The promise for American agriculture is tantalizing: healthier soil, more carbon kept in the ground, less fertilizer runoff, and less need for chemicals.
American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America proudly present a free, online source for unbiased, science-based information. The new platform is live, and it’s called Decode 6
Veterans and community members are gaining career knowledge and tools through agriculture as part of a cooperative effort between West Virginia University Extension and Operation Welcome Home, a project designed to support military members moving from active-duty service to civilian life.
Agronomists have discovered genetic markers that make crops resistant to a dangerous phenomenon - enzyme depletion. The researchers described the factors that lead to this lesion and developed a scale to rate resistance.
A Brazilian study shows that the number of fires detected in the entire Amazon region between 2003 and 2020 was influenced more by uncontrolled human use of fire than by drought.
As part of a multipronged approach to prevent infestations by the parasitic plant Striga hermonthica, researchers are unravelling the role of plant hormones, known as strigolactones (SLs).
Ambrosia beetles practice active agriculture: A bark beetle species breeds and cultivates food fungi in its nests and ensures that so-called weed fungi spread less.
In 2011, the Catholic bishops of England and Wales called on congregations to return to foregoing meat on Fridays. Only around a quarter of Catholics changed their dietary habits – yet this still saved over 55,000 tonnes of carbon a year, according to a new study led by the University of Cambridge.
RUDN biologists have shown the effectiveness of nano-fertilizers, solutions with metal-based nanoparticles necessary for plant growth. Unlike traditional fertilizers, they are easily absorbed by plants and do not pollute the environment.
RUDN University researchers have shown that technogenic toxicants in the ecosystem are distributed unevenly. The reason for this is that they come from the source in “portions”. Further, an active interaction of technogenic and natural factors begins: soils temporarily deposit pollution and create conditions for the transformation of toxicants. Further, the buffer role of the roots is switched on, which do not allow some pollutants to pass through. From a practical point of view, these data are important for optimizing the traffic load in urban ecosystems and developing technologies for cleaning soils in the city.
A RUDN University biologist with colleagues from Egypt studied in detail the energy consumption of farms where vegetables are grown. The authors studied all the parameters that directly or indirectly contribute to global warming and named the safest crop from this point of view.
A new grant from the National Institutes of Health to the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University will fund the collaborative development of community-based programs to increase local production and consumption of fruits and vegetables in the Mississippi Delta.
Ideas that sprang from a pre-pandemic panel discussion at Cornell University now inform a United Nations initiative aimed to meet looming global food needs in a healthy, equitable and sustainable way.
A team of researchers has sequenced the Honeycrisp apple genome, a boon for scientists and breeders working with this popular and economically important cultivar.
Cool-season grasses are often used as forage for beef cattle in the eastern United States, but these grasses don’t do well during the summer. Can warm-season grasses be an alternative?
In an age of industrialized farming and complex supply chains, the true environmental pressures of our global food system are often obscure and difficult to assess.
One of the reasons for the global threat to biodiversity is that we humans introduce more nutrients into our environment than would naturally be present there, for example, when fertilising agricultural land.
A new online bushfire resource – Recovering After a Farm Fire – is hoping to provide Aussie farmers with the support and information they need to help them process and recover after a bushfire.
Nature and climate are mutually dependent. Plant growth is absolutely dependent on climate, but this is, in turn, strongly influenced by plants, such as in a forest, which evaporates a lot of water.
After Canadian cities upgraded their wastewater treatment plans, the amount of damaging nutrients released into rivers plummeted. The result: a major improvement in river health.
Despite improvements by meatpackers to keep their supply chains free of cattle grazed on protected or illegally deforested lands, many slaughterhouses in Brazil — the world's top beef exporter — continue to purchase illegally pastured animals on a large scale. A new study published Oct. 18 in the journal Conservation Letters underscores the depth of the problem.
Start-ups and academic labs have begun to produce cultivated meat grown from cells to replicate lamb, pork, fish and chicken. Now they are joining together in a Consortium hosted by Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture to identify and address the technological challenges in large scale production
Cooperative organizations play a vital role within the global economy, employing millions of workers and sustaining communities around the world. A new study from the University of Iowa's Tippie College of Business outlines how a five-factor framework can help strengthen co-ops and further their global impact.
Modern agriculture uses a lot of plastic, especially in the form of mulch film that farmers use to cover field soils. This keeps the soils moist for crops, suppresses weeds and promotes crop growth.
If Russia's war in Ukraine significantly reduces grain exports, surging prices could worsen food insecurity, with increases up to 4.6% for corn and 7.2% for wheat. That also would have an environmental impact, with carbon emissions rising as additional land is used to grow crops.
Symposium will present information that will inform decision makers to support safe urban food production, treatment of urban pollutants, protection of water resources, improvement of environmental health, and human well-being
Developing countries around the globe face a challenge that pits economic growth against environmental protection. As they expand their agricultural production, they often convert forest into cropland and pasture. But the large-scale removal of trees weakens the world’s ability to prevent further climate deterioration and biodiversity loss.
A researcher at the Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University has come up with the idea of producing 100% Made-in-Thailand cat litter from cassava and aims to export it to the global market. The product effectively absorbs liquids and odors of cat urine, decomposes naturally, and is safe for cats and their owners. Coming up is sand for cat litter that indicates disease.
Symposium will feature industry economists and market specialists, crop commodity representatives, and university soil fertility and nutrient-management specialists
The growing threat of antimicrobial resistance has led researchers to search for new compounds everywhere. This week in mBio, a multinational team of researchers in Europe report the discovery of a new antifungal antibiotic named solanimycin.
Nitrous oxide is a powerful greenhouse gas. Its global warming potential can be up to 300 times that of CO2 over a 100-year period. Globally, more than half of man-made nitrogen oxide emissions come from agriculture. A reduction in the nitrogen fertilizer used and an improvement in the nitrogen use efficiency of crops are therefore important measures in climate protection. An international team, coordinated by the Vienna Metabolomics Center (VIME) of the University of Vienna, is now presenting a new concept in the scientific journal "Trends in Plant Science" with which the efficiency of nitrogen fertilization is increased and the emission of nitrogen oxide (N2O) reduced.
Growing nutritious, protein-dense microalgae in onshore, seawater-fed aquaculture systems — particularly along the coasts of the Global South — could help increase food production by more than 50% and feed a projected 10 billion people by 2050.
Scientists are ringing alarm bells about a significant new threat to U.S. water quality: as winters warm due to climate change, they are unleashing large amounts of nutrient pollution into lakes, rivers, and streams.
The first-of-its-kind national study finds that previously frozen winter nutrient pollution—unlocked by rising winter temperatures and rainfall—is putting water quality at risk in 40% of the contiguous U.S., including over 40 states.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science has selected Brookhaven National Laboratory to lead a new research effort focused on potential threats to crops grown for bioenergy production. Understanding how such bioenergy crops could be harmed by known or new pests or pathogens could help speed the development of rapid responses to mitigate damage and longer-term strategies for preventing such harm.