Research published in Regional Environmental Change has shown that as climate zones shift toward hotter and drier conditions, ecological diversity will decline, posing a major threat to terrestrial ecosystems with far-reaching social and ecological impacts.
Air pollution and its high concentration in cities is one of the problems facing society today, due to its harmful effects on the environment, but also on human health. One of the causes of this pollution is the increase in nitrogen oxide emissions, mainly due to the use of fossil fuels.
What if, by adding a couple of cell layers inside a corn kernel, the grain could become significantly richer in essential nutrients like iron, zinc, and protein? Such an improvement could benefit people who rely on corn for a large portion of their diet, as in many parts of the global south. In a new study, University of Illinois scientists show it’s possible to increase iron up to 35% and zinc up to 15% compared to parent lines simply by adding cell layers in the bran.
A panel of experts will hold a WCS media briefing on High Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) that is currently wreaking havoc around the world and is the largest known outbreak since scientists have begun tracking the disease.
UD1022, a patented beneficial bacteria, can protect alfalfa plants from fungal pathogens that cause plant disease. But plant growth-promoting bacteria like UD1022 can have a dark side and antagonize other beneficial bacteria present in soil.
Green Bronx Machine, an impact driven, non-profit organization, has been named a Finalist in the 2023 Classy Awards.
The Virginia Tech media relations office has the following experts available for interviews surrounding the environment, energy, and sustainability. To schedule an interview, please contact [email protected]. Rising seas threatens U.S. coastlines and cities A recently released report from the U.N. on climate change found that rising sea levels are "unavoidable for centuries to millennia due to continuing deep ocean warming and ice sheet melt, and sea levels will remain elevated for thousands of years.
The alnus ambrosia beetle Xylosandrus germanus, also known as the black stem borer, was accidentally introduced by humans from its native east Asia to North America and Europe around the beginning of the 20th century.
The Bezos Earth Fund has awarded $9.9 million to the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) at Cornell University to support a project developing low-cost virtual livestock fencing that would benefit farmers and animals, improve public health in developing countries and combat climate change.
A University of Adelaide-led study will investigate if mixing a variety of compounds, including biserrula, into cow feed that contains seaweed, can reduce the amount of methane produced by livestock.
Barath Raghavan, an associate professor of computer science at USC Viterbi, is rethinking traditional farming practices by developing computational tools to help farmers design, develop, and manage sustainable farming methods.
In Brazil, a group of researchers supported by FAPESP created mutant forms of Salmonella to understand the mechanisms that favor colonization of the intestinal tract of chickens by these pathogenic bacteria and find better ways to combat the infection they cause.
A new study led by scientists from the Chinese MARA-CABI Joint Laboratory for Biosafety suggests greater awareness of biopesticide market availability, efficacy and field application processes could help tackle locust outbreaks in China.
Pests and diseases may reduce global wheat yields by over 20%. A study published April 11th in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Sergio Latorre at University College London, UK and colleagues suggest that genomic surveillance may be an effective disease management tool with the ability to trace lineages of emerging crop diseases, and to identify genetic traits for breeding disease-resistant lines.
Insights into gene and protein control systems that regulate the use of nitrogen by plant roots could help develop crops that require less nitrogenous fertilizers to produce acceptable yields. Plant biochemist Soichi Kojima and colleagues at Tohoku University discuss their findings and future plans in an article in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science.
Aerosols particles in the atmosphere are an important factor in the Earth’s climate, but researchers lack information on these aerosols’ molecular composition, especially for aerosols during the day and night above agricultural fields. In this research, scientists examined secondary organic aerosols over agricultural fields in the Southern Great Plains in Oklahoma. They found that the aerosols’ composition and structure differ from day to night and that some aerosols are ultimately from urban sources.
Plants are capable of responding to people and have behaviors comparable to tameness, according to authors of new research that calls for a reappraisal of the process of plant domestication, based on almost a decade of observations and experiments.
A pre-market regulatory status review conducted by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has concluded that teff modified by genome editing to have a semi-dwarf stature is not subject to biotechnology regulation under USDA’s SECURE Rule.
The key to insect success may be their wings. That’s what West Virginia University researcher Terry Gullion, professor of chemistry in the WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, has learned by studying the chemical composition of insect wings — something that has not been examined in detail until now.
“There’s no doubt we can produce enough food for the world’s population - humanity is strategic enough to achieve that. The question is whether - because of war and conflict and corruption and destabilization - we do,” said World Food Programme leader David Beasley in an interview with Time magazine earlier this year.
More realistically representing crops and agricultural practices dramatically improves simulations of carbon and energy exchange.
Researchers from the Agroecosystem Sustainability Center (ASC) at the University of Illinois can detect soil tillage practices from space, weaving together data from ground images, airborne sensors, and satellites. Now, with a grant from the USDA’s National Institute for Food and Agriculture, they will expand on that work to produce more accurate estimates of tillage effects on corn and soybean yield, greenhouse gas emissions, nitrogen loss, and changes in soil organic carbon.
The partnership will enable both organizations to engage in discussions and dialogue on key global issues related to animal science and phytobiomes research.
The U.S. dairy industry operates a comprehensive data collection program that records herd production information from farmers nationwide. The program provides crucial input for cattle breeding and genetics, and its cooperative structure ensures benefits for producers and scientists alike. A new study from the University of Illinois explores the program’s century-old history, highlighting its relevance for modern agriculture and digital data collection.
UC Riverside scientists have significantly advanced the race to control plant responses to temperature on a rapidly warming planet.
A team of MIT researchers has come up with a kind of tiny, biodegradable tag that can be applied directly to the seeds themselves, and that provides a unique randomly created code that cannot be duplicated.
Temperature influences how badly pesticides affect bees’ behaviour, suggesting uncertain impacts under climate change, according to a new study.
Cambridge University scientists have come up with a system of measuring animal welfare that enables reliable comparison across different types of pig farming.
Animal agriculture is a major source of water pollution in the United States, as manure runoff carries excess nutrients into rivers and lakes. Because of their non-point source nature, most farms are not regulated under the federal Clean Water Act. This leaves pollution control up to the states, resulting in a patchwork of different approaches that are difficult to evaluate.
Farmers in Thailand still largely use chemical herbicides, especially paraquat and atrazine, to control weeds on their farms. According to research by the Office of Agricultural Economics, in 2019, Thailand imported almost 10 million kilograms of paraquat and close to 3.5 million kilograms of atrazine. The residues of these herbicides cause harm to the environment, living creatures, and our health.
When a family of five-ton elephants stomps and chomps its way through your crops, there’s only one winner. And in the central African nation of Gabon, farmers are getting fed up with the giant animals trampling their fields—and their livelihoods.
A WCS-coauthored study reveals that global mountain forests – critically important to wildlife – are vanishing at an accelerating rate with an area twice the size of Norway lost between 2001-2018.
Staphylococcus aureus, Clostridioides difficile, Candida auris, Drug-resistant Shigella. These bacteria not only have difficult names to pronounce, but they are also difficult to fight off. These bacteria may infect humans and animals, and the infections they cause are harder to treat than those caused by non-resistant bacteria. Antimicrobial resistance is an urgent global public health threat.
Researchers have revealed for the first time how a key gene in plants allows them to use their energy more efficiently, enabling them to grow more roots and capture more water and nutrients.
The research team under Choi Tae-yong, principal researcher at the AI Robot Research Division’s Department of Robotics and Mechatronics of the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (President Park Sang-jin, hereinafter referred to as KIMM), an institution under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Science and ICT, has developed a multiple-robot system for harvesting crops.
A new University of Illinois project is using advanced object recognition technology to keep toxin-contaminated wheat kernels out of the food supply and to help researchers make wheat more resistant to fusarium head blight, or scab disease, the crop’s top nemesis.
The Taylor Geospatial Institute today awards its first $1.7 million in Geospatial Institute Seed Grant Program to stimulate Collaborative Research (GISCoR) grants to research faculty across its partner institutions. The TGI consortium includes Saint Louis University, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, Harris-Stowe State University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Missouri University of Science & Technology, University of Missouri-Columbia, University of Missouri-St. Louis, and Washington University in St. Louis.
Technology exists that the BC government could leverage to help small farmers connect directly with consumers and also mitigate climate change impacts, say new findings from UBC Okanagan.
Bald Eagles and dairy farmers exist in a mutually beneficial relationship in parts of northwestern Washington State. According to a new study, this "win-win" relationship has been a more recent development, driven by the impact of climate change on eagles' traditional winter diet of salmon carcasses, as well as by increased eagle abundance following decades of conservation efforts.
A new CABI-led study has found that mass media campaigns aimed at changing pesticide use to fight crop pests and diseases are more effective when farmers are exposed to multiple forms of communication.
Aerial imagery is a valuable component of precision agriculture, providing farmers with important information about crop health and yield. Images are typically obtained with an expensive multispectral camera attached to a drone. But a new study from the University of Illinois and Mississippi State University (MSU) shows that pictures from a standard red-green-blue (RGB) camera combined with AI deep learning can provide equivalent crop prediction tools for a fraction of the cost.
Coffee is important to the economies of coffee producing regions. A study published in PLOS Climate by Doug Richardson at CSIRO Oceans & Atmosphere, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia and colleagues suggests that climate change may significantly affect land where coffee is cultivated.
The National Institutes of Health recently pledged $2.6 million towards the Center for C. elegans Anatomy, also known as WormAtlas. The center provides anatomical resources for researchers studying C. elegans, the tiny nematode worm that serves as a model organism for higher animals, including humans. Of the total award, $950,000 goes to co-principal investigator Nathan Schroeder of the University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES).
Growing commercial crops on solar farms can both increase commercial food production and improve solar panel performance and longevity, according to new Cornell University research published in the journal Applied Energy.
The study, published in the journal Science, suggests that the harsh climate during the Pleistocene era resulted in the fragmentation of wild ecotypes, which paved the way for the domestication of grapevine about 11,000 years ago in the Near East (Israel) and the Caucasus.
Greenhouse gases act like a layer of window glass in the atmosphere: They prevent heat from being radiated from the Earth's surface into space.
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