About 21 million years ago, a fungus that causes a devastating disease in rice first became harmful to the food that nourishes roughly half the world’s population, according to an international study led by Rutgers University–New Brunswick scientists.The findings may help lead to different ways to fight or prevent crop and plant diseases, such as new fungicides and more effective quarantines.
A new approach developed by Iowa State University scientists could allow plant breeders and farmers to diagnose soybean stresses – such as iron deficiency, disease or herbicide injury – by using a smartphone. The technology may have uses in unmanned aerial vehicles and ground robots as well. The researchers describe their approach in a recently published article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researchers develop a method of identifying gene expression patterns in drought-resistant plants.
How do you boost soil water content and soil health without irrigating? Best cover it with a layer of straw, a new study concludes.
Many homeowners appreciate the springy feel of a healthy lawn. But what are the tricks to keeping your lawn healthy? The April 22nd Sustainable, Secure Food blog explains how to maintain your lawn, and where to find resources specific to your region.
An international team of scientists including the University of Adelaide has discovered a new complex carbohydrate in moss that could possibly be exploited for health or other uses.
The Latest News On Marijuana Research
The latest research and experts on Wildfires in the Wildlife News Source
Gardeners, are you eager for winter to lose its icy grip? There’s no time like the present to improve your garden knowledge! Soils Matter, Soil Science Society of America’s science-based blog, provides insights to starting off the garden season.
Researchers from Uppsala University are using neutrons to study RuBisCO, an abundant enzyme essential to life on earth. They hope to determine how plants and other organisms use this enzyme to catalyze a reaction called carbon fixation that converts carbon dioxide into useful organic compounds.
We might think of roots as necessary, but uninteresting, parts of the crop production process. New research, however, focuses on what’s going on in the soil with the plant’s roots and the chemicals they produce.
UF/IFAS researchers are exploring all sorts of crops, including hops, artichokes, pomegranates, blackberries, olives and more.
Each year, farmers in the U.S. purchase tens of millions of pounds of antibiotics approved for use in livestock. When the animals’ manure is reused as fertilizer or bedding, traces of the medicines leach into the environment. New research holds troublesome insights with regard to the scope of this problem.
Where machine learning meets spring planting and big data intersects with farming big and small, two Washington University in St. Louis researchers at Olin Business School have devised a computational model so farmers and seedmakers could take the guesswork out of which particular variety of, say, soybean to plant each year.
Home and property owners often enhance their landscapes with the beautiful lantana, but some of the plant’s varieties may escape yards, spread to areas where they shouldn’t go and cross-pollinate Florida’s native lantana. Bloomify™ Rose and Bloomify™ Red are beautiful – so they will continue to enhance landscapes – but they don’t produce fruit and seeds, don’t spread and don’t cross-pollinate Florida’s native lantana, Lantana depressa, said Zhanao Deng, a professor of environmental horticulture at the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.
WCS announced today that a group of the world’s leading coffee companies has committed to addressing deforestation from illegal coffee production inside Indonesia’s Bukit Barisan Selatan (BBS) National Park – a key protected area for Sumatran tigers, rhinos, and elephants.
Researchers have good news for growers. Farmers raising a nitrogen-hungry crop like sweet corn may save up to half of their nitrogen fertilizer cost. The key: using a faba bean cover crop.
UF/IFAS researchers like Fred Gmitter saw some of the fruits of their labor consumed at this week’s Flavors of Florida event in Gainesville, Florida.
New Yorkers love apples. The Empire State is the second-largest apple grower in the U.S. and is the No. 1 producer of processedapple products, such as cider, juice and canned apples. Given this appreciation for apples, consumers might be concerned by reports from food scientists of a fungus, Paecilomyces niveus, that spoilsapple products even after heat pasteurization. The fungus also produces an FDA-regulated toxin called patulin that is found in these spoiled processed foods.
UPTON, NY—Scientists studying plant biochemistry at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered new details about biomolecules that put the brakes on oil production. The findings suggest that disabling these biomolecular brakes could push oil production into high gear—a possible pathway toward generating abundant biofuels and plant-derived bioproducts.
Choosing the right fertilizer or pesticide for your needs can be overwhelming. The April 7th Sustainable, Secure Food blog explains how to make the right choice, and why following label directions is important.
University of Adelaide research has discovered that drugs used in the treatment of certain brain disorders, including epilepsy, also alter the signalling process in plants under stress.
A research team led by Associate Professor He Jianzhong from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at NUS Faculty of Engineering has found that a natural bacterium isolated from mushroom crop residue can directly convert cellulose to biobutanol, a biofuel.
How do plants “know” it is time to flower? A new study uncovers exactly where a key protein forms before it triggers the flowering process in plants.
MacKenzie will manage the IICI’s programs and partnerships dedicated to translating key discoveries in plant health, disease and pest management, genomics, advanced breeding and nutrition to staple crops that impact food security around the globe.
Imagine sinking your teeth into a fat, bright red tomato, whose aroma promises a tantalizing treat. Instead, you realize you got a great looker, but not a great taster. That’s because the consumer has been left out of the breeding process. For 20 years, Harry Klee, a professor of horticultural sciences at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, has been using genetics to improve flavors and smells in tomatoes and other produce that induce the consumer to buy more of them.
Controlling weeds without synthetic herbicides, as organic certification requires, is challenging. Scientists are studying alternative tools for weed management. Research one such tool, propane-fueled flame weeding, provides practical advice to growers.
Deep underground, changes to rock layers are impacting the Earth’s surface. The Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) April 1 Soils Matter blog explains how these deep layers inform our knowledge of surface soils.
Ragweed, its pollen potent to allergy sufferers, might be more than a source of sneezes. In the Midwest, the plant may pose a threat to soybean production.Scientists have found that ragweed can drastically reduce soybean yield.
A research team at Virginia Tech has improved the traditional design of fog nets to increase their collection capacity by threefold
Novel observations suggest a great potential of measuring global gross primary production via solar-induced fluorescence.
The high price of sweetening your Sunday morning pancakes may be old news. A project led by Cornell University researchers promises to reverse the upward trend and help maple syrup producers get more sap from less land.
A new analysis indicates that if the land used to support animal-based diets were instead used for food crops, it would add enough food to feed a further 350 million people – more than the entire population of the U.S.
A team that includes Cal Poly Pomona scientists was honored for their work on an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approach to help control the spread of the Asian citrus psyllid (ACP)
The availability of livestock as a food source for vampire bats influences their immune response and infection by bacterial pathogens, according to a new paper in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. Because cattle ranching is common in areas where the bats live, the findings have implications for human as well as animal health.
Research in an arid area of Texas has yielded a statewide rainwater harvesting award for a group at The University of Texas at El Paso.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley have discovered that as plants develop they craft their root microbiome, favoring microbes that consume very specific metabolites. Their study could help scientists identify ways to enhance the soil microbiome for improved carbon storage and plant productivity.
As you watch the Masters Tournament, your eye may be drawn to more than the legends on the greens. What about the greens themselves? The March 22nd Sustainable, Secure Food blog explains the painstaking labor needed to make the golf courses so perfectly smooth and green.
Some waters are so shallow, they're susceptible to boat propellers scarring the seagrass beds in them.
To make protein, soybean plants need a lot of nitrogen. Beneficial bacteria in root nodules typically assist. A new study shows it’s possible to increase the number of soybean root nodules—and the bacteria that live there--to further increase crop yields. This could remove the need to apply additional nitrogen fertilizers.
West Virginia University alumnus Jothiganesh Shanmugasundaram received an Outstanding Scientist Award during the National Conference on Climate Resilience for Sustainable Livelihood in Annamalai Nagar, Tamil Nadu, India on Wednesday, Feb. 28.
Patrick Dickinson, Texas A&M AgriLife Research water conservation horticulturist in Dallas, gives tips for repairing and maintaining sprinkler systems for EPA WaterSense Fix A Leak Week 2018. (Texas A&M AgriLife video by Gabe Saldana)
The University of Portsmouth is playing a major role in a European project using agricultural and fisheries waste to develop sustainable methods and products to improve soil quality and reduce CO2 emissions.
New research reveals that even the highest performing maize crops contain rare harmful mutations that limit crop productivity.
Rutgers doctoral student Didik Prasetyo’s passion is learning more about the endangered apes and trying to conserve their habitats and populations, which face enormous pressure from deforestation from logging, palm oil and paper pulp production, and hunting. He coauthored an alarming recent study in Current Biology on the estimated loss of more than 100,000 Bornean orangutans between 1999 and 2015.
How will the farms of the future feed a projected 9.8 billion people by 2050? Berkeley Lab’s “smart farm” project marries microbiology and machine learning in an effort to reduce the need for chemical fertilizers and enhance soil carbon uptake, thus improving the long-term viability of the land while increasing crop yields.
Biologists at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered the molecular brakeman that holds kinesins in check until their cargo is needed.
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