Feature Channels: Agriculture

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KINGSTON, R.I. – November 6, 2019 – Saffron is the world’s most expensive spice, selling for about $5,000 per pound at wholesale rates, and 90 percent of the global saffron harvest comes from Iran. But University of Rhode Island agriculture researchers have found that Ocean State farms have the potential to get a share of the market as demand for saffron in the United States grows.

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Scientists identify more efficient methods for evaluating heat tolerance

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Researchers explored optimal pathways for managing groundwater and hydropower trade-offs for different water availability conditions as solar and wind energy start to play a more prominent role in California.

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The newest grape tomato – Moonbeam – has joined a constellation of tasty, small, heirloom-style tomatoes in the 2020 High Mowing Organic Seeds catalog, released earlier this month to home gardeners and commercial growers.

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Finalists in Grow-NY, a business competition for innovative food and agriculture startups, are fanning out through upstate New York to meet with potential business partners as they vie for $3 million in prizes.

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When many people think of watermelon, they likely think of Citrullus lanatus, the cultivated watermelon with sweet, juicy red fruit enjoyed around the world as a dessert. Indeed, watermelon is one of the world’s most popular fruits, second only to tomato – which many consider a vegetable. But there are six other wild species of watermelon, all of which have pale, hard and bitter fruits.

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Plant scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) and USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS)

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Consumers were more willing to buy unlabeled produce after being shown food tagged as “genetically modified” in a new Cornell University study that comes two months before a new federal law, requiring genetically modified organism disclosure labels on food products, goes into effect.

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Taking into account the target species, their interactions with existing species and the site’s environmental conditions may increase the success of restoration projects.

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For grape growers, accurately predicting each season’s yield is key to a successful harvest. Underpredict, and you won’t have enough labor on hand or you’ll run out of storage space; overpredict, and you could fall through on promises to your distributors.

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Peppers are popular. Consumers eat all kinds, including jalapenos, habaneros, chilis and more. But like all crops, peppers face diseases that threaten to reduce their production. So, a University of Florida scientist is leading a multi-state effort to lessen the risk of diseases eating away at pepper harvests. With new data, scientists plan to help farmers increase their pepper production.

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Fossil pollen can help reconstruct the past and predict the future

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Unchecked climate change could drive Britain's crop growing north and west, leaving the east and south east unable to support crop growing, new research suggests.

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An Iowa State University scientist is coordinating experiments across more than a dozen states to determine how the timing of cover crop termination affects the susceptibility of corn to disease. The experiments are part of a USDA-funded initiative that includes 100 scientists and 35 institutions to develop a suite of new tools to help farmers.

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Researchers will use a $2.25 federal grant to study how cells communicate within plants, and between plants and pathogens, to develop crops that are resilient to disease and other stresses. The work also could play a role in reengineering plants and microbes to improve biofuel production.

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Ceres2030, a global effort led by International Programs in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, is employing machine learning, librarian expertise and cutting-edge research analysis to use existing knowledge to help eliminate hunger by 2030.

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From maple syrup to apple cider to goat's milk soap, New York farms are growing sales in partnership with Cornell Cooperative Extension and Taste NY stores across the state.

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Tricking fungi into thinking they're starving could be the key to slowing down our evolutionary arms race with fungal pathogens, as hungry fungi don't want to have sex.

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Every year throughout Virginia and much of the Mid-Atlantic region, brown marmorated stink bugs are a nuisance to homeowners and a potential economic threat to farmers. During the spring and summer these insects feed on a wide range of fruit and vegetable crops. Then they ride out the cold winters by hiding out in your home entering through windows, cracks, and other small openings in your house.

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Cornell University researchers are deploying thumbnail-size satellites to monitor environmental conditions as a dry run for using the technology for future space research. At the same time, he is harvesting valuable data that will help growers make more informed decisions about growing crops and caring for animals.

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Sundeep Vani has joined Iowa State University to serve in the newly created role of chief technology officer (CTO) for biobased products, part of the State of Iowa’s Biosciences-based economic growth initiative.

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The Eastern Broccoli Project began in 2010 with the goal of growing a $100 million broccoli industry in the Eastern U.S. in 10 years. Currently, the industry is valued at around $90 million and, with two remaining years of funding, Cornell University researchers say they are on schedule to meet their goal.

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CWRU's W. Henry Boom, MD, and a team of collaborators nationally received the first installment of a seven-year contract, totaling $30 million in its first year from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the NIH, to establish three immunology research centers to accelerate TB vaccine development.

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New DNA sequences will aid in the development of improved millet varieties

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A team of Tufts University-led researchers exploring the development of cultured meat found that the addition of the iron-carrying protein myoglobin improves the growth, texture and color of bovine muscle grown from cells in culture. This development is a step toward the ultimate goal of growing meat from livestock animal cells for human consumption.

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Providing food closer to home in cities is possible

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Sunscreen from mushroom waste, healthy skincare products from apples and berries, and high-tech materials from Brussels sprout stalks – these are some high value products that could be first to market from a new $11 million research consortium led by the University of Adelaide.

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Lab-grown or cultured meat could revolutionize food production, providing a greener, more sustainable, more ethical alternative to large-scale meat production. But getting lab-grown meat from the petri dish to the dinner plate requires solving several major problems

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Irvine, Calif., Oct. 21, 2019 – The next time a river overflows its banks, don’t just blame the rain clouds. Earth system scientists from the University of California, Irvine have identified another culprit: leafy plants. In a study published today in Nature Climate Change, the UCI researchers describe the emerging role of ecophysiology in riparian flooding.

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Like many farmers nationwide, citrus growers are looking for any edge in their fight against weeds, and they’d rather use fewer chemicals to control the plants, says a University of Florida scientist. That’s because chemicals can get into groundwater, surface water and plants themselves.

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New findings from University of Florida scientists could help tomato growers nationwide in their battle against a damaging disease.

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Cornell University will lead a new global crop improvement research program to advance plant breeding tools, technologies and methods aimed at delivering staple crops that can increase yields, enhance nutrition and show greater resistance to pests and diseases.

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Bourbon isn’t bourbon without the mighty white oak. Distillers have been aging bourbon in oak barrels as far back as the Roman Empire. Oak barrels give bourbon its unique caramel, vanilla, nutty and toasted flavors. Kentucky distillers rely especially on the white oak. But what if disease hits the species? How would industry professionals protect it? The University of Kentucky College of Agriculture, Food and Environment is partnering with Maker’s Mark Distillery Inc. in Loretto, Kentucky, and Independent Stave Company to research the DNA of the white oak.

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Why does everything taste better when we're hungry? According to new findings from the National Institute for Physiological Sciences in Japan, not only does food taste sweeter when our stomachs are rumbling

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Science Foundation have awarded a three-year, $2.4 million grant to a team of Cornell University researchers who will study how agriculture-to-energy land-use conversions – putting solar panels or wind turbines on arable farmland – could impact food production, energy prices, water quality and resilience to changes in climate.

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Tours provide the perfect way to teach the community-at-large about the importance of agriculture. Students, residents, businesses and growers are invited to the EREC Open House for an inside look at the research of agriculture promoting sustainable foods, plants, and crops they use and come in contact with every day.

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Expect a tradeoff between alfalfa yield and quality when fertilizing with potassium

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A live webcast of the GAP Report Launch event will be available October 16, 2019 from 12:00 PM to 1:30 PM Eastern time: https://globalagriculturalproductivity.org

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Using plants to clean up soil

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New research is transforming technology for biomedicine and beyond. Chemists are simplifying experiments in mass spectrometry, a method commonly used by chemists, biologists, physicists and forensic scientists for analyzing molecular materials.

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What does the presence of 1,000 year old water mean for the future of water supplies under the desert regions of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Oman, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates? New research has sought to identify how much good water is available in the Arabian Peninsula, where water is stored in what are known as "fossil aquifers."

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When Florida families settle down to enjoy a seafood dinner they may not realize the main dish wasn’t freshly caught in the nearby Gulf of Mexico, but rather farmed off the coast of Panama. The process of farming seafood in the ocean, known as mariculture, is a growing trend yet little is known about the trajectories of its development.

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given the green light to ultra-low gossypol cottonseed, ULGCS, to be utilized as human food and in animal feed, something Texas A&M AgriLife researchers have been working on for nearly 25 years.

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Oat, quinoa, emmer and more to be topic of symposium

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The Neolithic Agricultural Revolution is one of the most thoroughly-studied episodes in prehistory. But a new paper by Sam Bowles and Jung-Kyoo Choi shows that most explanations for it don’t agree with the evidence, and offers a new interpretation.

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Changes in soil microbes, soil salinity to be covered in symposium

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Biologists looked at the European corn borer moth and pinpointed variation in two circadian clock genes – per and Pdfr – that enable different populations of the moth to adapt their seasonal transitions to climate change

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Figuring out the genetic underpinnings of hornworts’ weird biology could help researchers boost agricultural output, use less fertilizer, and gain new insights into plant evolution.