Agriculture
Cow Manure Becomes Biodegradable Mulch Film, Keeping Maize Yields With 30% Less Fertilizer
Chinese agriculture has long been trapped in a thorny triangle of interlocking problems: farmers apply too much chemical fertilizer, conventional...
Plantain Roots Quiet the Soil Microbes That Turn Fertilizer Into Pollutants
Every year, vast quantities of nitrogen fertilizer applied to pastures and croplands are transformed by soil microbes into nitrate, a...
New Antibody Tests Outperform PCR in Detecting Devastating Rice Panicle Blight Pathogens
Rice farmers and quarantine inspectors may soon have a powerful new weapon against one of the world’s most destructive rice...
Daily Low Doses of Shellfish Toxins Trigger Lasting Gut and Kidney Changes in Mice
For decades, food safety regulators have focused on the acute dangers of diarrhetic shellfish toxins, the potent compounds produced by...
UV-C Light Emerges as a Powerful, Chemical-Free Weapon for Apple Safety and Shelf Life
Apples are one of the planet’s most produced fruits, with global output exceeding 97 million tons in 2023, led by...
Self-Driving Robot Reads Tomato Seedling Health With Light Alone
A small four-wheeled robot that rolls autonomously down greenhouse aisles, aims a multispectral camera at individual tomato seedling leaves, and...
Highland Maize Hybrids Show Big Yield Gains Across Ethiopian Test Sites
Maize is the backbone of food security in Ethiopia, ranking second only to teff in cultivated area while leading all...
Milk Fat Membrane Lipids Show Promise Against Fatty Liver Disease in Mouse Study
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease has quietly become one of the most widespread chronic conditions on the planet, affecting an estimated...
Ancient Energy Gene Revealed as Hidden Drought Shield in Wheat
Glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase, or GAPDH, has spent more than a century in the textbooks as one of biology’s most dependable workhorses:...
Malawi’s Smallholder Farmers Are Ready to Pay for Farm Advice, Landmark Survey Finds
In a finding that could reshape how agricultural knowledge reaches some of the world’s poorest farmers, a new study from...
FAO Renews Mississippi State University as Global Reference Centre on Antimicrobial Resistance and Aquaculture Biosecurity
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has renewed the designation of Mississippi State University as an FAO...
Kenya’s Soil Moisture Science Has a Blind Spot Where It Matters Most
Soil moisture is the quiet variable that decides whether a season ends in harvest or hunger. It governs how rainfall...
Scientists Screen 300 Pearl Millet Lines to Find the Toughest Survivors of India’s Harshest Desert
In the blistering arid belt of western Rajasthan, where summer soil temperatures can scorch seedlings before they ever establish a...
Mango Auxin Genes MiYUCCA10A/B Trigger Early Flowering and Stress Tolerance in Transgenic Plants
Auxin is the master hormone that quietly choreographs nearly every stage of a plant’s life, from the first division of...
Red or White Blooms, Different Chemistry: Eucalyptus Study Reveals Flower-Color Link to Potent Antioxidants
A single eucalyptus tree species can wear two very different floral costumes, and according to new research, the color of...
Microbes and Nanoparticles Team Up to Boost Garden Pea Yields by 27 Percent
A field experiment in Punjab, India, has shown that pairing ordinary soil bacteria with zinc and iron nanoparticles can push...
Smarter Marker Panels Boost Genomic Prediction Power in Soybean Breeding
Soybean feeds billions of people and livestock around the world, yet breeding better varieties remains a slow, expensive guessing game...
War and Invasive Insects Push a Lifesaving Cactus Toward Collapse in the Horn of Africa
In the arid highlands of Ethiopia and Eritrea, a single plant has quietly held together an entire way of life...
Biogas Fertilizer Boosts Soil Microbes and Apple Quality on the Loess Plateau
On the dusty, wind-scoured terraces of China’s semiarid Loess Plateau, apple growers have long wrestled with a stubborn paradox: the...
Scientists Map the Hidden Gene Family That Helps Soybean Survive Salt, Cadmium, Manganese and Selenium Stress
Soybean is one of the most important oil crops on the planet, feeding both people and livestock while anchoring agricultural...