Farming and Agriculture

Duckweed is the fastest-growing flowering plant, but new knowledge of duckweed genetics discovered by Adelaide University researchers could lead to even faster growing rates. The research team, led by Professor Nikolai Borisjuk at the Institute of Cell Biology and Genetic Engineering in Kyiv, Ukraine, described for the first time the... Read more

UBC Okanagan researchers and Canadian egg farmers have created a practical tool to help producers balance environmental and economic trade-offs. Researchers at UBC Okanagan and Canadian egg farmers have built a practical decision-making tool to help producers balance environmental, economic and management trade-offs on their farms. The project developed software... Read more

In the search for climate-friendly foods, scientists have spent decades reimagining what grows in the field. But a quieter question has lingered in the background: Will anyone actually want to eat it? A new study in the journal Agricultural Economics has applied this question to intermediate wheatgrass, finding that consumers... Read more

In a world-first discovery, researchers have found an electrical shark deterrent used at Cocos (Keeling) Islands was effective at reducing the number of fish taken off fishing hooks by sharks—a process known as depredation. The study, led by The University of Western Australia's Dr. Jonathan Mitchell and published in Marine... Read more

Researchers from the University of Oxford, Nanjing Agricultural University, and Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology (Chinese Academy of Sciences) have finally identified the master regulator in plants that balances root and shoot growth when nutrients are limited. In field trials, rice plants with an improved version of the gene... Read more

A new study examining small-scale farming in Tanzania argues that major agricultural development initiatives, including the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), are built on flawed assumptions about how rural households make decisions. The research, led by Daniel Tobin of the University of Vermont, finds that household composition,... Read more

Scientists have developed a new edge-of-field water-treatment system that reduces the load of excess nutrients washing into waterways from farm drainage systems. Their method combines a woodchip bioreactor with a two-step biochar water-treatment module. A one-year field trial demonstrated that the system reduced both nitrogen and phosphorus runoff from farmland.... Read more

University of Florida scientists have developed a tomato packed with significantly higher levels of vitamin A, a breakthrough that could help combat one of the world's most widespread nutritional deficiencies. In research newly published in Plant Physiology by Jingwei Fu, Denise Tieman and Bala Rathinasabapathi from UF's Institute of Food... Read more

Plants around the world are flowering earlier in the year, a trend attributed to climate change. But there could be another hitherto hidden trigger. Scientists led by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences suggest a cause may be morning dew drops, as explained in a paper in the journal... Read more

Indoor farms, also known as vertical farms, are popular among agricultural researchers and are expanding across the agricultural industry. Some benefits they have over outdoor farms include the year-round production of food crops, less water and land requirements, and they don't need pesticides. They also reduce food waste and carbon... Read more

If you were one of the many amateur bakers who learned to bake sourdough bread during lockdown, you'll know how complex a single loaf can be. The rise of the bread, moisture, firmness and even crumb structure can make or break a baker's creation. It's why Latifeh Ahmadi, professor in... Read more

As the global population climbs toward 10 billion and climate change strains farmland, scientists are searching for new ways to feed the world. A group of Cornell food science researchers say one answer may lie not in fields of soy or herds of cattle, but in networks of fungi quietly... Read more

A new study co-authored by Virginia Tech and University of Vermont researchers offers one of the first, large-scale empirical looks at how Certified Crop Advisors (CCAs) across North America evaluate the next generation of artificial intelligence–enabled decision support systems (AI‑DSS) for agriculture. Published in Technological Forecasting and Social Change, the... Read more

There is a long history of the mechanical thinning of forests in standard forestry operations. Thinning typically involves removing some 30–50% of the standing volume of trees with commercially valued logs removed via tracked or wheeled machinery. More recently, thinning has been proposed to limit wildfire, drought, insect outbreaks, and... Read more

Researchers from the USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) are helping poultry farmers protect their flocks and their employees, while improving poultry production. ARS researchers recently developed an indoor air scrubber that purifies the air in chicken houses and reduces ammonia levels by 87% to 99%.... Read more