Agriculture and Food News

May 19, 2024

Top Headlines

Bees and Butterflies on the Decline in Western and Southern North America

May 15, 2024 — Bee and butterfly populations are in decline in major regions of North America due to ongoing environmental change, and significant gaps in pollinator research limit our ability to protect these species, according to a new ...

Two Decades of Studies Suggest Health Benefits Associated With Plant-Based Diets

May 15, 2024 — Vegetarian and vegan diets are generally associated with better status on various medical factors linked to cardiovascular health and cancer risk, as well as lower risk of cardiovascular diseases, ...

Natural Toxins in Food: Many People Are Not Aware of the Health Risks

May 16, 2024 — Many people are concerned about residues of chemicals, contaminants or microplastics in their food. However, it is less well known that many foods also contain toxins of completely natural origin. These are often chemical compounds that plants use ...

Bioengineered Enzyme Creates Natural Vanillin from Plants in One Step

May 16, 2024 — Vanilla, the most widely used flavoring compound in confectionaries and cosmetics, gets its sweet flavor and aroma from the chemical compound -- 'vanillin'. However, the large-scale production of natural vanillin is impeded by the lack of microbial ...

Latest Headlines

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Study Reveals Consumers Value Animal Welfare More Than Environmental Sustainability When Buying Meat and Dairy Products

May 16, 2024 — The treatment of animals rates higher than green issues when consumers choose meat and dairy products. That's according to a new study, which ...

Climate Change Is Most Prominent Threat to Pollinators

May 15, 2024 — A new article has found that climate change is the most prominent threat to pollinators -- such as bumblebees, wasps, and butterflies -- who are essential for biodiversity conservation, crop yields ...

Some Varieties of Annual Flowers Have a Place in Pollinator-Friendly Gardens

May 13, 2024 — While wildflowers and perennials are a must for supporting pollinators, there's no denying the popularity of many annual flowers for their colorful, ...

Scientists Unlock Key to Breeding 'Carbon Gobbling' Plants With a Major Appetite

May 10, 2024 — The discovery of how a critical enzyme 'hidden in nature's blueprint' works sheds new light on how cells control key processes in carbon fixation, a ...

Mosaic Grassland Landscapes Are the Most Beneficial

May 14, 2024 — Grassland provides many services for humans, animals and nature, such as feed production, carbon storage and recreation. Researchers spent two years investigating permanent grassland, its ...

Prostate Cancer Study: More Health Benefits from Plant-Based Diet

May 13, 2024 — Men with prostate cancer could significantly reduce the chances of the disease worsening by eating more fruits, vegetables, nuts, and olive oil, according to new ...

Like Dad and Like Mum...all in One Plant

May 13, 2024 — Scientists have established a system to generate clonal sex cells in tomato plants and used them to design the genomes of offspring. The fertilization of a clonal egg from one parent by a clonal ...

Bee Body Mass, Pathogens and Local Climate Influence Heat Tolerance

May 7, 2024 — How well bees tolerate temperature extremes could determine their ability to persist in a changing climate. But heat tolerance varies between and within populations, so entomologists examined bee ...

AI to Make Crop Production More Sustainable

May 6, 2024 — Drones monitoring fields for weeds and robots targeting and treating crop diseases may sound like science fiction but is actually happening already, at least on some experimental farms. Researchers ...

Plants Utilize Drought Stress Hormone to Block Snacking Spider Mites

May 3, 2024 — Recent findings that plants employ a drought-survival mechanism to also defend against nutrient-sucking pests could inform future crop breeding programs aimed at achieving better broadscale pest ...

Researchers Develop an AI Model to Reduce Uncertainty in Evapotranspiration Prediction

Apr. 30, 2024 — Evapotranspiration (ET) includes evaporation from soil and open water pools such as lakes, rivers, and ponds, as well as transpiration from plant leaves. The difference between precipitation and ET ...

Discovery of Mechanism Plants Use to Change Seed Oil Could Impact Industrial, Food Oils

Apr. 30, 2024 — Researchers have discovered a new mechanism of oil biosynthesis and found a way to genetically engineer a type of test plant to more efficiently produce different kinds of seed oil that it otherwise ...

Fading Lights: Multiple Threats to North America's Firefly Populations

Apr. 29, 2024 — Scientists have applied a data-driven approach to understanding firefly population dynamics on a continental scale. Key findings from this new study indicate that fireflies, part of the beetle order, ...

More Plants on the Menu of Ancient Hunter-Gatherers

Apr. 29, 2024 — It has long been thought that meat played an important role in the diet of hunter-gatherers before the Neolithic transition. However, due to the scarcity of well-preserved human remains from ...

Hornets Found to Be Primary Pollinators of Two Angelica Species

Apr. 29, 2024 — Researcher discovered that two species in the genus Angelica are pollinated primarily by hornets. This overturns the conventional belief that Angelica species are 'generalists,' meaning ...

Fixin' to Be Flexitarian: Scrap Fish and Invasive Species Can Liven Up Vegetables

Apr. 29, 2024 — Greening the way we eat needn't mean going vegetarian. A healthy, more realistic solution is to adopt a flexitarian diet where seafoods add umami to 'boring' vegetables. A ...

Genetic Hope in Fight Against Devastating Wheat Disease

Apr. 26, 2024 — Fungal disease Fusarium head blight (FHB) is on the rise due to increasingly humid conditions induced by climate change during the wheat growing season, but a fundamental discovery could help reduce ...

Barley Plants Fine-Tune Their Root Microbial Communities Through Sugary Secretions

Apr. 25, 2024 — Different types of barley recruit distinct communities of soil microbes to grow around their roots by releasing a custom mix of sugars and other compounds, according to a new ...

Scientists Released Long-Term Data of Ground Solar-Induced Fluorescence to Improve Understanding of Canopy-Level Photosynthesis

Apr. 25, 2024 — A recent study utilized ground-based instruments to measure solar-induced fluorescence (SIF) that reflect plant health and ...

Scientists Replace Fishmeal in Aquaculture With Microbial Protein Derived from Soybean Processing Wastewater

Apr. 25, 2024 — Scientists have successfully replaced half of the fishmeal protein in the diets of farmed Asian seabass with a 'single cell protein' cultivated from microbes in soybean processing ...

World's Chocolate Supply Threatened by Devastating Virus

Apr. 23, 2024 — A rapidly spreading virus threatens the health of the cacao tree and the dried seeds from which chocolate is made, jeopardizing the global supply of the world's most popular treat. Researchers ...

No Bull: How Creating Less-Gassy Cows Could Help Fight Climate Change

Apr. 23, 2024 — A new study has revealed breeding less-flatulent cows and restoring agricultural land could significantly reduce rising methane emission levels, which play a considerable role in climate ...

The Spiciness of Mustard May Depend on Soil Microbes

Apr. 22, 2024 — New study finds microbes may influence the taste of mustard ...

Honey Bees Experience Multiple Health Stressors out-in-the-Field

Apr. 17, 2024 — It's not a single pesticide or virus stressing honey bees, and affecting their health, but exposure to a complex web of multiple interacting stressors encountered while at work pollinating ...

Probiotic Feed Additive Boosts Growth, Health in Poultry in Place of Antibiotics

Apr. 17, 2024 — The growing need for antibiotic-free products has challenged producers to decrease or completely stop using antimicrobials as feed supplements in the diet of broiler chickens to improve feed ...

Plant Sensors Could Act as an Early Warning System for Farmers

Apr. 17, 2024 — Using a pair of sensors made from carbon nanotubes, researchers discovered signals that help plants respond to stresses such as heat, light, or attack from insects or bacteria. Farmers could use ...

Making Crops Colorful for Easier Weeding

Apr. 17, 2024 — To make weeding easier, scientists suggest bioengineering crops to be colorful or to have differently shaped leaves so that they can be more easily distinguished from their wild and weedy ...

Microbial Food as a Strategy Food Production of the Future

Apr. 12, 2024 — Scientists have summarized microbial food production ...

Biofortified Rice to Combat Deficiencies

Apr. 11, 2024 — Vitamin B1 is an essential micronutrient for human beings. Its deficiency is the cause of numerous diseases of the nervous and cardiovascular systems. Researchers have achieved a significant advance ...

Economist: Tens of Billions of Dollars in Forest Products Are Being Overlooked

Apr. 11, 2024 — Are we missing the forest for the trees? More than timber grows in forests -- including products worth many tens of billions of dollars. Because these goods go unrecorded in official trade ...