Feature Channels: Agriculture

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For many people, there's nothing more satisfying than a hot, spicy meal. But some research has suggested that capsaicin, the compound that gives chili peppers their kick, might cause cancer. Now researchers show in mouse studies that the pungent compound in ginger, 6-ginergol, could counteract capsaicin's potentially harmful effects. In combination with the capsaicin, 6-gingerol could lower the risk of cancer, they say. The study appears in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

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The treatment increases the efficiency of bactericide by ensuring that light and rainfall don't degrade the treatments before they target the HLB-causing bacteria.

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Researchers at The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation are working to harness the power of endophytes. The initiative, Forage365, aims to help farmers provide livestock with year-round grazing.

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Educational videos released this week by the Crop Science Society of America (CSSA) celebrate the International Year of Pulses (IYP), as designated by the United Nations. Pulses--dry beans, peas, and lentils--are an important crop for a sustainable agronomic future. The videos are the latest in a series of informational offerings by CSSA celebrating IYP.

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Good soil, water and environmental factors cannot overcome poor seed quality

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Brian Pearson, a UF/IFAS assistant professor of environmental horticulture, is one of three members of the hops research team. Pearson’s research to date won him third place in the Early Career Award for scientists at the American Society of Horticultural Sciences (ASHS) in early August. The Early Career Competition is for new faculty and professionals to share their discoveries to a peer audience.

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The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Momentum Technologies have signed a non-exclusive licensing agreement for an ORNL process designed to recover rare earth magnets from used computer hard drives.

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In herbivores' guts, fungi digest plant material. Researchers characterized several fungi involved in this digestion process and identified a large number of enzymes that work synergistically to degrade the raw biomass.

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Warm springs in the Great Lakes and Northeast regions – which create havoc for agriculture – may start earlier by mid-century if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced, according to a new Cornell University study published in Climate Dynamics.

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Efforts to protect a worldwide multibillion dollar-a-year coffee industry are the buzz at Texas A&M. This will confront the industry's serious problems: diseases, narrow genetic diversity, climate change and an ever-increasing global demand.

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Less than one year after President Barack Obama announced a White House Arctic Initiative that included better mapping of the area, a team of researchers led by the University of Minnesota Polar Geospatial Center released the first-ever publicly available set of high-resolution, three-dimensional topographic maps of the entire state of Alaska.

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What is the first color that comes to mind when you envision soil? Is it brown, black, yellow, or red? How about white, gray, green, or blue? The Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) September 1 Soils Matter blog post explains that of these answers are correct depending on where you are from! It is true; soils come in an incredible range of colors.

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The National Association of County Agricultural Agents (NACAA) has recognized Mace Bauer, agriculture agent with University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Extension Columbia County, for excellence in sustainability education aimed at young, beginning or small-scale producers.

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A modest but versatile crop, cowpeas may provide an answer to demands on grower resources—and international appetites.

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Researchers including a University of Guelph scientist have recorded the only known example of prehistoric pollen caught in explosive mid-discharge from a fossil flower. The team describes this “freeze-frame” fossilized pollen release – preserved in amber more than 20 million years ago — in a paper describing a new genus of fossil nettle plants.

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Plants – even relatively small ones – played a crucial role in establishing a beachhead for life on land, according to recent work by an international team from China, the U.S., the U.K., and the University of Saskatchewan. The team found that early in the history of Earth’s terrestrial biosphere, a small plant called Drepanophycus, similar to modern club mosses, was already deeply rooted. This kept soils from washing away and even allowed build up as the resilient above-ground parts of the plants caught silt during floods. These plants – typically a metre long at most – helped form deep, stable soils where other plants could thrive.

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A new study has found that plants regulate their leaf temperature with some independence from the surrounding air temperature, a trait that increases carbon uptake through photosynthesis.

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Agronomists, and crop and soil scientists to meet in Phoenix this November

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Many popular long-term drought estimates ignore the fact that plants will be less thirsty as carbon dioxide goes up. Plants’ lower water use could roughly halve some current estimates for the extent of future drought, especially in central Africa and temperate Asia.

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The University of Saskatchewan marked the official launch of its unique Plant Phenotyping and Imaging Research Centre (P2IRC) today with an international symposium and demonstration of new drone technology to be used in novel crop development approaches.

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UF/IFAS Extension and researchers help farmers in the Hastings agricultural area explore sweet potatoes as an alternative crop.

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A Virginia Tech scientist who has alerted world policymakers to the pest that destroyed 80 percent of Nigeria's tomatoes continues his outreach while UCDavis scientists warn that the pest may reach California, "where it is likely to become a serious threat to tomato production."

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A team involving Kobe University researchers has succeeded in developing Target-AID, a genome editing technique that does not cleave the DNA. The technique offers, through high-level editing operation, a method to address the existing issues of genome editing. It is expected that the technique will be applied to gene therapy in the future in addition to providing a powerful tool for breeding useful organisms and conducting disease and drug-discovery research. The findings were published online in Science on August 5 (Japan Standard Time).

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Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans 11 years ago, but the storm’s legacy may have a silver lining: reduced levels of lead in soil across the city.

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RUSTON, La. - An innovative underground radar technology developed at Louisiana Tech University is helping the City of Slidell in south Louisiana to identify and document underground infrastructure damage that had gone undetected in the months and years following Hurricane Katrina.

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Researchers at UC Riverside have developed an economic model that demonstrates how flexible wastewater treatment processes which blend varying levels of treated effluent can create a water supply that benefits crops and is affordable.

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Click here to go directly to the Environment News Source.

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A new study from University of Michigan researchers challenges the widely held assumption that biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel are inherently carbon neutral.

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Two Wichita State University professors are conducting research on an invasive plant species to assist Kansas ranchers in their practices.

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Pulses, and in this case dry peas, are a flexible crop with many benefits. They work well for growers when rotated with other crops, delivering long-term benefits to the soil. They are wide adaptable for various rainfall zones. And, this new research shows they can even be planted in fall, a time when growers often have time for field work.

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As consumers increasingly desire local food, opinion leaders can encourage others to eat healthier food and, in doing so, improve the local economy, according to new University of Florida Food and Agricultural Sciences research.

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Plants are adapting to increasing atmospheric CO2 according to a new study from the University of Southampton. The research provides insight into the long-term impacts of rising CO2 and the implications for global food security and nature conservation.

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A team of scientists will study the response of rice, a food staple for half the world’s population, in saline soil conditions under a four-year, $4 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Plant Genome Research Program.

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Researchers at the University of California, Davis, and in the Netherlands have discovered how three fungal diseases have evolved into a lethal threat to the world’s bananas.

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University of Saskatchewan scientists at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization International Vaccine Centre have developed and tested a prototype vaccine against Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus (PEDV) which has so far killed more than eight million pigs and cost more than $400 million in lost income since 2013.

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University of Washington professor Sally Brown and collaborators have published the most extensive compilation to date explaining how to grow urban agriculture, and how doing so could save American cities.

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Apparently, it’s more convenient to Florida residents to save water while brushing their teeth than to cut back on lawn irrigation, according to a new University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences report.

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Tomatoes are the Type B’s of the vegetable world: Laid-back, creative, collaborative.

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Wooden breast syndrome can affect broiler chickens, making the meat hard and chewy, rendering the birds unmarketable. University of Delaware researchers are working to combat the disease that afflicts chicken bound for your dinner table.

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A few strains of wild soy are able to fight the kudzu bug by limiting the ability of its nymphs, or young, to survive. The next step is to identify which gene gives the soybeans this defense mechanism.

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2016 is the final year for the soil fumigant to be used in California crop fields.

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Both Markets Are Eager for Sustainable Agriculture Solutions

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Ever thought of putting sewage on your plants? Scientists say thermally conditioned sewage sludge serves as an excellent fertilizer to improve soil properties. This was recently published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Nutrition. The major advantage over commercial fertilizers? Sustainable re-use of essential and finite phosphorus resources.

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Cover crops offer many choices, many benefits

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In a newly published study, Fred Gmitter, a UF/IFAS horticultural sciences professor, and his colleagues found genetic markers for fruit quality traits that will be useful in future cultivar-breeding efforts.

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The world’s leading atmospheric scientists overwhelmingly deny the existence of a secret, elite-driven plot to release harmful chemicals into the air from high-flying aircraft, according to the first peer-reviewed journal paper to address the “chemtrails” conspiracy theory.

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Amateur and professional entomologists are experts at their own version of Pokémon Go. After all, part of their job is to search for and collect rare insect species that are stored in the archives of natural history museums.

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Wildlife-friendly farming schemes can help boost the abundance of many UK moth species, a new study by the University of Liverpool has found.

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Successfully integrating human activities with ecosystem conservation forms the foundation of sustainability and is key to maintaining biological diversity. A new study has found that recreational use of private land in the U.S. could have significant benefits for both conservation efforts and economic return, especially when coupled with certain policy mechanisms.