Feature Channels: Agriculture

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The scientist who turned fresh-cut apple slices into a popular convenience food, available ready-to-eat in grocery stores, school cafeterias and fast-food restaurants, today described advances in keeping other foods fresh, flavorful, and safe for longer periods of time through the use of invisible, colorless, odorless, tasteless coatings. The overview of these edible films was part of the 246 National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.

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Honey bees should be on everyone’s worry list, and not because of the risk of a nasty sting, an expert on the health of those beneficial insects said here today at the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society. Despite years of intensive research, scientists do not understand the cause, nor can they provide remedies, for what is killing honey bees.

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The first study under realistic field conditions has found reassuringly low levels of chemicals from pharmaceuticals and personal care products in crops irrigated with recycled sewage water, scientists reported here today at the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.

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How will emerging 21st century toxicity testing technologies impact agricultural products?  How do they fit in the life cycle of discovery, regulatory registration and product defense or product stewardship? What’s the outlook for improved, science-informed hazard prediction and risk assessment? Those and other topics are on the agenda here today at a symposium during the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.

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The diets of people in North America shed almost 1.5 billion pounds of unhealthy saturated and trans fat over the last six years thanks to a new phase in the agricultural revolution, an expert said here today. In an interview before his address at the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, Daniel Kittle, Ph.D., cited the achievement as part of an expanded mission for agricultural science and biotechnology.

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Researchers have found and cloned a gene that prevents wheat from preharvest sprouting. The finding will to be most beneficial to white wheat production, which loses $1 billion annually.

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After years of development and consumer testing as “NY1” and “NY2” Cornell University and New York Apple Growers have given the hottest new apples in the Empire State names worthy of their unique assets: SnapDragon and RubyFrost.

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When it comes to carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in the soil, recent research at Texas Tech University shows that the new materials do not affect the sorption of the toxic part of oil called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).

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Students and staff at Michigan Tech are tending a sustainable vegetable garden in a residence hall courtyard. They're doing it without chemicals, and they're putting garden-fresh produce on dining hall tables.

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Teachers spent three weeks at Kansas State University learning inquiry, a form of teaching that will make science and agriculture more exciting so students will become interested at a young age.

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Analyzing the maize trade among 217 nations suggests that if U.S. maize exports are disrupted due to environmental or other factors, supplies and food security in many nations could be jeopardized due to the bilateral nature of trade patterns.

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The word "inflammation" typically has a negative connotation. Arthritis ... infection ... numerous maladies come to mind. But a Kansas State University researcher found that inflammation that occurs naturally in dairy cows the first few days after giving birth may play a surprisingly beneficial role in the complex process of going from late pregnancy to lactation.

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With fewer than a dozen flowering plants out of 300,000 species accounting for 80 percent of humanity’s caloric intake, people need to tap unused plants to feed the world in the near future, claims Cornell University plant geneticist Susan McCouch in the Comment feature of the July 4 issue of Nature.

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A new study found drug-resistant bacteria associated with livestock in the noses of industrial livestock workers in North Carolina but not in the noses of antibiotic-free livestock workers. The drug-resistant bacteria examined were Staphylococcus aureus, commonly known as “Staph,” which include the well-known bug MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus).

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A new study describes a robust corn yield prediction model that could help both growers and industry maximize their profits and efficiency.

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Canadian-led study will help scientists identify key genomic regions in canola, other food plants.

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A project funded by NASA will make use of existing satellite imagery to produce the first-ever global survey of croplands.

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An increase in antibiotic resistant bacteria that cause pneumonia in cattle prompted scientists at the Kansas State University Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory to survey records of pneumonia (also called bovine respiratory disease or BRD) cases over a three-year period. They discovered that drug resistance in one of the primary pathogens that cause BRD, Mannheimia haemolytica, increased over the three-year period 2009 to 2011.

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Scientists have identified a gene that gives wheat plants resistance to one of the most deadly races of the wheat stem rust pathogen, called Ug99.

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The goal of restoring or creating wetlands on agricultural lands is almost always to remove nutrients and improve water quality. But new research shows that constructed marshes also excel at pulling carbon dioxide from the air and holding it long-term in soil, suggesting that farmers and landowners may also want to build wetlands to "farm" carbon.

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Biotechnology has held out the promise of genetically engineered seeds that provide bountiful crops while keeping the weeds at bay. However, using these seeds raises many ecological, ethical, political, issues.

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Like a stealthy enemy, blast disease invades rice crops around the world, killing plants and cutting production of one of the most important global food sources. Now, a study by an international team of researchers sheds light on how the rice blast fungus, Magnaporthe oryzae, invades plant tissue. The finding is a step toward learning how to control the disease, which by some estimates destroys enough rice to feed 60 million people annually.

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Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center researchers conducted a study to evaluate the heat indexes in migrant farmworker housing and found that a majority of the workers don’t get a break from the heat when they’re off the clock.

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There’s nothing more frustrating for gardeners than discovering that their well-planned plots or rolling lawns have been infiltrated by invasive plant species, the perennial marauders of the back yard set. While many people panic and immediately start yanking or mowing the intruders when they first make their appearance, gardening expert Karen Snetselaar, Ph.D., chair and professor of biology at Saint Joseph’s University, advises that it’s best to investigate the plant that’s choking your columbines or blighting your lawn before complicating the problem with an errant course of action.

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Swimming in a 20,000 gallon tank at the University of Rhode Island are several large yellowfin tuna captured last fall about 100 miles off the Rhode Island coast. The fish are part of the first effort in the United States to breed tuna in a land-based aquaculture facility to meet the growing demand for tuna.

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It’s common wisdom that one rotten apple in a barrel spoils all the other apples, and that an apple ripens a green banana if they are put together in a paper bag. Ways to ripen, or spoil, fruit have been known for thousands of years—as the Bible can attest—but now the genes underlying these phenomena of nature have been revealed.

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A new study from researchers at the USDA Agricultural Research Service provides information about runoff under different management practices and can help farmers choose the practice that is best for them.

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A now patented animal feed technology improves the health, growth and reproductive functions of livestock.

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An international team of scientists use advanced space-borne radar to reveal how water flowed through the Sinai Desert five to ten thousand years ago, opening the possibility of capturing water from seasonal downpours for sustainable agriculture.

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What if you could save farmers money, protect the quality of the water in a watershed, help keep invasive plants out of waterways, protect biodiversity and prevent potential oxygen-depletion mass fish kills all with one predictive tool?

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University of Arkansas researchers conducted a life-cycle analysis of fluid milk that will provide guidance for producers, processors and others throughout the dairy supply chain.

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A University of Florida scientist is part of team working toward an insecticide that would target malaria-carrying mosquitoes but do no harm to other organisms.

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A pioneering genomics technique developed at Cornell University to improve corn can now be used to improve the quality of milk and meat, according to research published May 17 in the online journal PLOS ONE.

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A resistant strain of wheat can reduce nematode numbers in the soil and protect the next rotation of tomato plants.

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The Supreme Court’s unanimous opinion in Bowman v. Monsanto holds that farmers who lawfully obtain Monsanto’s patented, genetically modified soybeans do not have a right to plant those soybeans and grow a new crop of soybeans without Monsanto’s permission. “The Court closed a potential loophole in Monsanto’s long-standing business model, prevents Monsanto’s customers from setting up ‘farm-factories’ for producing soybeans that could be sold in competition with Monsanto’s soybeans, and it enables Monsanto to continue to earn a reasonable profit on its patented technology,” says Kevin Collins, JD, patent law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis

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Less oxygen = shorter time between molts = shorter life-span = fewer hungry grasshoppers. And for farmers, that’s very good news. A recent study conducted by Scott Kirkton, associate professor of biology at Union College, offers insight into the relationship between respiratory function and molting that could help farmers save more of their crops.

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Chickens likely raised with arsenic-based drugs result in chicken meat that has higher levels of inorganic arsenic, a known carcinogen, according to a new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

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Harsh Bais and Janine Sherrier of the University of Delaware’s Department of Plant and Soil Sciences are studying whether a naturally occurring soil bacterium, referred to as UD1023 because it was first characterized at the University, can create an iron barrier in rice roots that reduces arsenic uptake.

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North America isn’t known as a hotspot for crop plant diversity, yet a new inventory has uncovered nearly 4,600 wild relatives of crop plants in the United States, including close relatives of globally important food crops such as sunflower, bean, sweet potato, and strawberry.

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In a Kansas study, 50 years of inorganic fertilization increased soil organic carbon stocks but failed to enhance soil aggregate stability—a key indicator of soil structural quality that helps dictate how water moves through soil and the soil’s resistance to erosion.

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Mary Jo Dudley, director of the Cornell Farmworker Program, is an expert on issues affecting immigrant labor. An advisor to the White House, Dudley comments on renewed efforts in Congress to pass comprehensive immigration law reform.

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Urban heat islands raise the temperature of residential lawns, and hotter temperatures lead to more carbon dioxide efflux as compared to agricultural corn fields.

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The area of the contiguous United States in moderate drought or worse fell below 50 percent for the first time since last June, according to the latest edition of the U.S. Drought Monitor.

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Researchers illustrate how changes to farming could dramatically increase future costs of conservation.

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A new study of climate change and wine grapes published this month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paints a dire picture for wine grapes and wildlife. Two Cornell University experts urge lovers of both not to panic. With some thoughtful adaptation, there’s still a plenty of room and resources for everyone.