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Agriculture.

Exploiting a genetic quirk in potatoes may cut fertilizer needs

A gene controlling potato growth limits the plant’s fertilizer uptake. Tweaking related genes could lead to more sustainable potato varieties.

‘Smart lighting’ might make vertical farming more affordable

Can solar farms and crop farms coexist, more stories in agriculture.

Can scientists make fruits and veggies resilient to climate change?

Combining traditional plant breeding with new genomics tools is allowing scientists to grow plants that are better adapted to a warming climate.

How powdered rock could help slow climate change

A method called enhanced rock weathering shows promise at capturing carbon dioxide from the air. But verifying the carbon removal is a challenge.

50 years ago, scientists ID’d a threat to California wine country

Fifty years after scientists identified the cause of Pierce's disease, which damages vineyards, there still isn't a cure.

Mixing up root microbes can boost tea’s flavor

Inoculating tea plant roots with nitrogen-metabolizing bacteria enhances synthesis of theanine, an amino acid that gives tea its savoriness.

Could a rice-meat hybrid be what’s for dinner?

A hybrid food that combines rice, animal cells and fish gelatin could one day be a more sustainable way to produce meat.

Berkley Walker wants to revamp photosynthesis for a changing climate

Finding ways to make plants work better could help feed a growing population, especially as the planet warms.

Camouflaging wheat with a wheat smell could be a new approach to pest control

Wheat fields coated in wheat germ oil confuse the noses of mice, reducing seed loss by more than 60 percent, a new study finds.

50 years ago, flesh-eating screwworms pushed scientists to mass produce flies

"Fly factories” dreamed up in the early 1970s have helped North and Central America keep screwworms in check for decades.

Martian soil may have all the nutrients rice needs

Experiments hint that in the future, we might be able to grow the staple food in the soils of the Red Planet.

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Role of biotechnology in creating sustainable agriculture

Maize yield in smallholder agriculture system—An approach integrating socio-economic and crop management factors

Forecasting severe grape downy mildew attacks using machine learning

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Estimation of forage biomass and vegetation cover in grasslands using UAV imagery

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Pheno4D: A spatio-temporal dataset of maize and tomato plant point clouds for phenotyping and advanced plant analysis

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Breeding for Climate Resilience in Wheat Under Irrigated, Heat Stress, Rainfed and Drought Environments

• Radhakrishna Bhandari
• Harikala Paudel
• Mukti Ram Poudel

Effect of Sucker Thinning and Potential Impact of Harvest and Trimming Practice on Reduction of Starch Supply in Rhizome of Sago Palm ( Metroxylon sagu ) Cluster

• Albertus Fajar Irawan
• Akira Miyazaki

Marker Assisted Introgression and Evaluation of Retinol Equivalent Carotenoid in the Elite Cultivars Background from Traditional Landrace ‘Kavuni’

• Suvarna Rani Chimmili
• G. Subashini

Application of Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process in Land Suitability Evaluation for Faba Bean Crop

• Araya Kahsay

Morphological and Physiological Responses of Two Tropical Rice ( Oryza sativa ) Varieties to High-Temperature Stress

• Pallot Sindhumole
• B. R. Vishnu

Unveiling the Effect of Stocking Density and Salinity on Mucus-Associated Greenwater Qualities, Physiology, and Growth Performance of Euryhaline Milkfish Chanos Chanos

• Kishore Kumar Krishnani

Fertilization Strategies for Peppermint ( Mentha  ×  piperita ) Under Irrigation Patterns in Varamin, Iran: The Role of Mycorrhizae Depends on Chemical Phosphorus Availability

• Seyed Abolfazl Mousavi-Jangali
• Hamid Reza Tohidi Moghadam
• Arash Borzou

Evaluation of Groundnut ( Arachis hypogaea ) Genetic Variability for High-Temperature Tolerance in Controlled and Field Conditions

• Anurag Mathew
• Padma Vemulapalli
• Janila Pasupuleti

Prediction of rice yield using sensors mounted on unmanned aerial vehicle

• Rahul Tripathi
• Bismay Ranjan Tripathy
• A. K. Nayak

Transcriptomics Reveals Genes Involved in Purple Tuber Colour Development in Potato

• Jagesh Kumar Tiwari
• Satish Kumar Luthra
• Tanuja Buckseth

Molecular Modeling Study and Proposition of Novel Diaryl Ether Derivatives as Protoporphyrinogen Oxidase Inhibitors

• Adriana C. de Faria
• Elaine F. F. da Cunha
• Matheus P. Freitas

Optimization, Development and Evaluation of Vegetable Seedlings Transplanter Using Inclined Magazine-Type Metering Device for Cylindrical Paper Pot Seedlings

• Ajit Pralhad Magar
• Balaji Murhari Nandede
• V. P. Chaudhary

A Global Estimation of Potential Climate Change Effects on Pollinator-Dependent Crops

• Ehsan Rahimi
• Chuleui Jung

Enhancing Forage Production and Nutrient Value through Cereal/Legume Mixtures in Hydroponic Systems: A Study on Barley, Triticale, and Fodder Pea

• Othmane Elghalmi
• Zaynab El Aadmoni
• Mohamed El Koudrim

A Comparative Study of Nutrient Composition, Proteolytic Activity, Phytochemical Profiles, Vitamin C Content, and Antioxidant Properties in the Peels of Selected Perennial Fruits

• Jhanani Gopalraaj
• Krishnakumar Velayudhannair

Influence of Supplementary Nickel on Minerals Balance, Hematobiochemical Parameters, Antioxidant Activity, Plasma Minerals and Hormones Status in Murrah Buffalo Calves

• Thamizhan P
• Chander Datt
• Raman Malik

Cultivating Tomorrow: A Comprehensive Review of Agricultural Innovations in the Philippines (2018–2023)

• Albino Taer

Recurrent Parent Phenome Recovery Analysis in Six Different Backcross Populations of Bell Pepper Having Genetic Male Sterile ms10 Gene

• Menisha Rani
• Salesh Kumar Jindal
• Om Prakash Meena

Seed Priming with Biosynthesized Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles for Enhancing Seed Germination and Vigour through Promoting Antioxidant and Hydrolytic Enzyme Activity in Green gram ( Vigna radiata )

• M. Kathiravan

Genetic Diversity and Population Structure Analysis in Avocado ( Persea americana ) Accessions of India

• B. M. Muralidhara
• T. Sakthivel
• M. K. Honnabyraiah

Machine Learning Based Hybrid Approach for Estimation of Jute Area Using Optical and Microwave Satellite Imagery

• Rituparna Das
• Prabir Kumar Das
• Sharmistha B. Pandey

Effects of Dietary Energy Levels on Performance and Gene Expression in Indigenous Aseel Chickens

• Kumaravel Varadharajan
• Mohan Balasubramaniam
• Vasanthakumar Periyannan

Bacillus subtilis and Saccharomyces cerevisiae as Potential Modulators of Hemato-Biochemical Indices, Digestive Enzymes and Disease Resistance in Labeo rohita

• Barsha Baisakhi
• Himanshu S. Swain
• Debasmita Mohanty

Screening of Economically Sustainable Strains of Bivoltine Silkworm, Bombyx mori L. by Assessing the Comparative Fibroin Gene Expression

• Ishfaq Ahmad Malla
• Khursheed Ahmad Sahaf
• Khalid Z. Masoodi

AMMI and GGE Biplot Analysis for Selection of Some High Yielding Terminal Heat Stress Tolerant Wheat ( Triticum aestivum ) Genotypes in Bangladesh

• Nur Un Nesa
• Anannya Das
• G. H. M. Sagor

Development of Potting Media from Composted Organic Food Waste Supplemented with Trichoderma asperellum and Talaromyces tratensis for Control of Root and Stem-End Rot in Chinese Kale ( Brassica oleracea )

• Chutima Kaewkrajay
• Tida Dethoup

Adoption of Drought-Tolerant Teff and Its Welfare Effect in Rainfall Stress Region, Northern Ethiopia

• Menasbo Gebru Tesfay

The Comparison of Machine Learning Techniques for Agricultural Land Use Classifications in the Prairies: A Case Study in Saskatchewan, Canada

Development of an Automatic Weather Station for Irrigation Management via IoT

• Angelo Tiago Azevedo
• Rubens Duarte Coelho
• Rubens Andre Tabile

N-AquaRAM: A Cost-Efficient Deep Learning Accelerator for Real-Time Aquaponic Monitoring

• Ali Siddique
• Muhammad Azhar Iqbal
• Sunbal Siddique

Identification of the Best Strategies for the Development of Healthy and Organic Production: A Study in Mazandaran Province, Iran

• Fatemeh Shafiee
• Omid Jamshidi

Diversity of Root Endophytic Fungi from Some Medicinal Plants of Papaveraceae in Iran

• Yasaman Tajik Gharibi
• Kamran Rahnama
• Afsaneh Graan

Development of a Technology Valuation Model for Commercial Licensing: An Empirical Case of PB 1718 Basmati Rice Variety

• Stanishkar Thevaruparambil Sunil
• Akriti Sharma
• Girish Kumar Jha

Morphological and Molecular Evidence of Fish Parasite Gyrodactylus kobayashi and Argulus japonicus Isolated from Ornamental Fish ( Carassius auratus )

• Basanta Kumar Das
• Souvik Dhar
• Bijay Kumar Behera

Application of Vegetation Indices to Determine the Reproductive Development of Açaí in the Eastern Amazon

• Jamile do Nascimento Santos
• Izadora de Cássia Mesquita da Cunha
• Fábio Júnior de Oliveira

Design, Development and Performance Evaluation of a Portable Battery-Operated Litter Agitator Installed with AI-Controlled Obstacle-Avoidance Robot with Sensors

• Rohit Bhojyareddy Gaddamwar
• Ajaya Kumar Dash
• Susant Kumar Dash

Specific Glycoprotein E ( gE ) Gene Based Nested Polymerase Chain Reaction Assay for Detection of Marek’s Disease Virus in Chickens

• Muskan Bhadok
• Adarsh Mishra
• Yashpal Singh Malik

Influence of Histology and Histomorphometry of Thigh Muscles on Thermal Stress-Related Physiological and Plasma Hormonal Responses in Three Broiler Strains

• Haresh Kashinathrao Popalghat
• Nrusingha Charan Behura
• Soubhagya Muduli

Characterization of Spreadable Goat Cheese from Animals Fed with Cactus ( Opuntia ficus-indica ) Cladodes as a Productive Alternative in Arid and Semiarid Areas

• Florencia Frau
• Jorge Nelson Leguizamón-Carate

Development of a Power Operated Fenugreek Thresher

• C. Naveen Kumar
• R. K. Rathod
• S. M. Mathur

Molecular Characterisation and Dynamics of the Fusion Protein of an Emerging Genotype VIIi of Newcastle Disease Virus

• Rafia Maqbool
• Sabia Qureshi

Comparative Metatranscriptomics of Rhizosphere Microbiomes in Survived and Dead Cocoa Plants Under Drought Condition

• Norasekin Tamchek
• Ping-Chin Lee

Problems and Its Related Factors Affecting the Hatchery Owners in Producing Fish Seeds in Rural Bangladesh

• Mohammed Nasir Uddin
• Arup Kumer Das
• M. Salim Uddin

Identification and Differentiation of Mustard Crop with Associated Other Land Cover Features Using Multi-temporal Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Multispectral Instrument (MSI) Data with Machine Learning Approach Over Haryana, India

• Sultan Singh

Soil Water Balance and Productivity of Different Maize-Based Crop Sequences Compared to Rice–Wheat System under Contrasting Irrigation Regimes in North–West India

• Navneet Kaur
• Krishan Kumar Vashist

Soil Erosion Assessment Using the RUSLE Model, Remote Sensing, and GIS in the Woybo Watershed, Ethiopia

• Mudesir Nesru

Soil Attributes Modulate the Fungal Population and Diversity of Phytopathogens and Biocontrol Agents

• Sumit K. Soni
• Poonam C. Singh

Exploring Oxyfluorfen's Environmental Fate: Soil Affinity, Persistence, Degradation Dynamics and Ecological Implications

• Khuram Shahzad Ahmad
• Abdulnasser M. Karami

Examining the Prevalence and Predictors of Stunting in Indian Children: A Spatial and Multilevel Analysis Approach

• Venkata Naga Sindhuja Padigapati
• Selvaprakash Ramalingam

Buzzing for Broccoli ( Brassica oleracea var. italica ): Exploring Insect Pollinators, Their Behaviour, Single-Visit Efficiency and the Significance of Honey Bees in Yield Enhancement

• Sunaullah Bhat
• Johnson Stanley
• Sandeep Kumar

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Top headlines, latest headlines.

• Microbes in Mouth Reflect Lifestyle Choices
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Earlier Headlines

Wednesday, october 30, 2024.

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Monday, October 28, 2024

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Thursday, October 24, 2024

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Wednesday, October 23, 2024

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Tuesday, October 22, 2024

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Thursday, October 17, 2024

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Thursday, October 10, 2024

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Wednesday, October 9, 2024

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Tuesday, October 8, 2024

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Friday, September 27, 2024

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Wednesday, September 25, 2024

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Monday, September 23, 2024

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Research team investigates climate change impact on pecan orchards

by University of Texas at El Paso

How are U.S. agricultural crops affected by climate change? A research team from The University of Texas at El Paso aims to find out, starting with the region's pecan farms.

The research is led by Hugo Gutierrez-Jurado, Ph.D., associate professor in UTEP's Department of Earth, Environmental and Resource Sciences.

"Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, which are already having a profound impact on the crops in large agricultural areas across the country's arid regions," said Gutierrez-Jurado. "We are seeing decreases in crop productivity due to plant stress from excessive dry and warm conditions."

Pecans are one of the most economically significant crops for communities across the Chihuahuan Desert region on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, Gutierrez-Jurado said. According to Iowa State University's Agricultural Marketing Resource Center, the pecan crop in the U.S. alone was valued at $500 million in 2022 .

The UTEP study will look at how drought, heat waves and soil impact the cycle of water and carbon between plants and the atmosphere in dryland agricultural ecosystems. It will focus on two orchards, one in the El Paso area and another in the Conchos River basin near the city of Delicias in the Mexican state of Chihuahua.

The research team will monitor tree and root system growth, soil-plant water status and canopy temperature. Their goal is to develop a detailed understanding of how soil structure and management practices can either mitigate or exacerbate the stress that plants experience during extreme weather events. Additionally, the project will explore how these stressors affect the ability of crops to sequester, or capture and store, carbon dioxide , a critical factor in addressing climate change .

"This is a new way of looking at this problem. There has been a lot of research into how to make pecans and other crops more productive through input control, especially irrigation levels, but much of that work has failed to take into account the changes that trees and plants experience as a result of climate-related stress," Gutierrez-Jurado said.

The goal of the study is to uncover valuable insights for farmers and policymakers on how to improve water use efficiency and enhance carbon sequestration in agro-ecosystems.

If successful, the work will bring innovation to an area of agricultural practice known as precision farming, the team said, which seeks to improve productivity by taking a detailed look at the characteristics and unique variables that affect a specific plot of land.

"This research aims to determine the optimal timing for irrigation, which is vital information for agricultural producers, both local and beyond, as it will help improve orchard efficiency and conserve valuable resources," said Robert Kirken, Ph.D., dean of the UTEP College of Science. "I congratulate Dr. Gutierrez-Jurado and his team for receiving this award from NSF."

Gutierrez-Jurado's project continues a study initially funded by a program aimed at strengthening relationships between researchers on both sides of the border and promoting academic work that benefits the entire Paso del Norte region.

Throughout both phases of his project, Gutierrez-Jurado has collaborated closely with colleagues from Mexican institutions, including the Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua and the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales, Agrícolas y Pecuarias.

The research team will also collaborate with a local museum in El Paso to create hands-on, interactive learning experiences for the public, with a focus on climate change and its impact on the region's agriculture.

Provided by University of Texas at El Paso

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• 15 November 2022

Farming feeds the world. We desperately need to know how to do it better

You have full access to this article via your institution.

The potential benefits of digital agriculture to small-holder farmers are difficult to determine owing to a shortage of evidence. Credit: Adriana Adie/NurPhoto/Getty

How effective is ‘digital agriculture’? What, for example, are the benefits of sending weather forecasts to smallholder farmers’ phones? Does the digital approach improve nutrition or make agriculture more sustainable? Does it help farmers adapt to climate change, a priority for the negotiations taking place this week at the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt?

The honest answer to these questions is that we can’t yet be sure. That’s partly because of a lack of evidence — the needs of small-scale farmers are under-researched, as a project called Ceres2030 reported in 2020 (see go.nature.com/3o5hgl7). What’s more, the rules for evidence in policy for agriculture, food systems and climate adaptation are not as systematic as they are in policy for health and medicine.

In a welcome development, that might be about to change. Three organizations are creating a network called the Juno Evidence Alliance — its name a nod to its origins in the Ceres2030 project, both being named after Roman goddesses. It is a collaboration between CABI, a non-profit intergovernmental organization that collates agricultural information, headquartered in Wallingford, UK; the University of Notre Dame in Indiana; and Havos.ai, a company specializing in machine learning for evidence synthesis, based in Washington DC and Ithaca, New York. The collaboration has obtained US$3 million in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for this and related projects, and the UK government says it also plans to fund the alliance.

Natural solutions for agricultural productivity

Juno will be launched early next year. Its first project will be to assess the literature on nutrition, agriculture and climate change. Specifically, it will identify the areas in which research is and isn’t meeting people’s needs. After that, its creators want to develop guidance for researchers on the principles of evidence synthesis, and how to produce research that can be easily compared with other studies. Juno will also train people in evidence-synthesis skills.

Moreover, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) last month announced plans to publish a biennial Agrifood Systems Technologies and Innovations Outlook (see go.nature.com/3hgixy7). According to Chris Barrett, an agricultural economist at Cornell University, Ithaca, and one of the project’s leaders, this will explore topical questions such how widespread the use of drones is in agriculture in the global south, and how common it is for countries to fortify salt with iodine, an effective way to reduce iodine deficiency. Subject to funding, both initiatives will use machine-learning algorithms; in Juno’s case, to do much of the literature mining. Mary O’Connor, who oversees evidence innovation for CABI, says that artificial intelligence could reduce the time it takes to conduct an evidence review to 6–8 months, compared with the 18 months to 2 years it usually takes.

Efforts to publish more research, find and fill knowledge gaps, and improve evidence synthesis are clearly overdue. The committees of researchers who guide decision-makers and regulatory bodies around the world, including those in international organizations such as the FAO, are faced with an applied life-sciences literature that exceeds 10 million records in English alone. Reviews summarizing the work on many topics are few and far between.

It can be hard for decision-makers to compare the conclusions of separate studies. Different studies can use different evaluation indicators. At its most basic, there might not even be agreement on the definition of terms — for instance, the meaning of ‘small-scale farmer’ varies from study to study, if it is defined at all. This means that farmers, donors, non-governmental organizations and governments struggle to find reliable answers to their questions.

The task ahead

The Juno team should draw on the experiences of other fields, particularly medicine. Cochrane, a charity based in London, has been conducting and publishing health-care evidence reviews since the 1990s. These are used by, among others, the World Health Organization (WHO) in its guidelines for doctors and patients. Only last month, the WHO announced an update to pregnancy and childbirth guidelines informed by Cochrane’s work . There’s also the Campbell Collaboration, a network of social scientists, which produces evidence synthesis on social-policy interventions in fields ranging from education to policing.

But evidence synthesis in food-systems science faces challenges that don’t affect medicine, in which so much research is underpinned by randomized placebo-controlled trials. The Juno project will need to establish a common language to categorize basic and applied science across human health and nutrition, the microbiome, plant health, soil science, aspects of climate science and more.

Grape expectations: making Australian wine more sustainable

Its researchers will need to seek out science from scattered repositories; capture the wealth of untapped research in non-European languages; and track down researchers (including farmers who also do research) who collect data but do not publish work in journals. They will need to find reliable ways to assess the quality of the individual studies that act as inputs to the reviews, and find methods that account for bias. Some of those who specialize in agricultural science can be oblivious to the ways that thinking on subjects such as livestock rearing, genetic modification and the farming of indigenous crops is influenced by ethical, cultural and political forces, says Sheryl Hendriks, a food-security policy expert at the University of Pretoria in South Africa.

Evidence synthesis also needs long-term funding, international acceptance and an institutional home, as Joachim von Braun, an agricultural economist at the University of Bonn in Germany, tells Nature . “These initiatives need legitimacy, otherwise governments will not listen to their advice,” he says. The FAO said in a statement that it will “explore synergies and potential partnerships” in this area.

There is growing recognition of the need to tackle climate, nutrition and agriculture in an integrated manner, rather than in silos. The UN Food Systems Summit of 2021 brought together organizations from across these fields, and COP27 has an unprecedented focus on agriculture. As those working in the food system tackle challenges ranging from climate change to soil erosion to population growth, the need for more, better and more-systematic evidence to underpin their efforts is only going to increase.

Nature 611 , 425-426 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03694-5

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Benchmark results from New Zealand’s soil carbon monitoring programme for agricultural land

Here, in work funded by the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre, the Ministry for Primary Industries, and Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research, we outline benchmark results from New Zealand’s national soil carbon monitoring programme, in which 504 sites were established to determine a robust baseline of SOC stocks for agricultural land on mineral (non-organic) soils in New Zealand. Sampling sites were representatively spread across five broad land-use classes: dairy pasture, flat-rolling drystock pasture, hill-country drystock pasture, cropland, and perennial horticulture.

At each of the 504 sites soil samples were collected from a 20 × 20 m plot in 10 cm increments to a maximum depth of 60 cm. Continuous soil cores was the preferred sampling method (see figure). When soil cores could not be collected due to stones, the quantitative pit method was used, and for very steep or remote sites, or for loose and unconsolidated soils, bulk density rings were collected. The samples were tested for SOC and total nitrogen at Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research’s Environmental Chemistry Laboratory in Palmerston North.

Continuous soil core sampling. Left: 10 soil cores collected from a site. Right: soil core sampling using a mechanical waratah driver.

Our results showed an average across all New Zealand’s agricultural land on mineral soils of 101 tonnes of SOC per hectare in the 0–30 cm layer, and 138 tonnes per hectare in the 0–60 cm layer. These values are higher than in many other countries, which is largely due to a landscape dominated by perennial vegetation and a temperate climate that allows year-round plant growth, and thus carbon inputs to the soil. SOC stocks in the 0–30 cm layer were highest under dairy pasture, followed by hill-country drystock pasture, flat-rolling drystock pasture, and perennial horticulture, and were lowest under cropland.

Differences across land uses could not be attributed to land use alone, because the location of different land uses depends on soil type and climate. For example, there are proportionally more dairy pasture sites on Allophanic soils than in the other land-use classes, which have naturally high SOC stocks. When data from Allophanic soils were excluded, SOC stocks under dairy pastures were more similar to those of the other grassland classes. A full manuscript detailing the methodology and results has been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal.

For the first time these results provide spatially representative data to feed into national soil carbon inventory reporting, and they are a crucial baseline against which to compare future sampling. To determine if SOC stocks are changing over time within the different land-use classes, sites will be re-sampled every 4 to 5 years on a rolling schedule, which commenced in 2023. Knowing if and how SOC stocks are changing under our agricultural land will enable more informed decisions on how changes in land use and management could be used to maintain or increase SOC stocks.

Acknowledgements

We are indebted to all the farmers who allowed access for sampling and provided information on land use and management. The project would not have been possible without them. Funding was from the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre, the Ministry for Primary Industries and Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research.

Further reading

Mudge P 2022. An update on the national soil carbon benchmarking and monitoring system for agricultural land in New Zealand

Authors and key contacts

Georgie Glover-Clark

• Enhancing soils, water, and land
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