In a special Soil Measurement & Methods section of Vadose Zone Journal, scientists review the state-of-the-art tools for measuring water content in soil
Growing grapes for wine is tightly linked to soil moisture: too little, and the crop can be lost, but an oversupply of water tends to favor leaf development at the expense of fruit quality. It is often difficult to determine which portions of the vineyards require more or less irrigation due to California wine country’s natural g
Tropical regions could enjoy secure food supplies over the next fifty years if local smallholder farmers are helped to help themselves, says a University of East Anglia development expert writing in this week’s international journal Science.
Professor Michael Stocking acknowledges that soil degradation is rife in some areas and that around a billion people currently lack food security, but he questions the bleak picture of the future of tropical soils and food security often painted by
Once a raging forest fire is quelled, the next worry is erosion of the landscape. With vegetation destroyed, rain easily washes away the soil, causing large flows of debris and landslides. Erosion endangers sources of drinking water, streams, and roads. In an unprecedented study, Chris Pannkuk and Peter Robichaud show that scorched evergreen needles can play a key role in preventing erosion after a forest fire. They found that ponderosa pine needles were effective in reducing erosion caused
Malaria is a major scourge on health in many parts of the world, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa where over 90% of declared cases have been recorded. Mosquito nets impregnated with insecticides are considered as a good prevention and control weapon against the mosquito vectors, in particular in areas where malaria is strongly endemic.
The only insecticides currently recommended by WHO (1) are pyrethroids whose rapid action causes a “knock-down (KD)” (2) effect and high mortality when mos
Plants have a conductive tissue, phloem, for transporting sugars and hormones to non-green parts after photosynthesis. Phloem has two basic cell types, enucleate sieve elements (SE) and companion cells (CC). Scientists from the University of Helsinki have developmentally analyzed the process of phloem development in Arabidopsis plant and identified a mutation in a novel gene that is required for instructing phloem differentiation in young, developing plant tissue. Their article is published in Nature
Columbia economist offers new way to compute prizes for agriculture research
After many decades of economic growth, the single most important cause of human mortality remains malnutrition. The World Health Organization estimates that food deficits cause about 6 million deaths per year, or 14 percent of the total. Surprisingly, most people who die from hunger are actually farmers – not by choice, but by necessity. They are born in rural areas, and have no other resources with which to
Australian farmers are trialling a satellite-based pasture monitoring system which dramatically improves their ability to make informed farm management decisions.
Utilising the MODIS sensor in the Terra satellite, Australia’s ’Pastures From Space’ consortium can now deliver much more detailed data relating to pasture growth rates (PGRs), says CSIRO Livestock Industries’ Mr Gonzalo Mata.
“We can now provide farmers with 16-times more detail about their pastures,” Mr Mata says. “Inst
Researchers at Uppsala University and the Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences (SLU) report in the latest issue of Nature that they have identified a regulatory mutation in a gene for a known growth factor that makes pigs more muscular and less fat than wild boars.
Most characteristics, such as common diseases like diabetes, have a multifactorial background, which means that they are influenced by many different genes and environmental factors. Even though we know the entire DNA sequ
The industrial pollutant ozone, long known to be harmful to many kinds of plants, can also affect the very earth in which they grow.
Researchers at Michigan Technological University and the North Central Research Station of the USDA Forest Service have discovered that ozone can reduce soil carbon formation – a measure of the amount of organic matter being added to the soil. Their findings are published in the Oct. 16 issue of the journal Nature.
The scientists exposed forest stands
Research carried out in the Netherlands has revealed that the genetic background of cattle apparently determines how quickly and effectively they acquire immunity to infections from gastrointestinal worms. Such infections cause considerable economic losses in the beef farming industry. During her doctoral research, Kirezi Kanobana investigated how cattle rid themselves of worms and prevent new infections.
Kanobana used an infection model in which, based on their genetic background, animals e
The EU response to recent declines in pollinators and consequent loss of pollination services has been the inclusion of pollinator-friendly management in agri-environment schemes. These comprise the promotion of semi-natural habitats, such as set-aside and field margin strips. Yet, mass flowering crops, such as oilseed rape, are assumed to be of little value to pollinators.
However, in an article soon to appear in Ecology Letters, C. Westphal, I. Steffan-Dewenter and T. Tscharntke show that
A team of Purdue University researchers has recently uncovered the genetic mechanism that prevents certain crop plants from growing tall – a finding that has future crop production applications since some grains produce greater yields if plants are kept short.
Guri Johal, assistant professor of botany and plant pathology, and his colleagues have identified the process that generates dwarfed corn and sorghum plants, which grow to roughly half the height of their normal counterparts. This disc
Millions of animals could be needlessly slaughtered and billions of dollars lost from economies, unless the world backs an international science team to develop new tools to fight foot-and-mouth disease (FMD).
A group of world-leading researchers aims to develop a more effective FMD vaccine and better diagnostic tests that would enable livestock disease control agencies to isolate and eventually eliminate the disease. The team of scientists from the United Kingdom, Canada, United States, and
Rees, a new drought tolerant wheat variety, was released today by CSIRO joint venture organisation, Graingene.
CSIRO Plant Industry scientist Dr Richard Richards says Rees has an advantage over comparable wheats in dry years, producing about five per cent more grain despite receiving the same rainfall.
“Rees is the second variety to be developed using scientific gene selection criteria based on measuring a plant’s carbon isotope signature,” Dr Richards says.
“By using
USDA Forest Service (FS) researchers are improving the use of ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to study tree roots nondestructively. They are refining GPR’s processing capabilities by comparing results with those of more invasive methods.
GPR is an electromagnetic imaging technique that can be used to detect buried objects or hidden structures. GPR has been used for geological research, archaeology, forensics, and for assessing the integrity of roads and bridges. FS researchers soon reco
The Hessian fly changes wheat growth by injecting poisons into the plants, but a newly discovered resistance gene that can kill the insect may add a new defensive weapon for the grain crop.
Using the new gene in combination with other genes is expected to extend resistance time to the most economically damaging insect of wheat by as much as six times. Scientists from Purdue University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture—Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) mapped the new gene and
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