While increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere encourage plant growth, they also reduce the nutritional value of plants, which can have a larger impact on nutrition and food safety worldwide. Researchers discovered a new way plants are adapting to the changing climate — information that can be used to help plants grow strong while also maintaining their nutritional value.
A new benchmark analysis of nutrient omission trial data provides new guidance on the predictors of yield in smallholder maize and rice cropping systems in sub-Saharan Africa.
Stemborers and Striga weeds cause significant losses to maize production throughout Africa. Maize yield losses due to stemborers can vary from 20-40%. Striga weeds infest 40% of the arable land in sub-Saharan Africa, causing an annual crop loss of US$ 7 to 13 billion. Around the Lake Victoria basin, infestation by Striga weed causes 30 to 100% loss in maize yield. Weeding for Striga control is both time-consuming and labor-intensive. The use of insecticides for stemborer control is not only expensive and harmful to the environment but is also ineffective.
Scientists have sequenced the oldest plant genome using 6,000-year-old seeds from a watermelon relative collected at an archaeological site in the Sahara Desert in Libya.
Agriculture drives more than 90 percent of tropical deforestation. Halting deforestation will require a step-change in approach and to be effective measures must address underlying and indirect roles of agriculture, says a new study.
How we love chocolate! The big downside of this love is that more chocolate consumption directly implies more cocoa plantations, which has led to significant loss of forests especially in West Africa. In the coming decades is expected both an increase in demand and a decrease of suitable areas for growing cocoa due to climate change.
How can biodiversity be preserved whilst securing the economic livelihood of smallholder farmers growing vanilla in Madagascar? There is a way, according to a study that shows that vanilla plantations established on fallow land do not differ in terms of yield from those established in the forest. Cultivation on fallow land also increases biodiversity there.
At the rise of the fourth agricultural revolution, the modern farmer seeks to become “smarter,” benefit from new technologies and produce crops sustainably. The conventional knowledge around climate, agroecosystems, new technologies and sustainable farming of all crops is constantly enriched by practical experience, examples, and scientific data.
The fungus Ustilago maydis attacks corn and can cause significant damage to its host. To do this, it first ensures that the plant offers little resistance to the infection. The surgical precision it applies is shown by a new study.
Although some researchers have identified peptides through multiple methods, as in Arabidopsis and maize, the biological functions of most NCPs remain to be demonstrated. NCPs function by modulating larger regulatory proteins, and their functions can therefore be predicted from the proteins on which they act.
