Food and Agriculture News

June 1, 2024

Top Headlines

Improved Refrigeration Could Save Nearly Half of the 1.3 Billion Tons of Food Wasted Each Year Globally

May 28, 2024 — A new study concludes that nearly half of the food waste, about 620 million metric tons, could be eliminated by fully refrigerated food supply chains worldwide. At the same time, fully refrigerated ...

Transgenic Expression of Rubisco Factors Increases Photosynthesis and Chilling Tolerance in Maize

May 28, 2024 — Maize is one of the world's most widely grown crops and is essential to global food security. But like other plants, its growth and productivity can be limited by the slow activity of Rubisco, the ...

Escaped GMO Canola Plants Persist Long-Term, but May Be Losing Their Extra Genes

May 22, 2024 — Populations of canola plants genetically engineered to be resistant to herbicides can survive outside of farms, but may be gradually losing their engineered genes, reports a new ...

Gene Could Unlock Big Wheat Yields for a Growing Population

May 22, 2024 — A study has discovered molecular pathways regulated by a gene traditionally used to control wheat-flowering behavior could be altered to achieve greater ...

Latest Headlines

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Abandoned Farmlands Could Play a Role in Fighting Climate Change: A New Study Shows Exactly Where They Are

May 29, 2024 — The team used machine learning to map nearly 30 million acres of United States cropland abandoned since the 1980s, creating a tool that could guide ...

The Impacts of Climate Change on Food Production

May 20, 2024 — A new study shows that climate change has led to decreased pollen production from plants and less pollen diversity than previously thought, which could have a significant impact on food ...

Chocolate That Harnesses the Full Potential of the Cocoa Fruit

May 21, 2024 — Researchers have developed a type of chocolate that is more sustainable and nutritious than conventional varieties. Cocoa-fruit chocolate uses cocoa fruit jelly as a replacement for powdered sugar, ...

Study Reveals Consumers Value Animal Welfare More Than Environmental Sustainability When Buying Meat and Dairy Products

May 16, 2024 — The treatment of animals rates higher than green issues when consumers choose meat and dairy products. That's according to a new study, which ...

Natural Toxins in Food: Many People Are Not Aware of the Health Risks

May 16, 2024 — Many people are concerned about residues of chemicals, contaminants or microplastics in their food. However, it is less well known that many foods also contain toxins of completely natural origin. ...

Climate Change Is Most Prominent Threat to Pollinators

May 15, 2024 — A new article has found that climate change is the most prominent threat to pollinators -- such as bumblebees, wasps, and butterflies -- who are essential for biodiversity conservation, crop yields ...

Mosaic Grassland Landscapes Are the Most Beneficial

May 14, 2024 — Grassland provides many services for humans, animals and nature, such as feed production, carbon storage and recreation. Researchers spent two years investigating permanent grassland, its ...

Prostate Cancer Study: More Health Benefits from Plant-Based Diet

May 13, 2024 — Men with prostate cancer could significantly reduce the chances of the disease worsening by eating more fruits, vegetables, nuts, and olive oil, according to new ...

Like Dad and Like Mum...all in One Plant

May 13, 2024 — Scientists have established a system to generate clonal sex cells in tomato plants and used them to design the genomes of offspring. The fertilization of a clonal egg from one parent by a clonal ...

AI to Make Crop Production More Sustainable

May 6, 2024 — Drones monitoring fields for weeds and robots targeting and treating crop diseases may sound like science fiction but is actually happening already, at least on some experimental farms. Researchers ...

Discovery of Mechanism Plants Use to Change Seed Oil Could Impact Industrial, Food Oils

Apr. 30, 2024 — Researchers have discovered a new mechanism of oil biosynthesis and found a way to genetically engineer a type of test plant to more efficiently produce different kinds of seed oil that it otherwise ...

Fixin' to Be Flexitarian: Scrap Fish and Invasive Species Can Liven Up Vegetables

Apr. 29, 2024 — Greening the way we eat needn't mean going vegetarian. A healthy, more realistic solution is to adopt a flexitarian diet where seafoods add umami to 'boring' vegetables. A ...

Genetic Hope in Fight Against Devastating Wheat Disease

Apr. 26, 2024 — Fungal disease Fusarium head blight (FHB) is on the rise due to increasingly humid conditions induced by climate change during the wheat growing season, but a fundamental discovery could help reduce ...

Scientists Replace Fishmeal in Aquaculture With Microbial Protein Derived from Soybean Processing Wastewater

Apr. 25, 2024 — Scientists have successfully replaced half of the fishmeal protein in the diets of farmed Asian seabass with a 'single cell protein' cultivated from microbes in soybean processing ...

Social Media Can Be Used to Increase Fruit and Vegetable Intake in Young People

Apr. 24, 2024 — Researchers have found that people following healthy eating accounts on social media for as little as two weeks ate more fruit and vegetables and less junk ...

World's Chocolate Supply Threatened by Devastating Virus

Apr. 23, 2024 — A rapidly spreading virus threatens the health of the cacao tree and the dried seeds from which chocolate is made, jeopardizing the global supply of the world's most popular treat. Researchers ...

No Bull: How Creating Less-Gassy Cows Could Help Fight Climate Change

Apr. 23, 2024 — A new study has revealed breeding less-flatulent cows and restoring agricultural land could significantly reduce rising methane emission levels, which play a considerable role in climate ...

Making Crops Colorful for Easier Weeding

Apr. 17, 2024 — To make weeding easier, scientists suggest bioengineering crops to be colorful or to have differently shaped leaves so that they can be more easily distinguished from their wild and weedy ...

Microbial Food as a Strategy Food Production of the Future

Apr. 12, 2024 — Scientists have summarized microbial food production ...

Choosing Sugary Drinks Over Fruit Juice for Toddlers Linked to Risk of Adult Obesity

Apr. 12, 2024 — Consuming sugar-sweetened drinks in the first few years of childhood can be linked to poor diet patterns that increase the risk of obesity in later life, according to a new ...

Biofortified Rice to Combat Deficiencies

Apr. 11, 2024 — Vitamin B1 is an essential micronutrient for human beings. Its deficiency is the cause of numerous diseases of the nervous and cardiovascular systems. Researchers have achieved a significant advance ...

Food Security in Developed Countries Shows Resilience to Climate Change

Apr. 11, 2024 — A study has found that market forces have provided good food price stability over the past half century, despite extreme weather ...

'Diverse' Agriculture Benefits People and the Environment at the Same Time

Apr. 4, 2024 — A new analysis from 2,655 farms on five continents suggests that moving away from industrial, monoculture farming could benefit both the planet and ...

Sweet Success: Sugarcane's Complex Genetic Code Cracked

Mar. 27, 2024 — Scientists created a highly accurate reference genome for one of the most important modern crops and found a rare example of how genes confer disease resistance in plants. Exploring sugarcane's ...

Small Changes Can Yield Big Savings in Agricultural Water Use

Mar. 25, 2024 — While Hollywood and Silicon Valley love the limelight, California is an agricultural powerhouse, too. Agricultural products sold in the Golden State totaled $59 billion in 2022. But rising ...

Better Phosphorus Use Can Ensure Its Stocks Last More Than 500 Years and Boost Global Food Production

Mar. 25, 2024 — More efficient use of phosphorus could see limited stocks of the important fertilizer last more than 500 years and boost global food production to feed growing populations. But these benefits will ...

Bees Need Food Up to a Month Earlier Than Provided by Recommended Pollinator Plants

Mar. 22, 2024 — Plant species which are recommended as 'pollinator friendly' in Europe begin flowering up to a month too late for bees, resulting in low colony survival and low production of queens. This ...

Rose Essential Oil: A Safe Pesticide for Organic Agriculture

Mar. 21, 2024 — Following injury, plants release terpenoids to enhance their defenses. Researchers studying terpenoid-enriched essential oils (EOs) have found that rose EO (REO) can stimulate defense genes in tomato ...

Fish Fed to Farmed Salmon Should Be Part of Our Diet, Too, Study Suggests

Mar. 20, 2024 — Scientists found that farmed salmon production leads to an overall loss of essential dietary nutrients. They say that eating more wild 'feed' species directly could benefit our health while ...

Across Oceans and Millennia: Decoding the Origin and History of the Bottle Gourd

Mar. 20, 2024 — Researchers have uncovered intriguing details about the origins and spread of the bottle gourd, one of the oldest domesticated crops. Their work unveils the genetic diversification and population ...