Agriculture
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Agriculture
Bee-Loved Plantings
Zipcode-organized guidelines tell gardeners, farmers and others how to design a landscape that will not only entice pollinators but also keep these horticultural helpers happy.
By Janet Raloff -
Agriculture
A vanilla Vanilla
The orchid that gives us vanilla beans has startlingly low genetic diversity, suggesting crops might be susceptible to pathogens, researchers report.
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Humans
Wash Your Veggies!
The lesson in all of these food-poisoning outbreaks is that we must not expect a risk-free food-supply chain.
By Janet Raloff -
Agriculture
Federal Research Censorship
The media-affairs office in federal agencies can be fairly obstructionist, and when they do, the public comes out the loser.
By Janet Raloff -
Agriculture
Green Living, Chinese-Style
Chinese is developing eco-cities to take their citizens straight from the agricultural to the ecological age.
By Janet Raloff -
Agriculture
Vertical Agriculture
Instead of farming in the country, one Columbia University scientist would do it in the city, spanning floor upon floor of buildings--from basements to the tops of high rise structures.
By Janet Raloff -
Agriculture
Ethanol Fallout: Health Risks for Livestock
With Uncle Sam pushing the production of ethanol for fuel, U.S. farmers are planting more corn than at any time since World War II, and garnering premium prices for each harvested bushel. But many livestock operations are getting hit with a double whammy: higher feeds costs and corn-derived feed that’s carrying triple the normal load of fungal poisons.
By Janet Raloff -
Health & Medicine
Rice Woes, Pt. 1
A shortfall in rice production has been developing well under the radar screen of agricultural economists and growers. The bad news: It promises to get much worse, and fairly soon.
By Janet Raloff -
Agriculture
Study decodes papaya genome
Scientists have added another plant to the genome-sequencing roster: the tropical fruit tree papaya.
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Agriculture
Switchgrass Science
A native prairie grass shows promise as a substitute for corn in the production of fuel ethanol—an additive to stretch fossil-fuel resources for transportation. University of Tennessee researchers have produced a video on the science and prospects of switchgrass ethanol that is available in a 26-minute version and an abbreviated form. For those who don’t […]
By Science News -
Agriculture
Resistance to Bt crops emerges
Resistance to pest-killing cotton crops is spreading among one species of caterpillar, but techniques to prevent the spread of resistance appear to be working for five other species.