Agriculture
- Agriculture
Potty-trained cattle could help reduce pollution
About a dozen calves have been trained to pee in a stall. Toilet training cows on a large scale could cut down on pollution, researchers say.
- Agriculture
Cold plasma could transform the sustainable farms of the future
Physicists have been working on ways to use the power of plasma to boost plant growth and kill pathogens.
- Earth
Mixing trees and crops can help both farmers and the climate
Agriculture is a major driver of climate change and biodiversity loss. But integrating trees into farming practices can boost food production, store carbon and save species.
- Plants
How Romanesco cauliflower forms its spiraling fractals
By tweaking just three genes in a common lab plant, scientists have discovered the mechanism responsible for one of nature’s most impressive fractals.
- Agriculture
A tweaked yeast can make ethanol from cornstalks and a harvest’s other leftovers
By genetically modifying baker’s yeast, scientists figured out how to get almost as much ethanol from cornstalks as kernels.
- Animals
Focusing on Asian giant hornets distorts the view of invasive species
2021’s first “murder hornet” is yet another arrival. This is the not-so-new normal.
- Agriculture
Nanoscale nutrients can protect plants from fungal diseases
Applied to the shoots, nutrients served in tiny metallic packages are absorbed more efficiently, strengthening plants’ defenses against fungal attack.
- Plants
Modified genes can distort wild cotton’s interactions with insects
In a Yucatan nature park, engineered genes influence nectar production, affecting ants’ and maybe pollinators’ attraction to the wild cotton plants.
- Agriculture
How does a crop’s environment shape a food’s smell and taste?
Scientific explorations of terroir — the soil, climate and orientation in which crops grow — hint at influences on flavors and aromas.
- Tech
Bubble-blowing drones may one day aid artificial pollination
Drones are too clumsy to rub pollen on flowers and not damage them. But blowing pollen-laden bubbles may help the machines be better pollinators.
- Animals
Insects’ extreme farming methods offer us lessons to learn and oddities to avoid
Insects invented agriculture long before humans did. Can we learn anything from them?
- Life
Engineered honeybee gut bacteria trick attackers into self-destructing
Tailored microbes defend bees with a gene-silencing process called RNA interference that takes on viruses or mites.
