Agriculture Research and News
Not all plantations need to be the biological deserts that have come to characterize large-scale, industrial plantations. According to scientists in a paper out in February's issue of the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, well-planned plantations can actually alleviate some of the social, economic and ecological burden currently being placed on natural forests.
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Agricultural Research Service scientists are tapping into the DNA of a wild oat, considered by some to be a noxious weed, to see if it can help combat crown rust, the most damaging fungal disease of oats worldwide.
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Speed is not a word typically associated with trees; they can take centuries to grow. However, a new study to be published the week of Feb. 1 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found evidence that forests in the Eastern United States are growing faster than they have in the past 225 years. The study offers a rare look at how an ecosystem is responding to climate change.
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The mysterious "3/4 law of metabolism" is wrong. "Actually, it's 2/3," says University of Vermont mathematician Peter Dodds. His analysis from networks helps overturn almost 80 years of belief in a near-mystical relationship between the size of animals and their resting metabolism.
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 | The water content of leaves, their thickness, their density and other properties can now be determined without even having to touch them. A team of researchers from the CSIC Institute of Acoustics and the Agri-Food Research and Technology Centre of Aragón has just presented an innovative technique that enables plant leaves to be studied using ultrasound in a quick, simple and noninvasive fashion. ...> Full Article |
Scientists from Kew's Millennium Seed Bank in the United Kingdom and the University of Graz, Austria, have developed a rapid, new method to diagnose seed quality non-invasively and in real time.
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Studies conducted by Agricultural Research Service scientists are helping to increase understanding about the environmental factors that regulate production of avenanthramides, metabolites with potent antioxidant properties, in oat grain.
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Agricultural Research Service scientists have analyzed rust fungi from more than 160 sugarcane samples from 25 countries to provide a valuable resource for plant breeders and pathologists who are searching for genetic resistance to the deadly orange and brown rusts.
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 | Has the almond tree developed a unique way of drawing potential pollinators? A group of researchers at the Department of Environmental and Evolutionary Biology and the Department of Science Education at the University of Haifa-Oranim speculate that the toxin called amygdalin that is found in almond tree nectar is in fact an evolutionary development intended to give that tree an advantage over others in its surroundings. ...> Full Article |
A team of researchers from Queensland University of Technology is investigating the part that iron from Australia's iron-rich soil plays in the algal blooms that plague parts of the eastern coast line during summer.
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 | The number of bee colonies in Central Europe has decreased over recent decades. In fact, the number of beekeepers has been declining in the whole of Europe since 1985. This is the result of a study that has now been published by the International Bee Research Association, which for the first time has provided an overview of the problem of bee colony decline at the European level. Until now there had only been the reports from individual countries available. ...> Full Article |
 | Diverse biofuel plantings such as native prairie attract more beneficial insects than do single crops such as corn, Michigan State University scientists find. Therefore, biofuel policies should take such added value into account, they urge, based on their pioneering studies of beneficial insects in biofuel crops. ...> Full Article |
It might not look like there's much going on in those roadside corn fields, but a Purdue University researcher has shown that corn plants are in a fierce battle with each other for resources.
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Researchers have discovered that some of the most fundamental assumptions about how water moves through soil in a seasonally dry climate such as the Pacific Northwest are incorrect -- and that a century of research based on those assumptions will have to be reconsidered.
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A predator for the devastating coffee berry borer has just been discovered in Africa. Dr. Juliana Jaramillo from the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology in Kenya and Dr. Eric Chapman from the University of Kentucky have identified a previously unknown predatory thrips which feeds on the eggs and larvae of the coffee berry borer. Their study is published online in Springer's journal Naturwissenschaften -- The Science of Nature.
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