Agricuture News - January 2009 Archives

Names give cows a lotta bottle (1/30/2009)

Giving a cow a name helps to boost her milk production, Newcastle University scientists have found. ...> Full Article

Scientists identify bacteria that increase plant growth (1/29/2009)

Findings have implications for increasing biomass for the production of biofuels ...> Full Article

Climate change enhances grassland productivity (1/28/2009)

More frequent freeze-thaw cycles intensify soil processes ...> Full Article

How to move agriculture forward with limited water (1/27/2009)

New book confronts the challenges of producing crops with depleted water supplies ...> Full Article

Gene's past could improve the future of rice (1/26/2009)

In an effort to improve rice varieties, a Purdue University researcher was part of a team that traced the evolutionary history of domesticated rice by using a process that focuses on one gene. Agronomy Professor Scott A. Jackson said studying the gene allows researchers to better understand how it evolved over time through natural selection and human interaction. Understanding the variations could allow scientists to place genes from wild rice species into domesticated rice to create varieties with more favorable characteristics. ...> Full Article

Earth's seasons now arrive 2 days earlier (1/25/2009)

Biologists have long noticed that global warming is causing springtime flowering and ice melting to arrive earlier, but a new study shows that the seasonal cycle has also shifted, causing summer's peak temperature and winter's lowest temperature on land to arrive nearly two days earlier than was true 50 years ago. The cause is unknown, but UC Berkeley and Harvard researchers suspect it involves changing wind patterns over land and ocean, or drier soils. ...> Full Article

New book plants seed for biodiverse food production (1/24/2009)

A Northern Arizona University political science professor is working with Southern African farmers studying their agricultural expertise and exposing trade agreements that could threaten the world's food supply. ...> Full Article

WineCrisp -- new apple was more than 20 years in the making (1/24/2009)

A new, late-ripening apple named WineCrisp which carries the Vf gene for scab resistance was developed over the past 20 plus years through classical breeding techniques, not genetic engineering. License to propagate trees will be made available to nurseries through the University of Illinois. ...> Full Article

Prairie soil organic matter shown to be resilient under intensive agriculture (1/23/2009)

A recent study has confirmed that although there was a large reduction of organic carbon and total nitrogen pools when prairies were first cultivated and drained, there has been no consistent pattern in these organic matter pools during the period of synthetic fertilizer use, that is, from 1957-2002. ...> Full Article

Major agricultural initiative to benefit millions of South Asian farmers (1/22/2009)

Increased productivity will reduce hunger and malnutrition for hundreds of millions ...> Full Article

New, higher-yielding rice plant could ease threat of hunger for poor (1/21/2009)

Global consortium of scientists developing rice that would boost yields ...> Full Article

Pathogenic soil bacterium is influenced by land management practices (1/20/2009)

Researchers from Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin, Australia, have found that the soil bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei, which causes the emerging infectious disease melioidosis in humans and animals, is associated with land management changes such as livestock husbandry or residential gardening. The study, published Jan. 20 in the open-access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, sheds light on the environmental occurrence of this bacterium in the soil. ...> Full Article

New agreement opens avenues for strengthening Indian rice research (1/19/2009)

Short- and long-term projects promise to boost production and raise farmer income ...> Full Article

BGU and Primafuel announce exclusive licensing agreement for algae-based renewable fuels (1/18/2009)

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, a world leader in algae production commercialization, has announced a multi-year, multi-million dollar technology-licensing and development agreement with Primafuel, Inc., a California-based company that develops renewable fuels. The collaboration is focused on developing algae bio-refinery technologies for renewable fuels and high value co-products production. ...> Full Article