Plant breeders are masters of genome tuning, spending years developing crops with the genes to resist disease, drought, and pests. Now, a team of industry and academic researchers in Germany and the United Kingdom has developed a viral vector technology … Continue reading
Journal Club
Highlighting recent, timely papers selected by Academy member labs
Category Archives: Agriculture
Agricultural spray could quickly deliver advantageous genes to crops mid-growing season
Categories: Agriculture | Genetics | Journal Club | Sustainability Science
Tagged agriculture, agrobacteria, crops, drought, GMO, pesticides, RNA plant virus, tobacco, tomato
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How an animal’s teeth can reveal where it’s been
A careful measurement of isotope ratios in animals’ teeth could offer a new way to closely track their movements, according to a recent study that showed how the approach would work in Mongolian sheep and goat herds. Tooth enamel … Continue reading
Categories: Agriculture | Animal Behavior | Anthropology | Chemistry | Ecology | Journal Club
Tagged archaeology, enamel, forensic science, isotopes, paleoecology, strontium, teeth
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Interdisciplinary study brings a humanist perspective to research on land use change
Decades ago, Brazil’s northeastern State of Bahia produced much of the world’s cocoa for chocolate. Most farms grew their cacao trees interspersed with other native trees, in dense agricultural forests. Children played at the forest edges. Today those children are … Continue reading
Categories: Agriculture | Journal Club | Social Sciences
Tagged agriculture, agro-forestry, cacao, cocoa, conservation, deforestation, farming, forests, land use change, monoculture, remote sensing
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Satellite monitoring may help preserve the Chesapeake Bay by improving farming practices
Restoring the Chesapeake Bay, the nation’s largest estuary, has for decades proven to be a fraught enterprise, beset by the interests of researchers, farmers, anglers, multiple governments, and a host of others. A new approach, recently reported in Remote … Continue reading
Categories: Agriculture | Ecology | Environmental Sciences | Journal Club | Sustainability Science
Tagged adaptive management, Chesapeake Bay, cover crops, estuary, farming, pollution, satellite, watershed
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Country-level assessment hides big variations in soy’s carbon footprint
Analysts usually estimate a crop’s carbon footprint based on country-level factors. But that formulation isn’t adequate, according to a new analysis of soy exports from Brazil. Published in Global Environmental Change, the study tracked soy from specific production sites in … Continue reading
Categories: Agriculture | Climate science | Economic sciences | Environmental Sciences | Journal Club
Tagged Amazon rainforest, carbon emissions, carbon footprint, Cerrado, soybeans
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Variation in a single gene increases plant yield in groups but not in pairs
Groups of diverse plant species often produce more seeds than monocultures. But whether plants ramp up yield in response to genetically distinct, direct neighbors, as opposed to a broader neighborhood of diverse plants, remains an open question in ecology. “It’s … Continue reading
Categories: Agriculture | Ecology | Genetics | Journal Club
Tagged farming, monoculture, MPK4 gene, plant breeding, wild coyote tobacco plant
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Rice gene could make “green revolution” plants greener by cutting back on fertilizer
The green revolution was launched, in large part, with rather squat plants. In the 1960s, farmers began using semidwarf varieties of wheat and rice that produced many grain-bearing branches known as tillers. When farmers added nitrogen fertilizer, the plants gained … Continue reading
Categories: Agriculture | Climate science | Genetics | Sustainability Science
Tagged fertilizer, Green Revolution, greenhouse gas, NGR5, nitrogen, rice, tiller, wheat
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Potentially key gene has big role in natural variation of chloroplast size
Worldwide populations of Arabidopsis thaliana all have the same genes, but they vary in many traits, including the size of their chloroplasts. A recent study in Plant Physiology identified one of the genes, FtsZ2-2, contributing to the natural variation in … Continue reading
Categories: Agriculture | Genetics | Journal Club
Tagged Arabidopsis, chloroplast, FtsZ
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Intensive agriculture changes the soil microbiome
California rice farms dot the Sacramento Valley, converting native swampland into flooded paddies. The farms change California’s landscape both above ground and below it. A recent study shows in detail how rice plants shape the soil microbiome into a distinctive … Continue reading
Categories: Agriculture | Microbiology
Tagged agriculture, disease, microbiome, rice, soil
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Common features of domestic animals suggest caveats to evolutionary theory
White patches on fur coats, floppy ears, and curly tails are some of the traits frequently seen in domesticated animals. A group of researchers has now put forth a theory as to why these traits so often evolve in association … Continue reading
Categories: Agriculture | Developmental Biology | Evolution | Genetics | Journal Club
Tagged developmental bias, domesticated animals, domestication syndrome, evolution, neural crest cells
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Unlocking a mystery of seed development promises fatter, oilier oilseeds
The canola cooking oil lining supermarket shelves comes from the seeds of Brassica napus, a weedy-looking plant in the mustard family. Farmers of this crop understandably want varieties that yield big, oily seeds. A recent study in The Plant Cell … Continue reading
Categories: Agriculture | Genetics | Plant Biology
Tagged Arabidopsis, Brassica napus, canola, LEC2, oilseed rape, rapeseed, UPL3
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