Agriculture
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Agriculture
Frozen Assets
A U.S. gene bank has begun deep-freezing semen and other livestock 'seed' for possible future use in research or breeding.
By Janet Raloff -
Agriculture
Learning from Studs
Livestock gene banks offer dividends to researchers hoping to milk higher profits out of dairying.
By Janet Raloff -
Agriculture
The Ultimate Crop Insurance
A new treaty renews hope that the waning diversity in agricultural crops can be slowed, and important genes preserved, both in the field and in gene banks.
By Janet Raloff -
Agriculture
Bees increase coffee profits
Scientists studying a Costa Rican coffee farm have estimated the monetary value of conserving nearby wooded habitat for the bees that pollinate coffee plants.
By Ben Harder -
Agriculture
Plastic vs. Plants: Mulch method changes tomato’s gene activity
A suite of at least 10 genes in a tomato plant behaves differently depending on the farmer's mulch-and-fertilizer routine.
By Susan Milius -
Agriculture
A Maize-ing Travels
Corn, an American native, has taken root the world over and is becoming increasingly important to agriculture in nations beyond the West.
By Janet Raloff -
Agriculture
Coming Soon—Spud Lite
A new variety of baking potato has about 25 percent fewer calories and 30 percent fewer carbohydrates per unit weight than the typical brown-skinned Idaho potato.
By Janet Raloff -
Agriculture
Rethinking Refuges? Drifting pollen may bring earlier pest resistance to bioengineered crops
Pollen wafting from bioengineered corn to traditional varieties may be undermining the fight to keep pests from evolving resistance to pesticides.
By Susan Milius -
Agriculture
Fishy Alpha Males
As a way to protect wild fish stocks, raising genetically engineered fish may be futile should some of these modified fish escape into the environment.
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Agriculture
Calling All Cows
Last May, tissues from the carcass of a North American cow turned up positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy–the ailment responsible for mad cow disease. Within hours, the Canadian government traced the animal to the Alberta farm where it had been raised for its 8 years of life. In short order, other members of its herd […]
By Janet Raloff -
Agriculture
Spying Genetically Engineered Crops
Environmental Protection Agency scientists are exploring the use of satellites to monitor genetically engineered crops. At ground level, genetically modified corn plants don’t look any different from conventional ones, but data suggest that satellite sensors may be able to read different spectral signatures from the two types of the crop. USDA Most of these genetically […]
By Janet Raloff -
Agriculture
Fluid Security—Overcoming Water Shortfalls in the 21st Century
About 70 percent of Earth’s surface is covered with water, some 1.4 billion cubic kilometers of it. Too bad almost 96.5 percent of it’s salty, and another 2 percent is locked away as ice in remote places such as Greenland and Antarctica. All told, just a little more than 1 percent of our planet’s water […]
By Sid Perkins