Agriculture

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.

Agriculture

Learning from Studs

Livestock gene banks offer dividends to researchers hoping to milk higher profits out of dairying.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]