Agricultural and Forestry Science

New research at the University of Leeds has overturned existing advice to farmers that has been maintaining the disease toxoplasma in the nation’s sheep flocks for years.

Toxoplasma is a disease humans catch from sheep and cats that causes human abortions and birth defects with greater frequency than rubella.

In a study of a pedigree Charolais flock and commercial flock, Dr Judith Smith (left) and her colleague Dr Geoff Hide from the University of Salford found that some sheep fami

Cotton lint yields can be increased by up to 18 per cent when cotton crops are rotated with crops of a little known legume, vetch, according to a team of researchers at CSIRO Plant Industry.

Following an eight-year study the team found that vetch fixes large amounts of nitrogen, increases soil organic matter, improves soil structure, makes cultivation easier, increases soil water holding capacity and reduces the incidence of black root rot.

“Data from 2003 show when vetch is used

Greater investment in smallholder agriculture could offer a route out of the deepening poverty facing many African nations, a study by Imperial College London economists has concluded.

Reporting today in the journal Oxford Development Studies they outline five key policy themes that must be embraced by the international community if sub-Saharan Africa is to have any chance of meeting two of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals – halving both the number of people living on le

The harmful effects of chemical contaminants in food are of major health concern in Europe today. However, a lack of integration of interdisciplinary activities, such as basic research and risk assessment, severely hampers the efforts to reach European excellence in this area. The individual research projects are also small in scale and not well integrated into a coherent structure. To tackle the fragmentation problems and to achieve synergistic effects and full European research potential, the Europ

North Carolina State University plant pathologist Jean Beagle Ristaino shocked the scientific world when she published a paper in the journal Nature that called into question the then-prevailing theories about the strain of pathogen – and its place of origin – that caused the Irish potato famine in the 1840s.

Using DNA fingerprinting analysis of 150-year-old leaves – evidence that had not previously been studied – Ristaino ruled out the longtime prime suspect behind the famine: the Ib haplot

British scientists have found a natural way to produce healthier milk and butter, according to new research in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture. Cows fed rapeseed oil as part of their daily diet produce milk with a significantly less saturated fat. Butter made from the milk is easier to spread at fridge temperatures because it is lower in saturated fat than ordinary butter. According to Anna Fearon, one of the authors of the study: “This kind of tailored milk production could in fut