Agricultural and Forestry Science

Potato blight causes worldwide losses of £3 billion every year, but scientists are only just discovering how it infects potato plants, according to research due to be presented tomorrow, Thursday 11 September 2003, at the Society for General Microbiology’s meeting at UMIST in Manchester.
“In the past potato blight, Phytophthora infestans, was always thought to be a member of the fungal family, but now we know that it is more closely related to golden brown algae, which are commonly known as kelp

Thousands of breathless trekkers each year gratefully stop to admire the stunning high altitude scenery as they pass through the village of Landruk on their way to Nepal’s famous Annapurna mountain range.

As their gaze shifts from the famous ‘Fish Tail’ mountain to the brilliant green sloping terraced foot hills 6,000 ft up the Himalayas they could be forgiven for thinking it was all mother nature’s work.

It isn’t. In fact it’s all down to novel relationships being forged between l

On the slopes of Mt. Kenya and the terraced hills of Nepal local farmers are using their cattle in much the same way as scientists use test tubes.

They may be illiterate and continents apart. And there isn’t a laboratory for hundreds of miles. But when it comes to animal nutrition they can teach western scientists a thing or two about the feeding value of the diverse range of tree species found in the hills around them.

While western laboratories break down and then analyse the sep

As U.S. consumers seek reassurance that their hamburgers and steaks are free of deadly mad cow disease, researchers at the University of California-San Francisco say they may have found a promising solution. They’ve developed a faster, more reliable test for identifying the disease, possibly even in living cows. Current tests can only detect the disease after the cow dies.

The test was described today at the 226th national meeting of the American Chemical Society, the world’s larg

Scientists are examining which genetic characteristics of rice best control the growth of a common weed.

The growth of rice (Oryza sativa L.) is of great agricultural importance but it is affected by the common weed, barnyardgrass (Echinochloa crus-galli). Scientists from the Department of Crop Science at Konkuk University examined the use of rice allelopathic potential for weed control.

A laboratory bioassay using water extracts was conducted to determine the alleopathic p

Purdue University researchers have discovered a faster, less expensive method to test the quality and purity of dietary supplement oils, such as flax seed, borage seed and grape seed oil, often touted as cures for many human maladies.

The research results are published in the September issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry and on the journal’s Web site.

“This study brings analytical chemistry, food science, nutritional sciences and consumer interest together,” sai