New approaches in the fight against bacterial rice disease. An international research team, the “Healthy Crops” consortium, has developed rice varieties resistant to a detrimental crop disease in East Africa and Madagascar. The new varieties are resistant to bacterial leaf blight (for short: BB), caused by the bacterium Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo). The intention is to transfer these varieties to local breeders in Madagascar and Tanzania, where they will first be subjected to field tests and subsequently distributed to…
EIP Project “BioStripPlant” Successfully Concludes. On Thursday, 28 November 2024, the Leibniz Institute of Vegetable and Ornamental Crops (IGZ) hosted the final event of the “BioStripPlant” project. Funded by the European Innovation Partnership (EIP-Agri) and coordinated by agrathaer GmbH, the project aimed to develop and test an innovative cultivation method for organic vegetable farming in Brandenburg. Over three years, the project explored how strip-tillage combined with mulch and live mulch systems could enhance soil conservation and climate resilience. The results…
Plant biologists show how two genes work together to trigger embryo formation in rice. Rice is a staple food crop for more than half the world’s population, but most farmers don’t grow high-yielding varieties because the seeds are too expensive. Researchers from the University of California’s Davis and Berkeley campuses have identified a potential solution: activating two genes in rice egg cells that trigger their development into embryos without the need for fertilization, which would efficiently create high-yielding clonal strains…
A new study shows that increasing plant diversity in agriculture can be used to improve the carbon sequestration potential of agricultural soils. As the agricultural sector strives to reduce its carbon footprint, promoting biodiversity in agricultural practices could be the key to more sustainable and climate-friendly food production systems. As agricultural expansion and intensive farming practices continues to degrade soils and release carbon into the atmosphere, finding ways to enhance soil carbon storage is critical. Given that over 40% of…
Plants can extract even the smallest traces of the important nutrient potassium from the soil. A team led by Würzburg biophysicist Rainer Hedrich describes how they achieve this in ‘Nature Communications’. Potassium is one of the nutrients that plants need in large quantities. However, the amount of potassium in the soil can vary greatly: potassium-poor soils can contain up to a thousand times less of this nutrient than potassium-rich soils. To be able to react flexibly to these differences, plants…
Despite being widely popular, moths are not always welcome in forests, parks and gardens. Some moth species constitute a real threat to forests when they appear en masse. In the past, they have stripped entire deciduous and coniferous stands bare in many places in Germany. Forest pest monitoring is consequently particularly important to track their reproduction and to protect forests from greater damage. Research scientist from the Fraunhofer IFF are developing a digital, automated pheromone trap together with the Nordwestdeutsche…
Mizzou plant geneticist Ron Mittler is finding ways to breed soybean crops that can handle heat, drought and water-logging stresses, improving yields under pressure. Ron Mittler is on a quest to create a smarter soybean. For years, mid-Missouri has withstood unpredictable weather patterns, including drought, heat waves and flooding — conditions that are known to hamper agricultural yields and make it difficult for farmers to produce. While we can’t control the weather, Mittler and his team are working to harness…
In the agricultural and food industry, determining the chemical composition of raw materials is important for production efficiency, application, and price. Traditional laboratory testing is time-consuming, complicated, and expensive. New research from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign demonstrates that near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy and machine learning can provide quick, accurate, and cost-effective product analysis. In two studies, the researchers explore the use of NIR spectroscopy for analyzing characteristics of corn kernels and sorghum biomass. “NIR spectroscopy has many advantages over traditional…
Through international teamwork, scientists’ on-site weed resistance diagnosis boosts knowledge exchange and sustainable agriculture. Dr. Ulrich Lutz with Arvind Ramburn from the Parmessur team, during a training session in the lab of the Biotechnology department of the MSIRI. (c) Ulrich Lutz A collaborative effort between Dr. Ulrich Lutz from the Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen and Dr. Yogesh Parmessur from the Mauritius Sugar Industry Research Institute (MSIRI) has led to a significant breakthrough in combating herbicide-resistant weeds that are…
Urban agriculture has the potential to improve food security through local, efficient, and sustainable food production. Examples of urban food systems include hydroponics, where plants grow in a nutrient solution without soil, and aquaponics, which combines hydroponics with raising fish in tanks. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign examines the use of aquaponics wastewater as a growth medium for lettuce in a hydroponic system. This practice can potentially create a circular ecosystem for organic waste recycling and…
Tool developed at the University of Bonn should enable yield forecasts, among other things, in the future. Researchers at the University of Bonn have developed software that can simulate the growth of field crops. To do this, they fed thousands of photos from field experiments into a learning algorithm. This enabled the algorithm to learn how to visualize the future development of cultivated plants based on a single initial image. Using the images created during this process, parameters such as…
At the intersection of plants and nanomedicine perhaps lies a solution to current unsustainable agricultural practices and meeting increasing global food demands. Nano-agriculture: Sustainable solutions for global food security Researchers in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University are using findings from nanomedicine and digital twin technologies to understand the new field of Plant Nanobiotechnology, address unsustainable agricultural practices, and meet increasing global food demands. Currently, agriculture accounts for 14-28% of global greenhouse gas emissions and…
Study headed by the University of Bonn analyses 9,000 varieties of maize around the world. Maize can grow successfully in very different local conditions. An international study headed by the University of Bonn has now demonstrated the important role of the plant root system. The researchers analyzed more than 9,000 varieties in the study and were able to show that their roots varied considerably – depending on how dry the location is where each variety was cultivated. They were also…
Plants adapt genetically over time to the special conditions of organic farming. This has been demonstrated in a long-term study conducted at the University of Bonn. The researchers planted barley plants on two neighboring fields and used conventional farming methods on one and organic methods on the other. Over the course of more than 20 years, the organic barley was enriched with specific genetic material that differed from the comparative culture. Among other things, the results demonstrate how important it…
In the RhizoTraits joint project, Bayreuth researchers are looking at old crop varieties, researching root characteristics and investigating whether a mixture of varieties can increase yield stability in the climate crisis. The second phase of the project, which has now started, is being funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research with a total of €1.9 million, around half of which is going to Bayreuth. What for? It is undisputed that droughts and heatwaves are increasing due to the…
Drones monitoring fields for weeds and robots targeting and treating crop diseases may sound like science fiction but is actually happening already, at least on some experimental farms. Researchers from the PhenoRob Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bonn are working on driving forward the smart digitalization of agriculture and have now published a list of the research questions that will need to be tackled as a priority in the future. Their paper has appeared in the “European Journal…
Feedback
