AgriTech Review

Deep inside the tissues of maize, wheat, rye, and their grass relatives runs a chemical assembly line that has been quietly shaping agriculture for millennia. Its products, the benzoxazinoids, are a family of nitrogen- and oxygen-containing ring compounds that function as the primary chemical arsenal of many monocot crops against insects, fungi, bacteria, and nematodes. […]

Smartphone vineyard mapping is giving growers a new way to create detailed, vine-by-vine maps using nothing more than a smartphone. VineIQ says its technology allows growers to walk through a vineyard ... Read More The post Smartphone Technology Creates Vine-by-Vine Vineyard Maps appeared first on AgNet West.

Leaders of $100 million effort will use automated detection methods and computer models to monitor species’ trends

Staphylococcus aureus is frequently found in human and veterinary infections. It is named for the golden-yellow pigment it produces, which contributes to its virulence and protects it against oxidative stress. Its ability to withstand antibiotic treatment makes it a major clinical challenge.

Urban farming is often portrayed as raised wooden beds or community garden plots on overgrown vacant lots in cities around the country. The more prominent, but untold story is how urban farming provides access to land for beginning farmers or those without the means to purchase it, or how these farmers creatively manage limited resources, […] The post The Uncertain Future of Urban Agriculture at USDA appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Soils are warming quickly and at considerable depth across Alaska, with temperatures rising fastest in the state's permafrost region, a trend that could accelerate climate change and undermine the stability of roads, buildings and other infrastructure built on the continuously frozen ground.

A three-year surveillance program in Quzhou City, in western Zhejiang Province, China, has found that poultry-associated environments—particularly live poultry markets and farms—harbor far more avian influenza virus than the migratory bird habitats that have long dominated public concern about the disease. The study, conducted by researchers at the Quzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention […]

With six 3D printers operating at its production facility, Revo Foods can now turn out a product every three seconds, says CEO David Petuzzi. The post Austrian alt meat startup Revo Foods targets profitability by Q3 2027 as 3D-printing scales up appeared first on AgFunderNews.

“We're getting great results, big reductions in chemical spraying and also quite good increases in yield as well," says Antobot VP Marc Jones. The post Antobot scales UV-C robotics push with 300 deployments targeted in 2027 appeared first on AgFunderNews.

Vegetable crops sit at the heart of global food security, supplying essential vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and dietary fiber to billions of people. Yet the pressures facing vegetable production have never been greater. Population growth, rising health awareness, and the intensifying effects of climate change are driving demand for varieties that yield more, resist disease, tolerate […]

Drone surveys have transformed the way scientists watch soil disappear. With a few hundred overlapping photographs and a technique called structure from motion, a small unmanned aircraft can reconstruct a field surface in three dimensions at millimetre to centimetre resolution, revealing rills, gullies and subtle surface lowering that would once have required weeks of laborious […]

People with depression who dramatically cut ultra-processed foods experienced notable improvements in their symptoms in a small preliminary study. Researchers suspect healthier eating may benefit the brain partly by reducing gut damage and chronic inflammation.

On small farms scattered across the Langkat Regency of North Sumatra, Indonesia, antibiotics are a routine part of raising cattle, goats and sheep. Yet a new study suggests that the people administering these powerful drugs often understand remarkably little about what they are using, how it works, or what dangers it may carry. A cross-sectional […]

A drone that decides, mid-flight, exactly where to spray herbicide and where to hold its nozzles has moved a step closer to the field. Researchers at the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture have built and tested an adaptive sprayer control system that mounts on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), images the soybean canopy […]

Harvesting the contents of a bioreactor sounds deceptively simple: the culture is finished, the drug substance is sitting in the broth, and all that remains is to separate the cells from the liquid. In practice, this clarification step is one of the most stubborn bottlenecks in modern biomanufacturing. Chinese hamster ovary cells, the workhorses behind […]

For potato growers, the sight of corky, pitted lesions on freshly harvested tubers is a familiar and costly disappointment. Common scab, a soil-borne disease caused by filamentous bacteria in the genus Streptomyces, does not usually kill the plant, but it can render tubers unmarketable. In the United States, potatoes with more than ten percent of […]

High in the Western Himalayas, where villages cling to terraced slopes and livestock are the backbone of household survival, tribal communities have spent generations treating sick animals with remedies gathered from the surrounding forests. A new study published in Plant Biosystems by Niharika Sharma and Radha of Shoolini University has now put that knowledge under […]

Every extra 100 grams of ultra-processed food eaten daily was linked to higher risks of chronic disease and death, a large analysis found. Ready-to-eat meals and heat-and-serve snacks have become increasingly common in diets around the world over the past few decades. As people eat more of these heavily processed products, researchers have been trying [...]

A sweeping review published in Discover Soil argues that the future of global food security may rest less on the next bag of synthetic fertilizer and more on the trillions of microscopic organisms already living in farmers’ fields. Led by Mehedi Hasan Khan of the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute, the study synthesizes more than a […]

Will farmers want AI tools to help judge when to pick fruit, or is their own intuition enough?

In the quiet soil beneath the world’s croplands, an army of microscopic hunters has been waging war on insect pests for millions of years. Entomopathogenic nematodes, threadlike roundworms barely visible to the naked eye, seek out beetle grubs, caterpillars, and other soil-dwelling larvae, invade their bodies, and kill them with the help of symbiotic bacteria […]

Beneath every wheat field lies an invisible economy. Fungi decompose crop residues, shuttle nutrients to plant roots, suppress pathogens, and occasionally attack the very crops they share the soil with. A new long-term study from the Loess Plateau of China, published in the journal Plant and Soil, now offers some of the clearest evidence yet […]

Few crops punish forecasting errors quite like strawberries. The fruit is delicate, the season is short, and every punnet that ripens without a picker or a cold-chain slot waiting for it is money left rotting in the field. A new study published in Smart Agricultural Technology shows that daily strawberry yields on a working commercial […]

In the drought-prone highlands of Tigray in northern Ethiopia, a new study has delivered one of the most detailed pictures yet of how smallholder dairy farmers are faring, and the results reveal both a striking opportunity and a stubborn bottleneck. Researchers from Mekelle University surveyed 224 dairy producers across three distinct milk production systems, an […]

FBN will make the first features available to early test users now, with a broader rollout expected this fall. The post FBN and Google team up to give farm AI the context it’s been missing appeared first on AgFunderNews.

Deep in the frozen ruins of Whalers Bay on Deception Island, one of the most storied locations in maritime Antarctica, scientists have uncovered a thriving hidden community of fungi living inside the decaying remnants of a century-old whaling station. A new study published in the journal Blue Biotechnology reveals that wood, fabric, rope and soil […]

In the coal-rich heart of northern China, where mines, power plants, and cement kilns cluster within a few kilometers of one another, an enormous stream of industrial leftovers piles up every year: heaps of coal gangue, mountains of fly ash, and an endless supply of excavated soil from construction sites. A new study published in […]

Turkey is one of Europe’s agricultural powerhouses, ranking first in the continent’s agricultural economy and tenth globally in 2022, with the sector contributing 58.5 billion US dollars to national income and employing roughly 18 percent of the working population. Yet a new econometric study suggests that the country’s development model may be quietly working against […]

In the humid rainforest belt of Ondo State, Southwest Nigeria, the ground beneath a farmer’s feet tells a very different story depending on what grows above it. A new study of the Okitipupa and Irele local government areas has produced the first integrated statistical and map-based portrait of how five contrasting land uses—farmland, oil palm […]

Rwanda’s sugar bowl is leaking. The country produced roughly 130,000 metric tons of sugarcane in 2022, yet national demand for sugar sits between 160,000 and 180,000 metric tons a year, forcing imports to fill a gap of 30,000 to 50,000 metric tons. A new study of smallholder farmers along the Nyabarongo River suggests that a […]

The global livestock food industry stands at a crossroads. A sweeping review published in Food Science of Animal Resources by researchers at the Korea Food Research Institute argues that food technology, rather than any single breakthrough, will determine whether animal-derived foods can remain a cornerstone of human nutrition in a world of nearly ten billion […]

A sweeping 26-year analysis of India’s two most important commercial crops has revealed a striking divergence in what actually drives farm incomes, with seed technology emerging as the single most powerful lever for cotton growers while hired labour dominates sugarcane economics. The study, published in Discover Agriculture by economist Amit Mandal of Mankar College, The […]

Plant-based proteins have a stubborn problem: even when their nutrition is excellent, they often refuse to behave in a food factory. Lupin protein isolate, prized for its balanced amino acid profile and relatively low allergenicity compared with soy and pea proteins, is a case in point. It dissolves poorly, struggles to stabilize emulsions and foams, […]

On the salt-crusted farmland of Ningxia in northwest China, where soil pH climbs above 8.7 and evaporation relentlessly concentrates salts in the root zone, maize growers have long faced a frustrating paradox: the nitrogen fertilizer they pour onto their fields largely refuses to stay there. Conventional urea releases its nitrogen in a sudden early burst, […]

Rice is the staple food for billions of people, yet breeding varieties that perform reliably across wildly different landscapes remains one of agriculture’s stubborn challenges. A new multi-environment study published in the Indian Journal of Genetics and Plant Breeding has taken on that challenge in one of the world’s most demanding settings: the hill ecologies […]

Bambara groundnut, a humble underground legume that has sustained communities across sub-Saharan Africa for centuries, is quietly emerging as one of the most promising weapons against food insecurity in a warming Sahel. Now, a field trial conducted in the Sudano-Sahelian zone of Burkina Faso has delivered a message that could reshape how smallholder farmers grow […]

When the ocean creeps inland and salt poisons farmland, most plants shrivel and die. Mangroves, however, stand rooted in seawater twice a day, flourishing where agriculture fails. A new systematic review published in Discover Plants has now pulled together the scattered evidence explaining how these remarkable trees chemically survive one of the harshest environments on […]

For decades, agricultural scientists have treated soil acidity and soil carbon as two separate problems demanding two separate solutions. A sweeping new synthesis published in Advanced Science now shows they are deeply, quantitatively intertwined — and that fixing one can quietly pay for the other. By analyzing 251 field trials from around the world, researchers […]

A pigment-producing bacterium pulled from pine forest soil in Erzurum, Turkey, is attracting attention for a striking ability: its carotenoid-rich extract kills human cancer cells in the laboratory while leaving healthy cells largely unharmed. The microbe, identified as Micrococcus terreus strain SK34, was one of fifty pigment-producing isolates screened from soils collected across the region, […]

Decades after industrial waste stops flowing, the damage it leaves behind can keep working quietly underground. A new study of floodplain soils at the Savannah River Site in the United States shows that legacy contamination from coal ash does not simply kill off soil microbes. Instead, it reshapes entire microbial communities, favoring hardy generalist bacteria […]

New research from the DTU National Food Institute and Aarhus University shows that microorganisms can be used to specifically alter the amino acid composition of plant-based foods, making them more nutritious and therefore healthier.

In the sun-scorched savannahs of northern Ghana, a humble legume is quietly holding together the region’s farming systems, and a new study suggests that the future of the crop depends less on laboratory breakthroughs than on listening to the farmers who grow it. Pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan), the world’s sixth most important pulse crop, thrives […]

Enhanced-efficiency nitrogen fertilizers, the high-tech products marketed as a way to squeeze more grain out of every kilogram of applied nitrogen, did not consistently outperform ordinary urea in grain corn fields across Atlantic Canada, according to a multi-year field study published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Research. The research, conducted over two growing […]

A microscopic bacterium that lives inside the cells of some of the world’s most destructive rice pests may hold the key to controlling them. A new review published in the journal Crop Health by researchers at Nanjing Agricultural University brings together decades of evidence on how Wolbachia, an intracellular symbiont found in a large share […]

Farmers have long been told to fertilize for yield, but a new field study from Tamil Nadu, India, argues that the smartest fertilizer prescription is one that feeds the soil’s living machinery at the same time. Researchers at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University and partner institutions tested a soil-test-based, target-yield fertilizer system, adjusted with farmyard manure, […]

Few classes of industrial chemicals have earned a nickname as ominous as “forever chemicals,” yet the label is scientifically deserved. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are a vast family of synthetic compounds built around carbon-fluorine bonds so strong that they resist oxidation, reduction, hydrolysis and virtually every natural degradation pathway. A comprehensive new review […]

For more than half a century, agricultural laboratories around the world have relied on a single chemical recipe to decide how much potassium fertilizer a farmer should apply. A solution of neutral normal ammonium acetate is shaken with soil, the potassium it releases is measured with a flame photometer, and the number that emerges drives […]

Every year, an invisible army of fungi, insects, and weeds wages war on the fields that feed China, and every year an equally invisible defense system pushes back. For the first time, researchers have put a hard national number on just how much that defense is worth. A nationwide evaluation coordinated by China’s National Agricultural […]

Underwater archaeological investigations have been taking place in Lake Arendsee (Altmarkkreis Salzwedel) for several years. The discovery of Neolithic fish weirs, a high medieval barge (flat-bottomed cargo ship) and a late medieval dugout canoe attracted considerable attention.

Irrigation canals are the hidden circulatory system of global agriculture. Millions of kilometers of human-made channels carry water from rivers, lakes and reservoirs downhill to farmland, quietly sustaining harvests that feed billions of people. Yet for all their importance, most of these waterways are monitored poorly or not at all. Farmers and water managers in […]

Irrigation canals form a sort of circulatory system for global agriculture. Across the world, millions of kilometers of human-made canals carry water from lakes, rivers and reservoirs downhill to farmland. Canals are vitally important to human food production, yet many agricultural areas lack the means to monitor the ebb and flow of water through these waterways. This forces farmers and water managers to rely on scattered gauges, inspections and local reports to make decisions about water use.

A team of chemists and botanists in India has found that the leaves of a humble Himalayan weed can do the work of an industrial chemical plant. By mixing a simple aqueous extract of Rumex nepalensis, a perennial herb in the buckwheat family that grows abundantly across mountain slopes of Asia, with a zinc precursor, […]

A fermented liquid manure first described in Sanskrit agricultural texts more than a thousand years ago is now attracting serious scientific attention as a potential weapon against one of modern farming’s most stubborn problems: the slow degradation of soil health under decades of synthetic fertilizer use. In a comprehensive review published in Discover Soil, researchers […]

The fibrous, meat-like bite of a plant-based burger is not an accident of chemistry but the product of an elaborate structural hierarchy that has, until now, been largely invisible to food scientists. In a study published in Current Research in Food Science, a team of Dutch researchers led by Sam Kuijpers and Camilla Terenzi has […]

New application technology could help growers and retailers cut inputs, preserve chemistry effectiveness, and unlock future management flexibility. The post Precision Spraying Technology Could Expand Future Weed Control Options appeared first on CropLife.

Smart farms have become silent data factories. A single dairy cow now generates on the order of 65 kilobytes of sensor data every day, streaming from milking equipment, health monitors, and environmental devices, while a mid-scale crop farm with hundreds of soil moisture, temperature, and pest-monitoring nodes produces orders of magnitude more. As the global […]

Soil contaminated with toxic metals is one of the most stubborn environmental problems of our time. Lead, chromium, and uranium do not break down into harmless substances the way organic pollutants eventually do; they persist in the ground for decades, seeping into crops, groundwater, and ultimately the food chain. Traditional cleanup approaches, from digging out […]

Biodegradable films made from engineered honeybee silk could form the basis of a new generation of 'smart' wound dressings, according to CSIRO and Adelaide University researchers.

In the highlands of Papua New Guinea, crops have been killed by drought and frost. Severe frosts have destroyed food crops such as taro, sweet potatoes, bananas and sugarcane, leaving some local communities scrambling for food.

New research suggests that poultry litter-based soil amendments and weather conditions, particularly extreme weather events, may influence how long bacteria survive in agricultural soils used to grow sweet onions. The findings could help inform food safety risk management for produce growers.

A University of Kentucky forest entomologist is advancing a pest-control approach designed to target destructive forest beetles while minimizing effects on surrounding wildlife.

Seoul’s international garden festival is moving deeper into the city this fall, bringing 51 new gardens, outdoor performances and wellness programs to Maeheon Citizens' Forest in southern Seoul. The 2026 Seoul International Garden Festival, which began at Seoul Forest in May, will expand to Maeheon Citizens' Forest in Seocho District from Thursday through Oct. 27, while the Seoul Forest exhibition continues. The festival marks the 40th anniversary of Maeheon Citizens' Forest with gardens created by 367 local gardeners, along with competition entries and gardens sponsored by companies and institutions. The 51 gardens include 14 competition gardens — four by professional designers, five by local citizens and five by students — as well as 31 gardens involving local hobby gardeners and six company gardens. An opening ceremony will be held Thursday at 5 p.m. at the Forest Stage, with performances and awards for garden competition participants. Visitors can join docent-led tours three times

arXiv:2609.37072v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Aerial seed broadcasting can reach remote restoration sites, but provides limited control over seed placement within the soil. This paper presents a geometry-assisted, tri-functional morphing robot that combines aerial access, ground locomotion, and controlled-depth seed embedding in a fly-drive-plant architecture. After landing, the platform reconfigures into a four-wheeled planting configuration: an electronically coupled dual-motor drive folds the rear arms outward to form ground wheels, while a descending front tray engages the propulsion motors with a drill gear train. Reusing the propulsion motors for drilling eliminates a dedicated drill drive. The planting sequence forms a hole, dispenses a seed, and allows the vehicle to reposition on the ground or return to its flight configuration. Ground mobility supports repeated planting without requiring a separate flight between adjacent sites. A companion controller issues

arXiv:2609.36582v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Foot-ground interaction signals recorded by quadruped robots may enable spatially distributed, in situ characterization of soil strength. As a first step, we test whether the internal friction angle $\phi$ of cohesionless soil can be identified from the force history of a simplified rotating leg. A two-dimensional continuum model implemented with the material point method, benchmarked against measured rotating-leg force histories, generates the training data, and two Gaussian-process surrogates support Bayesian inversion of the full histories. In matched-model experiments, the framework recovers 14 off-grid friction angles with a median absolute error of approximately $0.1^\circ$ (maximum $\sim 0.7^\circ$); the reported credible intervals contain the true value in every case. These results establish that $\phi$ is identifiable when the forward model is correctly specified, and support further development of proprioceptive soil sensing

Seoul’s international garden festival is moving deeper into the city this fall, bringing 51 new gardens, outdoor performances and wellness programs to Maeheon Citizens' Forest in southern Seoul. The 2026 Seoul International Garden Festival, which began at Seoul Forest in May, will expand to Maeheon Citizens' Forest in Seocho District from Thursday through Oct. 27, while the Seoul Forest exhibition continues. The festival marks the 40th anniversary of Maeheon Citizens' Forest with gardens created by 367 local gardeners, along with competition entries and gardens sponsored by companies and institutions. The 51 gardens include 14 competition gardens — four by professional designers, five by local citizens and five by students — as well as 31 gardens involving local hobby gardeners and six company gardens. An opening ceremony will be held Thursday at 5 p.m. at the Forest Stage, with performances and awards for garden competition participants. Visitors can join docent-led tours three times

Gray Construction and Ameris Bank—the two primary secured creditors of defunct cultivated meat company Believer Meats—are mulling a combined credit and cash bid for the firm’s production facility in North Carolina. The post Exclusive: Believer Meats creditors weigh bid for US plant after UPSIDE Foods exit appeared first on AgFunderNews.

Birds are not only beautiful to look at and listen to; they also play important roles in nature. They eat pests and disperse seeds. They are generally considered indicators of a healthy environment. When birds thrive, soil and water quality often benefit as well. A new study published in the journal Landscape Ecology shows that growing a variety of crops in small field patches creates better habitats for birds.

The 52nd annual Montana Angus Tour brought cattle producers, Angus breeders and international visitors to Montana’s Hi-Line. The three-day tour highlighted the diversity of cattle operations across the region and… Source

The hope is that ArkeaBio's first product could be commercialized and start generating revenues in 2028, says CEO Frank Wooten. The post Exclusive: ArkeaBio raises $15m for livestock methane tech, cuts headcount appeared first on AgFunderNews.

RDO demonstrates connected equipment, precision technology, and local support solutions to help farmers maximize efficiency all season. The post RDO Showcases Smarter Equipment, Precision Tech and Support at Big Iron appeared first on CropLife.

Artificial intelligence promises to transform food safety by helping companies identify risks earlier, predict outbreaks and learn from patterns too rare for any one company to detect alone. But AI depends on one thing: large, diverse datasets.

The Farm Robotics Challenge launched its 2027 season on Sept. 15, unveiling a new three-division competition structure, a Startup pathway for teams committed to launching a company and more than $200,000 in prizes and startup support backed by a coalition of industry partners. Watch the 2027 Launch Webinar replay to learn about the new divisions, awards, Startup pathway and … The post Farm Robotics Challenge Launches 2027 Season appeared first on California Ag Network.

University of Melbourne researchers have found that planting native gardens on suburban nature strips can boost urban biodiversity, with insect numbers increasing sevenfold and the number of species approximately doubling.

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Researchers at the University of Kentucky Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment (CAFE) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have discovered that mating changes the chemical coating on New World screwworm (NWS) fly species with maggots that can cause serious tissue destruction and deadly diseases in livestock and other animals. The […] The post UK Researchers Identify Mating-Related Chemical Changes in New World screwworm appeared first on Morning Ag Clips.

Unverified social media posts claim Candace Owens was linked to four dating profiles and was unfaithful in 2022, but no independent evidence has confirmed the allegations.

AI is transforming Indian agriculture through weather forecasting, pest surveillance, farmer IDs, and voice-based advisory services. The next step is to make AI more human by providing local-language, location-specific, transparent, and easy-to-question advice, while keeping human experts involved in complex cases.

AI is transforming Indian agriculture through weather forecasting, pest surveillance, farmer IDs, and voice-based advisory services. The next step is to make AI more human by providing local-language, location-specific, transparent, and easy-to-question advice, while keeping human experts involved in complex cases.

Food in Senegal is mostly grown on small-scale, rain-dependent farms, leaving much of the population vulnerable to climate shocks, according to the World Food Programme. However, satellite crop-mapping technologies designed to monitor the impact of climate on farming are largely beyond the reach of the West African country.

A woman says her mother secretly transferred the family's 64-hectare East Gippsland sheep farm to one son, sparking a dispute among seven siblings.

A new study finds that exposure to birdsong soundscapes or forest landscapes reduces physiological stress. These findings of physical health effects complement previous research showing mental health benefits associated with birdwatching and could be useful for urban planners with limited green space options.

BROOKINGS, S.D. — The South Dakota State University Weed Science graduate team placed second in the Western Society of Weed Science category at the North Central Weed Science Society and WSWS Joint Student Weed Contest, hosted by Bayer, July 29-30. Students, representing both an undergraduate team and a graduate team, prepared for months studying weed […] The post SDSU Weed Science Teams Compete in First-ever Contest, Graduate Team Finishes Second appeared first on Morning Ag Clips.

Farmers used to sniff their soil to gauge how healthy it was. According to ecologist Rosa Boone, you can deduce a great deal from its smell: "The fungi and bacteria present in the soil are important for soil health and are responsible for the soil's smell." Boone discovered that the smell of soil can be captured and analyzed in the lab, providing insights into these microbial communities. "Monitoring soil life is becoming increasingly important, particularly in view of the forthcoming soil monitoring guidelines. My research shows that there is great potential for developing a sensor—an 'electronic nose'—that could be used to analyze microbial soil life directly, based on how it smells."

A sweeping new analysis of a decade of agricultural research suggests that the way we farm may shape not only what grows in our fields, but which microbes thrive beneath them and how much greenhouse gas escapes from the soil. In a study published in Discover Soil, researchers led by Neha Kalonia and Dipti Grover […]

Aquaculture is one of the fastest growing food sectors on the planet, but raising fish at high density in closed systems creates a stubborn chemical problem: nitrogen. Fish excrete ammonia, beneficial microbes convert it to nitrite and then nitrate, and if nitrate builds up, operators must either dilute the water with large volumes of exchange […]

Beneath every plant, the narrow sleeve of soil hugging its roots—the rhizosphere—is one of the most chemically active zones on Earth. Roots leak sugars, organic acids and other compounds into this zone, feeding microbes and dissolving minerals, and in doing so they can dramatically accelerate or slow the breakdown of soil organic matter. A new […]

Atrazine, the most heavily used herbicide in Brazilian agriculture, has long been a double-edged sword: it keeps weeds out of sugarcane and corn fields, yet it lingers in soil long enough to threaten crops, waterways, wildlife and possibly human health. Now a perspective article published in Discover Plants by researchers at the Federal University of […]

Agri-photovoltaics combines electricity generation and agriculture on the same land—to ensure this works well in the long term, it is worth taking a closer look at the soil. Researchers at the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) have, for the first time, measured how the construction phase of agri-photovoltaic installations affects soil structure.

Scientists have streamlined a method for measuring DNA-bound phosphorus in soil, making it cheaper and easier while preserving its accuracy. The technique could reveal how soil microbes help recycle phosphorus and ultimately support more sustainable fertilizer and nutrient management.

Fish, like all animals, experience stress, but for the billions of creatures raised in aquaculture systems worldwide, stress is not merely an inconvenience—it is a major driver of disease, stunted growth, and mortality. A new mini review published in Blue Biotechnology by researchers at ICAR-Central Institute of Fisheries Education in Mumbai examines how one of […]

Maize is one of the most widely grown cereal crops on Earth, and its future productivity increasingly depends on a counterintuitive idea: planting more plants into less space. High-density cultivation squeezes more ears out of every hectare, but it also triggers fierce competition for light, water and nutrients, causing tall, leafy plants to shade one […]

Heavy metal contamination of soil is one of the most stubborn environmental problems of the industrial age, and a new laboratory study from Nigeria suggests that a carefully tuned electric current could help solve it faster than many researchers thought possible. A team at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife has shown that a low-power electrochemical […]

In the highlands of western Ethiopia, a simple act of restraint is quietly rebuilding the ground beneath farmers’ feet. A new study from Gida Ayana District, in the East Wollega Zone of Oromia, shows that simply closing degraded land to grazing and human interference for seven years can dramatically improve the chemical and physical health […]

A new field-ready machine could help farmers and agronomists spot hidden threats early, protecting crops and strengthening agricultural resilience. The post SIU Researchers Build Robot, AI to Detect Soybean Diseases Before Symptoms Appear appeared first on CropLife.

A sweeping new systematic review and meta-analysis has produced the most detailed global picture yet of Staphylococcus aureus in bovine intramammary infections, the udder infections broadly known as mastitis that rank among the most economically damaging diseases of dairy cattle worldwide. Pulling together 143 peer-reviewed studies published between 2010 and 2025, spanning 40 countries and […]

Scientists think beneficial fungi could help transform nutrient-poor lunar and Martian regolith into a material capable of supporting crops. By helping plants access nutrients and withstand harsh conditions, these microbes could someday make self-sustaining space farming more realistic.

Insect pests are quietly one of the most expensive problems in global agriculture. According to estimates from the Food and Agriculture Organization cited in a new review published in Discover Agriculture, insect infestations destroy up to 40 percent of global crop production each year, inflicting economic damage exceeding 220 billion US dollars. For decades, farmers […]

In the highlands and lowlands of rural Ethiopia, what a family grows on its own plot may matter more to the nutritional health of mothers and young children than almost any other factor researchers can measure. A large new study of more than 500 women and 250 young children across five Ethiopian regions has found […]

Beneath the rolling tea gardens of India’s Kangra Valley, an invisible ecosystem of bacteria, fungi and archaea is hard at work, sustaining one of the world’s most beloved beverages. A new metagenomic study has now catalogued this hidden biodiversity in unprecedented detail, sequencing millions of DNA fragments from the soil that clings to tea roots […]