AgriTech Review

Costco's new Vanilla Apple Pie Sundae pairs soft serve with pie filling and cinnamon crust for $2.99, but shoppers say a key topping is missing.

A new architecture-diverse TabNet ensemble classifies seven crop types from harmonized multi-source soil data with 90.5 percent accuracy, outperforming XGBoost and single optimized models.

A newly characterized Bacillus velezensis strain fights sunflower sclerotiniose by damaging the fungal pathogen with heat-stable lipopeptides while simultaneously priming the plant's own defenses.

Eric Sfiligoj and Amy Asmus honor retiring Syngenta leaders, welcome Jeff Cecil, and examine 2026 harvest prospects and RFS changes. The post CropLife Retail Week: Syngenta President Retires, Corn and Soybean Harvest Delays, and EPA Biofuel Shift appeared first on CropLife.

Irrigation canals form a sort of circulatory system for global agriculture. Across the world, millions of kilometers of

A new study documents numerous new records for algae, bryophytes, fungi, and lichens across Italy, expanding the known distribution of rare species in alpine and coastal habitats.

Researchers have identified 32 germin-like protein genes in upland cotton and pinpointed five that respond strongly to drought, heat, and salt stress.

A new reusable strawberry stem made from hot melt adhesives provides a standardized, low-cost testbed for validating robotic harvesting systems.

Tropical montane cloud forests are among the most biologically complex and geographically isolated ecosystems on Earth, yet they remain significantly understudied, particularly regarding their insect fauna. In a recent study published in Neotropical Biology and Conservation, researchers presented the first

Researchers have found that during the Black Death, when a third of the population of Europe was wiped out, biodiversity fell. Understanding their farming practices could help us increase diversity in modern agriculture.

Antimicrobial resistance has emerged as one of the most pressing public health challenges of the twenty-first century, threatening to render essential medicines ineffective against common infections. The World Health Organization has ranked this crisis among the top ten global health

A new study in Scientific Reports introduces a hybrid framework using variable fuzzy sets and convolutional neural networks to assess and predict the resilience of fresh agricultural supply chains across China.

A Turkish research team found nitrogen was the most effective fertilizer for boxwood growth and root development, and used machine learning to identify which plant traits reveal fertilizer treatments.

A first-of-its-kind survey on five Panamanian silvopastoral farms links stream health to the amount of carbon stored in riparian trees, not the sheer size of forested corridors.

A new genus and five new species of Hypocreaceae fungi, named Manidigitorum for their hand-like spore-producing cells, have been described from the fungus gardens of Apterostigma ants, revealing unexpected diversity in one of nature's most studied symbioses.

Every day, India's cities generate roughly 170,000 tonnes of municipal solid waste, yet barely half of it is processed before the rest piles up in landfills or open dumps. A new open-access study from Banaras Hindu University suggests that a

Researchers have catalogued 47 WRKY transcription factor genes in Codonopsis pilosula and linked specific members, including Cpi05G005333-I, to the herb's lipid-based response to saline-alkali soil stress.

A three-month industrial-scale study in Ravenna demonstrates that recycling culture medium after each harvest preserves biomass quality, with proteins at 62% and C-phycocyanin at 12% throughout the cultivation period.

Deep in the soils of Romania, two centipede species have been living under the noses of scientists for centuries, so similar to their relatives that no one could tell them apart. Now, a team of researchers has finally unmasked them,

A new species of groundwater copepod, Elaphoidella quangnamensis, has been discovered in the hyporheic zone of a stream in central Vietnam, becoming only the second endemic Elaphoidella species recorded in the country.

A survey of the Botanic Garden of Pisa recorded 57 epiphytic lichen taxa, including two species new to Tuscany and several threatened species, revealing botanical gardens as urban refuges for rare bark-dwelling organisms.

Deep inside every plant cell, a chemical tag is being written, read and erased on messenger RNA molecules at astonishing speed. The tag, N6-methyladenosine, or m6A, is a methyl group deposited on the sixth nitrogen atom of adenosine bases, and

A sweeping review in Food Chemistry: X maps how AI, IoT, blockchain and green analytical chemistry could transform veterinary drug residue surveillance across global food chains.

Deep in the surface soil of a Chinese farm field, a microscopic predator has been quietly going about its business, unknown to science. Researchers have now pulled it into the light, describing a brand-new species of single-celled eukaryote with a

In the semi-arid reaches of the American Southwest, where every millimeter of rain is contested by sun, wind, and thirsty soil, farmers have long faced an uncomfortable bargain: grow cover crops to rebuild the soil's carbon bank, or protect the

A foliar chitosan–selenite formulation improved wheat seedling fresh weight under salt stress and activated antioxidant and ion-transport genes, though field validation remains needed.

A new global initiative called GReG is using environmental DNA to map and protect the hidden biodiversity of groundwater ecosystems across four continents.

A new field trial shows that organic manure and NPK fertilizer push three Iranian ecotypes of summer savory toward different combinations of biomass, pigments, and essential oil.

Deep in the forests and meadows of the Franco-Swiss borderland around Geneva, a quiet census of some of the least glamorous beetles in Europe has produced results that are anything but boring. A comprehensive new survey of four beetle families

Field observations in South Korea show that only a subset of bee visitors carry the pollinaria of two deceptive orchid species, with a single Eucera nipponensis record suggesting possible pollinator sharing between Calanthe discolor and C. striata.

A new study profiles the volatile organic compounds released during black soldier fly larvae rearing, revealing that larval activity and associated microorganisms drive a 52-fold increase in airborne chemicals compared to feed alone, with sulfur-containing odorants detected across all feed treatments.

A sweeping review finds AI delivers impressive agricultural gains in irrigation, soil management, and pest detection, but warns that spatial overfitting, poor reproducibility, and a structural climate resilience divide leave the world's most vulnerable farmers behind.

Imagine peeling back the lid on a pack of mushrooms and knowing at a glance whether they are still safe to eat — not from a printed date, not from a sniff test, but from the packaging itself changing color

A comprehensive review in Heliyon argues that cocoa fermentation, the step that creates chocolate flavor, simultaneously destroys many health-promoting compounds, and that rationally designed microbial consortia and precision fermentation technologies could transform cocoa into a source of nutraceutical ingredients.

A new review in Frontiers in Industrial Microbiology charts the shift from single-strain bacterial inoculants to engineered synthetic microbial communities that could stabilize rice yields under drought, salinity, and climate stress.

A naturally occurring cheese yeast, Debaryomyces hansenii, significantly suppressed the growth and ochratoxin A production of Aspergillus westerdijkiae on a cheese-like medium in new laboratory research.

A comprehensive 40-year review of Brazilian soil fauna reveals that tillage can reduce earthworm densities by at least 67 percent while seasonal patterns and soil chemistry produce starkly different responses across earthworms, springtails, soil mites, and enchytraeids.

A new review argues that AI-IoT dairy welfare systems must be designed as complete cyber–physical architectures, with digital twins still an emerging rather than established reality.

A hyperspectral imaging study shows that near-infrared spectra can nondestructively predict hardness, resilience, and chewiness in sesame protein meat analogs.

A new review maps how endophytic microbes defend crops against insect pests, while warning that inconsistent colonization, environmental sensitivity, and regulatory hurdles still stand between laboratory promise and field-ready deployment.

A comprehensive new review maps the full pathway of biomass-derived nanocellulose from agricultural waste extraction through green processing to advanced food packaging, bioactive delivery, and intelligent freshness sensing applications.

A French research team used a comic strip and a serious game to bring farmers, veterinarians, and public health officials together to co-design Q fever management strategies for goat farms.

A Welfare Quality assessment of six São Paulo dairy farms found that even farms rated Enhanced carried serious lameness, hygiene, and pain-management problems, showing that overall welfare labels can mask cow-level suffering.

A new study shows that the bone resorption marker CTX-I, measured in late gestation, can predict which dairy cows will develop hypocalcemia after calving.

A systematic review of 187 papers reveals that 3D path planning for autonomous agricultural machinery is expanding rapidly into rugged terrain, driven by efficiency, energy, and safety needs, yet fewer than 8 percent of studies incorporate tire-soil interaction, exposing a critical gap between geometric feasibility and physical executability.

Donald Trump's Rose Garden appearance attracted criticism on X after he waited through a song and moved during an event, though the report found no evidence linking this to health concerns.

Every cow carries two ages. One is written in her birth records; the other, researchers increasingly suspect, is written in her blood. A new study from Australian dairy farms has now used a machine-learning lipid clock to read that second

... ... The choice of chitosan as the delivery vehicle for this experimental vaccine reflects a growing body of research into biopolymer-based nanocarriers for mucosal immunization. Chitosan, derived from chitin found in crustacean shells, is positively charged at physiological pH,

A time-normalized analysis of mizuna grown in a spaceflight prototype root module shows nighttime water loss running at nearly half the daytime rate, challenging assumptions that plants stop losing water after lights-out.

A landmark study of edible insects and fortified baby foods across Kenya reveals widespread fungal contamination, mycotoxin traces, and histamine levels that demand urgent attention as insect-based nutrition scales up.

Every year, farms, landfills and wastewater plants belch out millions of tonnes of biogas, a methane-rich mixture that is often flared or vented after the energy-rich methane has been extracted. Now a team of chemical engineers in the Netherlands and

A validated collar-based system predicts individual feed intake in dairy cows with research-grade accuracy using only wearable sensor and farm data, and new evidence shows the predicted intake and derived feed efficiency carry familial variation in commercial herds.

Innovative investment mechanisms can help women farmers overcome financial barriers to digital agriculture and boost their incomes, says World Bank agriculture adviser Shobha Shetty.

A 20-year California field experiment shows that reduced tillage combined with cover crops more than doubles aggregate stability, doubles surface carbon stocks, and boosts water retention by 13 percent, while shifting carbon protection toward physically occluded forms within soil aggregates.

In a finding that could reshape how farmers raise premium poultry, researchers in Guangxi, China have shown that a humble flowering herb long used in traditional Chinese medicine can make chickens grow faster, eat more efficiently, and produce noticeably better

Australian researchers and international collaborators have demonstrated a solar-driven approach to convert glycerol, a low-value byproduct of biodiesel production, into hydrogen and higher-value chemicals. Using advanced techniques at the Australian Synchrotron, they revealed how the catalyst changed while it was working.

A Ph.D. student at the University of Sydney has produced the first comprehensive classification system and map of Martian soils, creating a new framework that could help scientists compare landscapes across the Red Planet and identify promising locations for future exploration, habitation and food production.

Researchers converted waste glycerol into acetyl glycerol ester additives that lowered biodiesel's cold filter plugging point from 2 °C to −4 °C at just 1 vol% dosage, while mapping trade-offs in flash point, water content, and acid value.

Researchers in India used Pergularia daemia leaf extract to synthesize titanium dioxide nanoparticles that inhibit multidrug-resistant bacteria, suppress biofilms, and promote angiogenesis, all while showing minimal toxicity in blood, chromosomal, and zebrafish embryo assays.

A plant's roots do much of their work out of sight, pulling in water and nutrients and holding the plant in place. That makes it hard to see how plants respond when conditions underground change, and how a warming climate affects them. New Dartmouth-led studies look at the strategies plants use below the surface to adapt and survive.

With up to 75% of the world's soils degraded, restoration projects try to reestablish functional and biodiverse environments to secure adequate food production, biodiversity, climate regulation and human well-being.

A new spatial modeling study estimates that parasitic Striga weeds cost African maize farmers about US$1.04 billion annually and shows that targeting less than 6 percent of infested areas while preventing expansion could avert losses that may triple by 2050.

Wetland reclamation has long been regarded as a strategy to meet growing food demand, given the favorable soil and water conditions of wetlands. However, the trade-off between potentially greater crop production and the ecological cost of lost wetlands—especially involving flood regulation—has not been well understood.

Some of nature's healthful benefits might be possible through well-curated ornamental spaces, suggests a brain activity study recently published in the October issue of Building and Environment from researchers at Drexel's Nick Howley College of Engineering and Computing. The findings, which reveal new insights into how humans experience nature, may lead to scalable, evidence-based ways to design spaces to produce restorative benefits, which could be especially helpful for those who do not have convenient access to plants outdoors.

Arabidopsis thaliana, a small flowering mustard plant used worldwide as the primary genetic model in plant biology, was long believed incapable of forming relationships with underground fungal networks. New research published in Current Biology led by professor Katie Field demonstrates for the first time that it can establish a fully functional, resource-sharing partnership with an ancient soil fungus known as a Mucoromycotina fine root endophyte (MFRE).

Researchers have engineered a three-bacterial consortium that systemically reprograms tomato defense metabolism and reshapes the rhizosphere microbiome to reduce Fusarium wilt severity by over 33 percent.

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A two-stage imaging and deep learning framework detects and grades infestations of four greenhouse pests, distilling 248 spectral bands into just ten diagnostic wavelengths.

The new platform, known as the Food-Sharing Compass, will be unveiled at the final event of the EU-funded CULTIVATE project which created it for the wider food-sharing community.

arXiv:2610.22337v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Robotic harvesting requires precise manipulation to ensure accurate positioning of the end-effector, especially in a constraint workspace. This study introduces the Path-Safe Approach Proximal Policy Optimization (PSA-PPO), a target-conditioned local reaching framework designed for robotic harvesting of nutrient film technique (NFT)-hydroponic lettuce in greenhouses. The proposed PSA-PPO preserves the standard clipped PPO objective while introducing a harvesting-oriented policy formulation that integrates target-conditioned observations, corridor-aware spatial constraints, trajectory-history-based safety encoding, and task-specific success criteria for constrained robotic manipulation. PSAPPO was trained entirely in Isaac Lab and successfully transferred to a physical UR10e robotic arm without any real-world policy fine-tuning. In a controlled physical benchmark against 150 scheduled targets, PSA-PPO achieved the highest reaching rate of

President Masoud Pezeshkian has arrived in Yerevan to attend the 17th biodiversity summit, as Tehran vows to document environmental damage caused by US-Israeli military aggression against Iran.

A multi-province survey of Epimedium sagittatum shows that climate, soil, and altitude shape the accumulation of medicinal flavonoids in organ-specific ways and pinpoints China's highest-quality production regions.

Researchers in India coated banana bracts, fish scales, and paper with a newly soluble polyaniline to build room-temperature, biodegradable gas sensors that detect ammonia, carbon monoxide, and sulfur dioxide.

Scientists used the soil bacterium Streptomyces thinghirensis to green-synthesize copper oxide nanoparticles that show strong antibacterial and antibiofilm activity against multidrug-resistant superbugs.

A new review argues that nanocomposite membranes infused with silver, titanium dioxide, graphene oxide, and metal-organic frameworks can overcome the fouling, energy, and nutrient trade-offs that limit wastewater reuse in agriculture.

A University of Guelph validation study found that a computer-vision system monitoring dairy milking parlours matched trained human observers almost perfectly on timing metrics and even detected six towel misuse events that the humans missed.

New research shows fungus-growing termites combine innate hygiene behaviors with comb- and gut-associated bacteria to defend their gardens against deadly Metarhizium pathogens and latent Xylaria weeds.

Seven molecules in human milk could help explain how a mother’s nutrition connects with her baby’s growth, offering a window into the biology of milk production. Human milk contains thousands of nutrients, metabolites, proteins, immune factors, and other molecules, yet researchers have often studied those components one at a time. Much remains unknown about how [...]

A South American Aristolochia vine introduced to southern China uses time-regulated trapping trichomes and yeast-mimicking volatile scents to recruit native drosophilid flies as pollinators, exemplifying ecological fitting without coevolutionary history.

To produce pharmaceuticals, food ingredients, and flavors and fragrances, it is often necessary to oxidize alcohols. In conventional chemistry, this transformation typically relies on harsh oxidants and elevated temperatures and generates toxic waste.

A survey of 155 households in Peru's Corosha community reveals that domestic dogs account for most wildlife predation events, while crop damage by rodents and parrots drives predominantly negative local perceptions of wildlife.

Researchers in India have developed an optimized machine learning framework combining preprocessing, feature selection and hyperparameter tuning that predicts agronomic parameters and classifies spinach growth stages with 84.63 percent accuracy.

Plus: Australia approves lab-grown duck. The post AgriFood Signals: India’s Scimplify nets $25m, Deere funds food security, USDA funds seed research appeared first on AgFunderNews.

The move, which the UKATC insists is “not a cost-cutting exercise,” reflects a shift to a new operating model, says chief engagement officer Daniel Himsworth. The post UK Agri-Tech Centre to slash workforce by 60% in strategic pivot to new operating model appeared first on AgFunderNews.

A new study across 13 Spanish farms finds that camera traps detect far more wildlife species than environmental DNA metabarcoding, but the two methods reveal complementary patterns shaped by species ecology and livestock density.

Deep inside every seed lies a hidden world that scientists are only now beginning to understand. Bacteria, fungi, archaea and other microorganisms inhabit both the internal tissues and external surfaces of seeds, forming what researchers call the seed microbiota. Unlike

Radishes grown in polyacrylamide hydrogel granules matched the yields of plants raised in the clay substrate used on the International Space Station while requiring significantly less water, positioning hydrogels as a promising foundation for space agriculture.

A brush with low doses of the herbicide dicamba spurs oxalis, a weed commonly known as wood sorrel, to produce more flowers, University of Michigan researchers have discovered. The finding suggests that farmers and homeowners are inadvertently making weeds growing around the perimeter of their fields or lawns stronger, the researchers say. The study results are published in the journal New Phytologist.

A super El Niño fueling record ocean temperatures poses a "terrifying" threat to the world's fragile coral reefs, the chair of the U.N.'s expert nature panel told AFP.

Bryce Baker of PTx explores retrofit-first global expansion, targeted spraying’s potential, and the challenges of scaling autonomous technology. The post Ag Tech Talk Podcast: PTx on Precision Ag Retrofits, Targeted Spraying, and Autonomy appeared first on CropLife.

Switch Bioworks and Bayer partner to advance engineered microbes that boost biological nitrogen fixation and deliver next-generation fertilizer solutions. The post Switch Bioworks Announces Collaboration with Bayer Crop Science to Advance Biological Nitrogen appeared first on CropLife.

A comprehensive review of 112 livestock studies finds that tannin feed additives deliver clear benefits for cattle, sheep and goats, particularly through reduced methane emissions and improved gut health, while showing limited value for poultry and inconsistent results for pigs.

A common-field experiment in Inner Mongolia shows that eight crops grown in identical saline-alkaline soil develop dramatically different rhizosphere microbial communities, ion allocation patterns and soil functional traits, with crop identity explaining up to 83.5 percent of fungal community variation.

Researchers from the Bazaruto Center for Scientific Studies (BCSS) Ocean Observatory have documented ancient forests that grew on the Mozambican coast thousands of years ago and have been found beneath the sea, where they now serve as hotspots teeming with marine life similar in biodiversity to coral reefs.

The European Commission risks obstructing wind power development if it reopens debate on key rules regarding the protection of wildlife habitats in member states, industry body WindEurope has warned.

Molecular docking and laboratory validation show bacterial azoreductases decolorize azo and anthraquinone dyes at up to 2,000 mg/L and cut phytotoxicity by 80 percent.

Phosphorus is the quiet workhorse of agriculture, an indispensable component of DNA and the backbone of every fertilizer blend that sustains global crop yields. Yet a paradox haunts the world's farmland: while phosphate rock reserves are unevenly distributed and expected

arXiv:2610.19924v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Plant-based cheeses often fail to reproduce the texture of dairy cheese. Closing this gap is slow because the reference methods, texture profile analysis (TPA) and sensory panels, destroy the sample and are poorly suited to screening many formulations in a timely and cost-effective manner. Here we show that non-contact, air-coupled ultrasonic imaging combined with machine learning can characterise cheese texture rapidly and without damaging the sample. Thirteen commercial products (nine dairy, four plant-based; 119 slices, 357 scans) were imaged in through-transmission at 100 kHz to give two-channel amplitude and time-of-flight C-scans, and each slice was then measured by TPA. The C-scans revealed millimetre-scale acoustic domains in ripened dairy cheeses, consistent with their fused-curd microstructure, that were absent from the homogeneous starch and oil matrix of the plant-based products. TPA showed that the texture gap is one of

A new review reveals that microplastics released from nuclear power plants act as Trojan horses, adsorbing rare heavy metals like uranium, cadmium, and mercury and delivering them into food crops through active transport routes, with severe consequences for food safety and human health.