Agriculture

Agriculture is a huge environmental issue in many ways, but one that’s often overlooked is livestock urination. Researchers from Germany and New Zealand have now demonstrated a potential way to reduce that problem – by toilet-training cows.

After years of court battles the EPA has announced it will ban agricultural uses of chlorpyrifos, a pesticide suspected of causing health problems in children. The ban comes into effect in six months, with a further review of non-food uses to follow.

Agriculture requires huge amounts of land and resources, and as the human population grows our food supply will be put under increasing stress. But a new study shows that farming protein from microbes could be a far more sustainable and efficient system.

A new study has found caffeine can be used to help bees locate specific flowers. The research suggests the drug enhances bee memory and makes them more efficient at homing in on certain targeted flowers.

While you might think that it's best to keep crops fungus-free, there are some fungi that actually help plants grow. In order to observe that relationship, scientists have created plants with roots that turn red when infiltrated by beneficial fungi.

Food security is a major potential problem, especially in the face of climate change. New research has shown that manipulating RNA in plants can drastically boost the amount of food they produce, and make them more resistant to drought conditions.

Because fruits just dangle from the main plant before ultimately falling off, one might think that they are unable to communicate with that plant. According to new research, however, tomato fruits are able to transmit alerts to their mother plant.

If you want to know how much water a plant is taking up, one of the best places to look is in its leaves. A new material known as AquaDust could help scientists more easily do so, without harming the plant.

According to Pennsylvania State University's Asst. Prof. Long He, the mushroom-farming industry is currently experiencing a labor shortage. His team has thus set about addressing that problem, by developing a mushroom-picking robot.

Although the use of pesticides is harmful to the environment, farmers still need a way of keeping crop-damaging organisms at bay. According to a new study, a combination of agricultural and beer brewing waste products may be able to help.

A project in Japan is seeking ways to grow vegetables in subtropical monsoon conditions. A consortium, composed of the Japanese government, academia and private companies is developing a plant factory system to supply produce despite the climate.

One of the challenges of farming lies in the fact that by the time plants appear to be stressed, it may already be too late to address the problem. A new potato, however, is designed to warn farmers by fluorescing at the earliest stages of stress.