Agriculture

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.

Australian researchers have cooked up a creative partial solution to the problem of labor shortages in the fruit-picking sector, developing a robot that can harvest apples from orchards at high speed.

Startup Carbon Robotics has wheeled out an autonomous machine for farmers that has weeds in its cross hairs, using a combination of computer vision and high-powered lasers to comb fields and take out thousands of the pesky plants an hour.

In many parts of the world there may not be much precipitation, but there is a fair amount of water vapor in the air – particularly at night. An experimental new device draws in that vapor, then uses it to irrigate edible plants.

Although Ceriporia lacerata fungus causes tree wood to rot, it also has a good side. According to a new study, adding the fungus to agricultural soil allows tomatoes to be grown using much less fertilizer.

Restoring post-agricultural land to tropical forest can be challenging, as the pasture grasses tend to choke out the native trees. A new study, however, indicates that waste from the coffee industry gives those trees a fighting chance.

It can be difficult for farmers to determine exactly when their crops need watering, or when they're getting infested with bugs or fungus. InnerPlant technology was created to help, by getting the plants to "glow" when they're in distress.

Those purple corn chips you see in the store aren't just a gimmick – the corn's purple pigment actually has health benefits. Researchers have now devised a method of extracting more of it from the usually discarded cob, for a variety of uses.