With the world only getting hotter, scientists are already looking at clever ways of changing up food production to make sure future generations don't go hungry. New research looks in this area looks at breeding new kinds of peas that are built to take the heat.
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Is sex overrated? The asexual root-knot nematode might think so. It has evolved to reproduce without sex and while this might not sound like a life worth living, it has turned them into far more efficient crop-killing machines than their sexually reproducing cousins.
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Sugar cane farmers have to be very careful when carting off their harvests to prevent the trucks destroying surrounding plants and soil. Volvo has been working on a self-driving solution to this problem and says it can save farmers big money in lost yields per season.
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Plant roots are industrious, often burrowing in search of water even if it means dislodging things like pavement and sewer lines. But how is it exactly that they sense a source of water and nutrients and alter their path to find it?
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In a conventional arms race, amassing the most advanced weaponry is one way to stay ahead. However in the ongoing evolutionary battle between host cells and viruses, scientists in Spain have found that to advance, we might have to go all the way to the early beginnings of life.
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What if biofuel crops could be grown on marginal land that wouldn't be suitable for food crops anyway? Well, that's the case with sugarcane. Now, genetically-engineered types of sugarcane may make it a more valuable source of biofuel than ever before.
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Already used to break water down into hydrogen and oxygen, and in turn create liquid fuels and electricity, artificial leaves now have another string to their bow. A Harvard team has turned artificial leaves into low-cost, portable fertilizer factories.
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Aflatoxins in fungi have been linked to stunted growth in children, liver cancer, and immune suppression. Now, researchers have genetically modified corn plants to fight back, by letting them send “Trojan horse” molecules into the fungus to neutralize its ability to produce the toxins.
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Phenotyping is a very tedious and time-consuming agricultural task, particularly when you've got a whole field full of plants to inspect … it's exactly the sort of job that it would be good to get a robot to do. A team at the University of Illinois has created just such a beast.
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Earlier this month, bad weather in Spain caused a vegetable shortage crisis in the UK, leading some supermarkets to ration the number of certain greens that customers could buy. Could creating a new line of broccoli for all seasons help avert another climate-induced veggie crisis?
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