Crops

Scientists at the Salk Institute hope to tackle climate change and food security by unraveling the genomic architecture behind various plant species, and have gleaned some valuable new lessons from the fastest-growing example we know of.

While pest insects can have a devastating effect on crops, pesticides can likewise cause a great deal of damage to the environment. That's where CropCoat comes in, as it's designed not to kill harmful insects, but to "hide" plants from them instead.

Pesticides may indeed kill plant pathogens, but they're also harmful to the environment. Newly developed nanoparticles may provide a more eco-friendly alternative, as they boost the immune systems of crop plants, then harmlessly dissolve.

If crop plants aren't receiving enough nutrients, they'll typically have lower-than-normal nitrogen levels. A portable new device could allow farmers to check those levels on the spot, so they can start addressing the problem as soon as possible.

Fertilizers typically contain phosphorous, as it's essential to growing plants. Unfortunately, though, it can become "locked" in the soil, and thus not available to crops. That said, it turns out that the addition of a microbe could unlock it.

Wheat is one of the most widely grown crops, so any increases in its yield could go a long way towards reducing world hunger. That's where a new variety comes in, as its yield is reportedly up to 11 percent higher than that of regular wheat.

If you want to know the local soil conditions, it would be good if you could just ask an earthworm. Given that that's an impossibility, though, scientists are now working on the next-best thing – earthworm-inspired soil-analyzing agricultural robots.

Although there are now a few different crop-spraying multicopter drones, fixed-wing drones are faster and have a longer battery range. That's where the recently US-certified autonomous electric Pelican crop duster comes into the picture.

In order to keep water from evaporating from the soil, farmers often cover the ground around their crop plants with sheets of polyethylene plastic. There could soon be a more eco-friendly alternative, though, in the form of soybean oil-coated sand.

While crop-spraying drones do have advantages over full-size piloted aircraft, they're limited by their battery range. Dutch startup Drone4Agro is developing a solution to that problem, though, in the form of a range-extended electric multicopter.

We've already heard about drones that spray crops with herbicides and fertilizers. The AeroSeeder is a bit different, however, in that (as you might have guessed) it disperses seeds that might otherwise be difficult to plant.

Powdery mildew is a widespread fungal disease that attacks many crops. And while it typically has to be treated using fungicides, special ultraviolet light-emitting robots could soon prove to be a better way to go.