Crops

The first Martian colonists will need to figure out how to grow their own food locally, but the soil is less than ideal. A new study has shown that dosing plants with symbiotic bacteria can drastically improve their growth in barren Mars-like soil.

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.

Sugarcane is a key food crop, but its large environmental impact leaves plenty of room for improvement. Unfortunately it’s tricky and time-consuming to breed new varieties, but now researchers have used CRISPR gene-editing to do so more easily.

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.

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.

University of Oxford researchers have come up with a way to control the speed at which tomatoes ripen by modifying a specific gene. This could not only help reduce wastage and boost tomato crop yields, but possibly other crop varieties, too.

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.

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.

Would transparent solar cells installed in greenhouse roofs deprive plants of vital sunlight? To find out, researchers at North Carolina State University grew lettuce under various wavelengths of light, and found that the plants did just fine.

Although we've been hearing about various agricultural robots that are still in development, there's at least one which is already commercially available. It's called the Slopehelper, and it's made mainly for use in vineyards.

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.