Science News
More than 750 million people don’t get enough nutrients from their food. More than two-thirds of those people live in places that consume a lot of rice. Can rice bred for extra protein be the answer?
“There are hundreds of millions of people around the world who depend on rice and eat it three times a day, but their access to protein is very limited by availability and cost,” explains Herry Utomo, a professor at Louisiana State University. “High-protein rice can be used to help solve the worldwide problem across social, cultural, and economic issues.”
Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. That’s certainly true for nitrogen fertilizers.
Without enough nitrogen, crops don’t grow well. Yields are reduced significantly.
Applying too much nitrogen fertilizer, on the other hand, can hurt the environment. Nitrogen can enter the watershed, polluting aquatic ecosystems. Microbes can also convert the excess nitrogen into nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas implicated in climate change.
In the early 1990s, Acton Lake in southwestern Ohio had a muddy problem. Large amounts of sediment from nearby farms were entering the lake’s watershed. These sediments traveled through streams draining the landscape and were filling up the lake.
So, the USDA gave local farmers incentives to change some of their farming practices. One of these practices was conservation tillage, in which the soil is plowed less often. That can reduce sediment runoff.
The beloved peanut usually grows in sandy soil where there might not be much moisture. But some varieties of peanut perform better in drought than others. They use less water when there isn’t much to go around, and remain productive as drought deepens. Crop scientists are trying to find the peanut varieties best at it.
Thomas Sinclair at North Carolina State University and colleagues are studying peanut varieties to find a ‘water conservation’ trait. It would help the plant maintain a high yield during a drought.
Fire and water. Timeless, opposing forces, they are actually linked in powerful ways that can have major impacts on communities and ecosystems.
Rice is a staple food crop of 20 percent of the world’s population. It’s also grown on every continent except Antarctica.
When you think of China, do you think of potatoes? Maybe not, but in the Loess Plateau region of northwestern China, potato is the main food crop.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that around 45 million tons of phosphorus fertilizers will be used around the world in 2018. Much will be applied to soils that also received phosphorus fertilizers in past years.
According to a new study, much of that could be unnecessary.
In a newly published study, researchers dug into how fertilizing with manure affects soil quality, compared with inorganic fertilizer.
Beans are awesome. They are packed with nutrients and are high in protein. They can grow in many different environments. They help replenish soil nitrogen levels. They are a vital crop for food security in many parts of the world.
But a small beetle can cause big losses to bean crops.