News by Subject Agriculture

Ugandans and Kenyans in poor urban households are willing to pay a premium for more nutritious flour, new research shows. The study, led by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), addresses huge knowledge gaps on consumers in urban slums and their interest in buying motivated nutritionally enriched foods.

Engineering biology is transforming technology and science. Researchers in the international Genome Project-write, including two authors from the UTIA Center for Agricultural Synthetic Biology, outline the technological advances needed to secure a safe, responsible future in the Oct. 18 issue of Science.

Scientists with the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and collaborators surveying the birdlife of Borneo have discovered a startling surprise: an undescribed species of bird, which has been named the spectacled flowerpecker. While scientists and birdwatchers have previously glimpsed the small, gray bird in lowland forests around the island, the Smithsonian team is the first to capture and study it, resulting in its formal scientific description as a new species.

A secret weapon used by the killer rice blast fungus to infect host plants has been discovered in new research.

Expect a tradeoff between alfalfa yield and quality when fertilizing with potassium.

Over the past two decades, approximately 20% of the Earth's cultivated surfaces have become less productive. According to the latest report from the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), humans are the culprit -- we have not done enough to protect nature's biodiversity. Today an international research team coordinated by the University of Würzburg and Eurac Research confirmed the advantages of biodiversification: agricultural fields with greater biodiversity are better protected from harmful insects, promote pollination and produce higher yields.

The 2019 Global Agricultural Productivity Report, released today by Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, shows agricultural productivity growth -- increasing output of crops and livestock with existing or fewer inputs -- is growing globally at an average annual rate of 1.63%.  

To better deal with climate stress, farmers in Colombia's maize-growing region of Córdoba needed information services that would help them decide what varieties to plant, when they should sow and how they should manage their crops. A consortium formed with the government, Colombia's National Cereals and Legumes Federation (FENALCE), and big-data scientists at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). The researchers used big-data tools, based on the data farmers helped collect. Yields increased substantially.