The extent to which the composition of the microbiome of apples and oil pumpkins depends on the geographical location and what insights can be derived from this for breeding, health and shelf life of the fruits is shown in two recent publications by researchers at TU Graz.
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IMAGE: The harmfulness of pesticides to beneficial organisms is one of the most serious concerns in agriculture. Therefore scientists are eagerly looking for new, more environmentally friendly and species-specific solutions. Researchers. view more
Credit: Estonian University of Life Sciences
The detrimental impact of pesticides on non-target organisms is one of the most urgent concerns in current agriculture. Double-stranded RNAs (dsRNAs) represent the most species-specific class of pesticides to date, potentially allowing control of a target pest without effecting other species. The unprecedented target-specificity of dsRNA is due to its nucleotide sequence-specific mode of action that results in post-transcriptional gene silencing, or RNA interference (RNAi), in the target species. The development and field use of dsRNAs, via both the insertion of transgenes into the plant genome and the application of dsRNA sprays, is a rapidly growing area of research. Simu
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IMAGE: The Marine Biological Laboratory s Swope Center, which includes campus dining halls. A new study by MBL Ecosystems Center scientists examines ways to reduce the nitrogen footprint of smaller institutions,. view more
Credit: Marine Biological Laboratory
WOODS HOLE, Mass. Nitrogen is an element basic for life plants need it, animals need it, it s in our DNA but when there s too much nitrogen in the environment, things can go haywire. On Cape Cod, excess nitrogen in estuaries and salt marshes can lead to algal blooms, fish kills, and degradation of the environment.
In a study published in
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IMAGE: Insects and crustaceans in surface waters are among those exposed to increasing total applied pesticide toxicity. view more
Credit: Renja Bereswill
A group of scientists from the University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany, has shown that for plants and insects the applied pesticide toxicity in agriculture has substantially increased between 2004 and 2016. In a paper published in the current issue of
Science, the authors show that this pattern is even relevant in genetically modified (GM) crops that were originally designed to reduce pesticide impacts on the environment. We have taken a large body of pesticide use data from the US and have expressed changes of amounts applied in agriculture over time as changes in total applied pesticide toxicity, says lead author Ralf Schulz, professor for environmental sciences in Landau. This provides a new view on the potential consequences that pesticide use in agriculture has on biodiversity and ecosystems .
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IMAGE: Using a chronosequence of corn lines, University of Illinois researchers found decades of breeding and reliance on chemical fertilizers prevents modern corn from recruiting nitrogen-fixing microbes. view more
Credit: Alonso Favela, University of Illinois.
URBANA, Ill. - Corn didn t start out as the powerhouse crop it is today. No, for most of the thousands of years it was undergoing domestication and improvement, corn grew humbly within the limits of what the environment and smallholder farmers could provide.
For its fertilizer needs, early corn made friends with nitrogen-fixing soil microbes by leaking an enticing sugary cocktail from its roots. The genetic recipe for this cocktail was handed down from parent to offspring to ensure just the right microbes came out to play.