The crops we rely on today have been bred over thousands of years to enhance certain characteristics. For example, sweetcorn started life as a wild grass called teosinte.
Biotechnology
Oct 24, 2018
0
5
The greater the diversity of crops grown in agricultural landscapes is, the better natural predators of aphids are able to control the pests on wheat fields. This is because a varied landscape provides better living conditions ...
Biotechnology
Mar 21, 2018
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25
Over the past half century, food production has intensified to meet the growing demand. And as agricultural fields have become ever larger, more pesticides are required to enhance yield.
Ecology
May 8, 2017
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96
The origins of over two-thirds of the grains, legumes, fruits, vegetables, and other agricultural crops countries grow and consume can be traced to ancient breadbaskets in distant parts of the world, according to an exhaustive ...
Environment
Jun 8, 2016
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36
For nearly a billion people around the world, cassava is a staple crop and a primary source of calories. The plant is easy to cultivate—cuttings grow well on marginal land—and it is very tolerant of drought. For the U.S. ...
Biotechnology
Apr 18, 2016
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9
Agricultural fields create a patchwork landscape that increases the potential for domesticated crop DNA to flood wild plant gene pools. This allelic introgression can cause significant evolutionary change in wild plant populations, ...
Ecology
Apr 5, 2016
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16
U.S. farmers are growing fewer types of crops than they were 34 years ago, which could have implications for how farms fare as changes to the climate evolve, according to a large-scale study by Kansas State University, North ...
Biotechnology
Sep 15, 2015
1
965
In the first study of its kind, new research from the University of New Hampshire shows that crop rotations, in isolation from other management factors, can increase the functions performed by soil microbial communities that ...
Environment
Sep 3, 2015
0
32
It is difficult to distinguish the human impact on the effects of natural factors on the evolution of crop plants. A Franco-Kenyan research team has managed to do just that for sorghum, one of the main cereals in Africa. ...
Biotechnology
Sep 2, 2014
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0
Greenhouses have improved the possibilities of invasion of greenhouse whitefly into the wild in the boreal region, new study finds. Genetic analysis sheds new light on the survival of whiteflies in Finland and helps to plan ...
Ecology
Sep 2, 2014
0
0
