Illinois study proposes circular phosphorus economy for Midwest

The U.S. Midwest produces at least a third of the world's corn and soybean supply each year. Feeding the world requires a lot of fertilizer, mostly in the form of nitrogen and phosphorus. While nitrogen can literally be pulled ...

Balancing food security and environmental quality in China

In many ways, the evolution of Chinese agriculture over the past 40 years is a remarkable success story. Spurred by investments in research and government subsidies for fertilizers and other farm technologies, China now feeds ...

The Phosphorus Index: Changes afoot

Phosphorus (P) is both an essential nutrient in agricultural fields and a contributor to poor water quality in surface waters. To encourage improved P management in fields, the P Index was proposed as a risk assessment tool ...

Upstream trenches, downstream nitrogen

Water quality scientist Laura Christianson is working on a solution to the "dead zone"—an area with dangerously low levels of oxygen— in the Gulf of Mexico. Christianson lives over a thousand miles north of the Gulf in ...

Antibiotic-eating bug unearthed in soil

It's well known how bacteria exposed to antibiotics for long periods will find ways to resist the drugs—by quickly pumping them out of their cells, for instance, or modifying the compounds so they're no longer toxic.

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