Biopesticides can be used to degrade aflatoxin in crops

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 25% of global food crops are contaminated with different types of fungal toxins, such as aflatoxins, highly toxic and carcinogenic substances produced by certain ...

Keeping clubroot in rapeseed in check by using fungi

Teams from the Chair of Plant Physiology at Technische Universität Dresden and the Julius Kühn Institute in Braunschweig have been researching biological methods to better control the widespread plant disease 'clubroot' ...

The bacteria that look after us and their protective weapons

The extensive agriculture that makes it possible to meet the nutritional needs of the planet's billions of inhabitants is based on the use of chemical products (pesticides) to avoid crop losses due to pests. However, these ...

Fungus that eats fungus could help coffee farmers

Coffee rust is a parasitic fungus and a big problem for coffee growers around the world. A study in the birthplace of coffee—Ethiopia—shows that another fungus seems to have the capacity to supress the rust outbreaks ...

A closer look at how immune cells attack and heal

Macrophages—immune cells that both fight infections and fix the damage they cause—are often placed into two categories: those that increase inflammation (known as "M1") to attack, and those that decrease inflammation ...

'Chaotic' way to create insectlike gaits for robots

Researchers in Japan and Italy are embracing chaos and nonlinear physics to create insectlike gaits for tiny robots—complete with a locomotion controller to provide a brain-machine interface.

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