A farming technique practised for centuries by villagers in West Africa, which converts nutrient-poor rainforest soil into fertile farmland, could be the answer to mitigating climate change and revolutionising farming across Africa.
Research reported in the Applied Physics Express demonstrates that ‘non-thermal air plasma irradiation’ dramatically improves the harvest of the salad crop Arabidopsis thaliana.
A recent study from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the University of Southampton reveals that inland freshwaters with a wide range of fish species contain higher-yielding and less variable fisheries.
Improved agricultural water management could halve the global food gap by 2050 and buffer some of the harmful climate change effects on crop yields. For the first time, scientists investigated systematically the worldwide potential to produce more food with the same amount of water by optimizing rain use and irrigation. They found the potential has previously been underestimated. Investing in crop water management could substantially reduce hunger while at the same time making up for population growth. However, putting the findings into practice would require specific local solutions, which remains a challenge.
The creation of a new kind of rice which gives off nearly zero greenhouse gas emissions during its growth has earned kudos for a team of scientists from three continents, including the lead investigator at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
Fluctuations in extreme weather events, such as heavy rains and droughts, are affecting ecosystems in unexpected ways -- creating "winners and losers" among plant species that humans depend upon for food.
Rice serves as the staple food for more than half of the world's population, but it's also the one of the largest manmade sources of atmospheric methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Now, with the addition of a single gene, rice can be cultivated to emit virtually no methane from its paddies during growth. It also packs much more of the plant's desired properties, such as starch for a richer food source and biomass for energy production, according to a study in Nature.
The rapidly rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere affect plants’ absorption of nitrogen, which is the nutrient that restricts crop growth in most terrestrial ecosystems. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg have now revealed that the concentration of nitrogen in plants’ tissue is lower in air with high levels of carbon dioxide, regardless of whether or not the plants’ growth is stimulated. The study has been published in the journal Global Change Biology.
Agriculture can be both a victim and a cause of climate change, say global warming experts. But new sustainable strategies that can help farming adapt to hotter conditions may help reduce agriculture’s carbon footprint too.
Even during a good year, soybean farmers nationwide are, in essence, taking a loss. That's because changes in weather patterns have been eating into their profits and taking quite a bite: $11 billion over the past 20 years.
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