Latest Crop diversity Stories

Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The world of agricultural science came out with some surprising news on Monday. An international consortium of scientists and researchers funded by the Global Crop Diversity Trust of Rome, Italy, announced findings that have gone against what was long held as an agricultural truth. The US is, contrary to long held belief, a fairly robust reservoir of plant diversity, especially among globally important food crops such as the...

TEL AVIV, Israel, February 4, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- The Makhteshim Agan Group ("MAI" or the "Company") - The Makhteshim Agan Group ("MAI"), the world leader in branded off-patent crop protection solutions, took an active role in the leading Economist forum on global food security and sustainable agriculture. Alongside influential decision-makers including Princess Maxima of the Netherlands, who is the UN Secretary-General's Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for...

New edge of extinction research is creating a revival of conservation and interest in what these old plants mean to the future A botanist brings a species of alfalfa from Siberia, to the United States. His hope? The plant survives, and leads to a new winter-hardy alfalfa. But what also happened during this time in the late 1800's, isn't just a story of legend and lore. The truth of the matter is creating a current revival in both interest and conservation of what's now called a crop's...

Following a Japan-UK research collaboration, a new method for marker assisted breeding is being used to slash the time it takes to isolate new traits such as salt tolerance. Details of the new method, called MutMap, will be published in Nature Biotechnology on Sunday so they can be used by scientists and breeders worldwide to dramatically accelerate crop breeding. "The beauty of the new method is its simplicity," said Professor Sophien Kamoun, co-author on the paper and Head of The...

Maize farmers in South Africa and soybean growers in China can see 'climate analogues' for 2030 in present-day South America and other places With climate change posing a threat to food production around the world, scientists are developing a form of virtual time travel that can offer farmers in many countries a glimpse of their future by identifying regions where growing conditions today match those that will exist 20 years from now, according to a new report from the CGIAR Research...

The conventional wisdom that says the 20th century was a disaster for crop diversity is nothing more than a myth, according to a forthcoming study by a University of Illinois expert in intellectual property law. Law professor Paul Heald says overall varietal diversity of the $20 billion market for vegetable crops and apples in the U.S. actually has increased over the past 100 years, a finding that should change the highly politicized debate over intellectual property policy. “The...

Growth of cropland, loss of natural habitat to blameThe continued growth of cropland and loss of natural habitat have increasingly simplified agricultural landscapes in the Midwest.In a study supported in part by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Kellogg Biological Station Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site in Michigan--one of 26 such NSF LTER sites around the world--scientists concluded that this simplification is associated with increased crop pest abundance and insecticide...

Growth of cropland, loss of natural habitat to blameThe continued growth of cropland and loss of natural habitat have increasingly simplified agricultural landscapes in the Midwest.In a study supported in part by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Kellogg Biological Station Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site in Michigan--one of 26 such NSF LTER sites around the world--scientists concluded that this simplification is associated with increased crop pest abundance and insecticide...

Scientists warn disaster looms for parts of Africa and all of India if chronic food insecurity converges with crop-wilting weather; Latin America also vulnerableA new study has matched future climate change "hotspots" with regions already suffering chronic food problems to identify highly-vulnerable populations, chiefly in Africa and South Asia, but potentially in China and Latin America as well, where in fewer than 40 years, the prospect of shorter, hotter or drier growing seasons...

Researchers meeting at a scientific conference in Aleppo this week reported that aggressive new strains of wheat rust diseases "“ called stem rust and stripe rust "“ have decimated up to 40% of farmers' wheat fields in recent harvests. Areas affected are North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucuses, including Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Turkey, Iran, Uzbekistan, Morocco, Ethiopia, and Kenya."These epidemics increase the price of food and pose a real threat to rural livelihoods...