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Category: Agriculture

22 Sep

A better understanding of crop yields under climate change

by TMR Desk
Agriculture, Climate Change
Research solves long-standing mystery of how water impacts agricultural production You don't need a PhD in agriculture to know that water is critical to crop production. But for years, people like Jonathan Proctor, who has a PhD in Agriculture and Resource Economics from the University of California Berkeley, have been trying to explain why the importance of water isn't showing up in statistical models of crop yield. "Studies analyzing how crop yields respond to temperature and rainfall tend to find that temperature matters much more than water, even though we understand from plant physiology that temperature and water supply are both really important for crops," said Proctor, a postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Peter Huybers' group at the Harvard John A. Paulson School...
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12 Sep

Living in timber cities could cut emissions, without using farmland for wood production

by TMR Desk
Agriculture
Housing a growing population in homes made out of wood instead of conventional steel and concrete could avoid more than 100 billion tons of emissions of the greenhouse gas CO2 until 2100, a new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research shows. These are about 10 percent of the remaining carbon budget for the 2°C climate target. Besides the harvest from natural forests, newly established timber plantations are required for supplying construction wood. While this does not interfere with food production, a loss of biodiversity may occur if not carefully managed, according to the scientists. The study is the first to analyze the impacts of a large-scale transition to timber cities on land use, land-use change emissions, and long-term...
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11 Sep

Pretreating soil with ethanol protects plants from drought, study finds

by TMR Desk
Agriculture
Ethanol can help plants survive in times of drought says a new study conducted at the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science in Japan. Led by Motoaki Seki, researchers show that adding ethanol to soil allows plants, including rice and wheat, to thrive after two weeks without any water. As ethanol is safe, cheap, and widely available, this finding offers a practical way to increase food production all over the world when water is scarce, without the need for costly, time-consuming, and sometimes controversial production of genetically modified plants. The study was published August 25 in Plant and Cell Physiology. The foreseeable future includes a steadily rising population and climate change-induced increases in water shortages, two conditions that will inevitably lead to...
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11 Sep

Keeping toxic cadmium out of rice, the genetic way

by TMR Desk
Agriculture
Researchers discover that the duplication of a transporter gene lowers toxic cadmium accumulation in rice without affecting quality and yield Rice is a staple food for nearly half the world's population. However, it accumulates more cadmium from the soil than other cereals like barley and wheat. Reports estimate that 40-65% of our total intake of cadmium, a toxic heavy metal, is from rice. Eating cadmium-contaminated rice poses a serious health risk to humans, with conditions like Itai-itai disease being associated with high cadmium intake. Efforts have been previously made to reduce the quantity of cadmium in rice through methods like importing clean soil, water management, and mixing contaminated soil with biochar and lime. However, these methods are time-consuming and expensive. To remedy this, scientists...
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30 Aug

How light and temperature work together to affect plant growth

by TMR Desk
Agriculture
Plants lengthen and bend to secure access to sunlight. Despite observing this phenomenon for centuries, scientists do not fully understand it. Now, Salk scientists have discovered that two plant factors -- the protein PIF7 and the growth hormone auxin -- are the triggers that accelerate growth when plants are shaded by canopy and exposed to warm temperatures at the same time. The findings, published in Nature Communications on August 29, 2022, will help scientists predict how plants will respond to climate change -- and increase crop productivity despite the yield-harming global temperature rise. "Right now, we grow crops in certain densities, but our findings indicate that we will need to lower these densities to optimize growth as our climate changes," says senior author Professor...
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