Agrophotovoltaics (APV), as an innovative model integrating agricultural production with solar photovoltaic power generation, is an important pathway to address the dual pressures of food security and low-carbon energy. As the global energy transition accelerates and agricultural modernization advances, its advantages of “dual land use and food–energy co-production” have become increasingly prominent. It can achieve efficient land use while accommodating clean electricity output and crop growth, aligning with the needs of sustainable development. However, for a long time, traditional models have been constrained by bottlenecks such as imbalanced light distribution, lagging temperature and humidity regulation, inefficient manual operation and maintenance, and data fragmentation, making it difficult to balance energy and agricultural benefits and seriously hindering large-scale promotion.

Factors such as sunlight and stage-specific nutrient application determine crop success in urban agriculture, far beyond fixed recipes or miracle solutions. This is demonstrated by an eight-year study conducted by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), Spain, in its build-integrated rooftop greenhouse, thermally connected to the facility itself, and located within the university campus.

Forests store carbon and support biodiversity, but management that benefits one goal may not benefit the other. A study of 150 forest plots found that increasing management intensity reduced total and aboveground carbon while increasing belowground carbon. Aboveground insect diversity and biomass also increased, whereas belowground fauna showed no overall response. Relationships varied among arthropod groups, habitats and years, revealing no single optimal management strategy. The authors suggest combining generally lower-intensity management with a mosaic of forest types to better balance carbon storage, arthropod habitat, climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation.

The tea industry is an important part of China’s agricultural economy, but the industrial development challenge of “who will grow tea and how to grow it well” has become increasingly prominent. In the face of realities such as accelerating aging of the rural labor force and insufficient resource endowments of smallholder farmers, promoting the implementation and widespread adoption of agricultural socialized services has become a key path to overcoming the development dilemma of the tea industry.

How does a plant survive extreme cold while still producing flavorful, nutrient-rich fruit? New research on blue honeysuckle (Lonicera caerulea) reveals a sophisticated metabolic strategy: the plant actively reallocates resources between two compound classes—anthocyanins and iridoids—to balance protection and palatability.