Akbulut and his research group have developed an innovative pesticide delivery system called nanopesticides. These tiny technologies, developed through a collaboration between Texas A&M University's engineering and agricultural colleges, Dr. Luis Cisneros-Zevallo, professor of Horticultural Science and Dr. Younjin Min, professor of Chemical Environ Engineering at University of California, Riverside, could change how we use pesticides.

Able to store carbon to offset emissions and prevent soil degradation and pollution, charcoal-like biochar could offer a sustainable solution to a lot of environmental challenges — if its production can be made greener. Supported by a three-year, $799,883 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture, an international team led by researchers at Penn State will address the so-called “dark side” of biochar, assessing the threat of organic contaminant residues in biorefinery char products.

Extreme weather and pollution have increased the salt content in some soil, making growing conditions harsh for salt-sensitive crops like rice. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Nano detail a possible solution that doesn’t require genetic modification to make rice plants thrive in these conditions. In lab experiments, they determined that coating rice seedlings with magnesium-doped carbon dots — derived from durian peels — increased the seedlings’ antioxidant activity and photosynthesis, reducing the stress caused by salty soil.  

Increasing heat, droughts, floods, and salinization caused by climate change are lowering the amount of edible food produced by our staple crops. Since taking over more land for agriculture isn’t sustainable, our only path forward is to adapt the crops themselves to the new conditions. We have two options—domestication of crops’ wild relatives which are more resilient but have a lower yield, or including resilience genes in modern high-yield crops. Writing in Frontiers in Science, researchers discuss these possibilities and the critical need for more funding, research, and public understanding.

The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT is pleased to announce Dr. Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg’s appointment as Managing Director for the Africa region, bringing her leadership in food systems, social inclusion, and gender-sensitive agricultural innovation.

A research team at the University of Göttingen, Germany’s Nature And Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU) in Rhede, and the Thünen Institute in Braunschweig has investigated the importance of limestone quarries for wild bee conservation. Diverse landscapes with good connectivity between quarries and calcareous grasslands proved to be particularly valuable. Calcareous grasslands – meaning grasslands on chalk or limestone soils – are exceptionally rich in plant and animal species, making them valuable ecosystems. Quarries with a lot of shrub encroachment, on the other hand, had a lower species diversity. Endangered bee species were more common in large quarries. The results of the study were published in the Journal of Applied Ecology.