Food Production News and Research

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Research finds mechanism triggering flowering plants to produce fruits and seeds

Food production has grown more and more challenging for producers throughout the globe due to rising global temperatures and declining pollinator populations.

14 Jul 2022

Research highlights how natural cellular molecules trigger plant immune responses

Natural cellular molecules that control vital plant immune responses have been found, according to two studies conducted by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany, and their Chinese counterparts.

From The Max Planck Institute 11 Jul 2022

Producing food without sunlight through artificial photosynthesis

Photosynthesis is the process that enables plants to take sunlight and carbon dioxide and convert it into chemical energy to grow.

29 Jun 2022

Researchers analyze ancient DNA cultural imprint in the pacific region

An “explosion” of intermixing cultures and genetics in Wallacea, an island region north of Australia, has been revealed through DNA analysis of ancient human remains, leaving an imprint that can still be seen in East Indonesians today.

13 Jun 2022

Field-grown ictB tobacco transformants show no variance in photosynthetic performance

To maintain pace with the expanding population, it is estimated that the global food supply will need to rise by 50-80% by 2050.

31 May 2022

Measuring agrobiodiversity in farms, markets, and on plates

What foods comes to your mind when you think about "The Mediterranean Diet"? For most people, the term evokes strong associations with fresh, minimally-processed ingredients – olive oil, fresh fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains, followed by fish and animal products – together making up a form of local food production and consumption that holds societal, economic, and cultural benefits.

19 May 2022

New reports highlight the resilience of local food sector during the Covid-19 pandemic

Local food suppliers saved the day during the Covid-19 pandemic food shortages, but new research from the University of Sheffield also finds lessons need to be learned if national food systems are to survive future crises.

9 May 2022

Researchers analyze leaf angle genetics for improved crop yields

Plants have long been the main source of nutrition. The demand for food production is always increasing as the human population grows exponentially. Since agricultural land is constrained, meeting this rising need will necessitate developing new ways to increase the productivity of existing crops.

29 Apr 2022

Comprehensive review provides insights on salt-reducing technologies in food production

Sodium is an essential micronutrient, but the amount we need is small. Three slices of bread or one teaspoon of table salt will do it, and chances are your daily sodium intake is far greater.

19 Apr 2022

Vertical farming shows potential for the production of healthy and sustainable food in future

Alternative production systems to provide the growing global population with healthy, nutritious and sustainably produced foodstuffs are currently gaining considerable attention.

15 Apr 2022

Unhealthy global diets are damaging human and planetary health

A global diet that increasingly includes ultra-processed foods is having a negative impact on the diversity of plant species available for human consumption while also damaging human and planetary health, according to a commentary published in the journal BMJ Global Health.

29 Mar 2022

Researchers investigate new properties of edible plants improving food production

As millions of people face hunger, new properties of leading edible plants that could improve future food crop production are looked into by Flinders University.

23 Mar 2022

Deforestation in conjunction with climate change constitutes a risk to food production in Brazil

Deforestation for agribusiness expansion in Brazil, in conjunction with climate change, has worsened the already severe drought suffered in the last decade by the transition zone between the eastern Amazon and the Cerrado, the vast tropical savanna ecoregion in central and western Brazil.

7 Mar 2022

Study provides first genetic evidence of demographic changes among hunter-gatherer populations

A new analysis of ancient human DNA demonstrates that people moved and chose their reproductive partners along complex social networks that stretched across large swathes of Africa between 80,000 and 20,000 years ago, according to a study co-led by Yale anthropologist Jessica Thompson.

28 Feb 2022

Researchers engineer strains of nitrogen-fixing soil bacterium to produce ammonia

Researchers from Washington State University have engineered strains of the ubiquitous, nitrogen-fixing soil bacterium Azotobacter vinelandii to produce ammonia and excrete it at high concentrations, transferring it into crop plants in lieu of conventional chemical fertilizers.

18 Feb 2022

Study reveals physico-chemical nature of xylem barriers that confer bacterial wilt resistance

A new work led by Núria Sánchez Coll, CSIC researcher at the Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics, elucidates how tomato plant varieties resistant to the bacterial wilt pathogen Ralstonia solanacearum have the ability to restrict bacterial movement in the plant.

17 Feb 2022

Protecting plants is imperative to sustain the health and wealth, report says

From farms to forests, Canada's plants face increasingly complex threats and protecting them is imperative to sustain the health and wealth they provide, according to Cultivating Diversity, a new expert panel report from the Council of Canadian Academies.

28 Jan 2022

Researchers discover new imperfection in the way Rubisco functions in cowpea

A single enzyme is responsible for assimilating carbon dioxide in photosynthesis to create all the carbon in human bodies, in food, and in the biosphere as a whole.

21 Jan 2022

WVU food science experts determine the properties of protein in several insect powders

As the human population grows to a predicted 10 billion by 2050 and overall land mass remains constant, traditional animal farming may become a less viable method for food production.

13 Jan 2022

‘Smart’ food packaging material kills microbes and keeps food fresh

A team of scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, US, has developed a 'smart' food packaging material that is biodegradable, sustainable and kills microbes that are harmful to humans. It could also extend the shelf-life of fresh fruit by two to three days.

From Nanyang Technological University Singapore (NTU Singapore) 29 Dec 2021