Plant Science
Researchers at Oregon State University (OSU) are giving an ancient grain a new life: this barley is naked, but not in an indecent way.
Meet alfalfa, a perennial legume used mainly as high-quality feed for dairy cattle. Alfalfa is also used as feed for beef cattle, horses, sheep, and goats. It’s high in protein (16-20% crude protein). It contains a lot of calcium and other minerals and vitamins. It contributes billions of dollars to the United States economy annually.
Plants don’t sleep like humans do—but just like some people don’t rest well in the heat, some plants don’t either. The canola plant isn’t as productive if the temperature is high at nighttime, and scientists are trying to find out why.
On August 21, 2017, about 215 million American adults watched one of nature’s most dramatic events: a total solar eclipse. However, most of the country could only see a partial eclipse. The path of the total eclipse was a strip just 70 miles wide, arcing across the country from Oregon to South Carolina.
Leftovers can be quite valuable. For instance, when soybean seed is crushed and the oil extracted, what’s left is called soybean meal. You’ll want to save this leftover.
When you picture a horse, you may imagine it grazing contentedly in a grassy pasture. Grazing lets horses move around naturally outdoors and socialize with other horses. And grass is an easily available, nutritious feed that horses like eating. If you have the land, providing pasture for horses is less costly than buying hay.
Domesticating plants to grow as crops can turn out to be a double-edged scythe.
On the steep farming slopes of China, Bozhi Wu and his research associates are finding ways to improve economic and environmental stability.
Farmers across the world produce between 10 and 13 million tons of field pea every year. That makes it a top legume crop, just behind dry beans and chickpeas.
But as the global climate changes and temperatures continue to rise, heat stress is becoming a major limiting factor for pea cultivation.
Camelina: Have you heard of it? It’s an emerging alternative oilseed crop in parts of the Great Plains.
A new study looks at how three varieties of camelina perform when grown in two different regions within the Great Plains.
The end goal is to find the camelina variety that performs best in each location or environment. Augustine Obour at Kansas State University was the lead author of the paper.