Science News
For the past 25 years, many farmers across Nebraska have relied on the chemical glyphosate for weed control to have a successful crop harvest.
Farmers pay attention to many aspects of their crops. They carefully track how much water they are giving them and the amount of fertilizer they are using. But what about how many bees and butterflies are visiting?
Climate change is a global issue. It affects our environment and our food supply.
Increasing temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, and extreme weather events influence crop yields and where crops can live. These events limit the number of crops humans can use.
Renewable energy demand and consumption is at an all-time high in the United States.
Shrub willow – a quick-growing woody crop – can be an excellent source of renewable bioenergy. The crop is harvested and turned into wood chips, which can be used for heat, mulch, animal bedding, biochar, and biofuel.
It’s a fact - humans love sugar. For those of us who also like to watch our calories, sugar substitutes can help.
Some zero-calorie or low-calorie sweeteners have attracted bad reputations for containing unnatural ingredients. But there are also natural sweeteners derived from plants, like stevia.
In the dry air and soil of Texas’ Southern High Plains, improving soil health can be tough. We usually think of healthy soil as moist and loose with lots of organic matter. But this can be hard to achieve in this arid area of Texas.
In recent years, hummus has become a pop culture food phenomenon, drawing praises from dieticians for the health benefits and chefs for the flavor.
However, the core ingredient, the chickpea, has had its production threatened.
Carbon nanotubes are tiny. They can be a hundred thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair. But they have huge potential.
Products manufactured using carbon nanotubes include rebar for concrete, sporting goods, wind turbines, and lithium batteries, among others.
Your morning cereal or oatmeal. The bread on your sandwich. The corn chips for your snack, and the cookies for dessert. Not one would be possible with the humblest of ingredients: the seed.
Seeds such as wheat, rice and corn directly provide about 70% of the calories eaten by people every day. And they ultimately provide nearly every morsel of food, either by providing feed for livestock or by being grown into fruits and vegetables. It’s no overstatement to say that without seeds, civilization would be impossible.