EurekAlert! News by Subject: Agriculture - News by Subject: Agriculture

Agriculture

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 2-May-2025 14:09 ET (2-May-2025 18:09 GMT/UTC)

2-Apr-2025

Migrating flies vital for people and nature

University of Exeter
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Buzzing insects may be seen as pests – but globally, hundreds of fly species migrate over long distances, with major benefits for people and nature, new research shows.

Journal: Biological Reviews
Funder: Royal Society

1-Apr-2025

Use of antifungals in agriculture may increase resistance in an infectious yeast

PLOS
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Genomic changes in the infectious yeast Candida tropicalis may play a role in its resistance to antifungals, according to a study published on April 1^st in the open-access journal, PLOS Biology by Guanghua Huang at Fudan University, China, and colleagues. These genomic changes can be brought on by a common antifungal, TBZ. The study demonstrates that the use of TBZ in agriculture may contribute to the increasing problem of antifungal resistance.

Journal: PLOS Biology

1-Apr-2025

The food and fuel that farms itself

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

CSHL Professor Rob Martienssen and colleague Evan Ernst have released new and more accurate genome sequences for five species of duckweed. Their research reveals the specific genes responsible for some of the plant’s most useful traits, allowing for new commercial agriculture applications.

Funder: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, U.S. Department of Energy, Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, Seeding Solutions, Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, Tang Genomics Fund

1-Apr-2025

One of the most widely used fungicides in farming harmful to reproduction in birds

CNRS
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A French team coordinated by a scientist at CNRS highlights the harmful impact on sparrow reproduction of chronic exposure to tebuconazole, one of the most widely used fungicides in agriculture in Europe. These findings, recently published in Environmental Research, reveal a direct link between exposure to this fungicide and slower growth, as well as increased mortality, in sparrow chicks, with a greater impact on females.

Journal: Environmental Research

31-Mar-2025

New study challenges the story of humanity’s shift from prehistoric hunting to farming

University of Bath
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has turned traditional thinking on its head by highlighting the role of human interactions during the shift from hunting and gathering to farming - one of the biggest changes in human history - rather than earlier ideas that focused on environmental factors.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

28-Mar-2025

Professor receives pilot funding to conduct study to increase forest farming in Appalachia

Virginia Tech
Grant and Award Announcement

The $500,000 grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission wants to improve economic development in the region through sustainable non-timber forest farming practices.

27-Mar-2025

Mapping the Earth’s crops

National Center for Supercomputing Applications
Reports and Proceedings

Imagine you’re a farmer, and you’re planning what to grow this season. You may want to know what crop would be most valuable to grow. If you’re a policymaker, you might want to know if there would be a shortage of a particular crop and incentivize farmers to grow it through subsidies. To do this, you’d have to know what’s currently growing to make those decisions – that’s where crop mapping comes into play. Yi-Chia Chang, a Ph.D. student at the U. of I., used NCSA resources to conduct his research on crop mapping.