New, groundbreaking research shows how, at a local scale, agricultural research and development led to improved crop varieties that resulted in global benefits to the environment and food system sustainability. The Purdue University study appears in the latest issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“At the global level, we see a reduction in cropland use from these technology improvements leading to gains in terrestrial carbon stock and avoided loss of threatened plant and animal species,” reported the team led by Purdue’s Uris Baldos, research associate professor of agricultural economics.

International collaborative research led by Aakash Project^* researchers at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN) show an unequivocal contribution of crop residue burning (CRB) to air pollution in the rural/semi-urban regions of Punjab and Haryana, and a relatively lower contribution than previously thought to the Delhi national capital region (NCR). We have installed 30 units of compact and useful PM_2.5^** in situ instrument with gas sensors (CUPI-Gs) and have continuously recorded air pollutants in 2022 and 2023. New analytical methods have been developed to assess and predict the formation and transport of air pollutants due to emissions from CRB.

Berger’s project, Insights into the Martian Environment Through Pattern Analysis of Compound Dunes, focuses on studying dune formations on Mars using high-resolution images captured by NASA's orbiting cameras. These “compound dunes”—dunes with smaller dunes layered on top—are well-documented on Earth but remain unexplored on Mars.