In a world where increasing demands for food security and energy strain existing resources, scientists are looking for new ways to maximize both. One potential option, agrivoltaics, integrates solar photovoltaics with crops. A new study examines the agricultural and economic trade-offs that come with installing solar arrays on working farms across the Midwest.
Few pests eat away at farm profitability as much as soybean cyst nematode (SCN). Causing at least $1.5 billion in yield losses annually, it’s soybean’s single biggest threat. Unfortunately, soybean’s most effective tool, genetic resistance, is starting to fail.
A new accounting of nitrogen pollution in the Mississippi-Atchafalaya River Basin (MARB) reveals a significant decline in recent decades, suggesting positive momentum for water quality goals in local watersheds and the Gulf.
Plastic products are ubiquitous in our food supply chain, shedding microplastics into every part of the human ecosystem. As they degrade, microplastics break down into even smaller fragments called nanoplastics — tiny particles that can affect biological molecules in ways not fully understood.
Growing up, I was an incredibly shy child. I would avoid talking to people at all costs. My mom didn’t like what she was seeing at all. Her solution was to put me in after-school programs where I could talk to other young girls. I wasn’t entirely for this decision at first, but the more I went to these meetings, the more I would find myself talking and participating, something I would have never thought to do before.
Dr. Salah Issa’s career in agricultural safety began in an unexpected way. Starting out at a graduate program in Ecological Sciences and Engineering at Purdue University as a self-described “city kid”, he was unaware that agricultural engineering was even a career option. It wasn’t until he took a course in agrosecurity that the world of agriculture, and its hazards, opened up to him.
Researchers at Tezpur University in Assam, India, working with scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Plants may look inert and harmless, but, at any given moment, they’re waging chemical warfare against attackers, preparing tissues to withstand freezing temperatures, or synthesizing compounds that become medicines for humans. These leafy biochemists produce over a million chemicals, or metabolites, to help them survive their rooted existence.
A lot has changed on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus since its founding in 1867, but a storied plot of land near the south quad has been preserved nearly intact for a century and a half.
This spring, the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will participate in a campuswide crowdfunding initiative known as Orange & Blue Days, inviting community members, alumni, and friends to help the college advance a core part of its mission: strengthening food access across Illinois.
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Email: aces@illinois.edu