The physical structure of corn plants — including the angle of leaves bending from the stem and the number of pollen-laden tassel branches — makes a big difference for yield. Compact plants can be planted closer together, adding up to more ears per acre. But compact corn didn’t happen by accident; years of hybrid breeding did that. Now, two new genome-based studies are making it possible to precisely adjust corn architecture to meet future demands.

Nanozymes are synthetic materials that have enzyme-like catalytic properties, and they are broadly used for biomedical purposes, such as disease diagnostics. However, inorganic nanozymes are generally toxic, expensive, and complicated to produce, making them unsuitable for the agricultural and food industries.

How do wildlife researchers know when an endangered population is sick? They can detect infectious microbes in animal waste, but the presence of a microbe doesn’t always equate to impactful symptomatic infections.

Weeds like Palmer amaranth make farming harder and less profitable, and available herbicides are becoming less effective. For scientists to find solutions, they first need to know their enemy.

According to some popular culture writers and online posts by discouraged singles lamenting their inability to find romantic partners, dating is “broken,” fractured by the social isolation created by technology, pandemic lockdowns and potential partners’ unrealistic expectations.

Pomelo is a large citrus fruit commonly grown in Southeast and East Asia. It has a very thick peel, which is typically discarded, resulting in a considerable amount of food waste.

There’s a longstanding attitude in many farming communities that trees and agriculture don’t mix. But agroforestry — the intentional integration of trees and shrubs in agricultural systems, such as planting trees as windbreaks, integrating trees on pastures, or growing tree crops intercropped with annual crops — can provide a multitude of benefits to both farmers and landscapes. So far, in the U.S. Midwest, these benefits have gone unrealized, with vanishingly small adoption rates.  

Unfertilized soybean fields with lower soil fertility should be planted earlier than high fertility fields, according to a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign study

If corn was ever jealous of soybean’s relationship with nitrogen-fixing bacteria, advancements in gene editing could one day even the playing field.

The night sky teems with migrating songbirds, aloft in their millions following routes etched in evolutionary time.