CPSC

Larry Dallas’ farm in Central Illinois’ Douglas County is as flat as it gets. That’s a good thing for planting straight rows and maneuvering farm equipment in the field, but there’s a major downside, too.

“Heavier rain is hard for us to deal with because of the poorly drained soils and the lack of any roll to the ground. It's hard for the water to get away when the rain starts,” Dallas said. “We have installed a lot of drainage tile trying to mitigate that.”

Precision agriculture first gained traction in the 1990s, when GPS technology made it possible for farm equipment to map and manage fields with a level of detail that was not possible before. Farmers could accurately apply fertilizer or seed at different rates across a field, responding to variations in field conditions.

When Bayer’s Crop Science division Head of R&D Mike Graham returns to campus this week, he’ll be looking ahead to the future of agricultural innovation and the enduring value of land-grant research. 

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. 

Researchers at Tezpur University in Assam, India, working with scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, have identified distinct chemical signatures in blood that could help detect gallbladder cancer earlier. This is important in cancer patients with and without gallstones, two groups that often require different diagnostic approaches. 

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. The Morrow Plots, famed in song and story, represent the oldest continuously running agricultural experiment in North America, and are the second oldest in the world. And this year, they turn 150.  

Scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign can now differentiate between human-derived and hydrological contributions of riverine nitrogen pollution in the Upper Mississippi River Basin. The advancement, published in Environmental Science and Technology, sets the stage for more nuanced policy and management of nitrate and nitrite, the nutrients that degrade drinking water quality and cause oxygen-starved “dead zones” in the Gulf each year.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign corn breeders know profitability is about more than yield. By tweaking kernel composition, they can tailor corn for lucrative biotech applications, industrial products, overseas markets, and more. But to efficiently unlock these valuable traits, breeders must first understand their genetic underpinnings.