URBANA, Ill. – The United States is the world’s leading producer of soybean and the second-leading exporter. Nearly 90% of oilseed production in the U.S. comes from soybean. A biological threat to soybean crops in America could affect the global economy, and the result could be devastating to the American soybean farmer, according to researchers in the USAID Soybean Innovation Laboratory (SIL), housed in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new tool uses an interactive database of geographic and genetic information to help authorities quickly identify where the confiscated tusks of African elephants were originally poached.

Developed by an international team of researchers, the Loxodonta Localizer matches genetic sequences from poached ivory to those stored in the database. It relies on genetic information from a small, highly variable region of mitochondrial DNA from African elephants.

URBANA, Ill. – This year’s 2019 Celebrate Food and Agriculture festivities brought a new audience to the University of Illinois Stock Pavilion. The primary use of the Stock Pavilion is instructional but since its construction in 1912, it’s been one of the most versatile spaces on campus. With some recent upgrades, it was an ideal setting for alumni and friends of the College of ACES to gather for this year’s pre-game celebration.

College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences student Austin Schorfheide, a sophomore majoring in agricultural economics with a concentration in public policy and law, has been selected as a 2019 Cargill Global Scholar. He is one of three University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign students to be selected for the program this year.

The prestigious Cargill Global Scholars Program, a distinctive international scholarship program that began in 2013, offers a scholarship award of $2,500 per year for up to two years.

URBANA, Ill. – The Soybean Innovation Lab (SIL) recently launched Africa’s first free, open-access, certificate-based online course in integrated pest management (IPM) and pesticide safety.

Insect pests, weeds, and diseases are common problems for farmers worldwide. In sub-Saharan Africa, pest control is typically manual, which is labor-intensive and often ineffective.

Crop sciences professor Gustavo Caetano-Anollés and graduate student Fizza Mughal used a bioinformatics approach to reconstruct the evolutionary history of metabolic networks.

Read more from the University of Illinois News Bureau. 

A revolution in Midwestern agriculture has to happen to minimize the Gulf of Mexico’s hypoxic zone, according to the University of Illinois Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE).

It is a little-known fact that corn — a Midwestern staple crop — has a bearing on the Gulf of Mexico’s health. The link is nitrogen, a common agricultural fertilizer component. According to a team of Illinois researchers, each annual harvest removes just 60-70% of nitrogen from fields.

URBANA, Ill. – The Child Development Laboratory (CDL) at the University of Illinois has been part of the campus and Champaign-Urbana community for more than 77 years, preparing over 4,000 young children for successful futures.

A gift from Nannette “Nann” Armstrong, an alumna of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at U of I, is helping to support the CDL in its commitment to provide high-quality early care and education for children, as well as to serve the campus through its teaching, research, and outreach and engagement.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Consuming potato puree during prolonged exercise works just as well as a commercial carbohydrate gel in sustaining blood glucose levels and boosting performance in trained athletes, scientists report. Read More.

URBANA, Ill. – World leaders convened for the UN Climate Summit in September amid dire projections of climate instability. The problem is multifaceted, of course, but a recent IPCC report identifies deforestation as the main driver of land-based greenhouse gas emissions, which comprise almost a quarter of all human contributions to climate change. What if more people around the world could be paid to keep forests healthy and intact?