URBANA, Ill. – As Corn Belt states seek ways to curb nitrogen flow from farms into the Gulf of Mexico, new University of Illinois research adds evidence for winter cover crops as an important part of the solution. A simulation study published in Science of the Total Environment finds widespread planting of cereal rye in Illinois could reduce nitrate in the state’s tile drainage water by 30%.

URBANA, Ill. – In 1876, when University of Illinois professor Manly Miles established the Morrow Plots, he couldn’t have imagined the plots would become the oldest continuous agricultural experiment in the Western Hemisphere. Nor could he imagine, more than a century before the dawn of the internet, that the plots’ data would be digitized and made available online to scientists, students, and educators around the world.

URBANA, Ill. – What if, by adding a couple of cell layers inside a corn kernel, the grain could become significantly richer in essential nutrients like iron, zinc, and protein? Such an improvement could benefit people who rely on corn for a large portion of their diet, as in many parts of the global south.

URBANA, Ill. – The University of Illinois is partnering with Perdue Farms and Cornell University on a project to study policy and management approaches to further reduce Salmonella cases linked to raw poultry.