URBANA, Ill. – Animal agriculture is a major source of water pollution in the United States, as manure runoff carries excess nutrients into rivers and lakes. Because of their non-point source nature, most farms are not regulated under the federal Clean Water Act. This leaves pollution control up to the states, resulting in a patchwork of different approaches that are difficult to evaluate.

URBANA, Ill. -- The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has committed another round of funding to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to lead the second phase of its Bioenergy Research Center — one of four large-scale DOE-funded research centers focused on innovation in biofuels, bioproducts, and a clean energy future for the country.

URBANA, Ill. – Aerial imagery is a valuable component of precision agriculture, providing farmers with important information about crop health and yield. Images are typically obtained with an expensive multispectral camera attached to a drone.

URBANA, Ill. – The National Institutes of Health recently pledged $2.6 million towards the Center for C. elegans Anatomy, also known as WormAtlas. The center provides anatomical resources for researchers studying C. elegans, the tiny nematode worm that serves as a model organism for higher animals, including humans.

URBANA, Ill. – Midwestern agriculture contributes the vast majority of nitrogen in the Gulf of Mexico, causing an oxygen-starved hypoxic zone and challenging coastal economies. State and federal policies have tried for decades to provide solutions and incentives, but the hypoxic zone keeps coming back. A recent study from the University of Illinois offers a new way to understand Midwestern nitrogen dynamics and forecasts future nitrogen loads under various management scenarios across the region. 

URBANA, Ill. – Sometimes, a summer can change everything. For several undergraduate women in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at the University of Illinois, a summer internship with the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service revealed new career goals and delivered the skills and experience to get there.

URBANA, Ill.

A team of researchers at the Agroecosystem Sustainability Center (ASC) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have been working to make it easier to calculate carbon credits for farmers.

URBANA, Ill. – Tackling nutrient pollution in the Gulf of Mexico is a big job, requiring coordination between dozens of states whose waters flow into the Mississippi. Although a 2011 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency memo set a framework for each state to reduce its nutrient load, it was up to the states to set their own policies in motion.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations has awarded a grant of $34 million to the Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency project, an international research effort led by scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In its 10-year history, RIPE has demonstrated large increases in crop productivity in replicated field trials on the university farm.