Crops

When Chris Mujjabi found an envelope marked ‘Kitale Synthetic’ in a cold storage room at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the corn breeder knew he had stumbled on something special.

Looking for a family-friendly event this weekend? Check out the fourth annual Crop Sciences Harvest Open House from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sept. 20 at the Crop Sciences Research and Education Center south of campus.  

In collaboration with other Bioenergy Research Centers (BRCs), researchers at the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) are developing industrially feasible techniques for second-generation biofuel production from oilcane, an oil-rich variety of sugarcane, to help meet our growing societal demand for fuels.

Malawi’s Lower Shire Valley is changing.

The Sustainable Student Farm (SSF) is a cornerstone of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences

Small grains researcher Juan David Arbelaez-Velez knows the secret to making perfect rice — and it’s not about how you cook it. Arbelaez and his team are investigating the genetic blueprint that determines different grain attributes such as appearance, cooking time, and texture.

When most growers plant corn, they expect perfect, uniform rows and plump and pearly yellow kernels lining the cob. But a group of USDA Agricultural Research Service scientists intentionally plant the misfits — some gnarled and speckled, others sprouting tassels where ears should be — to perpetuate the wide array of genetic variation in the Midwest’s most economically important crop. 

While the majority of Midwestern farmers rotate corn and soybeans, commodity prices and corn yield advantages compel some to plant corn year after year.

Laboratory and field experiments have repeatedly shown that modifying the process of photosynthesis or the physical characteristics of plants can make crops more resilient to hotter temperatures. Scientists can now alter the abundance or orientation of leaves, change leaf chemistry to improve heat tolerance and adjust key steps in the process of photosynthesis to overcome bottlenecks, researchers report in a new review in the journal Science.

Inside a large walk-in refrigerator on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus, thousands of envelopes hold the fate of global food security, not to mention a significant portion of the world’s economy.