Switchgrass has gripped Midwestern soils for millions of years, but soon, the earthbound prairie grass could fly.

Scientists developed a machine-learning tool that can teach itself, with minimal external guidance, to differentiate between aerial images of flowering and nonflowering grasses — an advance that will greatly increase the pace of agricultural field research, they say. The work was conducted using images of thousands of varieties of Miscanthus grasses, each of which has its own flowering traits and timing.

Farmers apply nitrogen fertilizers to crops to boost yields, feeding more people and livestock. But when there’s more fertilizer than the crop can take up, some of the excess can be converted into gaseous forms, including nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that traps nearly 300 times as much heat in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. About 70% of human-caused nitrous oxide comes from agricultural soils, so it’s vital to find ways to curb those emissions.

Darin Joos, a proud alum of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, knows a thing or two about the university’s beloved South Farms. Joos now manages the research facility, where he and his colleagues bring agricultural education to life in innovative ways.

The physical structure of corn plants — including the angle of leaves bending from the stem and the number of pollen-laden tassel branches — makes a big difference for yield. Compact plants can be planted closer together, adding up to more ears per acre. But compact corn didn’t happen by accident; years of hybrid breeding did that. Now, two new genome-based studies are making it possible to precisely adjust corn architecture to meet future demands.

Weeds like Palmer amaranth make farming harder and less profitable, and available herbicides are becoming less effective. For scientists to find solutions, they first need to know their enemy.

Lisa Ainsworth has been named director of the internationally acclaimed Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency project, which is led by the University of Illinois.

Unfertilized soybean fields with lower soil fertility should be planted earlier than high fertility fields, according to a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign study

After decades of impactful and prolific research, two photosynthesis trailblazers are passing the torch. Stephen Long and Donald Ort are retiring from their leadership roles for the Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE) project at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

If corn was ever jealous of soybean’s relationship with nitrogen-fixing bacteria, advancements in gene editing could one day even the playing field.