Corn after soy: New study quantifies rotation benefits and trade-offs
While the majority of Midwestern farmers rotate corn and soybeans, commodity prices and corn yield advantages compel some to plant corn year after year.
Fifteen years of excellence in agricultural ecology education
If you peek into a Turner Hall classroom at the end of the semester, you might see something unusual.
Review: Heat-resilient crops are within reach — given enough time and money
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.
Safeguarding soybeans: Preserving genetic diversity for a resilient future
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.
Report: ‘Future-proofing’ crops will require urgent, consistent effort
In a review in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Stephen Long, a professor of crop sciences and of plant biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, describes research efforts to “future-proof” the crops that are essential to feeding a hungry world in a changing climate.
University of Illinois Agronomy Days series returns to ACES
Summer is back, which means the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will return with its Agronomy Days
Four ACES faculty receive Campus Awards for Excellence in Instruction
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign each year presents Campus Awards for Excellence in Instruction to exceptional faculty and staff members, graduate teaching assistants and advisers campuswide. This year’s recipients, four of which are from the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, were honored at a ceremony on April 15.
2025 ACES award recipients include:
Breaking the phenotype bottleneck with autonomous robots
Determining, analyzing, or predicting how crops will grow in the field takes time and labor. The interactions between genetics, environment and agricultural practices are challenging to measure. The newly published results of a five-year study on maize (or corn) demonstrate that autonomous ground robots can accurately and reliably capture this information.
Illinois research shows benefits of prairie grass for sustainable aviation fuel
Switchgrass has gripped Midwestern soils for millions of years, but soon, the earthbound prairie grass could fly.