URBANA, Ill. – Seven new faculty members joined the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at the University of Illinois in the past year. Their expertise will add to the existing strengths in several academic departments and units, as well as University of Illinois Extension, a key part of the college.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Plants use sunlight to generate their food through photosynthesis. When the sun rises each morning, plants must prepare themselves to receive nutrients from the sunlight, which takes time. Decreasing the prep time in plants could hold the key to improving yields in many crop varieties.
URBANA, Ill. – When he thinks about where he’ll be in five to 10 years, recent University of Illinois graduate Austin Parish sees himself disrupting the agriculture industry. In a good way.
“Right now, our only limitation in ag is how big we can think. I'm excited to be working alongside startups to bring more data and technology than ever to disrupt the plant biotechnology space,” he says.
URBANA, Ill. – When agricultural weeds evolve resistance to herbicides, they do it in one of two ways. In target-site resistance, a tiny mutation in the plant’s genetic code means the chemical no longer fits in the protein it’s designed to attack. In non-target-site resistance, the plant deploys a whole slew of enzymes that detoxify the chemical before it can cause harm.
A recent news item reported a “digital divide” between urban and rural high school students in Illinois due to few computer science course offerings in schools outside Chicagoland. Given the state’s workforce development needs in this area (around 14,000 unfilled positions requiring computer skills at the time of the study), it is concerning that the educational gap not only exists, but is growing.
URBANA, Ill. – Ask a farmer, a scientist, and a conservation professional to define soil health, and you might come up with three rather different answers. That mismatch may be at the root of lower-than-ideal adoption of soil conservation practices, according to a new study from the University of Illinois and The Ohio State University.
URBANA, Ill. – Corn growers can choose from a wide array of products to make the most of their crop, but the latest could bring seaweed extract to a field near you. The marine product is just one class in a growing market of crop biostimulants marketed for corn.
URBANA, Ill. – Goss’s bacterial wilt and leaf blight is one of the most damaging diseases affecting corn. The most effective way to control this disease is to plant corn varieties that are resistant to the disease. In other words, growers avoid the disease by growing certain varieties of corn. In part, this is the easiest method because scientists don’t yet know much about Goss’s wilt.
URBANA, Ill. – Proteins have been quietly taking over our lives since the COVID-19 pandemic began. We’ve been living at the whim of the virus’s so-called “spike” protein, which has mutated dozens of times to create increasingly deadly variants. But the truth is, we have always been ruled by proteins. At the cellular level, they’re responsible for pretty much everything.
URBANA, Ill. – Despite soybean’s high protein and oil content and its potential to boost food security on the continent, Africa produces less than 1% of the world’s soybean crop. Production lags, in part, because most soybean cultivars are bred for North and South American conditions that don’t match African environments.