CPSC

URBANA, Ill. – With some reports predicting the precision agriculture market will reach $12.9 billion by 2027, there is an increasing need to develop sophisticated data-analysis solutions that can guide management decisions in real time. A new study from an interdisciplinary research group at University of Illinois offers a promising approach to efficiently and accurately process precision ag data.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. —  University of Illinois Provost Andreas C. Cangellaris held the investiture of Stephen P. Long as the Stanley O. Ikenberry Chair Professor of Plant Biology and Crop Sciences on Jan. 27 at the Spurlock Museum. 

URBANA, Ill. – In the battle against herbicide-resistant weeds, farmers are increasingly eager to add non-chemical control methods to their management toolbox. Impact mills, which destroy weed seeds picked up by a combine, have been shown to kill 70-99% of weed seeds in soybeans, wheat, and other small-statured cropping systems.

URBANA, Ill. – Researchers from the University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences and the Illinois Natural History Survey have published their 2019 field research results related to crop pests and diseases in Illinois.

URBANA, Ill. – Like most plants, soybeans pair up with soil fungi in a symbiotic mycorrhizal relationship. In exchange for a bit of sugar, the fungus acts as an extension of the root system to pull in more phosphorus, nitrogen, micronutrients, and water than the plant could on its own.  

URBANA, Ill. – The U.S. Midwest produces at least a third of the world’s corn and soybean supply each year. Feeding the world requires a lot of fertilizer, mostly in the form of nitrogen and phosphorus. While nitrogen can literally be pulled out of the air, phosphorus has to be mined from finite phosphate rock reserves and treated to be made available to plants. Most of the world’s phosphate rock is in Morocco, and at some point these reserves will run out.

URBANA, Ill. – When a plant senses an invading pathogen, it activates a molecular signaling cascade to switch on its defense mechanisms. One such mechanism involves sacrificing host cells to the pathogen. This is a tightly controlled process that involves the work of plant proteins to ensure that the sacrificial cells are only killed if the pathogen is attacking. This process, called the cell death response, ensures that only a few host cells die.

URBANA, Ill. – Of the eight Illinois researchers recently recognized by the Web of Science group as Highly Cited Researchers, three are affiliated with the Department of Crop Sciences in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences. They include Elizabeth (Lisa) Ainsworth, Stephen Long, and Donald Ort.

URBANA, Ill. – The United States is the world’s leading producer of soybean and the second-leading exporter. Nearly 90% of oilseed production in the U.S. comes from soybean. A biological threat to soybean crops in America could affect the global economy, and the result could be devastating to the American soybean farmer, according to researchers in the USAID Soybean Innovation Laboratory (SIL), housed in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois.

Crop sciences professor Gustavo Caetano-Anollés and graduate student Fizza Mughal used a bioinformatics approach to reconstruct the evolutionary history of metabolic networks.

Read more from the University of Illinois News Bureau.