Brightsurf Science News and Current Science News Events
 

Crop Diversity News | Crop Diversity Current Events

Sort By: Page Views | Date
Lack of funding for world crop diversity threatens sustainable food supply
Researchers from the Department of Agricultural Sciences at Imperial College have warned that a large proportion of the world's collection of crop diversity could be lost due to a lack of funding for the "genebanks" in which they are stored. In a report launched today at the United... view more (2002-08-28)

Grazer diversity counteracts plant diversity effects on ecosystem functioning in seagrass beds
Several influential experiments have shown that high plant diversity enhances ecosystem productivity, animal diversity, and invasion resistance. Yet theory predicts that plant and herbivore diversity, which often co vary in nature, should have countervailing effects on ecosystem properties. In the... view more (2003-07-02)

Mean Population Size Increases with Diversity
A long-standing debate in ecology has been the effect of diversity on the temporal stability of biological systems. Ecological theory predicts that the stability of populations should decline as community diversity increases, in part, because population size is assumed to decline with community... view more (2003-01-28)

Seed banks preserve plant diversity
'Some seed gene banks contain more higher plant species per square meter than anywhere else on the planet', write Simon Linington and colleagues of the Millenium Seed Bank, Kew, in the October issue of Biologist. This helps to 'ensure plant diversity is available long term for use in development or... view more (2003-10-02)

Mexican farmers effectively cultivate phenotypic diversity in maize
Erosion of genetic diversity of crop plants has for several decades been making it necessary to develop initiatives for protecting these plant resources. One strategy is in-situ conservation of crop plants. The model currently advanced involves maintaining the varieties to be conserved isolated in... view more (2004-03-31)

Ancient Mexican maize varieties
Maize was first domesticated in the highlands of Mexico about 10,000 years ago and is now one of the most important crop plants in the world.   view more (2008-06-26)

Diversity in the deep blue seas
Nature magazine has published an article by Xabier Irigoien, a researcher at AZTI, the Basque Fisheries and Marine Technological Research Centre. The article provides data on the diversity of marine life at the bottom of the sea - particularly amongst algae. Species diversity Most research carried... view more (2004-06-28)

Thousands of Crop Varieties from Four Corners of the World Depart for Arctic Seed Vault
At the end of January, more than 200,000 crop varieties from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East-drawn from vast seed collections maintained by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)-will be shipped to a remote island near the Arctic Circle, where they... view more (2008-01-23)

New GM Crop Management Systems Give Wildlife Benefits
In research published today, scientists from Broom's Barn Research Station conclusively show how to use GM herbicide tolerant (GMHT) crop technology for environmental benefit. The authors suggest that the new crop management approaches they have demonstrated could resolve legitimate concerns about... view more (2005-01-19)

Improving Swine Waste Fertilizer
Swine production generates large amounts of waste. While this waste contains nutrients that may serve as fertilizer when applied to agricultural fields, the ratio of nutrients in the waste is different than what a crop requires.   view more (2008-07-09)

Actions speak louder than words for diversity
Line managers play a critical role in the successful management of employee diversity in an organisation, and staff perceptions of how positively their manager handles diversity impacts their job satisfaction and commitment to the company.   view more (2005-01-07)

Catastrophic shift in species diversity and productivity of an ecosystem
Ecology and environmental management is largely predicated on the view that ecosystems respond to environmental changes in a smooth and straightforward way. However, in Ecology Letters, May, Schmitz reports on a long-term field experiment that may prompt a hard, critical look at this reigning view.... view more (2004-05-04)

Insects see crops clearly when the weeds have gone
All gardeners know that their plants have to compete against insects and weeds. We apply insecticides to protect plants from the munching hordes, and we apply herbicides, or hoe, to protect plants from weeds. But, according to Stan Finch and Rosemary Collier of Horticulture Research International,... view more (2003-06-05)

Wild weather forces farmers to adapt
Around the world, extreme climatic conditions are forcing farmers to rethink current cropping system strategies. To maximize crop production in the face of variable temperatures and precipitation, scientists say farmers may want to adopt a system in which crop sequencing decisions are based upon... view more (2007-07-30)

Hermaphroditic plants have genetic advantage in areas where extinctions are frequent
In one of the first studies to empirically compare the reproductive success of hermaphrodites and male and female populations, biologists from the University of Oxford make use of the rare and extreme sexual diversity displayed in a species of European weed to test the hypothesis that... view more (2006-02-22)

The ecological equivalent of Ellis Island: from ancestry to biodiversity
For many ecologists, the start of the 21st century was bewildering due to a book by Steve Hubbell. Hubbell claimed that many patterns in nature could be explained by a simple theory stating that all species are equivalent in competition for resources. In a letter to Ecology Letters, Rampal Etienne... view more (2004-02-24)

Organic corn: Increasing rotation complexity increases yields
While demand for organic meat and milk is increasing by about 20% per year in the United States, almost all organic grain and forage to support these industries in the mid-Atlantic region is imported from other regions. To meet this demand locally, area farmers need information on expected crop... view more (2008-05-29)

New Keys to Keeping a Diverse Planet
Variation in plants and animals gives us a rich and robust assemblage of foods, medicines, industrial materials and recreation activities. But human activities are eliminating biological diversity at an unprecedented rate.   view more (2007-09-27)

Something new under the Sun
That plants grow better if grown in a greenhouse in the correct climate is nothing new. Dutch researcher Rachel van Ooteghem has designed a control system for an improved solar greenhouse that yields more.   view more (2007-01-31)

Architectural plan revealed of doomsday arctic seed vault
The Norwegian government has revealed the architectural design for the Svalbard International Seed Vault, to be carved deep into frozen rock on an island not far from the North Pole.   view more (2007-02-09)

Can biofuels be sustainable?
With oil prices skyrocketing, the search is on for efficient and sustainable biofuels. Research published this month in Agronomy Journal examines one biofuel crop contender: corn stover.    view more (2008-08-20)

Pesticide Science Becomes Pest Management Science: Relaunched Journal is Pick of the Crop
Tuesday 4 April 2000, SCI International Headquarters, London, UK. The SOCIETY OF CHEMICAL INDUSTRY (SCI) is celebrating the re-launch of its learned journal Pesticide Science, now renamed PEST MANAGEMENT SCIENCE. First published in 1969, Pesticide Science has a strong international following and... view more (2000-03-29)

Vaccine to cope with viral diversity in HIV
The ability of HIV-1 to develop high levels of genetic diversity and acquire mutations to escape immune pressures contributes to our difficulties in producing a vaccine.   view more (2007-04-27)

Why does species diversity vary so much?
The diversity of life varies predictably with climate and is greatest where it is warm and wet (the humid tropics). But the question "why" has puzzled biologists for over a century. In the December issue of Ecology Letters, Currie and colleagues examine three hypotheses about the origin... view more (2005-01-11)

Genetically modified crops and the countryside
The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) is presenting some current research at BBSRC-sponsored institutes into the environmental impact of genetically modified (GM) crops. Come and talk to the scientists who carry out this work, and find out more about on-going research... view more (1999-06-14)

Sort By: Page Views | Date
© 2008 BrightSurf.com