News by Subject Agriculture

The cultivation of vanilla in Madagascar provides a good income for small-holder farmers, but without trees and bushes the plantations can lack biodiversity. Researchers from the Universities of Göttingen (Germany) and Antananarivo (Madagascar), investigated the interaction between prey and predators in these cultivated areas. They released dummy prey to determine the activity of natural enemies. The result: more prey were attacked as the proportion of trees increased. Results were published in the Journal of Applied Ecology.

NOAA published a peer-reviewed State of the Monument report jointly produced by the co-trustees of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. The report includes information on the status and trends of living resources, habitats, ocean conditions, maritime and cultural archaeological resources, and the human activities and natural events that affect them.

As the disease is rapid, infectious, and hard-to-diagnose, a team of plant pathologists with North Carolina State University and Michigan State University put together a clear and summarized guide to cucurbit downy mildew for beginners and experts. Accorded to Andres Salcedo, "We realized the necessity to compile relevant and concise information about the causal agent of cucurbit downy mildew and developed a guide of multiple alternatives for its diagnosis and handling."

Researcher makes 'little data' act big through, the application of mathematical techniques normally used for time-series, to spatial processes. The study, 'An information-theoretic approach to study spatial dependencies in small datasets,' featured on the cover of Proceedings of the Royal Society.

Some people love spicy food -- the hotter, the better. Others go out of their way to avoid the palate-singeing burn of capsaicin, the compound that gives chili peppers their kick. Now, researchers have developed a portable device (whimsically shaped like a chili pepper) that can reveal how much capsaicin a pepper contains, before biting into it. They report their results in ACS Applied Nano Materials.

Chemicals that haven't been manufactured in the U.S. for years or even decades are still turning up in the bodies of migratory terns in the Great Lakes region, a new study finds. The research focused on three types of compounds: PBDEs, PCBs, and the breakdown products, called metabolites, of DDT.