Daily Food & Ag Digest
Every day, the staff of the Genetic Literacy Project scours the Web for stories on a range of agricultural and food issues, including the GMO debate, conventional and organic farming, regulations, new breeding technologies and sustainability. We publish excerpts of those stories and encourage our readers to visit the original publications for the complete stories.
New CRISPR-based platform detects plant pests, identifies useful traits for crop breeding
SHERLOCK technology is a new CRISPR-based platform that is rapid and portable and enables detection and quantitation of plant genes ...
If US banned neonicotinoid insecticides, pesticide use could increase, posing threat to humans and pollinators, study suggests
New research from Gian Carlo Moschini at the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University and Ed ...
Under shareholder pressure, Bayer hires law firm to initiate ‘radical overhaul’ of glyphosate litigation strategy
Chemicals giant Bayer, under pressure from activist shareholders, said on [June 26] it has hired an external lawyer to advise ...
Organic industry-funded study finds trace levels of antibiotics, pesticides in conventional milk
Results from a recent study examining what’s in organic versus conventional milk show that the majority of samples of conventional, non-organic ...
‘RoboDUCK’: Weed-killing robot could cut chemical use in rice farming
An engineer working for Japanese carmaker Nissan has built a robot to help farmers reduce the use of herbicides and ...
French rapeseed yields hit 14-year low following drought, neonicotinoid insecticide ban
French farmers are getting so tired of beetles chomping on their rapeseed that some of them may decide to further ...
Viewpoint: Farmers use glyphosate to grow healthy crops, not because ‘Big Ag’ makes them
Until the public sees agriculture and the agricultural landscape for what it is and quits calling a circle a square, ...
Impossible Foods vs. Beyond Meat: Arms race to control booming plant-based burger market is on
Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are served in almost 20,000 restaurants across the country, and the list of restaurant chains ...
There’s little evidence showing diet soda is harmful—so why do experts recommend we avoid it?
Low-calorie sweeteners represent just about everything that’s wrong with our diet. They’re mostly synthetic. They play to the human preference ...
‘Third way’ agriculture: How technology, good judgement can save our food supply from climate change
Imagine waking up in a world that has become so hot and so crowded that most of what you eat ...
Despite threat of arrest, pro-GMO protests in India spread across 11 districts in state of Maharashtra
A ‘pro-GM seed’ movement, which had begun in one district of Maharashtra with farmers defying [a] ban on planting unapproved ...
Viewpoint: Mining phosphate to produce Bayer’s Roundup weed killer could contaminate environment ‘for years to come’
Roundup, the world’s top herbicide, has been mired in controversy in recent months as the jurors in three court cases ...
Newly identified rice gene could help develop drought-tolerant biotech crop varieties
Drought is one of the abiotic factors that affect the yield of crops. Studies have shown that basic leucine zipper ...
Milk without cows? Biotech startup recreates dairy proteins in the lab
Lab-grown meat is getting a lot of attention along with plant-based meat substitutes. Technology is driving the industry toward providing ...
Naturally occurring phosphorous in soil could cut synthetic fertilizer pollution, major threat to sustainable farming
Cornell University engineers have taken a step in understanding how iron in the soil may unlock naturally occurring phosphorus bound ...
Female farmers join protests in India demanding access to GMO herbicide-tolerant cotton
After several instances of farmers in Maharashtra sowing unauthorized varieties of genetically modified (GM) cotton to openly defy the moratorium ...
US college cafeterias, restaurants could be first to serve controversial GMO AquAdvantage salmon
Inside an Indiana aquafarming complex, thousands of salmon eggs genetically modified to grow faster than normal are hatching into tiny ...
Attacking single gene in deadly parasite could protect honeybees from untreatable infection
Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists have taken the first step towards a weapon against the major honey bee parasite Nosema ...
Chinese biologist Qu Dongyu to focus on hunger, poverty eradication as UN Food and Agriculture Organization chief
Qu Dongyu, China's deputy agricultural minister, was elected [June 23] as the new director general of the U.N. Food and ...
Light manipulation could cut indoor farming energy use 30-50% without hindering crop growth
There is substantial interest in growing crops in closed controlled environments, yet the energy requirements are high. Energy is required ...
‘Google maps’ for gene sequencing helps small labs cheaply, quickly develop disease-resistant crops
Australian researchers have developed a tool described as “Google Maps for genes” potentially throwing open the field of genetic manipulation, ...
Post-Brexit Britain ponders break from EU GMO, gene-editing restrictions, embracing US model
With so much focus and attention on Brexit, there’s another ‘B’ word that has been fretted over for decades, causing ...
Blight-tolerant American chestnut tree: Latest biotech solution to nature’s assault on valued species
A blight-tolerant American chestnut tree is the latest example of what the science community has begun to call a GRO—a ...
Bt eggplant, Bangladesh’s first GMO crop, controls ‘vicious’ fruit and shoot borer pest, boosts farmer profit sixfold
Eggplant, or brinjal (Solanum melongena), is a popularly consumed vegetable grown throughout Asia that is prone to vicious and sustained ...
Bees with access to diverse flowering plants are healthier pollinators, USDA study shows
Everyone wants healthy, thriving honey bee colonies. One-third of the food we eat requires pollinators, and commercial beekeepers transport honey ...
Varroa mites central driver of uptick in overwinter honeybee colony losses according to 2018-2019 survey, worrying entomologists
Beekeepers across the United States lost 40.7% of their honey bee colonies from April 2018 to April 2019, according to ...
Viewpoint: Environmentalists put nature ahead of human welfare by assaulting ‘unnatural’ GMOs, pesticides
Traditionally, Western thought has conceived of the environment as a set of natural elements that can be domesticated by man ...
