Sustainability / GreenGenes
Food production needs are expected to roughly double over the next 35 years as the world population grows and people in under developed countries become more affluent and demand more calories. Healthy ecosystems are vital to the survival of all organisms. How can we grow crops without harming the environment? How can we balance technology and global food security? What is the right balance of organic and conventional farming? What role can genetics and biotechnology play without compromising the needs of tomorrow?
Below is the complete archive of related articles sorted by date.
Climate change could ‘significantly’ cut nutrient content in crops over next 30 years
One of the biggest challenges to reducing hunger and undernutrition around the world is to produce foods that provide not ...
Suspected Fusarium wilt infection in Colombia threatens global banana supply, but fungus-resistant GMO fruit on the horizon
In a long-feared development, an extremely damaging disease of bananas has apparently reached Latin America. Late last week, the Colombian ...
GMO plants that produce industrial proteins could cut cost of medicines, consumer goods
Imagine if plants could be engineered to produce vaccines, pharmaceuticals, proteins and enzymes for medical, agricultural and industrial applications at ...
Dessert of the future? This $20 a pint ice cream made with GMO yeast sells out in hours
Agri-tech start-up Perfect Day released a line of real ice cream made with lab-grown dairy that costs $20 a pint ...
Engineered plants with deeper roots could store more CO2, help slow climate change
Hidden underground networks of plant roots snake through the earth foraging for nutrients and water, similar to a worm searching ...
‘Industrial-scale’ beekeeping doesn’t boost disease prevalence in honeybee colonies, study shows
It is generally thought that the intensification of farming will result in higher disease prevalences, although there is little specific ...
Viewpoint: Why CRISPR-edited crops should be allowed in organic agriculture
A University of California, Berkeley professor stands at the front of the room, delivering her invited talk about the potential ...
Viewpoint: We need GMO, CRISPR-edited crops to help feed 10 billion people
If we want to feed 10 billion people by 2050, in a world beset by rising temperatures and scarcer water ...
Podcast: Bt eggplant in Bangladesh—the GMO crop that boosted farmer profits 6-fold
Subsistence farmers in Bangladesh make a living by growing, harvesting and selling brinjal, or the fruit westerners know as eggplant ...
Mexico’s self-fertilizing corn could be worth millions. Will village where it grows share in the profits?
In a 1979 visit to Totontepec, a small town in Oaxaca, Mexico, naturalist Thomas Boone Hallberg marveled at the local ...
Demand for sustainable farming fuels growth of ‘GMO-free’ gene silencing tools to combat pests
Since its discovery more than 20 years ago, RNA interference (RNAi) has been extensively used in crop protection platforms. So ...
No Bee Armageddon: US honeybee colony numbers stable for 25 years. Thank capitalism?
Warnings of an impending "bee apocalypse" became widespread in 2006, after some commercial beekeepers reported the mass disappearance of worker ...
Viewpoint: Anti-GMO movement’s romanticized notions of ‘natural food’ won’t solve global nutrition challenges
Food science and farm technologies today provide Americans with an unprecedented abundance of safe, healthy and nutritious food. Yet, consumers ...
Podcast: Land use for animal agriculture has declined 140 million hectares since 2000. Can we keep this ‘livestock revolution’ alive?
We're often told raising animals for food takes a devastating toll on the environment, consuming ever more natural resources, hastening ...
Sustainable and nutritious unrefined whole cane sugar? Skip the organic scam and eat sucrose from GMO sugar beets
A drive toward The Everglades down US 98 between Yeehaw Junction and Belle Glade, FL takes you around the east ...
Crops engineered to stay green longer could produce more food for growing global population
A team of Clemson University scientists has achieved a breakthrough in the genetics of senescence in cereal crops with the ...
1/3 of the world’s soil is degraded. But technology can bring our farmland ‘back to life’
In Iowa they call it “black gold” – a fertile blanket covering the landlocked Midwestern state. Thousands of years of ...
Scientists urge speedy introduction of GMOs to help Ghana cut food imports
As Ghana’s government rolls out a master plan to drastically cut down on food imports, scientists are urging the speedy ...
Global farming trends put pollinators at risk, threaten food security, study claims
A multinational team of researchers has identified countries where agriculture’s increasing dependence on pollination, coupled with a lack of crop ...
How market forces, self-regulation and GMO crops are making fish farming more sustainable
More sustainable aquaculture and better-managed fisheries are increasingly actionable for consumers ...
Price of lab-grown burger could drop from $280,000 to $10 by 2021
Lab-grown meat, first introduced to the world six years ago in the form of a $280,000 hamburger, could hit supermarket ...
Manipulating plant mitochondrial DNA could boost crop diversity, promote food security
Researchers in Japan have edited plant mitochondrial DNA for the first time, which could lead to a more secure food ...
‘Second generation’ GMO plants could turn marginal soils into productive farmland
Roughly one-third of the world’s arable land suffers from lack of accessible iron, rendering it inhospitable to staple crops like ...
Viewpoint: ‘We’ll be eating each other in 5 years’? How ‘catastrophic’ environmentalism threatens sustainable farming
In April, the cry of climate catastrophe seized the political agenda. ... It was the only subject driving the zombie ...
Podcast: Biologist Rob Wager takes on anti-GMO scientists at 1st International Conference on Agroecology
Economic growth fueled by market reforms has cut poverty in the developing world drastically over the last 30 years. But ...
Lab-grown protein could make up 35% of meat consumption by 2040 amid growing concerns about animal agriculture
Memphis Meats, based in Emeryville, California, is one of a growing number of startups worldwide that are making cell-based or ...
Hybrid corn boosts grain yields 89%, nitrogen use efficiency 73% over 70 years
During the past 70 years, hybrid corn varieties have increased both yield and nitrogen use efficiency at nearly the same ...
Podcast: Save our forests with GMO trees? Let’s look at the costs and benefits first
We have genetically engineered food; how about trees? In [June 8's] Academic Minute, North Carolina State University's Jason Delborne looks ...
