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.
Video: Crops engineered with nanoparticles could survive bleak environments—including space
A family of nanoparticles known as metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs, can absorb harmful UV radiation. Joseph Richardson is a nano-engineer ...
Bacterial leaf streak disease can slash corn yields 20%—will science stop it?
Bacterial leaf streak, a foliar disease in corn, has only been in the United States for a handful of years, ...
Farmers, anti-glyphosate activists lobby EPA as agency mulls herbicide’s future in US
Pro- and anti-glyphosate companies and organizations lined up to praise — or bash — the active ingredient in the most ...
GMO crops and insects help stem overfishing, protect vulnerable marine ecosystems
For the first time in history, humans are poised to harvest more fish and seafood from farms than they catch ...
Paris bans synthetic pesticides as French anti-chemical movement ‘gains momentum’
Paris and four other French cities on [September 12] banned the use of synthetic pesticides within their boundaries, as an ...
Flood-tolerant crops could survive intense rainfall as climate change accelerates
Global warming has resulted not only in increased incidences of drought and heatwaves but also increased rainfall which brings higher ...
Sequenced pea genome aids effort to improve global nutrition, boost sustainable farming
An international team of researchers has assembled the first genome of the field pea, providing insight into how Mendel's original ...
Taco Bell rolls out vegetarian menu without Beyond, Impossible meat options
As more fast-food chains double down on menu items with meatless alternatives from Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, Taco Bell ...
EPA plan to end animal testing by 2035 pits environmental groups against animal rights activists
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Washington, D.C., announced .... that it will stop conducting or funding studies on ...
Pesticides don’t pose acute health risk to honeybees foraging on farmland, two-year study finds
Honey bees forage across a large area, continually scouting the local landscape for ephemeral food resources. Beekeepers often rely on ...
Plant breeding innovations required to weather climate change, report says
The world needs plant breeding innovations to address challenges of climate change and a growing population ...
US soybean and corn farmers fear plant-based burgers and glyphosate lawsuits signal uncertain future
I’m flat busted. My Missouri corn and soybean farm is bankrupt, financially incompetent, a lousy credit risk, upside down--you pick ...
We need phosphorus to fertilize crops and feed the world—can we mine it sustainably?
If you wanted to really mess with the world's food production, a good place to start would be in Morocco ...
Congressional Democrats push EPA to defend expanded approval of controversial pesticide sulfoxaflor
Oregon Democrats are asking the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to defend its decision to expand the use of a pesticide ...
Animal proteins from GMO microbes: More synthetic food ingredients to launch in 2021
The first three proteins from Motif FoodWorks’ fermentation-based food ingredient platform will be ready for launch in early 2021, says ...
CRISPR gene editing protects apples from orchard-destroying fire blight disease
The bacterium Erwinia amylovora, the causal agent of fire blight disease in apple, triggers its infection through the DspA/E effector ...
Viewpoint: Processed food does not necessarily mean it’s unhealthy—the science behind an essential but misunderstood technology
You are you and I am me because of processed foods, because our ancestors learned how to cook meat and make bread and, perhaps ...
How biotech gets potentially harmful chemical acrylamide out of fries, crackers and other popular foods
The discovery of [the carcinogenic chemical] acrylamide in foods like crackers, cookies, potato chips, and french fries rattled food makers ...
Natural plant enzyme could aid efforts to produce medicine in crops
Plants can do many amazing things. Among their talents, they can manufacture compounds that help them repel pests, attract pollinators, ...
Consumers largely prefer ‘real’ beef, despite plant-based burger’s surging popularity, survey shows
With all the news about Beyond Meat’s stock price and the rolling out of the Impossible Burger at Burger King, ...
Chemical-free pest control tools on the way thanks to novel gene silencing strategy
In insects, rapidly evolving primary sex-determining signals are transduced by a conserved regulatory module controlling sexual differentiation. In the agricultural ...
Viewpoint: France commissions new glyphosate-cancer study to justify more weed killer regulations
After reading this article, I relay the following comment from the collective Science-Technologies-Action (STA): “At the request of the [French] ...
Montreal plans to ban glyphosate herbicide despite safety assurances from scientists and pesticide regulators
Montreal plans to ban the use of glyphosate — a commonly used herbicide marketed primarily under the trade name Roundup ...
Viewpoint: Organic or conventional produce? Doesn’t matter—just eat more fruits and vegetables
All fruits and vegetables are good for you, but when people start talking about how to eat healthy, the word ...
Can indoor farming surmount agriculture’s biggest challenges?
A car park opposite the infamous New York City housing estate where rapper Jay-Z grew up seems an unlikely place ...
Growing some crops under solar panels boosts water efficiency, electricity generation
Solar panels might seem like they’re in direct competition with plants. One is catching sunlight to do photosynthesis, the other ...
Activist groups sue EPA to block expanded approval of alleged ‘bee-killing’ insecticide sulfoxaflor
Beekeepers asked the Ninth Circuit on [September 6] to block the federal government’s approval of the unrestricted use of the ...
