• Newly published results from a study on nutrition, food security and the environment in Saskatchewan First Nations show that food insecurity is a major concern and that many households would like more access to traditional foods.

  • When you think of a radish, you may think of the small, round, crunchy, red-and-white vegetable that is sliced into salads. You might be surprised to learn that a larger, longer form of this root vegetable is being used in agriculture as a cover crop.

  • The University of Connecticut's Spring Valley Student Farm is now home to a newly up-and-running aquaponics facility, a welcome addition to the farm, which already grows and provides fresh produce to campus.

  • Community gardens, the feel-good darlings of the growing season, are great for raising awareness about sustainability—but they’re just scratching the surface of a much larger harvest, according to a University of Alberta researcher.

  • A new University of Guelph study has discovered why exposure to pesticides increases some people’s risk of developing Parkinson’s disease.

  • A collaborative research team from China has published a new analysis that shows the Earth’s climate would increase by 4 ℃, compared to pre-industrial levels, before the end of 21st century.

  • As chocolate becomes ever more popular, demand for cocoa keeps rising. For production to keep up, agricultural practices have to become more sustainable. ETH researchers tested what shade trees can contribute to solving this problem.

  • A new study has uncovered when and why the native vegetation that today dominates much of Australia first expanded across the continent. The research should help researchers better predict the likely impact of climate change and rising carbon dioxide levels on such plants here and elsewhere. The dominant vegetation, so-called C4 plants, includes a wide variety of tropical, subtropical and arid-land grasses. , C4 plants also include important worldwide crops such as sugarcane, corn, sorghum and millet. The research has just been published online in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

  • In the soils of the world’s cereal fields, a family tussle between related species of fungi is underway for control of the crops’ roots, with food security threatened if the wrong side wins. Beneficial fungi can help plants to protect themselves from cousins eager to overwhelm the roots, but it’s a closely fought battle.

  • Industrial fisheries that rely on bottom trawling wasted 437 million tonnes of fish and missed out on $560 billion in revenue over the past 65 years, new UBC research has found.