Limiting global warming below the critical 2C level set out in the Paris Agreement is both feasible and consistent with economic growth – and the knock-on improvements to air quality could already cover the costs of mitigation measures and save more than 300,000 lives annually by 2030.

Exposed to light, plants turn green and form leaves. Not so in the dark. A signal responsible for this phenomenon has now been decoded.

A discovery by Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientists in Dallasprovides new insights about the biological or circadian clock, how it regulates high water-use efficiency in some plants, and how others, including food plants, might be improved for the same efficiency, possibly to grow in conditions uninhabitable for them today.

Redrawing the global map of crop distribution on existing farmland could help meet growing demand for food and biofuels in coming decades, while significantly reducing water stress in agricultural areas, according to a new study. Published today in Nature Geoscience, the study is the first to attempt to address both food production needs and resource sustainability simultaneously and at a global scale.

Timing of dredging is the key to helping preserve one of the world's most productive and important ecosystems - seagrass meadows.

Strawberries from Spain, tomatoes from the Netherlands, spices from Morocco and citrus fruits from Georgia - the globalisation of food production and food trading is posing new challenges for consumer health protection. The range of foods is getting bigger and their safety has to be guaranteed in increasingly more complex supply chains.

On July 22, 1847, a scouting party from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stood above the Great Salt Lake Valley in modern-day Utah; by 1870, more than 18,000 followers had colonized the valley and surrounding region, displacing Native American populations to establish dispersed farming communities. While historians continue to debate the drivers of this colonization event, a new study from the University of Utah proposes that agricultural productivity drove dispersal patterns in a process that led the current distribution of Utah populations today.

There are fewer fish in the sea – literally.

Consumer demand and inadequate scientific information has led to overharvesting, reducing fish species and fish stocks around the world.

In northern Montana, Doug and Anna Jones-Crabtree restore soil health while growing organic heirloom and specialty grains, pulse and oilseed crops on 4,700 acres. A thousand miles away in Central Minnesota, the Main Street Project sequesters carbon as it transforms 100 acres of bare ground to a permaculture farm alive with hazelnut trees and foraging chickens.

New research has identified genes that control vitamin E content in maize grain, a finding that could lead to improving the nutritional profile of this staple crop.