A new study found 22% of adults and 10% of children who participated in an air-quality study in California's San Joaquin Valley were breathing detectable levels of pesticides.

A professor of plant molecular biology wants people to know that plants have stem cells too. Just like in the medical world, plant stem cells could support human growth and development when used to improve the food supply. The researcher's lab discovered a transcription factor gene called HVA that controls cell division in vascular stem cells.

Midwestern soils are among the most productive in the world, thanks in part to extensive tile drainage systems that remove excess water from crop fields. But water isn't the only thing flowing through tile drains. Nitrogen moves along with soil water into drainage ditches, streams, and ultimately into the Mississippi River Basin, where the nutrient...

A sweeping global research review of the links between climate and agriculture reveals the likelihood of an emergent feedback loop whereby, as climate change puts more pressure on the global food supply, agriculture will, by necessity, adopt practices that may exacerbate its environmental impact. The paper also identifies new agricultural practices...

Researchers can harvest protein and vitamin B9 from microbes by feeding them nothing much more than hydrogen, oxygen, and CO2. The technology runs on renewable energy to produce a sustainable, micronutrient-enriched protein alternative that may one day make it to our plates.

Epigenetics, the dynamic regulation of genetic expression, involves complex molecular mechanisms. While the process of gene silencing by methylating the H3K27 position in histones is understood, not much is known about how to turn on the silenced gene. To this end, researchers recently investigated the epigenetic behavior of a model plant organism....