Food
Salads were recently in the news—and off America’s dinner tables—when romaine lettuce was recalled nationwide. Outbreaks of intestinal illness were traced to romaine lettuce contaminated with Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria.
These bacteria occur naturally in the intestines of warm-blooded animals. Because crops are grown in the natural environment, E.coli may get into the fields, contaminating produce. The results are potentially deadly for people who eat that produce.
“A healthy community requires healthy soil.” This idea spurred a consortium of researchers, farmers, and community garden practitioners to dive into the challenges—and opportunities—of urban agriculture. Their efforts, now in a second year, may highlight how urban soil can be a resource for human and environmental health.
More than 750 million people don’t get enough nutrients from their food. More than two-thirds of those people live in places that consume a lot of rice. Can rice bred for extra protein be the answer?
“There are hundreds of millions of people around the world who depend on rice and eat it three times a day, but their access to protein is very limited by availability and cost,” explains Herry Utomo, a professor at Louisiana State University. “High-protein rice can be used to help solve the worldwide problem across social, cultural, and economic issues.”
The beloved peanut usually grows in sandy soil where there might not be much moisture. But some varieties of peanut perform better in drought than others. They use less water when there isn’t much to go around, and remain productive as drought deepens. Crop scientists are trying to find the peanut varieties best at it.
Thomas Sinclair at North Carolina State University and colleagues are studying peanut varieties to find a ‘water conservation’ trait. It would help the plant maintain a high yield during a drought.
When you think of China, do you think of potatoes? Maybe not, but in the Loess Plateau region of northwestern China, potato is the main food crop.
Coffee is one of Brazil’s biggest crops. Brazil’s favorable climate helps coffee beans ripen and be ready for picking during a concentrated period of weeks. This makes mechanical harvesting an economically reasonable choice.
Some relationships can be complicated. Take the one between sweet potato crops and soil nitrogen, for example.
Too little nitrogen and sweet potato plants don’t grow well and have low yields. Too much nitrogen, however, boosts the growth of leaves and branches at the expense of storage roots. That also leads to low yields.
The world produces more corn by weight than any other cereal crop. Corn, also known as maize, is a staple food in many countries. But farmers growing corn face many challenges, such as drought, diseases, and pests.
Outside Asia, no country produces as much rice as does Brazil. It is the ninth largest rice producer in the world. Average annual yields are close to 15 million tons.
Researchers have good news for growers. Farmers raising a nitrogen-hungry crop like sweet corn may save up to half of their nitrogen fertilizer cost. The key: using a faba bean cover crop.
