Category: Plants & People

“They can be completely indiscriminate,They rip up everything and then, later on, discard what they don’t want. But that often means destroying quite fragile rare but inedible fungi for no good reason at all. At the same time, these fungi are often very beautiful to look at and are a real attraction for the visitors to the forest at this time of year. That is one reason why we have introduced our ban. (Click on title for full story)

They have myriad shapes, flavors, colors and levels of spiciness, but all American chilies, chili peppers and bell peppers emerged from a single species that later led to three lineages. (Click on title for full story.)

Bomb-blasted roads, frequent blackouts, shortages of basic equipment and an untested consumer market are hardly conditions that make for natural entrepreneurial opportunities. But three Army veterans and one civilian who all served in Afghanistan have taken on those challenges in their new venture. Their company, Rumi Spice, buys saffron from Afghan farmers and sells it to international customers. (Click on title for full story.)

Recently, commercial repellent products containing plant-based ingredients have gained increasing popularity among consumers, as these are commonly perceived as “safe” in comparison to long-established synthetic repellents although this is sometimes a misconception. To date insufficient studies have followed standard WHO Pesticide Evaluation Scheme guidelines for repellent testing. There is a need for further standardized studies in order to better evaluate repellent compounds and develop new products that offer high repellency as well as good consumer safety. This paper presents a summary of recent information on testing, efficacy and safety of plant-based repellents as well as promising new developments in the field. (Click on title for full story.)

Iowa farmers lose about $40 per acre to soil erosion in a state where more than 85 percent of the land is covered by crops. If you look at those figures and the amount of corn acres in Iowa, you quickly surpass a billion dollars of annual lost revenue. Nearly a third of topsoil is lost in ephemeral gullies, swaths carved into farms by heavy rain. Since most prairie plants are perennial, they physically stabilize the soil most of the year. (Click on title for full story.)

A luscious-looking olive, ripe off the sun-warmed tree, is horrible. (Click on title for full story.)

Up to this point, most breeders have only used elite lines to develop hybrids, because landraces are extremely difficult to use. This practice, however, greatly limits the genetic diversity breeders employ. Using novel alleles from maize landraces allows breeders to develop improved hybrids while broadening the genetic variation of their elite germplasm. This novel genetic diversity is very important to protect crops from evolving pathogens, as it means the varieties will have several resistant alleles, including alleles that have never been used in commercial germplasm before. (Click on title for full story.)

For years, economic forces, including low prices for farm produce, forced rural communities like Piedra Canteada to cut down trees and sell the logs. Then, in 1990, community leader Genaro Rueda Lopez got the idea that the forest could bring tourism revenue from campers. (Click on title for full story.)

Many studies have found nature is soothing to adults, and a few have linked kids’ exposure to green space to enhanced cognitive abilities. But this is the first to specifically explore the relationship between abundant vegetation and adolescent aggression. (Click on title for full story.)