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Category: Plants & People

  • How Farming Changed Human DNA Millennia Ago

    The agricultural revolution was one of the most profound events in human history, leading to the rise of modern civilization. Now, in the first study of its kind, an international team of scientists has found that after agriculture arrived in Europe 8,500 years ago, people’s DNA underwent widespread changes, altering their height, digestion, immune system and skin color. (Click image or title for full story.)

  • The $Billion Quest For The Lost Cider Apple

    But when pressed and fermented, it could blossom into liquid gold. With time and expertise, its nectar could become as layered and as nuanced as the great wines of France’s Loire Valley. (Click image or title for full story)

  • The Worst Contemporary Ecological Disaster Is All About Profit

    We are witnessing the worst manmade environmental disaster since the BP gulf oil spill. Huge, out-of-control fires rage through the forests of Indonesia – and the source of many is the practice of deliberately burning the land to clear it for palm oil and paper products. (Click image or title for full story)

  • Poaching For Bonsai Trees Is Endangering Rare Monkey

    We are just a few kilometres from the protected home of one of the world’s rarest primates, the Cat Ba langur, or white-headed langur. Only 70 are known to survive on the island of the same name, off the coast of north Vietnam, following decades of hunting. But conservationists have warned that there is another threat: intruders taking the trees themselves. (Click image or title for full story.)

  • How Recreational Fishing Is Killing Cape Cod Salt Marshes

    Recreational fishing is a major contributor to the rapid decline of important salt marshes along Cape Cod because it strips top predators such as striped bass, blue crabs, and smooth dogfish out of the ecosystem, according to new research by Brown University ecologists.

  • Increased Ozone Levels Alter Insect-Plant Interactions

    Increases in ground-level ozone, especially in rural areas, may interfere not only with predator insects finding host plants, but also with pollinators finding flowers, according to researchers.

  • Saving America’s #2 Crop By Collecting Wild Sunflowers

    Marek and Seiler, who works at the USDA Agricultural Research Service’s Northern Crop Science Laboratory, in Fargo, North Dakota, have spent the last 11 years traversing the American outback—from the deserts of eastern Oregon to the Florida coasts—in search of wild sunflowers.

  • How Syrian War Threatens Seed Bank And So, Our Future

    Among those fleeing are Aleppo’s scientists. Until recently, the city was home to ICARDA, a seed bank, one of many in a system that spans the globe. These seed banks collect and store hundreds of thousands of seed varieties, encompassing nearly every plant ever cultivated by humans, going back to the dawn of agriculture. Someday, we may need these seeds. Nature is always changing. We don’t know what will grow next year, and what won’t. Seed banks constitute humanity’s agricultural memory.

  • Saving Ecosystems Saves Communities

    United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which aim to eradicate extreme poverty and, in Goal 15, “Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.”

  • How Deforestation, Desertification, and Climate Change Spur Migration

    Increased land degradation is also one of the factors that can lead to migration and it is being exacerbated by climate change