Future Timeline

(Eurekalert) Plastic is a very complex material that can contain many different chemicals, some of which can be harmful. This is also true for plastic food packaging.

“We found as many as 9936 different chemicals in a single plastic product used as food packaging,” said Martin Wagner, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU’s) Department of Biology.

Wagner has been working with chemicals in plastic products for several years. He is part of a research group at NTNU that has now published its findings in the Environmental Science & Technology journal. PhD candidates Molly McPartland and Sarah Stevens from NTNU are the lead authors of both studies.

Interfering with hormones and metabolism

In one study, the researchers looked at 36 different plastic products that are used to package food. These products came from five countries; the United States, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Germany and Norway.

“In most of these plastic products, we found chemicals that can affect the secretion of hormones and metabolism,” Wagner said.

(Eurekalert) Drones monitoring fields for weeds and robots targeting and treating crop diseases may sound like science fiction but is actually happening already, at least on some experimental farms. Researchers from the PhenoRob Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bonn are working on driving forward the smart digitalization of agriculture and have now published a list of the research questions that will need to be tackled as a priority in the future. Their paper has appeared in the European Journal of Agronomy.

That the Earth feeds over eight billion people nowadays is thanks not least to modern high-performance agriculture. However, this success comes at a high cost. Current cultivation methods are threatening biodiversity, while the production of synthetic fertilizers generates greenhouse gases, and agricultural chemicals are polluting bodies of water and the environment.

Many of these problems can be mitigated by using more targeted methods, e.g. by only applying herbicides to those patches of a field where weeds are actually becoming a problem rather than treating the whole area. Other possibilities are to treat diseased crops individually and to only apply fertilizer where it is really needed. Yet strategies like these are extremely complicated and virtually impossible to manage at scale by conventional means.

Harnessing high tech and AI to become more sustainable and efficient

“One answer could be to use smart digital technologies,” explains Hugo Storm, a member of the PhenoRob Cluster of Excellence. The University of Bonn has partnered with Forschungszentrum Jülich, the Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing in Sankt Augustin, the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research in Müncheberg and the Institute of Sugar Beet Research in Göttingen on the large-scale project geared toward making farming more efficient and more environmentally friendly using new technologies and artificial intelligence (AI).

(European Journal of Agronomy) The rapid decline in the cost of sensors, robots, and computing power, as well as rapid advances in AI, offer opportunities for sustainable intensification (Grieve et al., 2019). Existing precision agriculture tools are becoming increasingly connected, accurate, efficient, and widely applicable (Finger et al., 2019). Combining these tools with process-based agro-ecosystem models enables new ways of crop management by predicting plant ideotypes for specific environments (Lynch et al., 2022), by predicting the performance of crops in a specific environment, the development of diseases, pests, and weeds or the demand for nutrients (Caubel et al., 2017, Colbach et al., 2014, Seidel et al., 2021). These models also enable the assessment of the impacts of novel technologies from local to landscape or regional scales (Duru et al., 2015, Kersebaum et al., 2015), which may contribute to the design of more effective policies and regulations and enable new field arrangements.

(Eurekalert) A unique $3.7m plant lab will put researchers on the frontline in the fight against climate change and create crops for “tomorrow’s atmosphere today”.

The new flagship facility at the University of Essex will allow scientists to adapt plants for a hotter drier planet as food security is increasingly threatened.

It boasts a cutting-edge commercially standard vertical farm, an indoor field that replicates real environments anywhere in the globe, and suites that imitate a warming world – with researchers able to raise CO2 concentration and temperature levels at will.

Computer plant scanning technology will also be used to monitor plants as they grow – and pinpoint precise changes in photosynthesis.

The research will be underpinned by AI and robotics that will develop new ideas, technologies, and strategies to predict how agriculture and the natural world are changing.

(Axios) Latin American treats like Gansitos and Canelitas cookies are slowly growing their share of the U.S. snack market — and not just in Latino communities.

The big picture: The boom in these snacks comes as the purchasing power of Latino communities has been rising, and as the U.S. Hispanic population has soared in numbers and spread across the country.

• The products' popularity among U.S. Hispanics has slowly "influenced American food culture" and "consumers across cultural and linguistic barriers" are now embracing these brands, according to statements made last year by Luis Alfaro, brand leader of Tajín for the U.S.

• A 2023 Mondelez report on the "State of Snacking" also notes that, as immigration makes certain flavors more readily available, people's palates change and general consumers are increasingly drawn to those "global tastes."

State of play: In the past few years, brands like Takis and Topo Chico have become staple goods sold in supermarkets and coffee shops across the U.S., even garnering "product of the year" prizes and recognition as goods that "have successfully disrupted the market," per NielsenIQ.

(Eurekalert) MINNEAPOLIS – People who eat more ultra-processed foods like soft drinks, chips and cookies may have a higher risk of having memory and thinking problems and having a stroke than those who eat fewer processed foods, according to a new study published in the May 22, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study does not prove that eating ultra-processed foods causes memory and thinking problems and stroke. It only shows an association.

Ultra-processed foods are high in added sugar, fat and salt, and low in protein and fiber. They include soft drinks, salty and sugary snacks, ice cream, hamburger, canned baked beans, ketchup, mayonnaise, packaged breads and flavored cereals. Unprocessed or minimally processed foods include meats such as simple cuts of beef, pork and chicken, and vegetables and fruits.

“While a healthy diet is important in maintaining brain health among older adults, the most important dietary choices for your brain remain unclear,” said study author W. Taylor Kimberly, MD, PhD, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “We found that increased consumption of ultra-processed foods was associated with a higher risk of both stroke and cognitive impairment, and the association between ultra-processed foods and stroke was greater among Black participants.”

For the study, researchers looked at 30,239 people age 45 or older who self-identified as Black or white. They were followed an average of eleven years.

When posting to social media channels about this research, we encourage you to use the hashtags #Neurology and #AANscience.

(Eurekalert) A study from the University of Adelaide has discovered molecular pathways regulated by a gene traditionally used to control wheat-flowering behaviour could be altered to achieve greater yields.

The gene is called Photoperiod-1 (Ppd-1) and it is used regularly by breeders to ensure wheat crops flower and set grain earlier in the season, avoiding the harsh conditions of summer. However, there are known drawbacks.

“While this variation benefits wheat productivity by aligning pollination and grain development with more favourable environmental conditions, it also penalises yield by reducing the number of grain-bearing florets and spikelets that form on the wheat inflorescence,” says Dr Scott Boden, a Future Fellow at the University of Adelaide’s School of Agriculture, Food and Wine.

By examining genes whose expression is influenced by Ppd-1, Dr Boden’s research team discovered two transcription factors that can be edited to influence the number and arrangement of grain-bearing spikelets that form on a wheat ear, as well as the timing of ear emergence.

“The deletion of one transcription factor, called ALOG1, increases branching in both wheat and barley, which normally form unbranched inflorescences, and suggests that this gene could be a major regulator of unbranched spikes in the Triticeae family of crops,” Dr Boden says.

(Eurekalert) Maize can grow successfully in very different local conditions. An international study headed by the University of Bonn has now demonstrated the important role of the plant root system. The researchers analyzed more than 9,000 varieties in the study and were able to show that their roots varied considerably – depending on how dry the location is where each variety was cultivated. They were also able to identify an important gene that plays a role in the plant’s ability to adapt. This gene could be the key to developing varieties of maize that cope better with climate change. The results were recently published in the prestigious journal Nature Genetics.

It is a bushy plant with highly branched stems. Finger-length ears grow from the axils of their elongated leaves and every one of them consists of a dozen rock-hard seeds.

You have to look very closely to recognize kinship with one of the world’s most important cultivated plants. And yet experts all agree that the genus teosinte is the ancestral form of all modern varieties of maize. Farmers in southwest Mexico began to select the progeny of teosinte plants that produced the most grains, and the tastiest grains, more than 9,000 years ago. Modern maize crops were cultivated in this way over the course of many generations and now maize is cultivated across all the continents. “We know that the appearance of the plants changed significantly during this time and, for example, the cobs have become much bigger and more prolific,” explains Prof. Dr. Frank Hochholdinger from the Institute of Crop Science and Resource Conservation (INRES) at the University of Bonn. “Up to now relatively little has been known, however, about how the root system developed over this period of domestication and afterwards.”

Roots in paper cigars

This has now changed thanks to the new study. Over the last eight years, the participating research groups have investigated around 9,000 varieties of maize and 170 varieties of teosinte around the world.