Scientists in Australia have crossed a popular, commercial variety of wheat with an ancient species, producing a hardy, high-yielding plant that is tolerant of salty soil.
Posts tagged "food"
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Experts develop salt-tolerant, high-yield wheat →
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Factory can make meat substitute by the mile →
When growing a test-tube burger still costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, going with 100 percent vegetables may prove more economical for fake meat. A European project has already set up a fake meat factory capable of creating an “endless” long piece of vegetarian meat.
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Artificial meat: Hamburger junction →
A QUARTER of a million euros is rather a lot to pay for a hamburger, but that will be the cost of the patty which Mark Post proposes to stick in a bun this October. The burger in question—not so much a quarter-pounder as a quarter-million-pounder—will be so expensive because it will be made from meat that has been grown from scratch in a laboratory.
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Livestock science will benefit sub-Saharan Africa →
Africa will benefit greatly from advances in livestock science that will benefit the animals and the people they provide with high quality protein, said scientists here Sunday.
Panelists addressed the hopes and challenges of modernizing livestock production in Sub-Saharan Africa during the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Vancouver, B.C.
“We explored how implementing new technologies will benefit society,” said University of Idaho animal scientist Rod Hill. He studies physiology in cattle, focusing on topics including feed use efficiency and muscle development.
“The issue is,” Hill said, “how do we get them to work best for mankind and benefit societies in Africa.”
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Infographic of Genetically Modified (GM) crops by countries most using them.
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A Zap of Cold Plasma Reduces Harmful Bacteria on Raw Chicken →
A new study by food safety researchers at Drexel University demonstrates that plasma can be an effective method for killing pathogens on uncooked poultry. The proof-of-concept study was published in the January issue of the Journal of Food Protection.
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Better crops from the roots up →
By altering root growth, scientists believe they are a step closer to breeding hardier crops that are more adaptable to environmental conditions and better able to fend off parasites.
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Could lab-grown meat soon be the solution to the world's food crisis? →
In the 1932 essay called “Fifty Years Hence”, in which he offered his notions of how the world might look in 1982, Winston Churchill wrote: “We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.”
It might have taken longer than 50 years, but Churchill was certainly on to something. Today, scientists are slowly converting his ideas to reality by producing small quantities of “cultured meat” in research laboratories. Indeed, Mark Post of Maastricht University, one of the pioneers in the field, claims he will be able to produce a cultured burger by the end of the year.
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Urban gardens: The future of food? →
With penny-farthings, handlebar mustaches and four-pocket vests back in fashion, the rise of urban farming should just about complete our fetish for the late 1800s. Today, you can find chicken coops on rooftops in Brooklyn, N.Y., goats in San Francisco backyards, and rows of crops sprouting across empty lots in Cleveland.
That it fits so snugly into the hipster-steampunk throwback trend is what makes urban farming ripe for ridicule. (“Portlandia” has taken a crack or two at it.) But could city-based agriculture ever make the leap from precious pastime to serious player in our cities’ food systems — not just for novelty seekers and committed locavores, but for the Safeway-shopping masses?
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Scientists develop drought-tolerant alfalfa →
With much of the Southwest struggling with drought, many ranchers and dairy farmers are having difficulty finding enough hay for their livestock and making tough choices: pay up to twice as much as last year and ship it in from hundreds of miles away or do without and sell off some of their herd.
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Chew hormone gum, lose weight? →
Fighting weight gain may one day be as easy as chewing a stick of gum after meals, according to new research.
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New projection shows global food demand doubling by 2050 →
Global food demand could double by 2050, according to a new projection reported this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The analysis also shows that the world faces major environmental challenges unless agricultural practices change.
Scientists David Tilman and Jason Hill of the University of Minnesota (UMN) and colleagues found that producing the amount of food needed could significantly increase levels of carbon dioxide and nitrogen in the environment, and may cause the extinction of numerous species.
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The robot sommelier with a taste for Cava →
An electronic tongue that can identify different types of Cava wine has been developed by scientists.
The ‘robot sommelier’ replicates how humans taste using sensors that detect chemical information from samples of the Spanish champagne-like wine.
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Chinese Scientists Clone Cows With “Humanized” Milk →
This very moment, grazing in the fields of the State Key Laboratory of Agrobiotechnology in Beijing, China is a particular heard of about 300 cows. Each one is a clone, and each one produces milk that contains proteins normally found in human milk. The cows are part of a vision belonging to Ning Li, SKYLAB’s director, to put “human-like milk” onto supermarket shelves–and into baby bottles–all over the world.
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Keep Nanotechnology Out of Organic! →
A major reason why consumers shop for products that are certified organic is to avoid the hazardous and unlabeled Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), toxic chemicals, and now the most recent, and likely most dangerous hi-tech poison of them all: nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is now a multi-billion dollar Frankenstein monster industry churning out a vast menu of untested and unlabeled products containing tiny nanoparticles including non-organic vitamin supplements, food packaging, processed food, cosmetics and sunscreens.
