Sublime

success of the Jamaica Project allowed the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and Davenport, to announce plans for a global study to identify mixed-race individuals as a first step toward their elimination in favor of “racially pure stock.”8

can get some idea of the untapped potential of agriculture by reading F. H. King’s fascinating 1911 book, Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan, which explains how these regions sustained enormous populations for millennia on tiny amounts of land, without mechanization, pesticides, or chemical fertilizers.

Few people today would recognize the name Norman Borlaug, but it was his research that helped kick off what has come to be known as the “Green Revolution.” An American agricultural scientist in the 1940s, Borlaug began researching high-yielding varieties of wheat in Mexico. He was tasked with using modern plant-breeding techniques, including induci

CGIAR isn’t just focused on new seeds. Its scientists have also created a smartphone app that allows farmers to use the camera on their phones to identify specific pests and diseases attacking cassava, an important cash crop in Africa. It’s also created programs for using drones and ground sensors to help farmers determine how much water and fertil

Much closer to realization is an effort to bring back the American chestnut tree. The tree, once common in the eastern United States, was all but wiped out by chestnut blight. (The blight, a fungal pathogen introduced in the early twentieth century, killed off nearly every chestnut in North America—an estimated four billion trees.) Researchers at t

Perhaps the Cook pine never wanted to leave New Caledonia. In a recent article in the journal Ecology, botanists from California Polytechnic State University reveal a novel behavior of the Cook pine — it always leans toward the equator.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Organic Program standards established in 2000 prohibit the use of GE seed or other GE inputs. Currently, organic farming is practiced by less than 2% of U.S. farmers.