It takes for instance 2. 700 liters of water to produce 1 kilo of cereals in Morocco
#Incentives needed to improve grain markets in Indiaeven after the agricultural reforms of 2002-03 for wheat rice
and pearl millet farmers in India grain markets are still pretty sticky. Two University of Illinois economists analyzed infrastructure of interstate trade for food-grain crops in three Indian states
and found that grain farmers are unable to cash in on India's market reforms and take advantage of a price difference between two or more markets.
We wanted to see if there was more integration in the markets since the 2002 reforms said Kathy Baylis.
because even if farmers could store their grain for six months or so they wouldn't be able to sell it then.
Baylis explained that prior to the reforms of the early 2000s it was difficult in India to transport grain across state lines.
and also expanded the number of people who could purchase and trade grain. Farmers used to have to go through a long arduous process to become certified.
Some people may think of this as only an engineering problem Baylis said where we just need to develop a really good place for them to store the grain.
But if there isn't an incentive to store grain to sell later and get a better price the extra storage won't help farm income.
what's happening in the city and sell their grain two or three months after harvest.
The study from Rice university and Duke university found that making a few changes to homework assignments in an upper-level undergraduate engineering course at Rice led to improved scores on exams.
The findings by a team from Rice's Center for Digital Learning and Scholarship and Duke's Department of psychology and Neuroscience demonstrate how technology
The results exceeded everyone's expectations said Rice co-author Richard Baraniuk the instructor of the upper-level signals
whether an intervention had a significant effect said Baraniuk the Victor E. Cameron Professor of Engineering in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and director of Rice's RDLS.
Rice research engineer J. P. Slavinsky was a co-author. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Rice university.
The tags which are about the size of a kernel of corn would appear in various color codes on packaging.
and comparing results from 1700 published assessments of the response that climate change will have on the yields of rice maize and wheat.
and the popcorn was prepared with canola oil that has saturated less fat and no trans-fat compared to the coconut oil bars previously used Overall the healthier items accounted for 9. 2%of total sales a clear indication of demand for these items.
Sales of the modified nacho's and popcorn increased by 8%despite the relatively healthier nature of the foods.
And thanks to Rice the how is becoming clearer. Biophysicists at Rice used the miniscule machine--a protease called an Ftsh-AAA hexameric peptidase--as a model to test calculations that combine genetic and structural data.
Their goal is to solve one of the most compelling mysteries in biology: how proteins perform the regulatory mechanisms in cells upon
The Rice team of biological physicist Josã Onuchic and postdoctoral researchers Biman Jana and Faruck Morcos published a new paper on the work this month for a special issue of the Royal Society
The special issue edited by Rice biophysicist Peter Wolynes and Ruth Nussinov a researcher at the National Cancer Institute in Frederick Md. and a professor at the Sackler School of medicine at Tel aviv University pulls together current thinking on how an explosion of data combined with ever more powerful computers is bringing about a second
Ultimately understanding these machines will help researchers design drugs to treat diseases like cancer the focus of Rice's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics.
and the discovery via DCA of likely couplings in the genetic source of the proteins the Rice team found evidence to support the hypothesis of a paddling mechanism in the molecule that Morcos described as a collapse of the two rings once trash found its way inside.
For example the systems biology approach could be applied in research to develop sweeter citrus fruit disease-resistant rice or drought-resistant trees.
The researchers found that western corn rootworm beetles that are already resistant to crop rotation are in some cases also less vulnerable to RNAI.
The western corn rootworm will likely be one of the first crop pests to be targeted with RNAI technology said Manfredo Seufferheld a former University of Illinois crop sciences professor who led the study with crop sciences graduate student Chia
Controlling the western corn rootworm costs growers more than $1 billion a year in the U s. Current methods for keeping the bug in check--crop rotation
and genetically modified corn--face challenges from populations of resistant western corn rootworms at various locations across the Corn belt Spencer said.
Seufferheld and his colleagues recently discovered an important factor that helps rootworms overcome crop rotation the practice of alternately planting soybeans and corn in the same field year to year.
They found that microbes in the guts of rotation-resistant rootworms help those beetles that stray into soybean fields survive on soybean leaves for a few days--just long enough for the females to lay their eggs in soil that will be planted in corn the following year.
And by the way would it also consider putting healthier ingredients in big sellers like nachos and popcorn?
Additionally boosters substituted canola oil for coconut oil bars in the popcorn and swapped the cheese in the nachos eliminating trans fat from the products.
And no one noticed the healthier changes to the popcorn and nachos which continued to sell briskly.
and then eat it as humans eat corn on the cob. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Forschungsverbund Berlin e. V. FVB.
Recent studies show that such a flatulogenic diet (for example bread cereals and pastries made of whole wheat
and beans soy beans corn peas Brussels'sprouts cauliflower broccoli cabbage celery onions leek garlic artichokes figs peaches grapes and prunes) induces profound changes
in the microbiota of IBS patients thus prolonging and increasing the symptoms However at the same time the gut microbiota of healthy subjects remained stable
In the last decades bigger and bigger stretches of land have been used for wheat growing which takes away the unique character of this landscape states Michalzik.
Vertimass anticipates that the ORNL technology will be in demand by existing corn-based ethanol production plants as well as new refineries coming online that aim to convert non-food crops such as switchgrass
poplar wood and corn stover into biofuels. The technology could also supply a source of renewable jet fuel required by recent European union aviation emission regulations.
and model the behavior of grain boundaries when subjected to a mechanical stress. The findings which have just been published in Nature go well beyond the scope of the geosciences:
They have shown that the crystal lattice of the grain boundaries exhibits highly specific defects known as'disclinations
When mechanical stress is applied the disclinations enable the grain boundaries to move thus allowing olivine to deform in any direction.
The scientists intend to continue their research into the structure of grain boundaries not only in other minerals but also in other solids such as metals.
or more of the world's cereal grain which some advocate would be used better to feed people directly.
A cow produces up to 70 kg of manure per day providing enough fertilizer in a year for one hectare of wheat equivalent to 128 kg of synthetic nitrogen that might
Nematodes pose a growing threat to rice production in Asia for example. Our findings also provide the industry with perspectives to develop a generation of new pesticides against nematodes.
and the amount of irrigation needed to produce a given weight of grain. Researchers begin by using satellite derived evapotranspiration estimates at thermal infrared bands to deduce the amount of moisture being transpired by plants.
The model can provide daily estimates of grain weights as well as water and fertilizer needs within a growing period.
The researchers identified three distinct dietary patterns interpreted as prudent (vegetables fruits oils water as a beverage whole grain cereals poultry fibre rich bread) Western
and fat and they rely increasingly on a short list of major food crops like wheat maize
The research reveals that the crops now predominant in diets around the world include several that were already quite important a half-century ago--such as wheat rice maize and potato.
Wheat is a major staple in 97.4 percent of countries and rice in 90.8 percent; soybean has become significant to 74.3 percent of countries.
In contrast many crops of considerable regional importance--including cereals like sorghum millets and rye as well as root crops such as sweet potato cassava and yam--have lost ground.
Many other locally significant grain and vegetable crops--for which globally comparable data are not available--have suffered the same fate.
In East and Southeast asia several major foods--like wheat and potato--have gained importance alongside longstanding staples like rice Khoury noted.
But hopeful trends are also apparent as in Northern europe where evidence suggests that consumers are tending to buy more cereals and vegetables and less meat oil and sugar.
and managing insect resistance to corn and cotton plants genetically engineered to produce proteins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt).
In 2013 Bt corn and Bt cotton were planted on 187 million acres worldwide and accounted for 75%of all cotton
and 76%of all corn grown in the U s. Recognizing that resistance is not all
and use them to classify 13 cases of resistance to five Bt toxins in transgenic corn
and cotton based on monitoring data from five continents for nine major pest species. Emerging resistance of the western corn rootworm to Bt corn exemplifies the urgent need for well-defined
The cost of this insidious beetle to U s. corn growers has been estimated at one billion dollars annually.
and cut back on soil insecticides U s. farmers began planting Bt corn that kills rootworms. The first evidence of rootworm resistance to Bt corn was discovered in Iowa in 2009 said Dr. Bruce Tabashnik the study's lead author
and head of the entomology department at the University of Arizona. Nearly five years later the resistance has spread
or milk allergies but my daughter is allergic to wheat cashews eggs and almonds. What can you do about that?'
and almost 40%of that is corn most of it used for animal feed. A small proportion of that acreage produces foods that people eat such apples
%The vegetable crops grown in the largest amount are starchy products such as potatoes and corn.
and high nitrogen-fixing legume that can be intercropped with corn cotton and other crops in many countries including the U s. Zhang said.
#Climate change puts wheat crops at risk of diseasethere is a risk that severity of epidemics of some wheat diseases may increase within the next ten to twenty years due to the impacts of climate change
The researchers carried out a survey in China to establish a link between weather and the severity of epidemics of fusarium ear blight on the wheat crops.
Wheat one of the world's most important crops for human food is milled for use in bread breakfast cereals cakes pizzas confectionery soups and many other foodstuffs.
Fusarium ear blight is a serious disease affecting wheat across many areas of the world.
During severe epidemics wheat crop losses can be as much as sixty per cent. These losses can become larger as under certain conditions the fusarium pathogen produces toxic chemicals known as mycotoxins.
The levels of mycotoxins present in the grain may render it unsuitable for either human
We know that the weather plays a big part in the development of the disease on the wheat crops--the incidence of the disease is determined by temperature and the occurrence of wet weather at the flowering or anthesis of the wheat crops.
When the weather-based model developed at Rothamsted Research was used to predict how climate change may affect the wheat crops it was predicted that wheat flowering dates will generally be earlier
and the incidence of the ear blight disease on the wheat crops will substantially increase.
The research suggests that climate change will increase the risk of serious ear blight epidemics on winter wheat in Central China by the middle of this century (2020-2050.
Similar conclusions were reached about impacts of climate change on wheat in the UK where climate change models are predicting warmer wetter winters for the country.
This suggests that the UK too will suffer a greater incidence of fusarium ear blight on wheat crops--greatly affecting one of our biggest staple crops.
because it is capable of increasing cereal productivity and improving soil structure. Once it has been harvested rapeseed can be used as a biofuel
and produce more milk when they eat energy-rich diets that include grain supplements or improved forages.
when it comes to producing bioethanol from plant parts like corn or sugar canes. Corn cubs and sugar canes are in fact plant parts that can also be used directly as food so there is a great public resistance to accept producing this kind of bioethanol.
A big challenge is therefore to become able to produce bioethanol from plant parts which cannot be used for food.
Cellulose is found everywhere in nature in rich quantities for example in the stems of the corn plant.
If we can produce bioethanol from the corn stems and keep the corn cubs for food we have come a long way says Per Morgen professor at the Institute of Physics Chemistry and Pharmacy University of Southern Denmark.
Cellulose is organized in long chains in the plant's cell walls and they are hard to break down.
and it is made on the basis of rice husks. My Iraqi colleagues have made the acid from treated rice husk.
The worldwide production of rice generates enormous amounts of rice husk and ashes from burning the husk so this material is cheap and easy to get hold of he says.
It's all about the acidthe ashes from burnt rice husks have a high content of silicate
and this is the important compound in the production of the new acid. The scientists paired silicate particles with chlorosulfonic acid and this made the acid molecules attach themselves to the silicate compounds.
Making the new acid3 grams of ash from burned rice husk were mixed with 100 ml of caustic soda (Naoh) in a plastic container.
of S. polyrhiza and analyzed it in comparison to several other plants including rice and tomatoes.
That's 27 percent fewer than Arabidopsis thaliana--which until recently was believed to be the smallest plant genome--and nearly half as many as rice plants.
and it can be converted to ethanol the way corn is converted currently to ethanol fuel but oils would have greater energy than ethanol.
After the coatings dried they were incorporated into the topsoil layer of the alluvial soils using tillage equipment. â#oebecause the flooding occurred during the non-growing season for corn
Illinois agricultural statistics recorded the harvest of 4500 fewer acres of corn and 6500 fewer acres of soybeans in Alexander County in 2011.
Olson cautioned that had winter wheat been planted outside the levees in the fall of 2010 the wheat crop would have drowned. â#oeillinois farmers are aware of the flooding potential especially in the winter
and early spring so they donâ##t plant winter wheat on unprotected bottomlandsâ#he said. â#oeconsequently there was no crop loss outside the levees in April and May of 2011.
Theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and his Rice colleagues found through exhaustive analysis that those who wish to control the chirality of nanotubes--the characteristic that determines their electrical properties--would be wise to look at other aspects of their growth.
In the study by Yakobson research scientist Evgeni Penev and postdoctoral researcher Vasilli Artyukhov that was published recently by the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano the Rice researchers found that the elastic energy landscapes
To get a clear picture of how caps are related to nanotube chirality the Rice group embarked upon a detailed two-year census of the 4500 possible cap formations for nanotubes of just two diameters 0. 8
and administered by Rice's Ken Kennedy Institute for Information technology and the NSF-supported Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) supercomputer.
Yakobson is Rice's Karl F. Hasselmann Professor of Mechanical engineering and Materials Science a professor of chemistry and a member of the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology.
One possible source is rice husks: They're unfit for human food produced by the millions of tons and 20 percent silicon dioxide by weight.
Carbohydrates--mainly cereals sugars potatoes and other tubers--and vegetable oils produced efficiently by large-scale agriculture
Zimmerer is already applying this approach to other crops such as corn which also includes many unique types with geographic dynamics being a key to adaptation and sustainability.
#Rice seed treatments effective, worth investment: Studywhen every extra expense makes a difference in profitability farmers often wonder which management decisions are worth the extra cost.
Researchers at Mississippi State university have been evaluating the effectiveness of rice seed treatments to find out what producers can expect from the extra investment.
After testing scores of samples taken from rice fields across the state MSU scientists found that seed treatments are effective in managing the crop's most troublesome insect pests.
Our research has shown that rice grown with a seed treatment typically yields from 8 to 12 bushels more per acre than untreated rice.
The main reason for that yield increase is rice water weevil control. Gore said seed treatments are effective in both conventional rice varieties and hybrids.
Although they do not provide 100 percent control of rice water weevil seed treatments do provide significant benefits in rice he said.
Because control is not absolute a foliar insecticide application may be necessary to maximize control in some situations.
and count the rice water weevil larvae. An infestation of one larva per core will result in about a 1 percent yield loss Gore said.
Gore said that seed treatments provide other benefits to rice producers too. Seed treatments provide good control against a whole complex of other rice pests he said.
Seed treatments help manage chinch bugs grape colapsis thrips and soil insects such as wire worms and white grubs and get the plants off to a good healthy start.
Performance under flood Seed treatments for row crops such as corn cotton or soybean target early-season pests that are in the soil
But rice seed treatments are different. We're targeting primarily rice water weevils and they only move into the field
when producers establish the permanent flood about three to six weeks after planting Gore said.
So seed treatments for rice have to last longer than in other crops because they are sitting in the field a lot longer.
Because rice is grown in aquatic or semiaquatic environments we needed to find out how different water management practices might impact the seed treatments'performance he said.
Adams tested zero one and two flushes with water across a rice field to check the efficacy of three different seed treatments.
Seed treatment rates Gore and Adams also tested the efficacy of seed treatment rates in hybrid rice.
Hybrid rice varieties are grown at 20 to 25 pounds of seed per acre versus 75 to 85 pounds with conventional varieties Gore said.
Currently labeled rates for hybrid rice production are said correct Gore. The management practice that showed significant improvement in rice water weevil control beyond the seed treatment was a foliar overspray with a pyrethroid on hybrid rice Gore said.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Mississippi State university Office of Agricultural Communications.
But a series of tests at Rice showed the wet-spun carbon nanotube fiber still handily beat copper carrying up to four times as much current as a copper wire of the same mass.
Rice researchers broke the fibers in different conditions--air argon nitrogen and a vacuum--to see how well they handled high current.
The analysis led by Rice professors Junichiro Kono and Matteo Pasquali appeared online this week in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.
and his colleagues including lead author Xuan Wang a postdoctoral researcher at Rice to quantify the fiber's capabilities.
A test rig designed by the Kono Lab at Rice allowed nanofiber and copper cables of equivalent mass to be compared.
The paper's co-authors are Rice alumnus Natnael Behabtu and graduate students Colin Young and Dmitri Tsentalovich.
#Environmental impact of Ontario corn production assessedresearchers at the University of Guelph examined the energy use
and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with corn production in Ontario. Their findings are published today in the Agricultural Institute of Canada's (AIC) Canadian Journal of Soil science.
The study reports estimated county-level energy and GHG intensity of grain corn stover and cob production in Ontario from 2006-2011.
According to the paper's authors most of the energy used during corn production comes from the use of natural gas
and electricity during grain drying; the production and application of nitrogen fertilizers (which are associated also with GHG emissions;
Corn is a major economic crop in North america and the renewable fuels developed from corn production are used frequently to mitigate the GHG emissions from fossil fuel use explained Susantha Jayasundara lead author of the paper.
Assessing the GHG and energy intensity of corn production helps identify opportunities for efficiency and aids in improving the GHG mitigation potential of corn-derived renewable fuels continued Jayasundara.
The authors note that reducing GHG intensity and improving energy efficiency during corn production can be achieved through the use of field-drying corn hybrids reduced tillage and diminished nitrogen inputs.
The article Energy and Greenhouse Gas Intensity of Corn (Zea mays L.)in Ontario: A regional assessment by Susantha Jayasundara Claudia Wagner-Riddle Goretty Dias and Kumudinie Kariyapperuma is available Open Access in the Canadian Journal of Soil science.
Given the environmental and economic benefits of renewable fuels and the proliferation of their use in Canada it is important to more fully understand the environmental impacts of their associated agricultural production added Serge Buy CEO of AIC.
Essential studies such as this are of national significance and are certainly evidence of the need for targeted federal investments in agricultural science.
and watch a movie with a giant bowl of buttery popcorn. Maybe you're a student stressed about a big exam
and corn or biodiesel from rapeseed and palm oil are in direct competition with food for arable land and water.
#Wheat: Genetic discovery to keep crops disease-freeaccording to John Curtin Distinguished Professor Richard Oliver Director of the Australian Centre for Necrotrophic Fungal Pathogens (ACNFP) at Curtin
farmers can lose more than 0. 35 tonnes per hectare in wheat yields to Yellow Spot even after applying fungicide.
Funded by the Grains Research & development Corporation Professor Oliver and his team in conjunction with independent research provider Kalyx Australia have demonstrated that by taking away disease-sensitivity genes from the wheat germplasm
pathogens find it difficult to latch onto wheat and cause damage. Our finding will help breeders produce crops in
Using large wheat variety trials provided by Kalyx Australia the team looked at yield loss of different cultivars (plants chosen for breeding because of desirable characteristics)
Results from the diagnostic developed by the lab of Rice bioengineer Rebecca Richards-Kortum are read from a paper strip that resembles a pregnancy test.
and morbidity said Richards-Kortum director of the Rice 360ë: Institute for Global Health Technologies.
Lead author Zachary Crannell a graduate student based at Rice's Bioscience Research Collaborative said the disease usually transmitted through drinking water accounts for 20 percent of childhood diarrheal deaths in developing countries.
The Rice test depends on recent developments in a recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) technique that gives similar gold standard results to PCR
In Rice's experiments samples were prepared with a commercial chemical kit that releases all the DNA and RNA in the small amount of stool tested.
While current tests might catch the disease in samples with thousands of the pathogens the Rice technique detects the presence of very few--even one--parasite in a sample.
#RNA sequencing of 750-year-old barley virus sheds new light on the Crusadesscientists have sequenced for the first time an ancient RNA genome--of a barley virus once believed to be only 150 years old--pushing its origin
and sequenced the RNA genome of Barley Stripe Mosaic virus (BSMV) in a 750-year-old barley grain found at a site near the River Nile in modern-day Egypt.
However in extremely dry conditions such as those at the site in Qasr Ibrim in Lower Nubia where the barley was found RNA can be preserved better
Using the new medieval RNA to calibrate estimates of the rate of mutations the researchers were able to trace the evolution of the Barley Stripe Mosaic virus to a probable origin of around 2000 years ago but potentially much further back to the domestication
of barley in the Near East around 11000 years ago. BSMV is transmitted through seed-to-seed contact
so it is likely to originally have been transferred from the wild grass population to an early cultivated form of barley
The medieval RNA from Qasr Ibrim gives us a vital clue to unlock the real age of the Barley Stripe Mosaic virus.
This made contact with cultivated barley and wild grass more likely providing opportunities for the virus to'jump'into the crop.
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