planting material News
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Floating vegetative mats may help clean fishery wastewater
The feasibility of using floating vegetation to remove nutrients from fishery wastewater is being tested by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists. The researchers' long-term goal is to develop a system to treat the wastewater, return it to ponds for reuse, and use the nutrients to produce biomass or plant material. The floating mats act as filters to remove the nutrients from the water. ...
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EPA issues stop sale order to dupont on sale and distribution of imprelis herbicide
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today issued an order to E.I. DuPont de Nemours (DuPont) directing the company to immediately halt the sale, use or distribution of Imprelis, an herbicide marketed to control weeds that has been reported to be harming a large number of trees, including Norway spruce and white pine. The order, issued under the Federal Insecticide, ...
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FAO urges countries to step up action against destructive banana disease
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is warning countries to step up monitoring, reporting and prevention of one of the world’s most destructive banana diseases, Fusarium wilt, which recently spread from Asia to Africa and the Middle East, and which has the potential to affect countries in Latin America. The TR4 race of the disease, which is also known as ...
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Plant Genebanking: Investing Seeds for the Future
For many years, the agricultural sector has worked on the continuous development of sustainable practices to provide sufficient food and medicine supply for a growing population. Among the many challenges they aim to resolve are the issues inflicted by plant disease outbreaks and upsurge, pests, and climate change. The conservation and increase of diversity of plant species are recognized ...
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Global programme seeks to contain serious threat to the world’s bananas
A fungus poses major risks to the world's banana production and could cause vast commercial losses and even greater damage to the livelihoods of the 400 million people who rely on the world's most traded fruit as a staple food or source of income. FAO and its partners Bioversity International, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture and the World Banana Forum have launched a global ...
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Soil nitrogen increased through greater plant biodiversity
Increased plant biodiversity improves grassland soil quality by boosting its nitrogen levels, even in the absence of nitrogen-fixing plants, recent research has found. Previous research has shown that grasslands with higher biodiversity had higher levels of carbon and nitrogen. However, in the case of nitrogen it has been suggested that this was purely a result of increased numbers of ...
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Potentially harmful effects of nanomaterials on soybean crops
A new study has examined contamination of fully grown soybean plants by two nanomaterials – nano-cerium oxide and nano-zinc oxide. The results could be concerning, as they indicate that the nanomaterials are absorbed by plants, possibly affecting growth, yield, and the fixation of nitrogen in soil, an important ecosytem service. With the rapid expansion of nanotechnology, there is concern ...
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Africa and India cultivate agricultural research ties
Africa and India are gearing up to further enhance cooperation in agricultural science, technology and innovation, and move beyond dialogue to a range of practical options from a virtual biotech platform to agribusiness centres, seed investments and even joint donor-aided projects. Willy Tonui, chief executive officer of Kenya’s National Biosafety Authority, said that studying how India ...
By SciDev.Net
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