Growth Spurts

Years ago, boll weevils bedeviled cotton growers until a successful large-area eradication program eliminated that problem for most U.S. producers. Now, stink bugs are pestering cotton growers, costing them about 3 percent of their crop each year.
Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists in Georgia have been testing the effectiveness of using a combination of trap crops [...]

On a long winter’s night, no treat seems simpler than a big bowl of popcorn — until you start to trace the connections between traditional races of popping corns and modern commercial varieties of popcorn.
Plant geneticist Amalio Santacruz Varela — then a graduate student at Iowa State University and currently a professor and researcher at [...]

Switchgrass grown for biofuel production produced 540 percent more energy than needed to grow, harvest and process it into cellulosic ethanol, according to estimates from a large on-farm study by researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Results from the five-year study involving fields on farms in three states highlights the prairie grass’ potential as a biomass [...]