Gain-of-function experiments in the lab can help researchers get ahead of viruses naturally gaining the ability to infect people in the wild.
KTSDesign/Science Photo Library via Getty Images
Growing legumes could at once provide African farmers with fertilisers and food crops. However, researchers warn this is not a one-size-fits-all solution.
Threatened by insecurity, Nigerian farmers are increasingly abandoning their land, adding to food inflation.
Photo by Kola Sulaimon/AFP via Getty Images
Smallholder rice farmers in Ghana should be supported by the government to access finance needed to adopt modern technologies for greater productivity.
There are so many milk alternatives these days, but it can be difficult to tell how beneficial they might be for our health. So we asked a dietitian to run through the main options.
Pulverized ancient bone can provide DNA to scientists for analysis.
Xin Xu Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology
Golden Rice – a controversial genetically modified product designed to combat malnutrition – has been approved as safe in the Philippines. But key questions remain unanswered.
The border closure has affected goods from other West African countries.
Wikimedia Commons
A new IPCC report has called for radical changes in food production to avoid catastrophic climate change. Rice-fish farming and mixed crops could help.
Endangered species are living happily in rice fields.
Bitterns in Rice/Matt Herring
The endangered Australasian bittern offers a way past the ‘farmers vs environmentalist’ debate in the Murray-Darling basin.
Despite being economically damaging and nearly impossible to achieve, politicians continue to cling to a policy of rice self-sufficiency.
Mazur Travel/www.shutterstock.com
Many of the crop plants that feed us waste 20 percent of their energy, especially in hot weather. Plant geneticists prove that capturing this energy could boost crop yields by up to 40 percent.
As atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise, rice plants produce fewer vitamins and other key nutrients. This could worsen hunger, malnutrition, child stunting and other diet-related health problems.
Mercury enters rice through local industrial activities and through burning coal.
David Woo
University Lecturer in Biogeography and Biodiversity; Academic Director of Oxford's MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management, University of Oxford