As a young Marine stationed in South Carolina in 1981, Frank Roberts recognized that the state’s low country was ideal for oyster farming. His family harvested oysters in the Chesapeake Bay and Long Island Sound, and he had a hunch it would work in South Carolina too.

Roberts eventually started his own oyster farm in South Carolina — making a key contribution to a growing nationwide aquaculture trend worth $1.3 billion (2014 figure), with some help from NOAA.  

Nitrogen can present a dilemma for farmers and land managers.

Internationally subsidised agricultural insurance is intended to protect farmers in developing countries from the effects of climate change. However, it can also lead to undesirable ecological and social side effects, as UFZ researchers and their US colleagues at the University of Oregon have explained in a review article in the latest issue of Global Environmental Change. The article also contains recommendations for improved insurance schemes which in future should also take account of ecological and social aspects in addition to economic issues.

New research from the University of Minnesota drills down to the county-level impact of corn production.

To find out what works best for reestablishing tropical dry forests, the researchers planted seedlings of 32 native tree species in degraded soil or degraded soil amended with sand, rice hulls, rice hull ash or hydrogel.

An international collaboration involving the Earlham Institute, Norwich, UK, and the Iwate Biotechnology Research Centre, Japan, has for the first time provided a genome sequence for the white Guinea yam, a staple crop with huge economic and cultural significance on the African continent and a lifeline for millions of people.

Fires that span across the Northern Territory and Western Australia appear to have broken out in areas that have already been burned in previous fires.  Areas that sport "burn scars", those areas that are a darker, almost red-brown color, are surrounded by fires that are anywhere from a few hours old to 7 days old.  The areas that are seven days old can be attributed to fires that spread but areas that are just a few hours old may be fires that have presumably been put out only to have them break out again.  The Northern Territory of Australia experienced a higher than normal amount of rain this past season allowing the plants and trees that fuel fires to become even more overgrown and subject to becoming fire fodder.

Within Danish cattle breeding the semen of one breeding bull is used to inseminate a lot of cows. Due to the many inseminations one bull can thus father thousands of calves. Therefore, it is vital to determine whether breeding bulls carry hereditary diseases.

A partnership between QUT, the NSW Government and farmers could lead to the eventual eradication of the highly invasive African lovegrass which is threatening pastures and native grasslands Australia-wide.

Two new studies of green algae — the scourge of swimming pool owners and freshwater ponds — have revealed new insights into how these organisms siphon carbon dioxide from the air for use in photosynthesis, a key factor in their ability to grow so quickly. Understanding this process may someday help researchers improve the growth rate of crops such as wheat and rice.