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A letter to Science, co-authored by 17 conservation and climate researchers, argues that carbon credits can be a valuable tool for climate change mitigation and forest conservation, but their success depends on improving their credibility.The co-authors are from the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Exeter, Bangor, São Paulo, North Carolina, VU Am…

Avocados (Persea americana) are not typically considered a food security crop, however, in rural regions in South America, avocados are an important part of the local diet and are grown by small-scale farmers, providing both a source of nutrients and income for local communities. A major obstacle preventing farmers supplying international markets …

Mapping Hong Kong’s vegetation fire historyNew ‘LTS fire pipeline’ reveals unprecedented detail A study by PhD student Aland Chan and colleagues at the Conservation Research Institute has developed a new way of mapping and representing fire occurrence in natural vegetation in Hong Kong, China, forging the basis for a new monitoring system that fir…

The Leverhulme Trust have awarded Crop Science Centre scientists a grant for developing technology capable of overcoming the resistance of crop-damaging nematode worms to genetic alteration. This technology will be similar to the COVID-19 vaccine, where a special molecule is wrapped in a fatty layer to protect it and make it easier to deliver. Nema…

Subset of resistant-crop growers needed for social optimumFarmers’ behaviour is integral to crop disease control, but has received surprisingly little attention from researchers until recently - an individual farmer makes decisions that affect not only their own farming practice, but can also affect that of their neighbours.In earlier behavioural m…

Redirect once published on cam.ac.ukResearchers have discovered how a South African daisy makes fake lady flies on its petals to trick male flies into pollinating it.A male fly approaches a flower, lands on top of what he thinks is a female fly, and jiggles around. He’s trying to mate, but it isn’t quite working. He has another go. Eventually he gi…

Understanding fire risk on a global scale is the challenge taken up by 4C PhD students Jovana Knezevic and Onkar Gulati, whose solution ‘FireSight’ recently won the Lucy Cavendish LucEnt Challenge, and was named runner up in the Cambridge Zero Climate Challenge.FireSight uses satellite remote sensing data analysed using machine learning to understa…

If crop science continues to advance at the pace it has over the last two decades, we hope secure, sustainable and affordable food could be only a further decade away. This is according to a research review by scientists at the Crop Science Centre, which has summarised the last ten years of dramatic advances on the topic of how legumes use benefici…

Tip of the Apex: 100 important questions for future Plant ScientistsUpdated list shows striking prominence of climate change and its effects.The Department’s Dr Cerian Webb has contributed to a study to identify 100 important questions facing plant science research, published today in New Phyologist (here and here)The project collected over 600 que…

Virus infection helps make tomato plants more successful fathersGene flow boost may aid development of virus-susceptible plant populationsDr Alexandra Murphy and her colleagues in the Virology and Molecular Plant Pathology group have discovered that bumblebees can preferentially boost the transfer of male genes in virus-infected tomato plants, whic…

Predicting threats to food securityHow mathematical modelling can prevent crop devastation and preserve livelihoods

C4 plants slower than C3 plants to engage photosynthesis as light levels increasePhotosynthesis is the fundamental basis of life on land – plants use the process to convert light and carbon dioxide into energy for their growth, and produce oxygen as a byproduct. Some plants, mostly in tropical and subtropical regions, have evolved a more efficient …

Standardised, low-cost, widely-applicable protocol eliminates common methodological error and improves data quality and reproducibility.A new protocol for monitoring water stress in pot-grown plants has been develop by Daniel Ginzburg, PhD student and scientist in the department and at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California. T…

A Cambridge-led consortium has received US$35m (£28m) over five years to develop sustainable solutions to increasing the yields of small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, without the need for costly and polluting inorganic fertilisers.The grant, from Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations (Gates Ag One), will enable researchers led by the…

Precision agriculture enables farmers to closely monitor the status of their crops (such as nutrients, pests and diseases, and water stress) in real time, and use that information to apply just the right amount of management input in the right place to ensure the plant grows optimally. Such practices help ensure resources are not wasted, and the en…