News 2019

Globe magazine , News By: Michael Keller To safeguard the long-term future of agricultural production in Switzerland, ETH and Agroscope are investigating how resistant the country's crop­ping systems are to drought. The heatwave of 2018 was yet another warning to both farmers and the public on the effects of climate change: in the future, Switzerland will see less and less rain during the summer months.

An international team * led by researchers from INRA and CEA managed to assemble the first sequence of the pea genome. This study, published on September 2, 2019 , will, in addition to increasing knowledge of this genome compared to that of other legumes, help to improve traits of interest for peas, such as disease resistance, regularity of yield and nutritional value.

Plants can tell the time, and this affects their responses to certain herbicides used in agriculture according to new research led by the University of Bristol. The study, in collaboration with Syngenta, found that plant circadian rhythms regulate the sensitivity of plants to a widely used herbicide according to the time of day.

A group of scientists has called for nutrition to be declared a national science and research priority and for the establishment of a 'trusted voice' to provide credible evidence-based nutritional information. The University of Queensland's Professor Mike Gidley , who chairs the National Committee for Nutrition established by the Australian Academy of Sciences , said nutrition was of critical importance to enable Australians to lead more productive lives.

Two of 10 new federal grants aimed at "leapfrogging" technologies to improve food security were awarded to scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. With estimates of future population exceeding 10 billion, agriculture needs radical improvements to improve yield and combat drought, flood and pests.

New research finds that irrigated farms within Wisconsin's vegetable-growing Central Sands region significantly cool the local climate compared to nearby rain-fed farms or forests. Irrigation dropped maximum temperatures by one to three degrees Fahrenheit on average while increasing minimum temperatures up to four degrees compared to unirrigated farms or forests.

Researchers at the University of Birmingham are searching for volunteers to take part in a new study to see whether eating a Mediterranean-style diet and being more physically active could improve brain function and reduce dementia risk. A Mediterraneanstyle diet is rich in fruit, vegetables, nuts and legumes, wholegrain cereals, fish and olive oil with limited intake of dairy foods, red meat and confectionary, such as sweet pastries.

The negative effects of sugary drinks have prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) to call on politicians, business leaders and society as a whole to design and implement effective ways to wean consumers off their predilection for soft drinks and to support healthier beverage choices. But what measures are most likely to reduce soft-drink consumption? In collaboration with the Cochrane Network, researchers based at TUM and LMU set out to answer this question.

A French consortium led by INRA, in collaboration with INSERM, the Universities of Lyon and Clermont Auvergne, Lyon Civil Hospitals and the Human Nutrition Research Centres (CRNH) of Rhône-Alpes and Auvergne, have now demonstrated that consuming certain lipids present naturally in dairy products (called "polar lipids") could reduce the cardiovascular risk in overweight postmenopausal women by lowering their blood levels of LDL-cholesterol ("bad" cholesterol) and triglycerides.

In an article published May 30, 2019 in the British Medical Journal , researchers from Inserm, Inra, Université Paris 13 and Cnam in the Nutritional Epidemiology Research Team (EREN) report an increased risk of cardiovascular disease in consumers of ultra-processed foods in the NutriNet-Santé cohort.

Today, scientists of the Institute of Bee Health of the University of Bern and the honeybee research association COLOSS have published an article in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports that shows a synergistic time-lag interaction between the parasitic mite Varroa destructor and neonicotinoid insecticides reducing survival of winter honeybees, Apis mellifera.

Chimpanzees have a mainly vegetarian diet, but do occasionally eat meat. Researchers at the University of Zurich have now shown for the first time that chimpanzees also eat crabs. In the rainforest of Guinea, the researchers observed how chimpanzees regularly fish for crabs. "Our study is the first evidence showing that non-human apes regularly catch and eat aquatic fauna," says Kathelijne Koops, researcher at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Zurich.

Joao Dorea, faculty member in the UW-Madison Department of Dairy Science, explains to colleague Victor Cabrera results he observed using an automated computer vision system that was developed to monitor the behavior of dairy calves. Photo by Ted Halbach/UW-Madison Department of Dairy Science The same technology that alerts a self-driving car that there's a pedestrian in the crosswalk could also warn a dairy farmer that a calf is getting sick-even if that calf is mingled among dozens of healthy ones.

Obesity is increasing more rapidly in the world's rural areas than in cities, according to a new study of global trends in body-mass index (BMI). The research analysed the height and weight data of more than 112 million adults across urban and rural areas of 200 countries and territories between 1985 and 2017.

New research using an approach called nutritional geometry sheds light on giant panda evolution, and their unusual transition from carnivorous ancestry to extreme specialised herbivory. Giant pandas are extremely specialised herbivores that feed almost exclusively on highly fibrous bamboo, despite descending from primarily flesh-eating carnivores.

University of Sydney researchers have examined whether there are any ongoing ramifications or potential side-effects from long-term high protein intake or from consuming certain types of amino acids. Amino acids have long been touted by the fitness and bodybuilding communities for their muscle building benefits.

University of Queensland researchers are investigating the use of maggots, locusts and other alternative proteins in a range of specialty foods. University of Queensland Meat Science Professor Dr Louwrens Hoffman said conventional livestock industries would not be able to meet worldwide demand for meat, and alternatives were needed to replace or complement traditional protein sources.

Sweeping changes designed to make the food more nutritious in a federal assistance program for low-income families reduced the risk for obesity for 4-year-olds who had been on the program since birth, according to new research. The study of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, or WIC, was conducted by researchers from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health , Tulane University and Los Angeles-based PHFE WIC, the nation's largest local WIC agency and a program of Heluna Health.

Machine learning can reveal optimal growing conditions to maximize taste and other features. MIT researchers developed a machine learning system that has identified the ideal growing conditions for basil, reports Chase Purdy for Quartz .

Sticker shock may not have been the only force driving the decline in soda consumption in Berkeley after residents voted to enact the nation's first soda tax in November 2014. The election, and the vigorous campaigning around the tax that led up to the vote, also may have played a major role in changing habits, shows a new study by economists at the University of California, Berkeley.