Search

With every exhalation, we release carbon dioxide ([CO.sub.2]) into the atmosphere. In the wondrous biological process of photosynthesis, plants use the sun's energy to convert this gas to the food [...]

Codling moth control program in the Northwest shows coordinated areawide treatments are environment-friendly and effective. Codling moth, the most destructive pome fruit pest, worldwide, is finally meeting its match. That [...]

In 1992, scientists with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, universities, state departments of agriculture, and industry adopted a national 5-year plan of research and action against the silverleaf whitefly, Bemisia [...]

For more than three decades, this collaborative effort has helped relatively small specialty crops deliver big economic and nutritional payoffs to farmers and consumers. Agricultural chemical producers readily test and [...]

When the little tractor on the computer screen crawled from the bluish-green region into the reddish-orange sector, Tim Badger watched the numbers in the column measuring the trail of pink [...]

Why would I want to work with all the people who are making my life miserable?' 'I'm not being paid to give attention to other agencies' concerns.' 'Farmers won't participate.' [...]

One day your dinner plate may be filled with bright, speckled beans, licorice-flavored avocado slices, and spicy pickled cabbage. A Halloween trick? No, a tasty treat. These and many other [...]

Fruit growers back new approach to codling moth control. Pest control is a major imperative in fruit production. Commercial apple and pear growers, for example, begin to lose money when [...]

It's the largest experiment ever to measure C[O.sub.2] effect. At the U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory in Phoenix, Arizona, the future is now! To see how crops will grow when carbon [...]

Amid the priceless artifacts at the Egyptian Museum in Torino, Italy, Steve Sheppard prepared to remove pieces of 3,000-year-old honey bees imbedded in beeswax. The museum curators were anxious - [...]

The search intensifies for safe, effective alternatives. Cheap, fast, and easy to use, methyl bromide has been 'a chemical for all reasons.' Exterminators use it to protect your home from [...]

On heavily grazed grass upland areas near Mazatan, Mexico, ARS and CIDESON scientists use a rainfall simulator to conduct research and collect data on potential erosion problems. (94-92) The recently [...]

The bee had landed on the ground, ready to walk into its nest in the soil, when Suzanne Batra reached for it, gently taking hold of it between her fingers. [...]

'To rule the mountain is to rule the river.' The one who penned this ancient Chinese proverb knew something about watersheds--those webs of streams, creeks, and rivers fed by rain [...]

They are not much larger than the head of a pin. Yet these flat, white bugs have so deeply wounded agriculture in the Southwest and Florida that the mere thought [...]

The Great Plains is a unique and wondrous ecosystem...harsh, yet productive...slow, but inexorable in its rate of change...unpredictable, except in its changeability. So believes Jan van Schilfgaarde, the Agricultural Research [...]

Fertilizer, seeding rates, even salinity measurements are guided by computers linked to a space-based global positioning system. High above the Earth hovers a fleet of satellites that enables all sorts [...]

Beef Research in Big Sky Country Indian tribes lived for thousands of years on this land. Unimpeded by fences, buffalo grazed millions of acres in seasonal migrations, moving on to [...]

Naturally occurring organisms may offer effective alternatives to standard treatments. Apples and pears are big business for both large and small fruit growers in the Pacific Northwest. Washington, Oregon, and [...]

How do some plants manage to survive - and even thrive - on parched deserts and on arid and semiarid rangelands? Baffled scientists have, for decades, hoped to learn how [...]

Nationwide, 100,000 farmers and agribusiness people now rely on information they receive directly from satellites to better plan the planting, growing, harvesting, and even marketing of their crops. They use [...]

An insect that loves to eat leafy spurge, a range weed now infesting 2-1/2 million acres on the Northern Plains, may bring some relief to farmers and ranchers. The weed, [...]

Lesquerella has the potential to become the nation's newest commercial crop, with U.S. farmers growing this oil-bearing plant as early as 1997. It's not impossible for such a shift to [...]

Cattle ranchers and sheep producers - their disputes are the heart of Old West legends and more than a few Hollywood epics. Now research has confirmed the foolishness of their [...]

Computer Programs Help the Environment Computer programs developed by Agricultural Research Service scientists are now striving to keep the environment clean while helping farmers and ranchers in getting better returns [...]

A new computer model may soon help farmers and others better understand how their decisions on tillage method, timing and type of irrigation, pesticide and fertilizer applications, and selection of [...]

Fruit disorders in apples and pears once cost the industry several millions of dollars in losses annually. Washington State's rural areas were especially hard hit. Today, those orchards produce nearly […]

Commercial freeze-dried bacteria cause ice to form in these pear pests. Scientists are exploring the possible use of the Pseudomonas syringae bacterium, freeze-dried, to control insects pests on pears. Operators [...]

Information picked up by airplanes and satellites will someday help farm operators maintain healthy, high-yielding crops, with minimum use of irrigation water, fertilizer, and pesticides. An Agricultural Research Service project [...]

When was the last time you called a radio or television station or wrote to a newspaper to let them know you didn't agree with an issue or viewpoint? Don't [...]

Most of California's rural economy relies on agricultural production, an $18 billion industry annually. One in 10 California residents is employed in agriculture, from farm to market. Income from tree [...]

Scientists try salad oil to decontaminate groundwater. A novel idea is under study in Colorado: using vegetable oils to clean groundwater contaminated with nitrogen fertilizers. One approach might be to [...]

A slimy green alien weed is clogging waterways and boat propellers. A nuisance to boating enthusiasts, it's a real threat to California's irrigation water delivery systems. If the weed continues [...]

Thanks to advances in plant breeding, vernonia is closer to becoming a viable new crop for U.S. farmers, providing them additional income and consumers new and improved paints, varnishes, and [...]

Millions of acres of highly erodible land that farmers agreed to cover with grass or trees and remove from production will soon reach the ends of their 10-year contracts. Annual [...]

Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a science than a heap of stones is a house,' said Jules Henri Poincare (1854-1912) writing in [...]

An inexpensive white powder can help save valuable topsoil and stem water pollution. Agricultural Research Service scientists say the powder--called polyacrylamide (PAM)--prevents irrigation water from carrying away soil particles as [...]

Many scientists and environmentalists expect the level of carbon dioxide ([CO.sub.2]) in the atmosphere to double during the next 50 years. However, they don't know how extra [CO.sub.2] will alter [...]

Research under way on western rangeland could eventually lead to control of millions of Mormon crickets and grasshoppers in Idaho and Montana. A one-celled microbe that infects and kills the [...]

Remember Tom Sawyer's scheme to get out of white-washing his aunt's fence? Though he despised the assignment. the youna manipulator set to work on the fence with gusto stepping back [...]

Thwarting One of Cotton's Nemeses There's not much good to be said for the pink bollworm, cotton's most destructive pest, except that it is being controlled to cut crop damage. [...]

Cutting Energy Costs for Irrigation A computer program cut power consumption by irrigation pumps up to 20 percent--a savings that translates into more efficient food production and significant energy conservation. [...]

Every summer, both people and livestock face pesky mosquitoes, gnats, and other biting flies. The resultant itching and discomfort come from the immune system reacting to proteins in the insects' [...]

'Farmers have learned at our field days that the time-honored practice of growing winter wheat, then letting land remain fallow, or cropless, is a waste of precious moisture and cuts [...]

Cotton ginners are beginning to face opposition from prospective neighbors when they undertake construction of new gins to remove valuable fibers from cotton seed. But, Agricultural Research Service engineers at [...]

Here's a surprisingly simple and practical tactic. If honey bees would build smaller cells - the six-sided cubbyholes that are a hive's basic architectural units - these beneficial insects might [...]

There's an axiom in the weed control business: The more closely related weeds are to the crops they infest, the harder it is to stop them. That's because growing conditions [...]

Inexpensive traps developed at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Laboratory in Tucson, Arizona, are now being used commercially to capture honey bee swarms that might otherwise take up residence in [...]

Question: Which is best for rangeland soils? No livestock grazing? Light or heavy grazing? Answer: Grazing, whether light or heavy, results in better soil - as measured by its organic [...]