Ambitious government plans for the expansion of solar farms could be achieved without sacrificing farmland, according to new research on a technology that could meet the UK’s electricity needs four times over.

The compounds, called flavonoids, have an insecticidal effect on corn earworm larvae.

Innovation allows for remote monitoring of beehive health.

Agricultural fertilizers are critical for feeding the world’s population, restoring soil fertility and sustaining crops. 

Plants play a key role in regulating Earth’s climate, but recent research suggests that rising temperatures could disrupt this balance, because plants are leaking more water than previously thought.

The Haber-Bosch process, which converts atmospheric nitrogen to make ammonia fertilizer, revolutionized agriculture and helped feed the world’s growing population, but it also created huge environmental problems.

Colorado’s forests store a massive amount of carbon, but dying trees – mostly due to insects and disease – have caused the state’s forests to emit more carbon than they absorbed in recent years, according to a Colorado State Forest Service report.

Scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) and the Prince of Songkla University in Thailand have demonstrated that Wrinkle-lipped free-tailed bats not only travels great distances, but also hunt at impressive altitudes of up to 1,600 metres above ground – the altitude at which many planthoppers fly, which are dreaded insect pests of rice plants.

A corn plant knows how to find water in soil with the very tips of its roots, but some varieties, including many used for breeding high-yielding corn in the U.S., appear to have lost a portion of that ability, according to a Stanford-led study.

There’s a longstanding attitude in many farming communities that trees and agriculture don’t mix.