Scientists have developed a new, scalable method for estimating crop productivity in real time.

Robovision develops and hires out artificial ‘brains’. These make it very easy for companies to automate complex production systems and machinery, such as a combine harvester. We spoke to Jonathan Berte, the (human!) brain behind the Belgian company Robovision.

It's become an all-too-common tale: An introduced insect takes hold in a new home and then spreads, wreaking havoc with ecosystems and economies. Take, for instance, the emerald ash borer, an Asian beetle first spotted in North America in 2002; researchers estimate it has killed hundreds of millions of ash trees and caused more than $10 billion in damage.

In the Péloponnèse region of southern Greece, some of the olive trees are a hundred years old and have been farmed via tried and tested methods over the decades; but these time-honoured approaches are now being augmented by Precision Farming.

 The mandate we have all been given, from health professionals, from politicians, from our employers, is "stay at home". Don't travel, don't congregate, don't go to the hospital unless you develop symptoms, stay at home.

Researchers have pioneered a new method which allows them to rapidly recruit disease resistance genes from wild plants and transfer them into domestic crops.