Plant breeding has been continuing for a long time. However innovation – unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), robots, computerized reasoning (AI) and machine learning – is reforming the training.

One fine Hawaiian day in 2015, Geoff Zahn and Anthony Amend set off on an eight-hour hike.

Fast-tracking nature’s design solutions to foster sustainability breakthroughs with the Biomimicry Global Design Challenge.

The word pesticide is misunderstood, nearly to the same extent as the word chemical. People have been led to believe, largely by the organic food industry and environmental activists, that pesticides are unnatural, dangerous, and do not belong in the food supply. But this defies a basic understanding of biology.

The crops we rely on today have been bred over thousands of years to enhance certain characteristics. For example, sweetcorn started life as a wild grass called teosinte.

Most people would agree that invasive plants are unwanted.

South Africa is experiencing a shocking rate of plant extinction with as many as 79 plants disappearing owing largely to expanding agriculture and urbanisation, the Stellenbosch University (SU)  has revealed.

The world’s social and financial systems must undergo a huge transformation to revive the natural world that is vital for human life, a major UN report has concluded.

An army travels on its stomach, and our food supply is also vital to the growth of civilization. If a group of people don’t need to spend as much time growing and producing food, it frees them up to focus on developing other skills.

Two in five of the world’s plant species are at risk of extinction as a result of the destruction of the natural world, according to an international report.

In that sweet spot where forestry meets technology, a Toronto-based startup called Flash Forest is employing aerial drones to plant trees 10 times quicker than a single worker planting with shovels, with a goal of planting a full 1 billion trees by 2028.

Farmers have historically focused on the three main macronutrients when it comes to nutrient management decisions: nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus.

People have been using plants in skincare for thousands of years, for cleansing, perfuming, beautifying and healing. Today, plants contribute significantly to the cosmetic (beauty) and cosmeceutical (medicinal) industry, which is worth billions of dollars.

Microbes can affect our health, but humans are not alone in this.

In our modern age of biotechnology, new tools are constantly being developed for agricultural improvement.

Plant seeds must travel far to maintain healthy ecosystems.

At first glance, it’s hard to see what gold, iron, lead, arsenic, silver, platinum and tin have in common.

By using precision gene engineering techniques, researchers at the Earlham Institute in Norwich have been able to turn tobacco plants into solar-powered factories for moth sex pheromones.

Until recently the use of silicon compounds in agriculture was limited, because ‘silicon’ was not included in fertilizer legislation.