Agricultural economists and food scientists with the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture teamed up for a study surveying multiple generations on their thoughts of wine packaging. The study, published in the journal Cleaner and Responsible Consumption, shows that, in general, there is a perception that quality wine comes in glass bottles but “that perception can change slowly as new and innovative packaging for wine becomes available,” said Renee Threlfall, one of the study’s authors and a research scientist in enology and viticulture. The study suggests that providing sustainability information about packaging can influence how much consumers are willing to pay, with both positive and negative results for alternative packaging.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture recently awarded vegetable breeder Ainong Shi and a team of researchers with the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture a $615,000, three-year grant to continue efforts to identify spinach cultivars tolerant of multiple Pythium species. The fungus-like pathogen effects soil-grown spinach but also thrives in moist conditions, making it especially problematic for indoor growers using greenhouses, hydroponics or vertical-farming systems. Shi uses a data-driven approach to estimate Pythium tolerance and evaluate multiple genomic prediction models. The practice speeds up the selection process for growing promising candidates.

Scientists in Sweden have taken an important step toward fighting potato late blight, a plant disease that once triggered an historic famine in Ireland and now threatens to spread globally due to climate change. 

A new study reports the synthesis of a peptide that specifically attacks Phytophthora infestans (P. infestans) to protect potato and tomato crops—without harm to other plants. The work was carried out by researchers at Stockholm’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology, in collaboration with research partners in Italy, India and Australia.