Accurate assessment of soil salinity is critical for sustainable agriculture and food security, yet remains technically challenging at fine spatial scales. 

To meet global food demands, aquaculture — the farming of aquatic creatures like fish or shrimp — is on the rise.

However, productivity in the industry is still limited due to early-life bottlenecks, with high mortality rates caused by disease outbreaks, environmental changes and stress.

Now, a team from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) has developed a scalable aquaculture platform designed to address these challenges. The system automates the sensitive phases of aquaculture — hatching and transfers — which can minimize pathogen exposure, animal stress and labor input.

Microplastics are widely recognized as pollutants in oceans and waterways, but scientists are increasingly discovering that they are also accumulating in agricultural soils. A new scientific review highlights a largely overlooked dimension of this problem: the complex interactions between soil microbes and viruses that occur on the surface of microplastic particles. The study reveals that these microscopic relationships may influence soil health, ecosystem recovery, and the long term sustainability of agriculture.

Wildfires, storms, and bark beetles have a major impact on forests and the benefits they provide for people and the environment. For the first time, a large international team led by researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has calculated how disturbances could transform Europe’s forests by 2100. Even in the most optimistic scenario, the team foresees a substantial increase in damaged forest area—in the most pessimistic case, disturbances could even double.

Individuals have a more negative reaction to the societal time change to Standard Time (ST) in the fall than to Daylight Saving Time (DST) in the spring, according to a study published March 4, 2026, in the open-access journal PLOS One. The findings were reported by Ben Ellman, an independent researcher in Illinois, Michael Smith of the Purdue University College of Agriculture, U.S., and colleagues.

A new study shows how climate and light conditions interaction affect the early growth in abarco, a highly valued tropical timber species, offering critical guidance for reforestation and sustainable forest management in the face of climate change.

A variety of proteins extracted from rice milling byproducts were shown to provide different qualities desired in plant-based cheesemaking, including firm texture and meltability. Mahfuzur Rahman, a food scientist and grain processing engineer with the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, and graduate student Ruslan Mehadi Galib published their results in the journal Future Foods under the title "Three shads of plant protein from a single rice cultivar: Insights into subunit profiles, molecular structures, functional and nutritional properties, and cheesemaking performance."