Research articles

Alternate wetting and drying (AWD) optimizes water use in rice cultivation. This study shows that a soil water potential-based AWD scheme could minimize yield loss while increasing water productivity in 37% of global irrigated rice areas.

Increased agricultural nitrogen inputs lead to elevated nitrogen losses and may result in detrimental environmental impacts. This study uses meta-analyses to evaluate and predict changes in nitrogen losses to air and water in response to sustainable nutrient, crop and soil management practices.

A model simulating the carbon cycle in low-oxygen aquatic environments suggests a potential pathway to increase alkalinity production and carbon dioxide uptake, offering an affordable and scalable method of carbon capture in aquaculture systems.

Understanding greenhouse gas (GHG) emission patterns in crop production, particularly their spatial and temporal distributions, is key to designing better policies. This study combines secondary data and household survey data to examine the GHG emissions intensity of croplands in China and how it has fluctuated in the past few decades and to identify the factors driving emissions intensity inequality.

Strategies to change meat consumption patterns remain poorly understood. Using decomposition analysis, this study shows that the decline in UK meat consumption is driven by the consumption of smaller portions of meat, followed by reducing the number of days and occasions on which meat is consumed.

A scenario analysis demonstrates that integrated crop–livestock optimization combined with intensive monogastric livestock production could reduce greenhouse gas emissions and redirect cropland use from feed to food production.

Future yield improvements will require a closer examination of specific production factors and their interactions. This study quantifies potassium (K) limitations in Indonesia’s intensive cereal cropping systems and reveals that current soil K levels and fertilizer applications are inadequate to meet crop needs, exacerbating the existing yield gap in rice–maize systems in Indonesia and other countries in Southeast Asia.

Nanomaterials positively impact staple food biomass production, reducing metal(loid) accumulation and mitigating oxidative damage in plants under stress conditions. This study provides practical insights into evaluating various nanomaterial application approaches, highlighting their potential for promoting sustainable agriculture and improving food safety.

Nutrition profiling systems inform nutritional and health policies to prevent disease and promote health. This study presents a revised version of the Food Compass nutrient profiling system that incorporates the latest evidence linking diet and health—and which has been validated against health outcomes in a US population.

The use of biomarkers to complement traditional dietary assessment methods can help strengthen findings from nutritional epidemiologic studies. This study identifies plasma proteomic signatures that reflect the response to healthy dietary patterns and are associated with reduced incidence of chronic disease and mortality.

Staple crop production in China involves high levels of synthetic fertilizer use and losses to the environment. Using a localized nitrogen management model for wheat, maize and rice, this study estimates the environmental and economic benefits of improving nitrogen use efficiency at the county level.

Mercury exposure from fish consumption poses a risk to human health, and effective mercury management is hampered by uncertainty about how human activities affect mercury levels in fish. This study presents global geographic variations in total mercury and methylmercury levels in fish and quantifies the impact of human activities.

Carbon sequestration on agricultural land holds great promise for combating climate change. This study estimates the mitigation potential of three sequestration practices—soil carbon enhancement, biochar application on cropland and silvo-pastoral systems—while identifying cost-effective mitigation portfolios.

A dataset including 29 countries and life-cycle assessment highlights the environmental impact of school plate food waste. A sustainable food education framework is presented to support early intervention and wasteful behavioural changes.

Maize yield variability in sub-Saharan Africa has important implications for food security and livelihoods. By combining the time specificity of weather-related impacts on crops and different agroclimatic zones, this study shows that shifts in sub-seasonal dry–wet spell patterns are a major contributor to this variability.

Planthoppers are among the most destructive pests on rice. This study identified that a leucine-rich repeat protein OsLRR2 negatively regulates defence responses. Knockout of the encoding gene OsLRR2 enhances rice herbivore resistance and yield, which holds the potential to produce high-yielding rice varieties that are resistant to devastating pest insects.

Plant–environment interactions are examined using artificial intelligence and computational modelling, allowing energy use to be optimized in plant factories with artificial lighting.

Healthy and sustainable diets that better match the dietary preferences and economic affordability of specific groups are needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. To address this gap, this study proposes a region-specific reference diet for China and compares it to global dietary guidelines.

The United States is the world’s largest beef producer. Identifying strategies to mitigate its GHG emissions remains a challenge due to sector complexity and heterogeneity. This study takes an LCA approach to quantify potential mitigation opportunities available or soon to be available for the beef sector.

Data from tangential flow filtration experiments using cell culture medium without animal products are used to estimate the costs of scaled-up, continuous cultivated chicken manufacturing.