Field trials articles from across Nature Portfolio

Chemical control of insect pests is considered a necessary evil of modern intensive agricultural practices. New approaches exploiting chemical ecology and genetically modified plants as ‘green factories’ point the way to harvests that are less reliant on insecticides.

The excess application of nitrogen fertilizer in agriculture and the limitation of nitrogen uptake by crops raise the alarm about the urgency to breed crops with higher nitrogen use efficiency (NUE). Recently, a novel strategy has been developed to enhance NUE and crop production by manipulating nitrate remobilization.