ARS

“It felt a little buzzy,” said Lily Meritt, 7, a Daisy Girl Scout from Montgomery County, Maryland. She watched hungry mosquitoes through a plexiglass container as a USDA research scientist talked about pests that love to bug people. Lily and other D.C.-area Girl Scouts visited USDA headquarters to...

With a name like Fhb1, this particular gene is unlikely to ever become a household name. But it has the potential to combat a fungal disease that has been plaguing wheat farmers for years. Wheat scab can cripple a farmer’s yield and cost millions of dollars in crop losses.

We all love nuts, but we’re careful not to eat too many because of the high fat calories. Now, there may be less to worry about. In a series of studies, USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) physiologists David Baer and Janet Novotny looked at how many calories of almonds, walnuts, and...

Charting a course ahead for the conservation and sustainable farming of freshwater and marine species is a chief focus of the first State of the World’s Aquatic Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, a Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report that will contain subsections from 89...

Early in October 2016, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) was faced once again with New World screwworm, which had been eradicated from the United States more than three decades ago. Infestation of this flesh-eating parasite was confirmed in deer from the National Key Deer Refuge in the...

Whether eaten sliced or as a pizza topping, pineapple is a delicious and versatile tropical fruit that ranks third in worldwide popularity behind the banana and mango.

Though remarkably thin, soil makes up a layer of the Earth’s crust that’s vital to human survival. The soil is a living, breathing thing that, like the body’s skin, requires care and attention lest we lose its many benefits.

The cranberries that are traditionally a part of Thanksgiving dinner may have a brighter future because of what Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists found when they went digging recently in a remote marsh in Wisconsin.

The invasive brown marmorated stink bug causes problems for homeowners and farmers and threatens U.S. specialty crops valued at over $20 billion. Farmers rely on insecticide sprays to reduce crop-damaging stink bugs. Another strategy is using traps with lures to capture this pest.

The UN recently released a report stating that world hunger is once again on the rise, with 815 million people now hungry. That is roughly two and a half times the population of the United States. To this end, the UN lists “zero hunger” near the top of its list of Sustainable Development Goals, only...