Articles in 2020

Poultry coccidiosis results in about US$3 billion global production losses per year, and is managed by prophylactic antimicrobial use. Lessard et al. have developed chicken feed based on transgenic corn for mitigating coccidiosis, resulting in reduced intestinal lesions and improved body weight and feed conversion in Eimeria-infected corn-fed animals compared to untreated controls. Corn-fed and salinomycin-treated birds had comparable outcomes, indicating potential for antimicrobial-free management of coccidiosis.

Food systems are increasingly globalized and interdependent. Using food supply data from over 170 countries, Bentham et al. characterize global patterns of food supply change over five decades, highlighting the decline in the supply of animal source food and sugar in many Western countries, the increase in the supply of such foods in Asian countries and remarkably little change in food supply in the sub-Saharan Africa region.

Thlaspi arvense (pennycress) has the potential to provide new sources of food and bioproducts when grown as a winter cover crop. Here, Chopra et al. demonstrate that multiple desirable traits can be stacked to rapidly domesticate pennycress. The resulting crop integrates into current crop rotations and produces seeds with improved nutritional qualities, easier harvesting and suitability for human consumption.

Collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) will impact agricultural land use and its economic value in Great Britain. Ritchie et al. model the impacts of smooth (conventional climate change) and abrupt (tipping point change) AMOC collapse on land use, arable farming and related economic outputs in Britain, as well as the economic feasibility of technological adaptations such as widespread irrigation.