Reviews & Analysis

One-third of human-induced reactive nitrogen emissions can be traced to livestock supply chains. Highly variable nitrogen use efficiencies along these chains uncover opportunities for more sustainable nitrogen management.

Metabolomics can identify dietary biomarkers and describe the metabolic consequences of diet. A robust study design identifies a set of stable urinary metabolites that link to healthy and unhealthy dietary patterns, metabolic networks and distinct urinary metabolic signatures.

In the short term, conservation agriculture does not overcome problems of poor crop productivity and food insecurity of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.

Producing meat without the drawbacks of conventional animal agriculture would greatly contribute to future food and nutrition security. This Review Article covers biological, technological, regulatory and consumer acceptance challenges in this developing field of biotechnology.

Nanotechnology holds great application potential in plant agriculture. This Review Article identifies the technological readiness, addresses the primary barriers to adopting nano-enabled technologies and proposes a roadmap to advance nanotechnology-enabled agriculture.

A diet-controlled study indicates that metabolic flexibility is an important driver of inter-individual difference in the response to dietary change, and a high flexibility score is a likely health asset.

Under the current political and regulatory environment, animal-sourced foods will remain part of the least-cost nutritious diet in the United States.

A new approach to analysing resilience reveals changes in China’s phosphorus system and suggests ways to improve it.

Consumer acceptance of novel and disruptive technologies is key to their implementation and to building capacity for transforming food systems. Using gene technology, nanotechnology, cultured meat and food irradiation as cases, this Review explores consumer acceptance through the frames of food neophobia, disgust sensitivity and cultural values.

Emerging fungal and oomycete pathogens pose a significant risk to global food security. This Review summarizes factors affecting pathogen introduction and spread and current disease control strategies, and highlights the direction that research must take to face the challenge of emerging crop pathogens.

Rehabilitation of degraded farmlands can have diverse benefits for sustainability, supporting rural livelihoods, economies, society and culture, as well as contributing to food security. A long-established agroforestry programme in Cameroon illustrates these benefits.

Food banks, food pantries and other emergency food operations are often overlooked in studies of food access. Their availability for patrons should not be expressed in terms of geographic coverage, but rather their capacity and hours of operation.

Crop yield is stagnating in many parts of the world, and climate change threatens the worldwide agricultural system. This Review presents a comprehensive overview of current development leveraging genomic analyses and revolutionary new plant breeding technologies to enhance food crop traits through agricultural biotechnology.

Technologies and systemic innovation are critical for the transformation of the food system. This Perspective identifies promising technologies, assesses their readiness and proposes eight action points to accelerate innovation.

The global trade of fish and fish products brings with it the challenge of identifying exposure to contaminants from imported products. Marine fish trade models can now quantify human exposure to persistent organic pollutants.

Pork production in East Asia is declining due to African swine fever. The effects of this epidemic are modelled, predicting global meat price increases and lower food security in China.

Current food production systems and diets do not support purely local food consumption around the world, even when trade flows are optimized.

Gender inequality, discriminatory laws and economic precarity persist for many women in the agriculture and food sectors. This Perspective frames the persistent malnutrition and food insecurity experienced in parts of South Asia, despite economic growth, in terms of social and political structures that inhibit the agency of women.

Textured soy protein can now provide scaffolding for bovine skeletal muscle cells to adhere to and form meat-like 3D cell cultures, thus advancing the generation of cultured meat and reducing the reliance on animal agriculture.

CRISPR technology has been widely used in plant genome editing and has great potential in precision breeding. The application of CRISPR technology to food crops provides potential for crop synthetic biology and crop domestication. The authors also discuss the implications of regulatory policy for deployment of the technology in the developing world.