Soaring energy prices will yield sharp increases for corn and soybean production next year, cutting into farmers’ profits and stretching already high food costs, according to a new University of Illinois study.

The residual herbicides commonly used in the production of corn and soybean are frequently detected in rivers, streams, and reservoirs at concentrations that exceed drinking water standards in areas where these crops are extensively grown.

Purdue University researchers have identified several soybean varieties that grow well in areas of the Midwest like southern Indiana and are resistant to root-knot nematodes, a plant-destroying parasite with a recently confirmed presence in that part of the state.

A preliminary assembly and annotation of the soybean genome, Glycine max, has been made available by the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI), to the greater scientific community to enable bioenergy research.

In 2002, U.S. farmers harvested 2.7 billion bushels of soybeans. Last year in Missouri, farmers harvested 194 million bushels of soybeans worth about $1.2 billion. Now, a team of researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia is turning those soybeans into gold, with nothing more than a little water.

Across the southern United States, an invisible, yet deadly parasite known as the root-knot nematode is crippling soybean crops. While plant breeders are racing to develop cultivars resistant to the root-knot nematode, they are being slowed down by current time-consuming and expensive methods of screening for resistant plants.