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  • In pictures

Drugs, space travel and the ‘age of promise’

Space-age wonder drug Terramycin promised utopia, but might instead have triggered one of the biggest threats to our future.

  • Podcast

Farmland

Fruit and vegetables link our hungry bodies to the world of plants. Yet many of us have little understanding of the farming industry and the impact that bringing crops to our plates has on the planet.

  • Article

Thomas Sankara and the stomachs that made themselves heard

Thomas Sankara’s vision to transform farming and health in Burkina Faso turned to dust with his assassination. Perry Blankson highlights the considerable achievements of Sankara’s brief span in power.

  • Article

Unravelling genetic origins from the potato to cinchona

Starting with the humble potato, Nataly Allasi Canales reveals how researchers unearth the genetic origins of modern plant varieties, and explains why their work is so important for biodiversity.

All stories (30)

Images

  • Indian agriculture and crops. Gouache drawing.
  • Indian agriculture: drawing water for crops. Gouache drawing.
  • Saints who, though noble, were condemned to work in mines, dig the fields, cut the crops, act as herders, or look after camels. Woodcut.
  • A woman advises a man who coughs as he tends his crops to get a tuberculosis check up: the National Leprosy and TB Programme in Kenya. Colour lithograph by Ministry of Health, ca. 2000.
  • Buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) sitting on a purple flower. Bees are important pollinators and play a crucial role in promoting the growth of crops and flowers. The aposematic yellow and black banding pattern on the bee acts as a warning to deter predators.
  • Nepal; agriculture in the Khumbu, 1986. Pangboche (altitude 4200 metres), showing the tiny, walled terraced fields on which Sherpas cultivate their staple crops (potatoes, barley, wheat). Potatoes are rarely grown beyond 4000 metres but barley is grown at higher altitudes. Scattered juniper and birch trees share this terrain with sub-alpine grasses. Few people live permanently beyond this village amid the last scattered trees below the treeline.
  • Aedes aegypti mosquito crop
  • Nepal; Kathmandu Valley, 1986. The Kathmandu Valley is situated in Nepal's Hill Region ('Pahar' in Nepali - altitutides 1000-4000 metres), and is the country's most fertile and urbanised area as well as being its political and cultural centre. The hills, sculpted into a vast complex of terraces, are extensively cultivated. Hill farmers produced food staples, mostly rice and corn, although this is still a food-deficit area. Other crops include wheat, millet, barley, sugarcane, tobacco, potatoes and oilseed. The climate is mild with summer temperatures reaching 30 degrees C and winter temperatures about 10 degrees C. The most common trees are oak, alder, jacaranda and rhododendron.
  • Lathyrus vernus (L.)Bernh. Papilionaceae previously Orobus vernus L. (Linnaeus, 1753) Spring vetchling. Distribution: Europe to Siberia. The seeds of several Lathyrus species are toxic, and when eaten cause a condition called lathyrism. The chemical diaminoproprionic acid in the seeds causes paralysis, spinal cord damage, aortic aneurysm, due to poisoning of mitochondria causing cell death. Occurs where food crops are contaminated by Lathyrus plants or where it is eaten as a 'famine food' when no other food is available. It is the Orobus sylvaticus purpureus vernus of Bauhin (1671) and Orobus sylvaticus angustifolius of Parkinson (1640) - who records that country folk had no uses for it. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Lathyrus vernus (L.)Bernh. Papilionaceae previously Orobus vernus L. (Linnaeus, 1753) Spring vetchling. Distribution: Europe to Siberia. The seeds of several Lathyrus species are toxic, and when eaten cause a condition called lathyrism. The chemical diaminoproprionic acid in the seeds causes paralysis, spinal cord damage, aortic aneurysm, due to poisoning of mitochondria causing cell death. Occurs where food crops are contaminated by Lathyrus plants or where it is eaten as a 'famine food' when no other food is available. It is the Orobus sylvaticus purpureus vernus of Bauhin (1671) and Orobus sylvaticus angustifolius of Parkinson (1640) - who records that country folk had no uses for it. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
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