Plant breeders are turning their attention to roots to increase yields without causing environmental damage. Virginia Gewin unearths some promising subterranean strategies.

Feeding the world is going to require the scientific and financial muscle of agricultural biotechnology companies. Natasha Gilbert asks whether they're up to the task.

World hunger remains a major problem, but not for the reasons many suspect. Nature analyses the trends and the challenges of feeding 9 billion by 2050.

A proposal to let nations opt out of growing European-approved GM varieties is under fire from all sides.

The world buzzed with news that an antiretroviral gel can halve the incidence of HIV infection in women. But a quieter buzz could be heard at the International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2010) in Vienna, where the gel results were unveiled.

It started with a story in the Press-Register of Mobile, Alabama. On 16 July, the paper reported that beleaguered oil giant BP was hurriedly signing up scientists to gather data for the company, to aid its defence in cases arising from the Deepwater Horizon spill. The catch was that these lucrative contracts also restricted the scientists

Producing enough food for the world's population in 2050 will be easy. But doing it at an acceptable cost to the planet will depend on research into everything from high-tech seeds to low-tech farming practices. (Editorial)

In the oceans, ubiquitous microscopic phototrophs (phytoplankton) account for approximately half the production of organic matter on Earth. Analyses of satellite-derived phytoplankton concentration (available since 1979) have suggested decadal-scale fluctuations linked to climate forcing, but the length of this record is insufficient to resolve longer-term trends. Here we combine available ocean transparency measurements and in situ chlorophyll observations to estimate the time dependence of phytoplankton biomass at local, regional and global scales since 1899.

Climate change can affect the phenology, population dynamics and morphology of species, but it is difficult to study all these factors and their interactions at once. Using long-term data for individual yellow-bellied marmots, these authors show that climate change has increased the length of the marmot growing season, leading to a gradual increase in individual size. It has simultaneously increased the fitness of large individuals, leading to a rapid increase in population size.

The annual burial of organic carbon in lakes and reservoirs exceeds that of ocean sediments, but inland waters are components of the global carbon cycle that receive only limited attention. Here the authors find that the mineralization of organic carbon in lake sediments exhibits a strong positive relationship with temperature, suggesting that warmer water temperatures lead to more mineralization and less organic carbon burial.