Grass could be used to produce biofuels. The advantage of using grass crops is that they can be grown in marginal lands that would otherwise not be used .

Drinking water flowing from your tap can contain harmful bacteria, viruses and single-cell animals. And most countries do not routinely test for all these bugs.

The main concern of food producers has always been to bring safe fruit and vegetables to European plates. But now, expectations have been stepped up one notch as pressure mounted to reduce factors, related to climate change, susceptible to affect the safety of food .

The life that inhabits the world’s oceans has almost infinite variety. It remains an untapped source of diversity.

The barely explored marine environment has already thrown-up a vast treasure-trove of high-value biomolecules .

For 700 million people in Africa and the Far-East, yams and cassava represent important crops for food security and as a source of income.

Eating fruit or having a glass of red wine is seen as offering health benefits. The benefits are often pinned on polyphenols, natural chemicals —found in foods—referred to as flavonoids and phenolic acids, but also fragments of food proteins called peptides.

Might it be possible to make better plants more quickly than we do today? And without the public objection that accompanies genetic manipulation? Climate change means that this is now an urgent question.

Many people in Europe are critical of genetically modified (GM) food, due to safety concerns. A Eurobarometer survey, published in 2010, revealed that the European public tends to be worried on a “mediate level” about GM food , with people in Austria being particularly concerned.

Scientist Peter Freeman is managing a project that is probing the clock and metabolism of plants, called TiMet . Partners to the project include star biologists in the Germany, Spain, Switzerland and the UK, all working to gain better insights into what make plants tick.

The amount of nitrogen that is excreted by livestock is directly proportional to the amount it is fed . This is according to Chris Reynolds a researcher in nutritional physiology of ruminants  at  the University of Reading , UK.

Food processing of cereal and fruits creates a rather voluminous amount of by-products . The London, UK-based Institution of Mechanical Engineers recently estimated that anywhere between 35% and 50%--or 1.

Riots, political instability and a spike in malnourishment cases blighted the years 2007 and 2008, particularly in developing countries.

Seaweeds are not only tasty, but they are a source of nutrients that could be beneficial for health and wellbeing. And like terrestrial plants, seaweeds also contain significant portions of fibre that reach the colon undigested.

Forests and land ecosystems are the earth’s carbon reservoirs. They are key to limit the impact of greenhouse gases, as they fix those gases down.

Peanut, egg and soy are more common food known to trigger an allergic reaction, a problem affecting around 8% of children in the EU. Intuitively, you might not list apples as causing allergic reactions.

If you can't kill them, trap them. Such is the fate that scientists are reserving to pathogenic bacteria, such as the infamous E. coli .

youris.com talks to Clare Hall, social science researcher at the Scottish Agricultural College in Edinburgh, UK, about the best ways to effectively inform the public about food safety in relation to pathogens responsible for foodborne diseases.

Marek Zadernowski is a consultant, specialist in quality management and safety in a food sector, based in Olsztyn, Poland. He is a member of Polish Association of Food Technologists and a fellow of the  UK Royal Society of Public Health .

It all started when the  Irish Food Standard Authority  realised, mid-January, that some of the burgers sold in the country (and in the UK) contained about 29% of equine DNA, upon testing.