Improved nitrogen (N) use is key to future food security and environmental sustainability. While many regions still experience N shortages, agriculture is the leading global emitter of N₂O due to losses exacerbated by N surpluses in other regions. In order to sustainably maintain or increase food production, farmers and their advisors need a comprehensive and actionable understanding of how nutrient management affects both yield and N₂O emissions, particularly in tropical and subtropical agroecosystems. We performed a meta‐analysis to determine the effect of N management and other factors on N₂O emissions, plant N uptake, and yield. Our analysis demonstrates that performance indicators—partial N balance and partial factor productivity—predicted N₂O emissions as well as or better than N rate. While we observed consistent production and environmental benefits with enhanced‐efficiency fertilizers, we noted potential trade‐offs between yield and N₂O emissions for fertilizer placement. Furthermore, we observed confounding effects due to management dynamics that co‐vary with nutrient application practices, thus challenging the interpretation of the effect of specific practices such as fertilization frequency. Therefore, rather than providing universally prescriptive management for N₂O emission reduction, our evidence supports mitigation strategies based upon tailored nutrient management approaches that keep N balances within safe limits, so as to minimize N₂O emissions while still achieving high crop yields. The limited evidence available suggests that these relationships hold for temperate, tropical, and subtropical regions, but given the potential for expansion of N use in crop production, further N₂O data collection should be prioritized in under‐represented regions such as Sub‐Saharan Africa.

Chile peppers, native to the Americas, have spread around the world and have been integrated into the diets of many cultures. Much like their heat content, nutritional content can vary dramatically between different pepper types. In this study, a diverse set of chile pepper types were examined for nutrient content. Some pepper types were found to have high levels of vitamin A, vitamin C, or folate. Correlations between nutrient content, species, cultivation status, or geographic region were limited. Varietal selection or plant breeding offer tools to augment nutrient content in peppers. Integration of nutrient rich pepper types into diets that already include peppers could help combat nutrient deficiencies by providing a significant portion of recommended daily nutrients.

This article attempts to summarize the current knowledge on plant domestication on the basis of recent genome sequencing. To this end, several topics are explored, including (a) domestication as a process, (b) the genetics of domestication, (c) the impact of domestication on plant genomes, and (d) how domestication studies may change in the future with new genomic information.

Changes in crop yield and production over time are driven by a combination of genetics, agronomics, and climate. Disentangling the role of these various influences helps us understand the capacity of agriculture to adapt to change. Here we explore the impact of climate variability on rice yield and production in the Philippines from 1987–2016 in both irrigated and rainfed production systems at various scales. Over this period, rice production is affected by variations in soil moisture, which are largely driven by the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). We found that the climate impacts on rice production are strongly seasonally modulated and differ considerably by region. As expected, rainfed upland rice production systems are more sensitive to soil moisture variability than irrigated paddy rice. About 10% of the variance in rice production anomalies on the national level co-varies with soil moisture changes, which in turn are strongly negatively correlated with an index capturing ENSO variability. Our results show that while temperature variability is of limited importance in the Philippines today, future climate projections suggest that by the end of the century, temperatures might regularly exceed known limits to rice production if warming continues unabated. Therefore, skillful seasonal prediction will likely become increasingly crucial to provide the necessary information to guide agriculture management to mitigate the compounding impacts of soil moisture variability and temperature stress. Detailed case studies like this complement global yield studies and provide important local perspectives that can help in food policy decisions.