【推荐1】With the help of a new mobile application called Farm Assistant, developed by Wu Zeyin, farmers in Botswana can make their work much easier.

Wu, an 11-year-old pupil from Hubei province, moved to Botswana with his family seven years ago. During the past years living in the country, he found that the quantity of fruit and vegetables sold at local supermarkets was very limited, and the quality was poor. Some vegetables weren’t ripe, such as small carrots and green tomatoes, and they were quite expensive.

Tropical savanna(草原)and desert climates are typical in most parts of the country, making it difficult to grow common crops. Drought-tolerant species of corn, sorghum and beans are also uncommon. For a long time, Botswana had to import many grains, fruits and vegetables from neighbouring countries, such as South Africa, to meet the needs of its people.

Botswana has made a series of cooperative arrangements with China to get rid of food shortages. In July last year, a pilot project to grow China’s water-saving and drought-tolerant rice was successfully undertaken in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, which brought Wu some new ideas on local agriculture.

“At that time, I was preparing for the first Youth Artificial Intelligence and Future Media Global Innovation Challenge,” he said, “When I got the news, I gave up my first plan of developing a personal time management app, and decided to develop an app for agriculture.”

The app supports eight crops commonly grown locally, including tomatoes, potatoes, onions, corn, carrots, cabbage, eggplant and radishes. Farmers who use the application can click on the pare to see its watering needs, opening time, seed price, selling price and production. After planting the seeds, farmers click the timer to start, and the application reminds them what to do at each stage.

When asked why he wanted to help local farmers here, Wu quotes an old saying in China: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

【推荐2】In order to meet growing food production and energy needs in low-and middle-income countries, solar-powered groundwater irrigation (灌溉) is rapidly gaining ground. More than 500,000 solar pumps (泵) have been set up in south Asia over the last few years and a major expansion is planned across sub-Saharan Africa.

Dustin Garrick, professor in the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability, along with an international team, examined the trend toward solar pumps as a clear opportunity for boosting agricultural yields and reducing poverty, but the opportunity comes with risks.

While replacing electric or gas pumps with solar-powered irrigation holds the promise of reducing carbon emissions (排放), it is not guaranteed. Farmers who have access to these pumps may expand production of crops or diversify into other activities, which are not emissions neutral. Solar pumps will increase groundwater pumping efficiency, which may be desirable in regions that support such increases, but this could worsen groundwater lessening in regions that are already stressed. The cheap clean energy of solar pumps may lead to increased groundwater development, without necessarily decreasing overall emissions.

Despite these challenges, the clean-energy boost can serve as a stimulus for positive change in water and energy management but will require enhanced regulation and planning in both low-and high-income settings. Garrick and his team advocate for improved data collection initiatives, with a shift from separated to integrated approaches. They suggest using technology to measure water pumping and collecting remotely sensed data to monitor land use changes. As well, regulatory improvements are crucial, with mounting limits for carbon emissions and groundwater lessening established at various levels.

With groundwater management already a difficult challenge, we must act fast to understand the implications of the clean energy boost and poverty reduction acts to avoid these gains being won away by wells running dry. The rapid adoption of solar irrigation intensifies the urgency, demanding adaptation from governments and institutions to sail through these complexities.

【推荐3】Large-scale climate patterns that can impact weather across thousands of kilometers may stoke multicontinental droughts and wildfires at the same time around the world, two new studies find.

These patterns, known a climate teleconnections, typically occur as repeated phases that can last from weeks to years. “They are a kind of complex butterfly effect, in which things that are occurring in one place have many side effects very far away,” says Sergio de Miguel, an ecosystem scientist at Spain’s University of Lleida and the Joint Research Unit CTFC-Agrotecnio in Solsona, Spain.

The El Nino-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, is perhaps the most well-known climate teleconnection. It involves phases during which weakened trade winds cause warm surface waters to a mass (积聚) in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, known as El Nino, and opposite phases of cooler tropical waters called La Nina.

Major droughts arise around the same time at drought hot spots around the world, and the world’s major climate teleconnections maybe behind the synchronization (同步), researchers report in one study. What’s more, these patterns may also regulate the burning of more than half of the area on Earth each year, de Miguel and his colleagues report in the other study.

The research could help countries around the world forecast and cooperate to deal with widespread droughts and fires, researchers say.

Past research has predicted that human-caused climate change will led to more intense droughts and worsen wildfire seasons in many regions. But few studies have investigated how shorter-lived climate variations-teleconnections-influence these events on a global scale. Such work could help countries improve forecasting efforts and share resources, says climate scientist Ashok Mishra of Clemson University in South Carolina.