The 2026 FAO Partnership Award was jointly awarded to HELP Logistics, the Jordan Youth Innovation Forum, and the Maasai Integrated Development Initiative, recognizing their strong results for people and communities across diverse contexts.The annual prize pays tribute to outstanding cooperation with FAO in advancing its mandate, including partnerships with Members, UN agencies, international institutions, academia, civil society, the private sector and media.

Jacalin-related lectins play crucial roles in plant adaptation to abiotic and biotic stresses. The rice genome encodes four putative jacalin-related lectin kinase genes (OsJacLKs), but their functions toward environmental stresses remain largely uncharacterized. This study demonstrates that a putative jacalin-related lectin kinase, OsJacLK1, conferred resistance to the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae rather than salt stress.

Chinese scientists have successfully isolated a key gene from teosinte, the wild ancestor of modern corn, that dramatically increases the protein content in maize seeds. Published in the journal Nature, the research was led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), along with Shanghai Normal University and Sichuan Agricultural University. The discovery provides a powerful genetic tool to reverse a historical trend: over 9,000 years of domestication