News & Events
Phosphorus (P) is a macronutrient required for plant growth and reproduction. Orthophosphate (Pi), the preferred P form for plant uptake, is easily fixed in soil, making it unavailable to plants. Limited phosphate rock resources, low phosphate fertilizer use efficiency, and high demands for green agriculture production make it important to clarify the molecular mechanisms underlying plant responses to P deficiency and to improve plant phosphate efficiency in crops
ISAAA Inc., in partnership with the Philippine Agriculture and Fisheries Biotechnology Program (DA-Biotech Program) and the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research and Agriculture (SEARCA), published a policy brief titled To Regulate, or Not to Regulate, the Answer to the Question: The NCBP Policy on Plant Breeding Innovations or New Breeding Techniques. Ms. Ma. Lorelie U. Agbagala, Assistant Scientist at the Department of Science and Technology (DOST)
Scientists from the University of the Punjab, Pakistan, reported an alternate insecticidal gene in cotton that confers resistance against pink bollworm. Their findings are released in Molecular Biology Reports. Pink bollworm is one of the significant chewing insect pests in cotton that impact yield and lint quality, even in Bt cotton.
CONSTITUTIVE PHOTOMORPHOGENIC DWARF (CPD), member of the CYP90A family of cytochrome P450 (CYP450) monooxygenase, is an essential component of brassinosteroids (BRs) biosynthesis pathway. Compared with a single CPD/CYP90A1 in Arabidopsis thaliana, two highly homologous CPD genes, OsCPD1/CYP90A3 and OsCPD2/CYP90A4, are present in rice genome.There is still no genetic evidence so far about the requirement of OsCPD1 and OsCPD2 in rice BR biosynthesis.
Researchers from the Transmission:Zero team at Imperial College London have engineered mosquitoes that slow the growth of malaria-causing parasites in their gut, preventing transmission of the disease to humans. Malaria is one of the world's most devastating diseases, putting at risk about half of the world's population. In 2021 alone, malaria has infected 241 million and killed 627,000 people, mostly children below five years old in sub-Saharan Africa.
Wheat has supplied about one-fifth of all calories and proteins consumed worldwide. However, the cultivation of wheat has reduced the diversity of its varieties, and consequently, modern varieties are more vulnerable to diseases, pests, and climate hazards. Climate change has since created an urgent need for wheat varieties that can thrive in extreme environmental and climatic conditions and withstand pests and diseases.
Hypoxia is an abiotic stress in plants. Flooding resulting from climate change is a major crop threat that increases the risk of hypoxic stress. The molecular mechanisms underlying hypoxia in plants were elucidated in recent years, but new genes related to this stress remain to be discovered. Thus, we aimed to perform a meta-analysis of the RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) data of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) and rice (Oryza sativa) under hypoxia. We collected 29 (Arabidopsis) and 26 (rice) pairs of RNA-Seq data involving hypoxic (including submergence) and normoxic (control) treatments and extracted the genes that were commonly upregulated or downregulated in the majority of the experiments.
More people are projected to face acute food insecurity globally, as the food crisis worsens in 19 hunger hotspots. This is according to the latest joint report of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and UN World Food Programme (WFP) report titled Hunger Hotspots FAO-WFP Early Warnings on Acute Food Insecurity: October 2022 to January 2023 Outlook. The expected increase in food insecurity is attributed to rising conflict, weather extremes, and economic instability intensified by the pandemic and the ripple effects of the crisis in Ukraine.
Flooding has become a global concern, putting people at risk of starvation due to water drowning crops. Now, researchers are getting closer to identifying the molecular processes underlying how floods deprive plants of oxygen — and how to engineer hardier crops. “Hypoxia is an abiotic stress for plants often caused by flooding,” said the paper's first author Keita Tamura. Hypoxia is a condition where plants are deprived of oxygen because of oversaturation.
Sources of durable disease resistance are needed to minimize yield losses in cultivated oat caused by crown rust (Puccinia coronata f. sp. avenae). In this study, we developed five oat recombinant inbred line mapping populations to identify sources of adult plant resistance from crosses between five APR donors and Otana, a susceptible variety. The preliminary bulk segregant mapping based on allele frequencies showed two regions in linkage group Mrg21 (Chr4D) that are associated with the APR phenotype in all five populations
The long-standing ban on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in Kenya has finally been lifted, marking a historic moment in the country's agri-biotech development. The Kenyan Government, through a Cabinet decision, has lifted the ban to allow efficient adoption of approved biotech crops and importation of GM foods. By lifting the ban, the Cabinet has further authorized open cultivation and importation of white GMO maize.
ISAAA Inc., in partnership with SEARCA Biotechnology Information Center and the Philippine Agriculture and Fisheries Biotechnology Program (DA-Biotech Program), will hold the Know the Science Webinars to present the latest developments in biotech crops in the Philippines. Registration is now open to the public. The first webinar on the Current Status of Commercialized GM Crops in the Philippines: Biotech Corn and Golden Rice will be held on October 11, 2022, at 10 AM via Zoom.