News & Events

Rural micro, small and mid-size enterprises (MSMEs) are the backbone of agriculture and food systems. But too often, they are constrained by a lack of investment and adequate capital.Many investors simply lack the knowledge and capacity to reach small-scale farmers and rural MSMEs. That’s why bridging the funding gap requires an investor with a deep understanding of the agriculture sector and rural communities.From India to Uganda and beyond, IFAD is stepping in to empower rural entrepreneurs to grow their businesses at every stage of their journey.

During the development of the rice female gametophyte (FG, embryo sac), there exists a free-nuclear stage wherein eight nuclei, originating from the same mother cell nucleus, respectively migrate to specific positions to acquire distinct cell identities after cellularization and develop into the egg cell, central cell, or accessory cells. Therefore, this nuclear migration stage is essential for fertilization and rice fertility. How these nuclei can find their own way to exactly move to different predetermined positions and how the two polar nuclei are selected have been intriguing questions for decades.

Large language models trained on biological sequences, rather than natural language, are transforming biology, from predicting human genetic disease (1, 2) to the design of new-to-nature proteins (3–5). In this issue of PNAS, Cao et al. (6) extend these applications to detect the molecular underpinnings of phenotypic convergence by decoding patterns invisible to traditional sequence analysis approaches

As the year draws to a close and we look back on 2025, the message is clear: IFAD’s investments are not just funding rural development, they are changing lives, building resilience, creating jobs and driving sustainable economic growth. This year, IFAD has cemented its role as a financial leader, driving the charge in rural development and turning investments into tangible results for both rural communities and for Member States and other investors.

Drought is a natural disaster that profoundly impacts on global agricultural production, significantly reduces crop yields, and thereby poses a severe threat to worldwide food security. Addressing the challenge of effectively improving crop drought resistance (DR) to mitigate yield loss under drought conditions is a global issue. An optimal root system architecture (RSA) plays a pivotal role in enhancing the capacity of crops to efficiently uptake water and nutrients, which consequently strengthens their resilience against environmental stresses.

India has approved its first genome-edited rice varieties, signaling a shift toward more sustainable, high-performing crops developed without foreign DNA. Unlike genetically modified organisms (GMOs), these new rice lines, created using the CRISPR-Cas9 system, rely on precise gene editing to enhance resilience and productivity. India's agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan released the two varieties — Pusa rice DST1 and DRR Dhan 100 — developed by researchers at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) and the Indian Institute of Rice Research (IIRR), both under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR).

As genomics increasingly shapes modern agriculture, Digital Sequence Information (DSI), the digital data derived from a plant’s DNA, has become a powerful tool for improving how crop genetic resources are accessed and used, particularly in plant breeding programs for developing better crop varieties. However, the rapid growth of genomic data has outpaced the capacity of many national research systems, especially in developing countries, to apply these tools effectively and responsibly.

Many nascent breeding programs aim to achieve genetic gain by crossing locally-elite germplasm, but a lack of systematic approaches to develop elite gene pools from locally adapted varieties hinders their progress. Motivated by the observation of undesirable transgressive segregation in presumed elite crosses in Senegalese cereal breeding programs, we designed approaches for de novo development of elite gene pools from locally adapted landrace-derived germplasm.

The World Meet on Biotechnology and Plant Biology (WMBIOTECH2025) is scheduled to take place from November 4–6, 2025, in Rome, Italy. This prestigious international conference is designed to serve as a global platform for scientists, researchers, academics, and industry leaders to exchange knowledge and showcase the latest innovations in the fields of biotechnology and plant biology.

Papua New Guinea (PNG) is blessed with natural resources and a young, dynamic and strikingly diverse population, speaking over 800 languages. Yet its agricultural potential remains untapped. We caught up with Reehana Raza, IFAD’s Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, to learn more after her recent visit to the island country. During her time in PNG, she saw the impact of the IFAD-supported Market for Village Farmers (MVF) project.

Drought is a major factor limiting rice (Oryza sativa L.) production, making the identification of drought-related genes crucial for enhancing drought resistance in rice breeding. The Protein Phosphatase 2 C (PP2C) family, comprising serine/threonine protein phosphatases, plays critical roles in hormonal signaling pathways that orchestrate plant responses to biotic and abiotic stresses. Here, we identified OsPP2C03 (LOC_Os01g32964), an H-clade PP2C gene, as a drought-tolerance candidate through genome-wide association studies (GWAS).

Modifications of the maize gene ZmAN3 which provides maize plants with increased leaf length, leaf width, leaf area, leaf fraction fresh weight, leaf fraction dry weight, stem fraction dry weight, and/or 1000 kernel weight are disclosed. Also disclosed are seed obtained from such plants as well as use of the seed and plants to produce commodity productions and in maize breeding.