News & Events
Under the famine prevention, humanitarian crises and food insecurity minutes of the official meeting communique, G7 ministers called for global enhancement of adaption efforts and committed to leveraging the power of national and multinational research institutions, such as CGIAR, who are working to generate knowledge and strengthening partnerships to accelerate the pace and scale of innovation needed for food systems transformation.
Dr. Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted, a CGIAR scientist and nutrition expert from WorldFish, was named today as the 2021 World Food Prize Laureate for improving the quality, quantity, and availability of food in the world through her pioneering scientific work on nutrition, fish, and aquatic food systems. Often referred to as the “Nobel Prize for food and agriculture,” the World Food Prize is the most prominent global award recognizing an individual who has enhanced human development and confronted global hunger by improving the quality, quantity, and availability of food for all.
In the context of a changing climate, drought is one of the major factors limiting plant growth and yield. Hence, breeding efforts are directed toward improving water use efficiency (WUE) as a key factor in climate resilience and sustainability of crop production. As WUE is a complex trait and its evaluation is rather resource consuming, proxy traits, which are easier to screen and reliably reflect variation in WUE, are needed.
Opening the 8th World Congress on Conservation Agriculture, the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), QU Dongyu, urged for new solutions and smarter ways to produce more food with less, and stressed that without a healthy environment, there are no healthy foods.
A big push in a rapidly urbanizing continent kicked off today as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) launched the Green Cities Regional Action Programme for Africa. The Programme aims to apply innovative solutions and turn urbanization into an opportunity for cities to become more sustainable, more resilient, provide access to healthy foods and ensure a better life for everyone.
The characterization of tissue-specific promoters is critical for studying the functions of genes in a given tissue/organ. To study tissue-specific promoters in soybean, we screened tissue-specific expressed genes using published soybean RNA-Seq-based transcriptome data coupled with RT-PCR analysis. We cloned the promoters of three genes, GmADR1, GmBTP1, and GmGER1, and constructed their corresponding β-Glucuronidase (GUS) promoter-GUS reporter vectors
Biosafety laws must reflect and acknowledge technological innovations to maintain food quality and safety while permitting diversification in the production chain. This is one of the key points in the EMBRAPA publication on Regulatory Framework of Genome Editing in Brazil and Worldwide. Regulation of products derived from genome editing techniques has been a subject of discussions globally. One of the main focuses in the discussions is whether the products that used site-directed nucleases should be classified and regulated as GM products
The Agricultural Biotechnology Annual released by the US Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service reports that the many challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic have delayed key milestones in the Philippines that were expected in 2020.The Philippines is a regional biotechnology leader, having been the first Asian country to allow the commercial planting of genetically engineered (GE) Bt corn in 2003
Accelerating genetic gain in crop improvement programs with respect to climate resilience and nutrition traits, and the realization of the improved gain in farmers’ fields require integration of several approaches. This article focuses on innovative approaches to address core components of the breeder’s equation. A prerequisite to enhancing genetic variance (σ2g) is the identification or creation of favorable alleles/haplotypes and their deployment for improving key traits.
A team of researchers from Kanazawa University, Ehime University, and Nagoya University, has shown how nicotinamide (NIM) could help reduce or prevent Fusarium head blight in wheat and boost plant immune system.NIM is a natural substance that can help stimulate the immune system in plants. It is found in food and used as a dietary supplement. The team pre-treated the spikes, which carry the grains of wheat plants with NIM and then inoculated the plant with conidia of Fusarium graminearum to induce head blight.
Thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) is an important plant especially to scientists trying to understand how plants grow and develop. It has been used for research for decades, and one might expect that its structure has been fully documented, but a study reveals this plant still has some surprises. A study conducted by scientists at The Pennsylvania State University describes a previously unreported structure in Arabidopsis called the 'cantil', which connects to the stem at one end and hangs in the air to hold up the flower-bearing stalk, similar to the function of a cantilever in structural engineering.
Major global crops in high-yielding, temperate cropping regions are facing increasing threats from the impact of climate change, particularly from drought and heat at critical developmental timepoints during the crop lifecycle. Research to address this concern is frequently focused on attempts to identify exotic genetic diversity showing pronounced stress tolerance or avoidance, to elucidate and introgress the responsible genetic factors or to discover underlying genes as a basis for targeted genetic modification.