News & Events

The FAO Food Price Index (FFPI) is a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities. It consists of the average of five commodity group price indices weighted by the average export shares of each of the groups over 2014-2016. A feature article published in the June 2020 edition of the Food Outlook presents the revision of the base period for the calculation of the FFPI and the expansion of its price coverage, to be introduced from July 2020

Land plants thrive in soils showing vastly different properties and environmental stresses1. Root systems can adapt to contrasting soil conditions and stresses, yet how their responses are programmed at the individual cell scale remains unclear. Using single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomic approaches, we showed major expression changes in outer root cell types when comparing the single-cell transcriptomes of rice roots grown in gel versus soil conditions.

The GM Approval Database, or GMAD, is one of ISAAA’s unique features that compiles all the available information about biotech/GM crops that have been approved for planting and importation for food and feed, and commercialization. ISAAA sources out the information from publicly available decision documents per country, Biosafety Clearing Houses and peer-reviewed scholarly articles to maintain the credibility of the database.

Climate change poses a major threat to rice productivity, with the crop facing a dual challenge: adapting to rising climate risks while reducing its environmental footprint. Rice also covers 11% of global arable land but contributes 10% of agricultural emissions—mainly methane from flooded paddies—and uses 40% of the world’s irrigation water. With each 1°C temperature rise potentially cutting tropical rice yields by 10–15%, and extreme weather already causing major food losses, IRRI will lead the shift to climate-smart, nature-positive systems.

Identification of molecular markers governing plant growth habit (PGH) traits that enable mechanical harvestability is pivotal for boosting production efficiency of crops under changing climates and increasing global food demand. With a combinatorial integrated genomics-assisted breeding strategy comprising of association mapping, haplotype-based association, molecular haplotyping and gene expression analysis in a 286 association panel of chickpea (Cicer arietinum), we dissected the genetic basis of PGH traits.

Eggplant is one of the world’s most important vegetables and a staple in some South and Southeast Asian countries. In the Philippines, eggplant or talong is the leading vegetable crop in terms of volume (248,000 metric tons) and area of production (14,000 hectares) based on the 2022 Philippine Statistics Authority report. Eggplant farming also offers huge income potential for resource-poor farmers in many provinces in the country.

Five hours. That's how long women in energy-poor households spend each day on cooking-related tasks—time not spent in school, earning income, or caring for themselves. Multiply that by 2.1 billion people still cooking with traditional fuels, this represents a significant barrier to progress that gets far less attention than it deserves. It isn’t just a matter of convenience. Household air pollution from traditional cooking methods causes 3.7 million premature deaths each year. Cooking with unsustainable, polluting fuels costs the world trillions in damage to the environment and local economies, but it’s women who pay the heftiest price.

The whitefly-transmitted begomovirus can devastate Solanaceae crops worldwide. Despite a strong demand for the genetic introgression of begomovirus resistance, only the begomovirus resistance gene in tomatoes and peppers has been cloned. Here, we aimed to identify a begomovirus resistance gene in eggplant (Solanum melongena). Previously, we identified accession No.820 as a resistance source against tomato yellow leaf curl Kanchanaburi virus (TYLCKaV).

Rice is fundamental for global food security, but traditional breeding struggles to rapidly address challenges like climate change, pests, and increasing demand. This review synthesizes advancements in rice improvement, comparing conventional approaches with modern biotechnological tools. Traditional methods are slow, environmentally dependent, and have limited genetic diversity. Modern techniques, including MAS, QTL mapping,

Set against the backdrop of FAO’s 80th anniversary, the fifth edition of the World Food Forum in 2025 was remarkable, with 62 country chapters featuring a strong presence of global leaders, impressive numbers, and high-level events. This year's forum further solidified a five-year leadership in creating a premier international platform for discussions focused on transforming global agrifood systems.

Herbivory is destructive for crop production in many regions worldwide. The induced plant response to herbivores promotes resistance; therefore, characterizing the mechanisms underlying natural host resistance is highly important. However, the genetic components of resistance to herbivores in the staple food crop soybean remain elusive. Here, a key defense gene, GmMYC3, was identified via joint linkage and association mapping in soybean.

In Japan, rice cultivars with high eating quality such as Koshihikari are often highly susceptible to the fungus Pyricularia oryzae, which causes rice blast, the most serious disease of rice; however, little is known about the genetic factors leading to this high susceptibility to blast. Here, after our initial inoculations with P. oryzae, the expression of the pathogenesis-related protein 1b (PR1b) gene was not detected in Koshihikari using RT-qPCR, but it was detected in Nipponbare