News & Events

As COVID-19 continues to threaten the lives and livelihoods of millions of people in Southeast Asia, additional concerns are being raised about the longer term health of the sub-region’s food systems – a complex matrix involving farmers, fishers, labourers, drivers, cold storage, food processors, retailers, and consumers.

The evolution of insect resistance to pesticides poses a continuing threat to agriculture and human health. While much is known about the proximate molecular and biochemical mechanisms that confer resistance, far less is known about the regulation of the specific genes/gene families involved, particularly by trans-acting factors such as signal-regulated transcription factors.

For centuries bees, among the hardest working creatures on the planet, have benefited people, plants and the environment. By carrying pollen from one flower to another, bees and other pollinators enable not only the production of an abundance of fruits, nuts and seeds, but also more variety and better quality, contributing to food security and nutrition.

FAO is committed to transforming food and agricultural systems so that they are more climate-smart, resilient and biodiversity-friendly, said FAO Director-General QU Dongyu at the virtual meeting of the United Nations System Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB). The meeting is the United Nations’ highest-level coordination forum, and brought together the Principals of 31 UN system entities.

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is one of the leading food crops of the world, and the safe production of rice plays a central role in ensuring food security. However, the conflicts between rice production and environmental resources are becoming increasingly acute. For this reason, scientists in China have proposed the concept of Green Super Rice for promoting resource-saving and environment-friendly rice production, while still achieving a yield increase and quality improvement.

The improvement of the security situation in Daraa Governorate in southwest Syria has allowed thousands of displaced families to return to their homes. However, it has not been an easy return for the families who lost their income, resources or their breadwinners. Many returnees are women and people with disabilities, groups vulnerable to poverty or food insecurity.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is seeking $350 million to scale up hunger-fighting and livelihoods-boosting activities in food crisis contexts where COVID-19's impact could be devastating. Although the pandemic's full-scale and long-term impact on food security is yet to be revealed, evidence shows that in countries already hit by acute hunger, people are increasingly struggling to have access to food as incomes fall and food prices rise.

Modern agriculture relies heavily on chemical fertilizers, especially in terms of cereal production. The excess application of fertilizers not only increases production cost, but also causes severe environmental problems. As one of the major cereal crops, rice (Oryza sativa L.) provides the staple food for nearly half of population worldwide, especially in developing countries. Therefore, improving rice yield is always the priority for rice breeding.

As communities around the world cope with the novel coronavirus, it’s becoming clearer that the way we produce, trade and consume our food is undeniably linked to this crisis. And as long as ecosystems degrade and biodiversity is lost due to agriculture and other uses, zoonic diseases like COVID-19 are an increasing threat.  In the short term, our economies and food systems are put to the test as never before, with the risk falling on the most vulnerable.

Imposing trade restrictions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic can have dramatic adverse impacts on food security, as Glauber et al. (link), Balié and Valera (link), and Laborde et al. (link) have suggested. And, while the crisis will likely impact food security through other significant channels, such as the effects on incomes (link), understanding the potential food price and hunger impacts specifically from trade bans demonstrates how harmful these policies can be to efforts to withstand this shock.

Rice as a model plant for epigenomic studies has much progressed current understanding of epigenetics in plants. Recent results on rice epigenome profiling and three-dimensional chromatin structure studies reveal specific features and implication in gene regulation during rice plant development and adaptation to environmental changes. Results on rice chromatin regulator functions shed light on mechanisms of establishment, recognition, and resetting of epigenomic information in plants

Juan Carlos Rivera lives in the Dry Corridor of El Salvador, an area where high temperatures, low rainfall and regular droughts pose constant regular problems to his way of life. He is a farmer who sells rabbits and quail, but with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, he and his partners in “Las Casitas”, a network of small producers, have had problems marketing their products.