News & Events

A new technology borrowed from the pharmaceutical industry can make staple foods and seasonings like flour and salt packed with nutrients, according to a research released in Science Translational Medicine.Hidden hunger is a concern of about two billion people who are fed with the right amount of required calories but lack micronutrients like iron, calcium, and vitamins in their diet.

During the 8th Session of the Governing Body to the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) in Rome, Italy on November 14, 2019, a panel discussion on CRISPR technology and its potential to transform agricultural production was sponsored by the U.S. Mission to the UN Agencies and U.S. Embassy to the Holy See. The panel of experts told the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization that CRISPR technology has a pivotal role to play in the fight against global food insecurity.

To overcome nitrogen deficiencies in the soil, legumes enter symbioses with rhizobial bacteria that convert atmospheric nitrogen into ammonium. Rhizobia are accommodated as endosymbionts within lateral root organs called nodules that initiate from the inner layers of Medicago truncatula roots in response to rhizobial perception. In contrast, lateral roots emerge from predefined founder cells as an adaptive response to environmental stimuli, including water and nutrient availability

The Paraguayan Minister of Agriculture, through the National Commission for Agricultural and Forestry Biosafety has given their approval to Verdeca's HB4® drought and herbicide tolerant soybeans. The HB4 stack is Verdeca's newest product release from its pipeline of traits developed to benefit soybean producers through quality improvement, stress mitigation, and management practices.

Genome editing could be an alternative approach to improve the vitamin A content of crops, according to a study by Akira Endo and colleagues at the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization and Ishikawa Prefectural University in Japan. The results of the study are published in Rice. Beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A, is a vital target for biofortification of crops to aiming to address the problem of vitamin A deficiency prevalent in developing countries.

Salt stress is a major constraint to rice acreage and production worldwide. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the natural genetic variation available in the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) rice mini-core collection (URMC) for early vigor traits under salt stress and identify quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for seedling-stage salt tolerance via a genome-wide association study (GWAS). Using a hydroponic system, the seedlings of 162 accessions were subjected to electrical conductivity (EC) 6.0 dS m^-1 salt stress at the three-to-four leaf stage.

The Board of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) today approved $161 million in funding to support climate resilient projects in Chile, Kyrgyzstan and Nepal benefitting 1.5 million people. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has been supporting the formulation of the projects that will build resilience and mitigate the effects of climate change in the three countries.

The Director-General thanked her for her support for FAO and the Rome-based UN agencies focused on food and agriculture, as well as briefed her on how he has dedicated his first 100 days in office to making the Food and Agriculture Organization "transparent, open and inclusive". She welcomed the Director-General’s creation of The Committees on Women and Youth at FAO and highlighted the importance of paying attention to people with disabilities.

Mycorrhizal fungi are critical members of the plant microbiome, forming a symbiosis with the roots of most plants on Earth. Most plant species partner with either arbuscular or ectomycorrhizal fungi, and these symbioses are thought to represent plant adaptations to fast and slow soil nutrient cycling rates. This generates a second hypothesis, that arbuscular and ectomycorrhizal plant species traits complement and reinforce these fungal strategies, resulting in nutrient acquisitive vs. conservative plant trait profiles. Here we analyzed 17,764 species level trait observations from 2,940 woody plant species to show that mycorrhizal plants differ systematically in nitrogen and phosphorus economic traits.

Immunity evolved as an impossibly elegant, yet devastatingly destructive force to combat pathogens, environmental insults, and rogue malignant cellular agents arising from within. The immunologic arsenal developed in a veritable coevolutionary arms race with the world’s pathogens, culminating in lymphocytic weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, T cells and B cells endowed with antigen specificity, the capacity for clonal expansion, and most importantly, long-lived memory, represent the pinnacle of such evolution.

As microbiologists and public health officials scramble for weapons to combat antibiotic resistance, they may end up including an unlikely ally in their arsenal: other bacteria. The prime candidate right now is a predatory bacterium known as Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus. Found in soils and water globally, B. bacteriovorus are free-living, harmless bacteria—harmless to humans, at least. In the microbial world,

Mechanical stimuli, such as wind, rain, and touch affect plant development, growth, pest resistance, and ultimately reproductive success. Using water spray to simulate rain, we demonstrate that jasmonic acid (JA) signaling plays a key role in early gene-expression changes, well before it leads to developmental changes in flowering and plant architecture. The JA-activated transcription factors MYC2/MYC3/MYC4 modulate transiently induced expression of 266 genes, most of which peak within 30 min, and control 52% of genes induced >100-fold.