The United States Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) has concluded that raw and refined sugar from genetically engineered insect resistant sugarcane CTC175-A developed by the Centro de Tecnologia Canavieira (CTC) in Brazil are as safe as raw and refined sugar derived from conventional sugarcane varieties

"We need a bold move... to help farmers just as Nigeria has done," said Daniel Osei Ofosu, Ghana country coordinator of the Program for Biosafety Systems (PBS) of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Fall Armyworm is likely to spread from India to other countries in South East Asia and South China, putting food security and farmer livelihoods at risk. This news is according to the warning of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The pest was first reported in Asia affecting crops in India. The insect has the ability to fly over long distances (100 km per night) and destroy crops such as maize, rice, vegetables, groundnuts, and cotton.

Rice is life in Myanmar, where 70% of its rural population engages in rice farming for their livelihood. Building on this strength, the government is set to regain its past position as a major global rice exporter. To achieve this goal, scientists at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and farmers in the Ayeyarwady Delta have been working together since 2013 to improve the country’s rice production by introducing an array of IRRI-recommended best management practices.

The Polish Ministry of Agriculture released a new draft labeling voluntary standards for food products free from genetic engineering derived from livestock not fed with GE feeds and/or products. This was reported in the USDA Foreign Agriculture Service-Global Agricultural Information Network Report. The draft standard states that a "non-GMO" label would be placed on the packaging of such products.

Since the approval of Bt eggplant for "limited cultivation" in Bangladesh in 2013, ~17% of the total brinjal farmers in the country are already benefiting from the technology. Scientists concisely report the history, present status, and future direction of the Bt eggplant project in Bangladesh in a perspective article in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology.

The U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) Fish and Wildlife Service announces the full withdrawal of the July 2014 memorandum stating that certain agricultural practices, particularly the use of genetically engineered (GE) seeds and neonicotinoid pesticides across the National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS) would be phased out in refuges. The announcement of withdrawal, thus reverses the decision to universally ban the GE crops on refuges.

A team led by Professor Marcelo Menossi at the University of Campinas's Biology Institute (IB-UNICAMP) in Brazil has found that the key to overcoming a major constraint on sugarcane yield could lie in a gene called ScGAI. Sugarcane yields have been static for decades due to the constraints on culm development. The culm's sugar storage capacity is physically limited, restricting the volume of sucrose and biomass that can be obtained from the crop for sugar and ethanol production.

Scientist from the USDA Agricultural Research Service developed a new process that can be used to insert multiple genes into a crop plant, which can make it easier to breed a variety of crops with highly enhanced characteristics. The new process is reported in The Plant Journal.

A new FAO report sounds the alarm on some of the world's most severely underfunded crises, which in the wake of new shocks require an urgent humanitarian response and emergency agricultural assistance. Without adequate funding, new challenges such as droughts, floods, lean seasons or conflicts could push millions of people into acute hunger and food insecurity, jeopardizing their well-being, lives and future, the UN agency warned.