Chef Robby has more than 20 years of professional cooking and kitchen management experience, with a scope that knows no geographical boundaries. A graduate of the California Culinary Academy, he is renowned for his classic Mexican, Greek, American, and, of course, Filipino restaurants that constantly get rave reviews and have won numerous prestigious awards.

- Deepening ties between FAO and the United Nations Volunteers programme (UNV) should make opportunities to join the fight against hunger and rural poverty more accessible to young people as well as to experts who wish to contribute their time and skills. Daniel Gustafson, FAO Deputy Director General and UNV Executive Coordinator Olivier Adam signed a Memorandum of Understanding today aiming at scaling-up their collaboration and making rapid deployments easier. 

Rice, one of the vital staple for many countries, was first domesticated in China about 10,000 years ago. This is according to the study conducted by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and published in the US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers recovered rice remains from the Shangshan site in the Lower Yangtze in China. The remains were recognized as the earliest examples of rice cultivation.

Researchers from Kansas State University have identified a gene that can resist wheat streak mosaic virus. The team identified Wsm3 gene, the third gene known to resist the virus, and the first that can do so at outdoor temperatures of 75 degrees Fahrenheit and higher.

Photosynthesis is one of nature's most important processes. Aside from producing oxygen, this natural process converts solar to chemical energy by transforming atmospheric carbon dioxide and water into sugar molecules to provide plants with needed food and energy to survive.

Rice is grown in a wide range of climates across Africa ranging from cold conditions in the highlands of, for example, Madagascar, Ethiopia, and Rwanda, to extremely hot conditions such as in the Sahel zone or Egypt. Future rice production and food security are under pressure as a result of climate change-induced increases in heat, drought, salinity, and floods.

Can Tho, Viet Nam – The Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases (ECTAD) of FAO Viet Nam in collaboration with the Department of Animal Health (DAH) organized the 15th Epi – Labnet meeting from 16 to 18 May 2017, in Can Tho. Network of Epidemiology and Laboratory (Epi-Labnet) is a working group established by DAH in 2006 to support disease surveillance, disease prevention and capacity development activities.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), by request of the European Commission (EC), assessed the 2016 scientific publication by Robin Mesnage et al., including its relevance for the risk assessment of maize NK603. The publication analyzed the proteomic and metabolomic profiles of maize NK603 kernels and compared those to a non-GM maize line used as comparator.

The world's oceans offer both challenges and solutions to the world's Sustainable Development Agenda, and managing them more carefully is essential for global food security today and tomorrow as well as the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said today at the United Nations Ocean Conference.

American cotton farmers face tough times with the prevailing unpredictable weather and decrease in prices of cotton. With the new study of Z. Jeffrey Chen of The University of Texas at Austin, cotton farmers might have better days ahead. Chen and team developed more productive cotton using epigenetic modification. The study is published in Genome Biology.