ISAAA releases a short video (6 minutes) titled Voices and Views: Messages to the Public summarizing the messages of biotech experts and stakeholders to the public. The video addresses concerns on the safety of biotech crops and highlights the importance of public understanding of biotechnology, as well as the benefits that the public can get from biotech crop adoption.

Researchers at the University of California, Davis, have identified short DNA segments in tilapia that influence the expression of the genes regulating the fish's response to salinity stress. Most fish live either in freshwater or saltwater, but  tilapia has a remarkable ability to adjust to varying salinity levels.

"You cannot at the same time uphold the scientific consensus around climate change and deny the scientific consensus around the safety of GM crops," said Cornell University Professor Sarah Davidson Evanega, director of Cornell Alliance for Science. Speaking on Food Security and Global Growth: The Big Picture on March 4 as part of the President's Council of Cornell Women (PCCW) Symposium 2017, Evanega emphasized that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) could play an important role in fighting global food insecurity.

Severe food insecurity threatens more than 17 million people in conflict-ridden Yemen, according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis released by the United Nations and humanitarian partners today. Twenty of the country's 22 governorates are in ‘emergency' or ‘crisis' food insecurity phases and almost two-thirds of the population are now facing hunger and urgently require life and livelihood-saving assistance. 

University of Arizona (UA) plant geneticist, Monica Schmidt, genetically engineered a variety of corn to turn off the ability of a plant fungus to make aflatoxin. Her findings are published in the open-access journal, Science Advances. Aflatoxin is a mycotoxin produced by fungus Aspergillus. When aflatoxin is ingested by humans and animals, it can lead to hepatotoxicity, liver cancer, kwashiorkor, Reye's syndrome, and impaired growth.

A group of researchers led by Professor David Edwards from The University of Western Australia's (UWA) School of Biological Sciences and Institute of Agriculture has identified 21,000 new genes in bread wheat.

The adoption of biotech soybean and maize in Bolivia can generate US$150,000 of additional income for the country, according to the report released by the Association of Producers of Oilseeds and Wheat (Anapo), the Bolivian Institute of Foreign Trade (IBCE), and the Agricultural Chamber of the East (CAO).

Researchers from Louisiana State University (LSU), the Palacký University in the Czech Republic and at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio have solved a longstanding mystery in photosynthesis.

Swaziland Parliament is working hard in ensuring enactment of biosafety legislation that enables cultivation of GM cotton. This was said by Dr. Titus Thwala, the Chair of the agricultural parliamentary committee during a tour of the GM cotton field trials located at Swaziland Cotton Board fields in Big Bend on February 23, 2017. "As the parliament, we are going to make sure we work together with stakeholders to enact legislation that will make it possible for GMOs to work well in the country," Thwala said.

Scientists from The University of Edinburgh have produced pigs that show resistance to Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS), a major viral disease endemic in most pig producing countries worldwide, and estimated to have cost the pig industry in Europe more than €1.5 billion each year.