Longer dry seasons and unpredictable rainfall are having a serious impact on the farming communities in the semi-arid zone, or Caatinga biome, in the state of Bahia in north-eastern Brazil. Against this background of water shortages across the Caatinga, IFAD has focused on reducing rural poverty through income generation, increased production, better nutrition, and the creation of agricultural and non-agricultural employment opportunities.

The GMOs that were approved have all gone through a comprehensive authorization procedure, including a favorable scientific assessment by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). The authorization decisions do not cover cultivation. These GMOs had received "no opinion" votes from the Member States both in the Standing and the Appeal Committees and the Commission therefore had to adopt the pending decisions.

A research team from the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center led by Andrea Eveland has identified a genetic mechanism that could increase the yields of cereal crops. The team performed the research in Setaria viridis, a grass that is closely related to economically important cereal crops and bioenergy feed stocks such as maize, sorghum, switchgrass, and sugarcane.

A team of researchers from the University of Sydney, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Australia, Rothamsted Research in the United Kingdom, and the University of Minnesota and U.S. Department of Agriculture in the United States has discovered the first rust virulence molecule that wheat plants detect to ‘switch on' built-in resistance and stave off the disease.

A team of international scientists, including researchers from University of Georgia and U.S. Department of Agriculture have successfully mapped peanut's genetic code. The findings of the five-year study provide relevant data to help other scientists around the world decode some of the genetic potential of the peanut plant.

Carleton (1) claims that “temperature during India’s main agricultural growing season has a strong positive effect on annual suicide rates.” Using state-scale panel data for 1967–2013, the author suggests that an increase in 1 °C temperature in a single day can cause 70 suicides. The evidence, she argues, is consistent with “an agriculture channel in which heat damages crops,” resulting in economic hardship and suicide.

Researchers from eight Asian countries – Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Laos, Myanmar, Philippines, Vietnam – gathered on December 12-13, 2017 in Haikou City, China, to form the Asian Forage Legumes Network. This is in response to the increasing pressure for farming systems in Asia to produce more without causing further harm to the environment.

IRRI, in cooperation with the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice), conducted a training on basic tractor operation, maintenance and implementation of laser-assisted land leveling. This initiative is part of the work package output of the water-efficient and risk mitigation technologies for enhancing rice production in irrigated and rainfed environments or WateRice Project.

The CGIAR Research Program on Grain Legumes and Dryland Cereals Agri-food Systems (CRP GLDC) launched focused on increasing the productivity, profitability, resilience and marketability of critical and nutritious grain legume and cereal crops grown in Sub Saharan Africa and South Asia. This second phase CRP combines the lessons learned from three phase 1 CRPs: Dryland Cereals, Grain Legumes, and Dryland Systems. CRP-GLDC is a Research for Development investment of US$413 million over five years (2018-2022).

HarvestPlus is proud to announce it has been awarded $15 million as one of the finalists in the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s 100&Change competition. This global challenge has sought bold solutions to critical problems of our time, and this award recognizes HarvestPlus for its work on a solution to one of the world’s greatest problems—hidden hunger.