University of California, Riverside (UCR) researchers have developed transgenic mosquitoes that stably express the Cas9 enzyme in their germline. Cas9 enables the use of the CRISPR gene editing tool to make efficient, targeted changes to the mosquitoes' DNA.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) Panel on Genetically Modified Organisms of the European Food Safety Authority (GMO Panel) has given reauthorization for a genetically modified (GM) sugar beet in the European Union (EU).

What would happen if U.S. farmers stopped producing animals for food and Americans went vegan? Some have called for a move in that direction to address increasing concerns about U.S. health, eating habits, and climate change. Researchers at USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and Virginia Tech recently explored those questions and found surprising results.

Researchers at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) have identified a gene that enables wheat resistance to the stem rust strain UG99 that was discovered in Uganda in 1999. Stem rust is a devastating fungal disease that hampers wheat production throughout Africa and Asia and threatening food security worldwide.

The 2017 International Food Biotechnology and Biosafety Workshop organized by Hacettepe University and Michigan State University on October 9-11, 2017 in Ankara, Turkey has released its final declaration.The workshop's final declaration emphasized the need for modern biotechnology as a key technology for food and agricultural science, which are widely considered as the future of global food security by the scientific community.

One of the most important ways of achieving ‘Zero Hunger’ by the year 2030 – one of the UN’sSustainable Development Goals (SDG#2) – is by making agriculture attractive and profitable to the youth around the world. To try and understand the needs of young agricultural leaders from across the globe, a panel discussion was conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, Italy, as a side event of the CFS 44 (44^th Session of the Committee on World Food Security).

Definitions of “sustainable” that can be found in dictionaries include “able to be maintained at a certain rate or level,” “conserving an ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources,” or “causing little or no damage to the environment and therefore able to continue for a long time.” There is nothing wrong with that, except that we are missing a trick: being sustainable by just preserving the status quo in productivity or the environment will not be good enough for the transformative changes we need to make in the world’s agrifood systems.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP23) today recognized the importance of agriculture for the implementation of the Paris Agreement.

Discussions at COP 23 have focused on ways to minimize climate change while also increasing efforts to assist developing countries, in particular, adapt to changing weather patterns.    

Scientists from Wageningen University and Research have found natural genetic variation for photosynthesis in plants and are unravelling it to the DNA level. Led by Mark Aarts and Jeremy Harbinson, the research team has shown that thale cress has various genes involved in adaptation to the changes in the amount of light to which plants are exposed. A gene that has been studied in detail is the Yellow Seedling 1 gene, which is involved in the adaptation of chloroplasts to light changes. Due to a variation in this gene, some thale cress plants can handle an increase of light (the difference between a cloudy and a sunny day, for example) better than others.

N. Chandrasekhara Rao from the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi discussed the impact ofbiotechnology on farmers' welfare and poverty reduction in his paper published in the Agricultural Economics Research Review. "The peer-reviewed research findings suggest higher yields, higher net income and lower chemical use with conservation tillage. "The peer-reviewed research findings suggest higher yields, higher net income and lower chemical use with conservation tillage. The most recent meta-analysis estimated 22% yield gain associated with 39% reduction in plant protection expenditure and 68% higher net income.