ICRISAT News, April 219

A one-day workshop was held at the National Research Center on October 10, 2016 to launch the ISAAA Report on the 20th Anniversary (1996 to 2015) of the Global Commercialization of Biotech Crops and Biotech Crop Highlights in 2015. The workshop was under the auspices of the President of National Research Center and the President of the Arab Center for the Studies of Arid zones and Dry lands (ACSAD).

The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) opened its 43^rd plenary on October 17, 2016, a day after the celebration of World Food Day, poised in the wake of international agreements on new global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. The call is to forge ahead with these goals in a coordinated action to transform the world's food systems and nutrition.

Every year brown planthopper (BPH) infestations in farmers’ rice fields cause severe yield losses in South, Southeast, and East Asia valued at more than USD 300 million. That is why Chen Chi-Chung, the deputy minister of Taiwan Council of Agriculture (CoA), expressed his strong support for the sustainable management of one of the most serious pests of rice crops in Taiwan and the continent.

“It is imperative for the ASEAN nations to invest in scientific research to ensure the improved productivity, quality, health, and resilience of Asia’s rice sector, and strengthen global food security.” This was the call issued by Matthew Morell, director general of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

To celebrate World Rabies Day, the Ministry of Health of Viet Nam, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO), U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other One Health partners join hands to promote the message “Rabies: Educate, Vaccinate and  Eliminate”

In this post I argue that qualitative field work aiming at understanding the local context is not a frivolous activity. For highly contested topics, such as gender and land, and in contexts where custom dominates, rigorous qualitative empirical work may lead to valuable insights and research outputs.

CIP had already been a well-respected and accomplished research for development organization when I joined. In the years since, the two biggest things that have happened were the UN’s adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on climate change.

A group of 139 scientists have published a letter in response to recent newspaper reports carrying comments made by a Malaysian government minister about the country’s peatlands. The Minister of Modernisation, Agriculture and Rural Economy, Douglas Uggah Embas, described oil palm production – one of the biggest culprits in the destruction of Malaysia’s peatlands – as being “handled well” and “responsibly” in the country.

Left to its own defenses, a farm field growing a variety of plants tends to attract fewer insect pests than a field growing just one type of crop. While scientists and farmers have noted that difference for years, the reasons behind it have been poorly understood.

University of Washington (UW) researchers have developed a new toolkit based on modified yeast cells to tease out how plant genes and proteins respond to the plant hormone auxin. The yeast-based tool allowed them to decode auxin's basic effects on the diverse family of genes that plants use to detect and interpret auxin-driven messages.

Plant Protection Research Institute and Syngenta Vietnam Co. Ltd. coordinated the harvest of Bt maize event MIR162 in a large scale field trial in Vinh Phuc. Vinh Phuc is one of four large scale field trial sites of MIR162 approved by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD).

Legal obligations and compensation in the field of biosafety is one of the important components stipulated in Article 27 of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (CPB) and specified in the Nagoya-Kuala Lumpur Additional Protocol on legal obligation and compensation in the framework of the CPB. Vietnam has joined the international treaties mentioned above and has the responsibility to build up the regulations to implement the provisions on legal obligations and compensation on biosafety in Vietnam.

Over 170 farmers, students, professors, and other stakeholders attended the public briefing and symposium about the Joint Department Circular on biotech crops and biosafety on September 28, 2016 at the Sarabia Manor Hotel and Convention Center, Iloilo City.

Global food markets will likely remain "generally well balanced" in the year ahead, as prices for most internationally-traded agricultural commodities are relatively low and stable, FAO said today. The benign outlook, especially for staple grains, is poised to lower the world food import bill to a six-year low, according to the Food Outlook.

After three months of field trials which started in April 2016, Bt maize (MIR162) was harvested in Dak Lak and Ba Ria-Vung Tau Provinces in Vietnam. After the harvest, the seeds were destructed following the regulations implemented by the government. Representatives of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and other local agencies ensured that all biosafety guidelines in planting and harvesting GM crops under testing were followed.

FAO's Mountain Partnership and Slow Food have launched a voluntary product label for mountain goods that's meant to improve market access for small highland producers from developing countries and highlight mountain products as distinct and sustainable.

This year's Nobel Laureate discovered and elucidated mechanisms underlying autophagy, a fundamental process for degrading and recycling cellular components.  Yoshinori Ohsumi was born 1945 in Fukuoka, Japan. He received a Ph.D. from University of Tokyo in 1974. After spending three years at Rockefeller University, New York, USA, he returned to the University of Tokyo where he established his research group in 1988. He is since 2009 a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

A QTL is a segment of an organism’s DNA that contains a gene or genes linked to a particular trait. In the rice plant, for example, it can control height, built-in resistance to a particular disease, or the ability to produce more grain yield. It is within this complex inner universe of genes and DNA strands where Shalabh Dixit works in his role as a scientist at the International Rice Research Institute’s (IRRI) Plant Breeding Division

Declining prices could thwart international efforts to eradicate hunger and extreme poverty unless steps are taken to guarantee decent incomes and livelihoods for small-scale producers, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said today. Globally, food prices are believed to be back to their long-term downward trend in real terms, as supply growth outpaces demand.

The global genetically modified (GM) seeds market will continue to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) close to 10% by 2020, says a new report by Technavio, a global technology research and advisory company. Technavio's latest report, Global Genetically Modified Seeds Market 2016-2020, covers the present scenario and growth prospects of the global GM seeds market for 2016-2020.