A study conducted by researchers from John Innes Centre (JIC) has found that compact growth in plants is imposed by two different types of genes, called ATH1 and DELLA, which work in parallel. Some plants grow close to the soil while others reach high. The JIC study addressed the architecture and growth habits of plants. Using genetic analysis, microscopy, and the technique called ChIP-sequencing, they found the two types of genes.

CTNBio, Brazil's biosafety regulatory agency, has approved Oxitec's Friendly™ fall armyworm technology on March 9, 2021 for application on farmers' fields. The approval follows an in-depth, independent evaluation of scientific data by CTNBio, permitting the deployment of this solution on commercial crops across Brazil, and validating it as a safe, environmentally friendly, and sustainable crop protection solution.

Two independent studies conducted by researchers from Graz University (TU Graz) found that the composition of microbiome of apples and oil pumpkins depends on its geographical location which can affect its fruit quality, adaptability, storability, and food safety to human health. The researchers used high-throughput amplicon sequencing to target the 16SrRNA and the TS1 genes to assess the bacterial and fungal microbiomes in oil pumpkins.

The global market of gene editing tools is estimated to make up over US$258 million in terms of value in 2021. This is according to the Global Gene Editing Tools Market Professional Survey Research Report 2021-2028 released by Report Consultant in April 2021. The report also projects that the market is likely to accrue a compound annual growth rate of over 18% from 2021 to 2018.

Bt brinjal (eggplant) became widely-adopted biotech product in Bangladesh in just seven years. Breeders from Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) are developing two eggplant varieties that can withstand both eggplant fruit and shoot borer (EFSB) and bacterial wilt. Bacterial wilt is found in plants and then lingers in the soil in most parts of Bangladesh and second to EFSB in causing significant crop loss in brinjal. It cannot be controlled by chemical sprays and can only be managed by planting varieties that are resistant to the disease.

Economic losses from weather-related shocks have doubled in India over the last three decades, from US$ 20 billion in 1998–1997 to US$ 45 billion in 2008–2017. As climate change continues to increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, farmers need to be better prepared or risk losing their livelihoods. But, how can they plan for floods and droughts when long-term seasonal forecasts are unable to pinpoint exactly when a destructive event will take place, and short-term weather forecasts provide information that is too late to be useful?

Latin America and the Caribbean "are truly a pillar for world food security," QU Dongyu, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), said Thursday in an address to more than 30 ministers from the region and North America. Addressing the Third Hemispheric Meeting of Ministers and Secretaries of Agriculture of the Americas, the Director-General hailed the region's contribution to preventing the COVID-19 health crisis from becoming a food crisis. "Now you need to be the architects of recovery, a recovery with transformation," he urged.

Aimed at providing lawmakers with practical guidance on legislative processes that prioritize nutrition, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), published today a new Handbook for Parliamentarians, entitled "Food Systems and Nutrition". The online Handbook was produced in collaboration with the Scaling-Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement, the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children's  Fund (UNICEF) and the African Union Development Agency's New Partnership for Africa's Development (AUDA-NEPAD).

Research conducted by the Wageningen University and Research (WUR) and BGI Genomics has described the special history of lettuce in detail through their DNA analysis of 445 types of lettuce.The Centre for Genetic Resource, the Netherlands (CGN), the Dutch gene bank and part of WUR, manages a collection of 2,500 lettuce types, the largest, most complete, and best-documented lettuce collection in the world.

The study tested different methods of zinc biofortification to wheat in calcareous soils in southern Spain for a period of eight years. The researchers applied different doses of fertilizer in the soil and different doses of zinc were sprayed to the plant leaves at various stages of the wheat's development. The results showed that the application of fertilizers to the soil was not very effective, but foliar application increased zinc concentrations in grains by up to 51% with just 10% of the fertilizers used.