As the 10^th Annual Summit of the African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) takes place this week, Africa is confronting a unique set of intertwined challenges. While African countries have on average seen far fewer COVID-19 cases and deaths per capita than many countries in North America and Europe, the effects of the pandemic are reverberating through the continent’s food systems, impacting vulnerable urban and rural Africans.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) announced its proposal for a new rule that will ease the regulation of some National Priority List sites. The public is being invited to comment on the said proposal. US EPA is proposing exemptions under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act and the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act for certain plant-incorporated protectants (PIPs)

The first-ever government-funded research project on Synthetic Biology in Kenya has been launched. The project, funded under the country's National Research Fund, will employ synthetic biology innovations in addressing intractable challenges in food security and healthcare. Led by a multidisciplinary team of local researchers, the project titled Developing low-cost diagnostic tools and biosensors for rapid detection of crop and human pathogens in Kenya aims at harnessing the power of synthetic biology to provide viable solutions to delayed disease surveillance and intervention in the country.

The first coronavirus infection in Nigeria was recorded on February 27, 2020. Samples were sent to the African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases (ACEGID) by the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control for genome sequencing. As a result, the first SARS-CoV-2 sequence data on the African continent was published on March 6, 2020. Now, scientists at ACEGID in Nigeria's Redeemer's University identified seven lineages of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus out of over 1,000 in the world.

Integrating trees in farming and pastoral landscapes, or agroforestry, is one of the most effective tools we have for mitigating and adapting to the climate crises and for restoring degraded lands while also providing nutrition and livelihoods to millions of people, particularly, in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet the integral role that agroforestry plays is often under-recognised, with policy barriers to accelerated adoption, even in areas with significant potential.

 Food systems transformation; innovation and digitalization; and partnerships are central to ensure food security and improve nutrition worldwide, said FAO Director-General, QU Dongyu.  He was speaking at a special event of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), taking place on the final day of the FAO Regional Conference for Asia and the Pacific. An initiative of the Director-General, the session aimed to highlight the importance of global policy convergence, particularly Driving Food System Transformation Toward Sustainable Healthy Diets.

Since the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has determined that the soybeans improved using CRISPR-Cas9 are not considered as genetically modified, the Seed Project using CRISPR commences. "We received a decision from the USDA that the genome-edited soybean which contains a double amount antioxidant, anti-aging oleic acid, are not GMOs," said Ji-Hak Han, Director of the Toolgen Seed Business Division. This is the second time that Toolgen received the same decision. The first one was for a new variety of Petunia.

Scientists have published the most comprehensive genome information to date for all three of the most troublesome agricultural weed species, marking a new era of scientific discovery toward potential solutions. Waterhemp, smooth pigweed, and Palmer amaranth impact crop production in the United States and around the world.

A study published in BMJ Medical Journal reported that pregnant and post-partum women who were diagnosed with COVID-19 seem to have fewer symptoms of fever and muscle pain, but have higher chances of getting admitted to the intensive care unit. The study also found that pregnant women with COVID-19 have increased chances of delivering preterm, though the preterm birth rates were not high. The findings are based on 77 studies that involved 13,118 pregnant and post-partum women and 83,486 non-pregnant women.

Edible plant-based vaccines were developed to become part of the solution to address the possible hazards associated with the parenteral vaccines. Experts from India say that edible vaccines may eventually eradicate the global outbreak of infectious diseases. According to the experts, edible vaccines are made by plants with antigenic protein introduced into the plant cells.