Surrounded by orange, lemon and mango trees, we find Rebeca, Fedora, Natalia, Campana and Gertrude. They are five of the 21 cows that Marlene Vacusoy and her husband, Cornelio León, own, but managing cattle is relatively new for this Ecuadorian couple.They had always been farmers but never livestock owners, so when Marlene and Cornelio’s son came home one day with a cow and the desire to start cattle farming, the couple was not pleased.

The FAO Director-General QU Dongyu today met virtually with more than 120 senior managers of the UN Agency from around the world to present the next steps in implementing reforms to make the Organization more efficient, effective, inclusive, transparent and results-oriented. This was the third global meeting in which QU engaged in person with all the managers at the level of director and above.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Mars, Incorporated and World Agroforestry (ICRAF) have agreed to collaborate on a five-year research-in-development project, Sustainable Farming in Tropical Asian Landscapes (SFITAL) to explore environmentally sustainable ways to link small-scale producers to global supply chains.

A 2018 integrated survey by the National Statistical Office of Malawi listed Dedza district among those with the highest malnutrition rates in Malawi. Ironically, Dedza is one of the major production hubs for legumes such as beans and groundnut in Malawi. The district is also popular for cereals such as maize, as well as root and tuber crops such as Irish potato. It was noted that many farmers in the district produce most of their crops for sale, using only maize and vegetables for their own consumption.

At the moment FAO is fighting the second generation of Desert Locusts. We have made significant progress in a number of countries, especially in Kenya, where only two of the 29 counties that were infested in February have Desert Locusts today. In the coming days, that will drop to one county, and within three weeks Kenya should be free of large-scale infestations altogether. That is a success but the threat of possible re-infestation towards the end of the year will call for careful and continued surveillance.

Scientists at the University of Edinburgh's Roslin Institute and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service Meat Animal Research Center have decoded the whole genome of pigs. The new reference genome, built using the latest cutting-edge DNA sequencing technologies, provides information on the location of more than 21,000 pig genes and is freely available online.

An inter-university team of scientists developed a method to successfully edit the mitochondrial DNA within living cells in a precise manner by combining two new breeding techniques: CRISPR and TALENs. The scientists found an interbacterial toxin that enabled them to change a cytosine base in the DNA code to thiamine, thereby harnessing the potential to correct some point of mutations in the mitochondrial genome

ISAAA monitors the advances in genome editing and its implications in food and agriculture. Articles based on peer-reviewed journals are published every week in the Crop Biotech Update and are summarized in the Genome Editing Resource. This page is available for public use, aiming to stimulate informed discourses and decision making regarding the technology.

Medicago announced that it has administered the first doses of its vaccine against COVID-19 to human volunteers. The results are expected to come out as early as October of this year. The Quebec City-based company is able to develop a clinical-grade vaccine candidate in a matter of weeks using plant-based technology. They create their products with virus-like particles (VLP) instead of animal products or live viruses. The VLPs mimic the shape of the virus and allows the human body to recognize them, thus creating an immune response in a non-infectious way.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Mars, Incorporated and World Agroforestry (ICRAF) have agreed to collaborate on a five-year research-in-development project, Sustainable Farming in Tropical Asian Landscapes (SFITAL) to explore environmentally sustainable ways to link small-scale producers to global supply chains.