The Australian Office of the Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR) has received a license application (DIR 165) from the University of Melbourne to conduct a field trial of genetically modified (GM) wheat with altered iron content. The trial is proposed to take place between April 2019 and December 2023, on up to 10 sites per year with a maximum area of 2 hectares per site.

Researchers from Pennsylvania State University have fooled soybean plants into thinking they were under attack by temporarily silencing the expression of of a critical gene. After selectively cross breeding those plants with the original stock, the progeny "remember" the stress-induced responses and become more vigorous, resilient, and productive.

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) identifies a dominantly inherited mutation that confers resistance to engineered cotton in caterpillars of the cotton bollworm, one of the world's most destructive crop pests. Entomologists from the University of Arizona (UA), the University of Tennessee and the Nanjing Agricultural University in China collaborated in this three-part study.

Plant communities and animals have typically performed better than monocultures. The mechanisms for this, however, have been a mystery for a long time. Biologists at the University of Zurich (UZH) have now identified the genetic cause of these mechanisms. Two UZH researchers, Samuel Wüst and Pascal Niklaus, addressed this question by combining modern genetic and ecological approaches.

The Philippines remain as Asia's biotechnology leader, according to the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service-Global Agricultural Information Network Report on agricultural biotechnology. The Philippines is the first Asian country to allow the planting of GM crop and is moving towards developing a regulatory framework for GE animals. In 2016, the original GE plant regulations (Department of Agriculture Administrative Order No. 8) was changed to the Joint Department Circular (JDC)

Scientists at the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science in Japan have found that the protein NGA1 is critical for plants to have normal responses to dehydration. In plants, dehydration response is regulated by the hormone abscisic acid (ABA). Successful rehydration requires accumulation of ABA during the early stages of dehydration, among other things. While scientists know how ABA does its work, they did not know much about how ABA begins to accumulate in response to dehydration stress. RIKEN scientist Hikaru Sato and his team screened 1,670 transgenic plant lines and performed a series of experiments to address this issue.

PennState University researchers used rice seedlings to show that the stress of hotter temperatures may trigger a response in a plant's ribonucleic acid (RNA), which is a part of a cells' genetic messaging system, to manage this change in its environment. The researchers studied over 14,000 different RNAs to look for changes in the RNA. Thus, they searched for changes in RNA's intricately folded structures that could signal acute heat stress.

University students and educators from four universities have called for an expedited legislation on biotech crops under research and development in Uganda. This was during an inter-university dialogue on agricultural biotechnology, which was held at the School of Food Technology, Nutrition and Bioengineering Makerere University, Kampala on November 1, 2018. Students attending the event voiced the need for the National Biotechnology and Biosafety Bill to be passed by the parliament to enable Ugandan farmers access to improved biotech crops.

Reying on agriculture for survival, Q'eqchi communities living in Guatemala's mountains are seeing their traditional crops fail to excessive heat and erratic rainfall.

But thanks to a project supported by IFAD they are learning to adapt to the changing climate by adopting practices that protect their environment and preserve their food culture.

Women in Kakamega and Busia counties of Western Kenya are going against the grain. They are turning their backs on the commonly planted grains of sorghum and maize and on commercial sugarcane, and replacing them with a grain that not only better meets the nutritional needs of the family but also fulfils economic and agronomic requirements in a time of climate change.