The world’s agricultural monitoring systems provide up-to-date information on food production to decision makers that is crucial to global and national food security. When prices become dangerously volatile—as they did during the food price crisis of 2007-2011—these systems spread critical information quickly that can reduce the risks of market and supply upheavals.

Path-breaking village-level studies with over 40 years of data will be available at ICRISAT for further research with support from the Jim and Wendy Ryan Endowment Fund. Instituted by the former Director General of ICRISAT, Dr Jim Ryan and his wife Wendy Ryan, this new fund will support researchers undertaking agricultural economics studies with data from the Village Level Studies (VLS) and the Village Dynamic Studies in South Asia (VDSA) that have been carried out by ICRISAT.

International food commodity prices dipped in October, as falling dairy, meat and vegetable oils prices more than offset a surge in sugar prices, the United Nations said today.

The FAO Food Price Index, a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities, averaged 163.5 points in October, down 0.9 percent from September and 7.4 percent below its level a year earlier.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne have discovered how a protein called LMI1 controls leaf growth and shape. Francesco Vuolo and colleagues are investigating the mechanisms underlying leaf shape variations, but have recently looked into the little understood leaf parts called stipules. These outgrowths form at the base of a leaf during development and vary greatly in size and function in different plant species.

Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists have identified networks of genes and gene regulators that allow plants to direct nitrogen to different parts. Scientists have known that plants actively redirect nitrogen to their different parts, especially when the amount of nitrogen available in the soil is limited. But they have not identified the actual genes and proteins that add up to a plant-wide nitrogen regulatory system.

Scientists at Iowa State University (ISU) have identified a genetic pathway that influences both plant growth and disease resistance. The research group has focused on the protein Feronia, a receptor kinase protein found in plant cells.

The immediate action of parliamentarians to adapt and advance legal, political, and institutional frameworks to end hunger and guarantee availability of nutritional and healthy diets are vital, said José Graziano da Silva, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

An "English News Writing Skills Development Course" jointly organized by the Pakistan Biotechnology Information Center (PABIC) in collaboration with the International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS), the University of Karachi, and the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan was conducted on August 29 to October 23, 2018 at University of Karachi, Pakistan.

Biologists from the University of Zurich (UZH) have discovered that the plant hormone strigolactone could make space farming a possibility. The research group of Lorenzo Borghi of the University of Zurich and Marcel Egli of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts focused on the process of mycorrhiza, a symbiotic association between fungi and plant roots.

The Government of Indonesia has approved the first genetically modified crop which will soon be commercialized in the country. The biotech sugarcane event NXI-4T which contains betaine gene was developed by the state-owned sugar company, PT Perkebunan Nusantara XI (PTPN XI). The gene expressed osmoprotectant compound which was introduced using Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated plant transformation.