The John Innes Centre (JIC) in the United Kingdom has formed a new alliance with the Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics in Spain, and the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Germany. The alliance will promote the vision of a pan-continental European Research Area. The partnership will initially focus on enabling graduate students and post-doctoral researchers to work together, share experiences and move between the three centers.

More than 150 executive and legislative officials from the Philippine House of Representatives, as well as selected members of the judiciary attended the Forum on the Global State of Biotechnology, a biotech outreach program conducted by the SEARCA Biotechnology Information Center in collaboration with the United States Embassy Manila, the House of Representatives, Philippine Judicial Academy (PHILJA),

Argentina is set to commercialize the first drought and salttolerant soybean in 2019. This is an important step towards combating the increased risk of drought globally because of global warming.

As the planet continues to warm, plants face a dilemma. Stomata, the same tiny opening in their leaves they have to open to exchange gases also release water. They can close the holes to stay hydrated in hotter, drier conditions, but may miss out on critical carbon dioxide in doing so.

In the 1970s, investigators were already envisioning new technologies to generate crops that could utilize nitrogen (N₂) from air to produce their own fixed N species, stating that “cereals that could provide their own fertilizer are beyond doubt the biggest prize of all in the gift of the new biology” (1). At this time, the N₂-fixation genes (nif) of Klebsiella pneumoniae had just been transferred to Escherichia coli,

The FAO Food Price Index remained stable in August, as cereal prices rebounded while vegetable oils and sugar declined.

The monthly index, released today, averaged 167.6 points in August, virtually unchanged from its revised estimate for July and 5.4 percent below its level in August 2017.

Bogor, Indonesia, 14 August 2018 – Results of the initial on-farm experiments to validate the predictive accuracy of the WeRise for rice-rice for rainfed rice (WeRise-RR) in selected provinces in Indonesia showed that farmers could potentially increase their yield by following the WeRise advisories. WeRise is an ICT tool that aims to improve rainfed rice productivity by helping farmers plan their crop production strategically by using seasonal climate forecast and crop growth models to come up with advisories. It was developed by the IRRI-Japan Collaborative Research Project (IJCRP).

A study published in Nature reports about a gene that improves plants' ability to absorb nitrogen, which can help develop high-yielding varieties of rice, wheat, and other staple crops that would need less fertilizer. According to plant geneticist Xiangdong Fu from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and co-authors, modern crops cannot absorb nitrogen as efficiently as traditional crops can, thus fertilizers are applied to help modern crops grow

In 2018, Brazil has completed 20 years since GMOs were adopted in agriculture. Throughout this period, what stands out are the benefits for farmers resulting from planting genetically modified (GM) soybeans, corn, and cotton. There has been, for example, a reduction in the application of pesticides per hectare and there have been fewer losses caused by pests. Consequently, the productivity and yield of the GM crops have been, on average, higher than conventional crops.

Researchers from the University of Minnesota (UMN) and partners found new soybean genes linked to aphid resistance. The results of their investigation is published in The Plant Genome journal. Aphid is a tiny pest of soybeans and other crops worldwide, causing billions of dollars in crop losses. Thus, discovering resistance genes is vital towards developing soybean varieties with robust aphid resistance.