A new formulation of a drug to prevent excessive bleeding following childbirth could save thousands of women’s lives in low- and lower-middle-income countries, according to a study led by the World Health Organization (WHO) in collaboration with MSD for Mothers and Ferring Pharmaceuticals.

Over 6000 farmers in Andhra Pradesh will move to an improved business model for better value chains and better incomes through an intensive two-year project supported by the Walmart Foundation in partnership with ICRISAT. At a meeting in New Delhi, senior representatives from Walmart and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropic (ICRISAT) launched ICRISAT’s program focussed on two key national priorities:

Key stakeholders gathered together at the Africa Rice Center (AfricaRice) headquarters, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire on 19 June 2018, to formally launch a landmark project aimed at boosting food, nutrition and income security of rural communities in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana through productive and sustainable use of inland valleys for rice-based systems, while conserving land and water resources.

The Philippines produces 15.2 million tons of rice; leaving 11.3 tons of rice straw spread out in the field. The abundance of rice straw can be used for a number of profitable practices like composting, mushroom production, and as feed for animals. However, it is still perceived to have of little value in the Philippines because of its difficulty in collection and lack of opportunities to use rice straw as an additional source of income. Rice producers would prefer burning it in open fields for easier management.

The Global Cassava Partnerships for the 21st Century (GCP21) has called for urgent regional approach to halt the spread of cassava mosaic disease (CMD) that is threatening cassava production in Southeast Asia—a region that accounts for about 55 million tons of cassava and hosts billions of dollars in cassava investment.

The Global Environment Facility (The GEF) has today approved US$ 15 million in funding to assist continued management of the large marine ecosystem in the Bay of Bengal in order to help sustain ecosystem services for the benefit of the coastal populations and countries. The ultimate goal is to help safeguard ecosystem services that are estimated to be worth around US$ 240 billion over the next 25 years, and reinforce nutrition and livelihoods for hundreds of millions of people in the region.

Rice is one of the most important targets for plant breeders to secure enough food for a growing population. Producing nutrient efficient crops has become essential to secure enough food as well as to eliminate environmental consequences of using fertilizers. The team of Nahed Mohammed from the University of York in the UK aims to explore the genetic diversity of rice to identify genotypes with high efficiency under Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), and Potassium (K) deficient conditions.

Data science involves creating models that can predict the future, such as what the yields will be for the next planting season. This work, arguably, is “sexy.” There’s an aspect of data science, though, that is “unsexy” but a requisite to actually developing those predictive models. It’s called data cleaning or data curation. Depending on the quality of a data set, data cleaning takes up between 60 percent and 80 percent of a data scientist or a data analytics team’s time.

Rice is commonly produced in the tidal swamp areas of South Sumatra predominantly as a single annual crop because the dry-season cropping suffers from rat and weed damage and labor shortage. In recent years, best management practices and technologies were introduced through the Assessment Institute of Agricultural Technology (AIAT) to encourage farmers to plant rice more than once a year.

Rice straw management remains to be one of Vietnam’s biggest agricultural challenges. On average, 60% of the straw generated from rice production in the country is burned in the field every year. The burning of what amounts to 20 million tons of straw annually is dangerous and not environmentally sustainable because it increases greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which leads to environmental pollution.