Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry have succeeded in producing functional plant Rubisco in a bacterium, allowing genetic engineering of the enzyme. Rubisco, a critical enzyme in photosynthesis, catalyzes the first step in carbohydrate production in plants, the fixation of CO2 from the atmosphere.

Scientists from the Canadian Light Source (CLS) have teamed up with researchers from the University of Saskatchewan (U of S) to develop a new technique to examine drought tolerance in wheat. Led by Chithra Karunakaran and Karen Tanino, the team developed a simple non-destructive method to screen hundreds of wheat leaf samples in a day, reducing the time and cost associated with traditional breeding programs to select varieties for drought tolerance.

What will happen if herbicide tolerant crops are no longer available because glyphosate is banned? This questioned was answered by PG Economic's Graham Brookes, and Purdue University's Farzad Taheripour and Wallace Tyner in their research article published in GM Crops and Food.

India is known to have a fast growing entrepreneurship culture, mainly in the IT sector. However, lately the food industry too has been attracting many such entrepreneurs.  There is also a movement in the food industry. These are from people who are conscious socially, environmentally as well as for health. Many also see the need to support farmers who are at the beginning of the food chain, yet are often the last to benefit.

By championing the possibilities of waste - food, agro-industrial and even human - a grant funded by IFAD and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) has supported food security and sustainability across the world. From 2011 to 2015, the Resource Recovery and Reuse project – implemented by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) under the CGIAR Water

In 2016, about 815 million people suffered from hunger - 38 million more than in 2015. After declining for most of the last decade, food insecurity is now on the rise says the annual State of Food Security and Nutrition Report (SOFI) authored by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the UN World Food Program (WFP), the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Elongator is a multitasking protein complex involved in diverse cellular processes, including histone modification, DNA methylation, and tRNA modification. In recent years, the Elongator protein emerged as a key regulator of plant immune responses. However, characterization of its function in plant immunity has been conducted only in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Thus, it is unclear if its role in plant immunity is conserved in higher plants.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service (USDA FAS) has released the 2017 Agricultural Biotechnology Annual for Japan. The report states that Japan remains as one of the world's largest per-capita importers of food and feed produced using modern biotechnologies. The United States is its dominant supplier of corn, accounting for 70 percent of Japanese corn imports in 2016.

Researchers from the Wageningen University and Research reported that Golden Rice could help alleviate micronutrient deficiencies in Bangladesh.

The research showed that Golden Rice has significantly increased levels of carotenoid in the rice endosperm without exhibiting any detrimental effects. The transgenic variety GR2 R BRRI dhan29 has better-yielding capacity, with the potential to increase yield by 10%, thus, increasing the amount of food available for the Bangladeshi people. With such benefits, the researchers recommended for the approval of Golden Rice in Bangladesh.

Scientists at the U.S Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have identified a common set of genes that enable different drought-resistant plants to survive in semi-arid conditions. The discovery could play a significant role in bioengineering and creating energy crops that are tolerant to water deficits.