Committed to improving food and nutrition security, Kayla Zhu and Alyssa Swehla, were selected by the World Food Prize Foundation for the Borlaug-Ruan International internship. They have spent the last two months at ICRISAT and the World Vegetable Center in India working within research teams to gain firsthand experience of how science can change lives.

The total number of suspected cholera cases in Yemen this year hit the half a million mark on Sunday, and nearly 2000 people have died since the outbreak began to spread rapidly at the end of April. The spread of cholera has slowed significantly in some areas compared to peak levels but the disease is still spreading fast in more recently affected districts, which are recording large numbers of cases.

The resource-poor farmers residing in stress-prone areas form the section of our society that is highly vulnerable to poverty and hunger. Environmental stresses such as drought, flood, and salinity frequently destroy their food crops, forcing them to leave their agricultural fields fallow. These environmental conditions affect the poorest farmers—women,

 Amid rising violence and displacement in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), 7.7 million people face acute hunger - a 30 percent increase over the last year, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) warned today in a new report.

The CRISPR-Cas9 system is a plant breeding innovation that uses site-directed nucleases to target and modify DNA with great accuracy. Developed in 2012 by scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, CRISPR-Cas9 has received a lot of attention in recent years due to its range of applications, including biological research, breeding and development of agricultural crops and animals, and human health applications

Supporting herders to get back on their feet and preventing further livestock losses and suffering are crucial in drought-hit Ethiopia where hunger has been on the rise this year, warned today the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

The proposal for direct use of Golden Rice for food, feed, and processing is now under public comment in the Philippines. The Public Information Sheet (PIS) on the proposal for the direct use as food and feed, or for processing of Golden Rice was published in the July 26 issue of Manila Standard. The application for biosafety permit was submitted by the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in February 2017

It is with deep sadness that the International Rice Research institute (IRRI) announces the passing of Dr. Gelia Tagumpay Castillo, 89, on Saturday, 5 August. Gelia had been ill for some time.
Born on 3 March 1928 in Pagsanjan, Laguna, Philippines, she was an internationally respected rural sociologist. Her outstanding publications are major and definitive works on Philippine agricultural and rural development.
 

Denmark, Ireland, Norway, and multiple other nations didn’t see the fish war coming. In 2011, in the waters and fjords of east Greenland, fishermen began spotting a blue-green iridescent fish. It was mackerel, a species that had never before been caught so far north. By 2014, the fish was one of Greenland’s most valuable exports, generating $100 million in sales (1).

The CRISPR-Cas9 system allows effective gene modification through RNA-guided DNA targeting. Researchers have significantly altered Cas9, resulting in partially or completely deactivated Cas9. The deactivated Cas9 (dCas9) offers a platform to regulate transcriptional expression with the addition of an activator or repressor.