Asthma is a common chronic inflammatory disease in the airways. It was thought to be caused by the combination of environment and genetic factors. Previous studies have suggested that cell immunity played a vital role in regulating the airway hyper reactivity (AHR) and inflammation. Fei Xu of the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University in China developed a mouse model for asthma by expressing the human IL10 and TGFB1 genes to explore the possible interaction between these two during asthma progression.

Access to reliable information, including on changing weather patterns and market conditions, is essential for empowering farmers, especially those in developing countries, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said today. "There is an urgent need to take the data which is available globally and to translate it to the ground level," Graziano da Silva said in remarks made during a G7 Agriculture Ministers meeting session entitled Empowering Farmers.
 

In a discovery that could benefit millions of people in the world, Rutgers University scientists have found a way to enhance the nutritional value of corn by inserting a bacterial gene that causes it to produce the key nutrient methionine. Thomas Leustek, study co-author said that most harvested corn is used for animal feed, but it lacks methionine.

To discuss issues and concerns regarding biotechnology and its impact on food and the environment, the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance (USFRA), together with the Nebraska Soybean Board hosted Food Dialogues: Pivoting the GMO Conversation at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln on September 6, 2017. More than 100 food influencers, filmmakers, and farmers attended Food Dialogues®, and nearly 7,000 people viewed the livestream.

Adrian Dubock of the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board laid out the steps on how people can organize themselves for the adoption of Golden Rice, a beta carotene-enriched rice variety developed to address Vitamin A deficiency. The first step, according to Dubock, is to organize people for public meetings to coordinate activities for improved health and welfare through Golden Rice adoption. The different levels of the government must take their roles in this task, with the help of nongovernmental organizations and the private sector.

Flores et al. (1) suggest that large Amazonian floodplains are vulnerable to fire and that a future, drier climate will trigger wide-spread conversion of floodplain forests into fire-dominated savanna. Furthermore, the authors argue that fires in fluvial networks will cascade through nonflooded communities and spearhead fire-induced change in the wider basin. We disagree with the reasoning, which we argue lacks a nuanced understanding of habitat diversity in Amazonian floodplains.

We, delegates meeting in Bangkok at the First Global Sustainable Rice Conference from 4‐5 October 2017;

Considering the critical role of rice in global food security, grown by 150 million smallholders, mostly in Asia, and serving as the main staple for 70% of the world’s 815 million food‐insecure;

Fundación Antama celebrates 20 years of growing Bt maize in Spain with two short videos that discuss the cultivation of Bt maize in Spain and its benefits to Spanish farmers.

Watch the videos (in Spanish) at the Fundacion Antama website.

Millions of young people in developing countries who are poised to enter the labour force in the coming decades need not flee rural areas to escape poverty, argues a new FAO report published today.Rural areas actually have vast potential for economic growth pegged to food production and related sectors, The State of Food and Agriculture 2017 says. And with the majority of the world's poor and hungry living in these areas, achieving the 2030 development agenda will hinge on unlocking that oft-neglected potential, it adds.
 

CRISPR-Cas9 has been a valuable tool for research and has been widely applied to different plant species. However, this method is still not widely used for the allotetraploid rapeseed (Brassica napus), an important oilseed crop. Huazhong Agricultural University researchers, led by Hong Yang, examined the mutation efficiency of the CRISPR-Cas9 method for 12 genes. The team also determined the pattern, specificity and heritability of these gene modifications in B. napus.