Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and NRGene, in collaboration with a global team of researchers have announced the accurate assembly of the W22 maize reference genome. According to the team, the second version of W22 has reached a scaffold N50 of 35.5 MB with less than 2% unfilled sequence gaps.

Researchers at North Carolina State University (NC State) have presented evidence on the movement and evolution of Phytophthora infestans, the pathogen that caused the Irish potato famine in the 1840s, which set down roots in the United States before attacking Europe.

The article by Yu et al. (1) in a recent issue of PNAS unveils potential salivary biomarkers for the early detection of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). Despite the groundbreaking findings demonstrated, the authors assert that the ongoing strategy for detecting OSCC (oral visual inspection and biopsy) is ineffective, because it has globally yielded high specificity but varied sensitivity. Here, we briefly discuss the above-mentioned affirmation, taking into account the landscape of OSCC screening approaches.

- With 14 million people food insecure in strife-torn Yemen, the European Union (EU) has committed 12 million euros in support of FAO's efforts to tackle rising hunger. EU funds will be used to provide a better understanding of the magnitude of the current situation and avert a deepening crisis, while providing immediate agricultural support to more than 150 000 people to help them rapidly improve food production and nutrition.

Some crops have it easy. They’re planted, they grow, they’re harvested and, finally, they’re eaten. No such luck with cassava. Cassava, as food, at the very least must be cooked in order to remove certain toxins. More interesting, however, is that cassava serves as a basis for the manufacture of many by-products ranging from chips as feed to processed food, starch and alcohol.

Recently, a curriculum developed by CCAFS on climate-smart agriculture (CSA) was used to teach students enrolled in the West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL) Master's programme on Climate Change and Energy at University Abdou Moumouni of Niamey Niger (UAM) at a 20-hour workshop. The workshop was about climate change, agriculture and food security, and utilized a specialized curriculum aimed at building capacity of decision-makers and implementers in Africa.

In Ethiopia, the major activities of the Livestock and Fish Program focus on small ruminant production and marketing and are led by the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and public and private institutions.

A new study published in The Journal of Nutrition has found that daily consumption of meals with beans conventionally bred to be richer in iron help prevent and reverse iron deficiency in young Rwandan women in just four-and-a-half months. 

Early detection and response to effectively control a disease outbreak is a key component for pandemic preparedness.  To strengthen influenza surveillance capacity of the animal health authorities in Viet Nam, the Department of Animal Health within the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (DAH-MARD) and the Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases (ECTAD) of FAO Viet Nam

Optimization is the mathematical quest for the best way to do something, from finding the shortest distance between two places to figuring out the best way to pack a suitcase. It often involves calculating the highest or lowest value of something. The applications are far-reaching. To Bosch, they also offered a pleasing aesthetic. “I wanted to convince my students that this material I teach is beautiful and incredibly applicable,” says Bosch, who teaches at Oberlin College in Ohio. “My mission was to show them that pretty much any field you could think of has optimization applications.”