Addressing the combined challenges of food insecurity, biodiversity loss and climate change impacts can be a major source of national and global economic growth, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Singapore’s Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for Social Policies, told Ministers and Heads of Delegation in the first day of the 43^rd Session of the FAO Conference.

The Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), QU Dongyu, re-elected on Sunday for a second term at the head of the Organization, delivered today his opening statement at the 43^rd Session of FAO Conference (1-7 July), in which he stressed that it is time to “rewrite the narrative on food security.” The Conference began on Saturday 1 July with the election of Marie-Claude Bibeau, Canada’s Minister of Agriculture and Agri-food, as Chairperson and the McDougall Lecture by Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Singapore’s Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for Social Policies.

New resources on biotechnology in the Philippines are now available on the ISAAA website. These informational materials are developed to raise awareness, understanding, and acceptance of the country's biotech products derived from conventional and modern biotechnology. Creating information, education, and communication materials is part of the ISAAA Inc. project called Pinoy Biotek, in partnership with Philippine Agriculture and Fisheries Biotechnology Program.

Computer scientists at DePaul University in the United States used a bioinformatics workflow to reconstruct one of the most complete genomes of a top cotton species, the African domesticated Gossypium herbaceum cultivar Wagad, giving scientists a more complete picture of how wild cotton was domesticated over time. The research team is led by Thiru Ramaraj, assistant professor of computer science at DePaul's Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media and also the lead author of the publication in the journal G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics. Their work began with crunching DNA sequence data.

ISAAA, in partnership with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), released the Animal Biotechnology Resource. It serves as a public repository of information materials on animal biotechnology sourced from international workshops organized by ISAAA, USDA, Virginia Tech, and partners. The animal biotech resources include workshop proceedings, videos, podcasts, and presentation slides tackling the latest developments in the field as well as the regulatory approaches for consideration.

The course is a capacity building initiative of ISAAA Inc. and the Malaysian Biotechnology Information Centre (MABIC). It was first organized in 2018 as a platform for Asian scientists and regulators to be more competent in the regulations and policies related to biotechnology. Since then, the short course has been offered to promote strong collaboration among key biotechnology stakeholders for science and regulation to co-evolve and bring the benefits of modern biotechnology to society, while reducing its potential risks.

California-based food tech startup Climax Foods revealed a plant-based protein ingredient that replicates the dairy protein casein. This discovery is a breakthrough in the field of plant-based products. Casein is an essential protein responsible for the dairy cheese's texture and melt and stretch characteristics. Replicating casein has long been the most challenging issue in producing plant-based cheeses.

The Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) announced that its researchers successfully conducted gene editing on miscanthus. The plant, also called silvergrass, is known to be a potential as a source of novel bioproducts like oils and high-value chemicals. The researchers used CRISPR-Cas9 to selectively target genes to knockout their function and precisely introduce new genes into the genome.

A scientist from Wageningen University and Research (WUR) used gene editing technology to develop potato plants resistant to the potato late blight disease. The disease, which caused the “Great Famine” event wherein the failure of potato crops in the mid-19^th century led to a million deaths in Ireland due to starvation, still costs farmers 3-10 billion Euros in yield loss and management expenses annually.

Powdery mildew has a significant impact on the grape industry. The disease's impact, both financially and environmentally, is significant and it is the reason for the majority of pesticide use on grapes. Now, the industry has invested in finding more effective ways to fight it. The VitisGen research collaboration, a grape breeding project now in its third iteration, is working to produce a disease-resistant ‘SuperGrape' using CRISPR.