On 24–25 April 2023, the CGIAR Initiative on One Health held its annual planning meeting at the Addis Ababa campus of the International Livestock Research Institute, with some participants joining online via Microsoft Teams. The goal of the meeting was to bring together the work package leaders and core team to review the initiative’s achievements of 2022 and plan the research activities and deliverables for 2023.

A shift towards permanent “crisis resilience” from short-term aid is crucial to mitigate increasingly frequent shocks to the global food system and tackle rising global hunger, say food policy researchers. Disruption to food systems from multiple crises such as economic downturn, conflict, climate change-related weather events and the COVID-19 pandemic, has caused a surge in acute food insecurity in recent years.

IITA–CGIAR, in collaboration with the National Agricultural Seeds Council (NASC) and Catholic Relief Services (CRS), launched a cassava seed quality self-compliance reporting module on its SeedTracker platform in Abuja on 3 April. This new module enables cassava seed entrepreneurs (CSEs) to report on the quality and condition of seed production fields. The three Institutions are collaborating under the BASICS project, which aims to integrate the cassava seed value chain to produce and deliver high-quality seeds of improved cassava varieties at affordable prices.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) today marked International Day of Plant Health 2023, highlighting how protecting plant health can help end hunger, reduce poverty, protect biodiversity and boost economic development. This year’s focus was on the links between plant health and environmental protection. Addressing the challenges of plant health must involve “sharing knowledge, best practices, resources to develop innovative solutions for plant disease, invasive and alien species and also climate change impacts,“  FAO Director-General, QU Dongyu said in opening remarks at a global event hosted by the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) and FAO’s Plant Production and Protection Division.

Genome editing experts released an article in Nature Plants pushing for regulations that ensure societal benefits. They emphasized that genome editing delivers an exceptional chance to develop crops that benefit consumers, however, the success of the technology depends on risk-proportional regulation. Consumers show a preference for seedless fruit varieties in the market such as watermelon, mandarin oranges, and grapes. These varieties support healthy diets without pre-market regulatory approvals prior to commercial release.

Gene editing technology has placed the seed industry in an optimal position while transitioning in production practices, according to the Rabobank's report on gene editing and grain and oilseed supply chain. The current grain and oilseed market demands less inputs for agricultural production, while the need for more food is challenged with fewer options for land expansion. Gene editing provides options to address these concerns.

Researchers from the National Fisheries Research and Development Institute (NFRDI) in the Philippines have developed a fish-spawning method that will allow fish farmers to produce high-quality, pure spawn during off-season that do not require a high level of technical knowledge to execute. The method is expected to help Filipino farmers reduce their dependence on wild stocks while helping achieve national food security.

Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have discovered plants that contain root oncogenic loci (rol) genes that originate from Rhizobium rhizogenes bacteria introduced to a wide variety of plants millions of years ago through a natural process. The bacterium R. rhizogenes has the special ability to transfer its genes to host plants and transform them in the process. Henrik Lütken and his research team at the University of Copenhagen's Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences working on potted plants noticed that the transformed plants also had significantly more and longer roots.

All participants of the International Rice Congress 2023 are required to register officially. It is important to read all the information on the website before you commence the registration process. The IRC 2023 organizers do not employ any other third party agency to process payments on its behalf. IRC 2023 registrations and payments are processed strictly within this official platform and is facilitated by the IRC 2023 Secretariat. Please contact us at ricecongress@irri.org before making payments related to registrations.

Legumes are true green manure for crops, as they are able to fix nitrogen from the air in the soil and thus boost the growth of plants grown alongside them. In Africa, several farming systems use certain legumes in association with cereals: cowpeas, groundnuts, etc. Could legumes partially replace mineral fertilizers? What role could they play in food security on the African continent?