From brainstorming solutions for food security and mitigating climate change based on science and innovation to highlighting the links between healthy eating and a healthy planet - a youth-driven World Food Forum today wrapped up five days of intensive dialogue, networking and investment pitching aimed at addressing the world’s growing food crisis. Energizing the gathering has been the urgency of bringing diverse perspectives to bear towards its goals of finding solutions for food security and improving agrifood resilience;

Scientists at Illinois State University are working to turn the weed pennycress into a cold-tolerant, short-season oilseed similar to Camelina. In some ways, the process echoes the development of its plant relative, canola. John Sedbrook, a professor of genetics at Illinois State University, and his colleagues are using CRISPR gene editing technology to modify pennycress. Like canola's rapeseed ancestors, pennycress suffers from high levels of antinutritional erucic acid in the oil and high levels of glucosinalates, particularly one called sinigrin, in the meal.

Bacterial leaf blight (BLB) of rice is considered to be a disease of economic importance as the disease causes severe yield losses in all rice growing regions. Transcription activator like effector (TALE) molecules are produced by the pathogen, Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo) bind to the effector binding element (EBE) of the promoter of SWEET gene and activates transcription of SWEET genes, making the plant susceptible to the disease.

Members of the French Plant Biotechnology Association (AFBV) call for a general mobilization of public and private research across Europe to ensure plant variety adaptation to climate change. The AFBV considers using new plant biotechnologies, including genome editing, as necessary for the success of this adaptation plan not only to ensure food security but also to address the impacts of climate change.

ISAAA Inc., in partnership with SEARCA Biotechnology Information Center and the Philippine Agriculture and Fisheries Biotechnology Program (DA-Biotech Program), conducted the webinar Current Status of Commercialized GM Crops in the Philippines: Biotech Corn and Golden Rice as part of the Know the Science Webinar Series. It was attended by 798 participants on Zoom and various social media platforms on October 11, 2022, and was designed for media practitioners to get information for their news articles and orient the general public on the latest updates about the topic.

The workshop aims to prepare participants for the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties or COP-15 and 10th meeting of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety or COP-MOP 10) to be held in Montreal, Canada in December 2022.

Australia's Office of the Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR) has issued license DIR 190 to BASF Australia Ltd., authorizing the commercial release of Indian mustard genetically modified (GM) for herbicide tolerance. The release is authorized to take place throughout Australia. The GM Indian mustard and products derived from it may enter general commerce, including use in human food and animal feed.

 Science and data-based solutions must be the foundation of agricultural development projects, and those who work on them should make their cases more forcefully, QU Dongyu, Director-General of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), said Wednesday during the World Food Forum. “Take your knowledge to policy makers,” the Director-General told participants in a special “Investments in agricultural research for development: Are we on the right track?” session.

Almost 4,000 attendees; 80 companies with machinery demonstrations and displays from tillage and sowing to harvesting and grain handling; 22-hectare trial and demonstration plots – conferences on mechanization – official opening by Minister of Agriculture –  24-26 August in Mekong Delta, Vietnam. Held in Can Tho, Vietnam, last week, AGRITECHNICA ASIA Live, a 20-hectare outdoor event combining field demonstrations, exhibition and conference program, successfully concluded, attracting almost 4,000 farmers, traders, scientists and politicians.

A  recent Twitter conversation between the UN’s David Beasley and Tesla’s Elon Musk has shown that hunger is deceptively complex. There is a crucial difference between acute hunger, caused by shocks like war or natural disasters, and chronic hunger, which occurs when agricultural production (and distribution) fails to keep pace with threats such as soil degradation, erratic rainfall, or heatwaves, or when poverty renders food unaffordable.