In 2022, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) must make “extraordinary” efforts to achieve tangible on-the-ground progress towards reducing hunger, making agrifood systems more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable, and to ultimately achieve the Four Betters – Better Production, Better Nutrition, a Better Environment and a Better Life for all – Director-General QU Dongyu told the FAO Council today.

Experts from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden reported a connection between CRISPR, a protein that protects cells from DNA damage known as p53, and other cancer genes. The results, published in Cancer Research, contribute more information to precision medicine. CRISPR has been a popular gene editing tool in research. However, some hurdles need to be addressed to be used efficiently in precision medicine. One of these challenges is associated with how cells respond to DNA damage, which CRISPR gene editing causes in a controlled fashion.

A new study published in Science of the Total Environment reveals that the proportion of UK people eating and drinking plant-based alternative foods such as plant-based milk, vegan sausages, and vegetable burgers nearly doubled between 2008–2011 and 2017–2019. The study, conducted by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), with partners at the University of Oxford is believed to be the first analysis of plant-based alternative foods (PBAF) consumption trends in the UK.

ISAAA and its network of Biotechnology Information Centers, in partnership with Murdoch University, held a webinar  focused on the latest scientific and regulatory updates on gene-edited (GEd) plant products in Asia and Australia. The aim was to share knowledge and advice about the technology and regulations related to it to provide the intended beneficiaries with advice on the production and international trade of the GEd products.

Auxin uses two main pathways to orchestrate plant growth, one of them has been discovered by Professor Zhenbiao Yang and his team. One theory proposed a century ago suggests that when plants are ready to grow, auxin causes their cells to become acidic, loosening the bonds between components and allowing the walls to soften and expand. How auxin activates acidification remained a mystery until now.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cuba has decided to develop their own vaccines. The efforts of their own experts have been paying off based on the reports of the developers. The Finlay Institute of Vaccines reports that one of their COVID-19 vaccines, Soberana 02, has been over 90% effective in protecting against symptomatic COVID-19 infection when used together with a related vaccine, Soberana Plus

The research group used the chickpea cytokinin oxidase/dehydrogenase gene expressed under the chickpea WRKY31 gene promoter. The WRKY31 gene promoter was selected to modulate the cytokinin level in roots and investigate the effect of cytokinin depletion in root growth and architecture, and subsequently, on yield and productivity of chickpea.

To accelerate the development of improved groundnut varieties, ICRISAT’s groundnut breeding team is gearing up to provide seed to research partners for multi-environment testing (MET) during the 2022 rainy season. Two product profiles are being targeted by the team. Resistance to late leaf spot (LLS) as well as rust are key traits for both profiles. To select lines with resistance to LLS and rust, markers for two major QTLs that correspond to the resistance to these diseases were used.

Countries need to make their agrifood systems more resilient to sudden shocks of the kind witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has emerged as a major driver of the latest rise in global hunger estimates. According to a new report published today by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), without proper preparation unpredictable shocks will continue to undermine agrifood systems.

The marine, nonheterocystous cyanobacterium Trichodesmium has long been chronicled as a prominent and cosmopolitan feature of the surface waters of many tropical and subtropical areas of the ocean. Indeed, reports of its accumulation in blooms at the surface appear in the journals and logs of Charles Darwin, Captain James Cook, and his botanist, Joseph Banks (1⇓–3). Phycologists mapped its distribution in the sea beginning with the first major ocean plankton survey, the Great Plankton Expedition of 1899