Marking World Soil Day, FAO today has launched the most comprehensive global map to date showing the amount of carbon stocks in the soil. Soil organic matter, with carbon as its main component, is crucial to soil health and fertility, water infiltration and retention as well as food production.  As a major carbon storage system, conserving and restoring soils are essential for both sustainable agriculture and climate change mitigation. 

Birch (Betula platyphylla) contains triterpenoids with anti-HIV and anti-tumor activities. However, the natural amount of these triterpenoids is low, and their chemical synthesis, costly. Transcription factors, such as the bHLH (basic helix-loop-helix), can regulate metabolite pathways, and improve yield. Thus, transcription factors can potentially improve production of birch triterpenoids.

Dr. Virgilio R. “Pexy” Carangal, 84, former agronomist (1974-94) at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), passed away due to congestive heart failure on 26 November.
       He had been a Filipino plant breeder with an impressive track record in the administration of Philippine public-sector agricultural research when he joined IRRI’s Multiple Cropping Program in 1974. He was tasked with launching and then coordinating the Asian Cropping Systems Network (ACSN).
 

Five traditional farming systems in China, Korea and Spain have been designated by FAO as "Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems". These include two sites in Spain which are the first such sites ever to be recognized in Europe– the Malaga Raisin Production System in La Axarquía and the Salt Production System in Añana. 

A ban on genetically modified (GM) crops in the European Union hurts productivity, according to retired Montana State University Economics Professor Gary Brester. At the Montana Farm Bureau Annual Convention in Billings, Professor Brester explained that claims that European yields without GM crops match those in the U.S., the debate is not taking into account enough years of data.

A team of researchers has uncovered a previously unknown mechanism that triggers gene silencing in corn. Gene silencing turns off genetic traits, and plant breeders consider it as the key on trait inheritance from one generation to the next. Lead researcher Surinder Chopra, professor of maize genetics in the College of Agricultural Sciences at Penn State and his team showed that silencing the corn pericarp color 1 gene can have two "overlapping" epigenetic components — RNA dependent DNA methylation (RdDM) and non-RNA dependent DNA methylation (non-RdDM).

A new FAO database launched today will help countries to better monitor, survey and effectively manage their animal genetic resources, allowing for early warning of the threat of extinction.

The Domestic Animal Diversity Information System (DAD-IS) is the most complete source of global information on animal genetic diversity to date.

Around 400 high school and college students and faculty in Laguna, as well as regulators, researchers and scientists from the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB), were informed about various perspectives on the international debate on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the special screening of the documentary film Food Evolution held on November 21, 2017 at DL Umali Hall, UPLB, College, Laguna

Twenty-nine (29) senior high school students and their science teachers from Isabela, Laguna, Iloilo, Cebu, Davao, and Cagayan De Oro were enlightened on the issues and trends in agriculture and agri-biotech through lectures on biotech principles and applications in crops, livestock, and fisheries; the agriculture landscape in Southeast Asia;

University of California, Riverside (UCR) researchers have developed transgenic mosquitoes that stably express the Cas9 enzyme in their germline. Cas9 enables the use of the CRISPR gene editing tool to make efficient, targeted changes to the mosquitoes' DNA.