On 1 July 2017, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus begins his 5-year term as WHO’s new Director-General. Dr Tedros previously served as Minister of Health and Minister of Foreign Affairs in Ethiopia and as Board Chair of the Global Fund and Roll Back Malaria Partnership. Dr Tedros plans to focus on five main areas of work during his tenure.

The closing workshop for the United Nations Joint Programme on Integrated Nutrition and Food Security to end malnutrition and stunting for children and vulnerable groups in Viet Nam was held today in Ha Noi by Ministry of Health (MOH) and Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), in cooperation with the UN agencies.
 

Ademola A. Adenle (Colorado State University), E. Jane Morris (University of Leeds), Denis J. Murphy (University of South Wales) and other experts from around the world collaborated to come up with a book that summarizes cutting-edge perspectives on the risk analysis and governance of GMOs, supporting effective and informed decision-making in developing countries.

Genetic markers that could help unlock the diastatic power of barley were identified by researchers at the James Hutton Institute and Scotland's Rural College (SRUC). Diastatic power (DP) is a malt's ability to break down starches into simpler and fermentable sugars during mashing. The process is important in the production of grain whisky where the mash consists of up to 90% of unmalted cereal with the remaining barley component added in quantities sufficient for starch breakdown.

South-South Cooperation - partnerships in which developing countries exchange resources and expertise - is proving an inclusive and cost-effective tool to support the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said today. "South-South and Triangular Cooperation offers the possibility of an approach that is not the traditional way followed by donors. It is more horizontal and it is based on the concept of solidarity," he said.

According to Natalia Dudareva, distinguished professor of biochemistry and principal investigator of the project, volatile compounds are actively trafficked out of cells through the use of an ATP-binding cassette transporter (ABC transporter), which moves substances across cell membranes. It has been previously assumed that the emission of volatile compounds was through diffusion, not active transport.

The number of hungry people in the world has increased since 2015, reversing years of progress, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva told member states today at the opening of the agency's biennial conference.  Graziano da Silva stressed that almost 60 percent of the people suffering from hunger in the world live in countries affected by conflict and climate change.

Nitrogen-fixing rhizobia have established a symbiotic relationship with the legumes. Hence, hundreds of legume genes are involved in the symbiotic nitrogen fixation (SNF) process. However, investigations of SNF-related gene functions are significantly restricted by insufficient mutant resources of representative legumes.

A team of biologists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has found that some plants selectively kill part of their roots to survive under cold weather conditions.The team experimented on Arabidopsis roots to look at the effect of chilling temperature on root development and growth. They found that a temperature of four degree Celsius leads to DNA damage in the root stem cells of Arabidopsis, as well as their early descendants.

Researchers from FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF) and Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands reveal the secrets of a special protein that conducts plant growth. Katanin (named after katana, the Japanese word for samurai sword) severs microtubules at the right time and the right place. As a result, microtubules grow in the right direction and they guide further growth and plant cell division, and consequently plant growth.