An undergraduate class at Purdue University has discovered a key mechanism that keeps plants short. Graduate student Norman Best led the eight undergraduate students and identified a mutation that leads to small stature in the dwarfed Sunflower variety Sunspot.

In Nunavut, the northernmost territory in Canada, Inuit high-school graduation rates are well below average, and only 40 per cent of all school-age indigenous children are attending full time.

The yellow fever epidemic in Angola, first reported in late January 2016, appears to be declining, with no new cases confirmed in the last 6 weeks. However, WHO and partners continue to provide support to Angola as well as to Democratic Republic of the Congo to control the outbreak there.

Bananas originated in South and Southeast Asia, and are now produced throughout the world’s tropics and eaten in at least 192 countries worldwide. Quinoa came from the South American Andes, and is currently cultivated in almost 100 nations. Countries clearly depend on one another’s crop diversity. But can we measure the extent of the benefits?

Researchers at Lancaster University and Liverpool John Moores University have made an important breakthrough in understanding Rubisco, the central plant enzyme responsible for photosynthesis. This breakthrough could help address global food security.

Law professors from the University of the Philippines Law Center-Institute of International Legal Studies (IILS) shared their assessment on Bt talong and GMOs in the Philippines during their special Agriculture and Development Seminar Series (ADSS) seminars for the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA) on July 20, 2016, at SEARCA, College, Laguna.

Stephen Campbell, research specialist and Professor David Stern of the Boyce Thompson Institute report the discovery of a repair system in the algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, which uses chloroplast extracts and light to release an interrupting sequence from a protein. The discovery has implication in agriculture and biotechnology because it could potentially be harnessed to enable proteins to become active only in the light.

The international prices for major food commodities saw a modest decline in July, following five consecutive months of increases. The FAO Food Price Index (FPI) averaged 161.9 points in July 2016, slipping 0.8 percent (1.3 points) below its level in June and 1.4 percent below its level of July 2015. The overall decline of the Index was largely caused by drops in international quotations of grains and vegetable oils, more than offsetting firmer dairy, meat and sugar prices.

Scientists under the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) project drawn from Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO), African Agricultural Technology Foundation and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center have for the first time established a confined field trial for genetically modified maize resistant to African maize stem borer (Busseola fusca). The pest, which is endemic to African uplands 500m above sea level causes 13 percent loss of all harvested maize grain in Kenya.

In PNAS, we (1) highlight changes in the balance of oxidized and reduced nitrogen contributions to United States reactive nitrogen deposition, pointing out that decreases in nitrogen oxides (NO_x) emissions, combined with modest growth in ammonia emissions, have altered the inorganic nitrogen deposition budget from majority deposition by oxidized species (nitric acid and nitrate) in the early 1990s to majority deposition by reduced species (ammonia and ammonium) today