To celebrate this year’s World Environment Day on June 5, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) partnered with Italian celebrity chef, Carlo Cracco, to highlight the impact that climate change is having on rural communities in developing countries.

In a first of its kind in Mali, the Joint Agro-Meteorological Services Incubator (JAMSI) has been launched to build the capacity of the Mali National Weather Agency (Mali Meteo) to deliver improved climate services to farmers.

Combined efforts to prevent further human suffering, strengthen resilience and safeguard livelihoods in the wake of El Niño's devastating effects worldwide must be rapidly ramped-up by governments and the international community, United Nations (UN) leaders said today. More than 60 million people worldwide, about 40 million in East and Southern Africa alone, are projected to be food insecure due to the impact of the El Niño climate event.

In India, self-help groups (SHGs) have played an important role in changing the lives of women in rural areas. SHGs are considered one of the most significant tools in carrying out a participatory approach toward economic empowerment of women and in improving various aspects of the social structure in the country.

The CMRS app (simply known as Crop Manager) was officially launched by Radha Mohan Singh, India’s Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, in a ceremony organized at the Research Complex for the Eastern Region of the Indian Council for Agriculture Research (ICAR-RCER) in Patna on 28 June.
 

ISAAA releases Biotech Booklet No. 5, "Beyond Promises: Top 10 Facts about Biotech/GM Crops in Their First 20 Years, 1996 to 2015," a visual presentation of the 10 important highlights about biotech crops from 1996 to 2015, taken from the 20^th Anniversary of the Global Commercialization of Biotech Crops (1996 to 2015) and Biotech Crop HIghlights in 2015, authored by Clive James, Founder and Emeritus Chair of ISAAA.

The Institute of International Legal Studies of the University of the Philippines Law Center (ILSI-UPLC) held the forum "GM Crops: Public Perception and Trade Regulation Practices" on June 28, 2016 in Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines. The activity brought together scientists, biotech proponents from the public and private sectors, and other concerned agencies

Japanese scientists have discovered a simple genetic modification that can lead to more robust plants. Their findings are published in Plant & Cell Physiology. Previous study of the same research team revealed the molecular mechanism that was controlling the biological clock of Arabidopsis plants. In their initial trials, they inhibited three pseudo-response regulator (PRR) genes

Doreen Ware, lead scientist in a new research to analyze and annotate the depth of maize genome says that "it is a lot more exciting" than previously believed. Ware, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) in New York reports that their research establishes the amazing diversity of maize that has great importance for agriculture.

Eggplant (Solanum melongena) is a vegetable grown throughout Asia that is ravaged by the eggplant fruit and shoot borer (EFSB) , Leucinodes orbonalis, prompting farmers to treat it heavily with insecticides. While Bt technology has been used for controlling insect pests in maize and cotton, there have been only few Bt vegetable crops.