IFAD has issued a call for proposals for grant-funded projects designed to empower indigenous peoples' communities in rural areas. The grants will be provided through IFAD's Indigenous Peoples Assistance Facility (IPAF), established in 2007 to foster development in the framework of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – and in partnership with indigenous peoples’ organizations at the regional level.

Clinical treatment for metastatic cancer has traditionally entailed administering the highest possible dose in the shortest period, a strategy known as high-dose density therapy. The implicit goal is complete eradication. Unfortunately, a systemic cure for most metastatic cancers remains elusive, and the role of chemotherapy has been reduced to prolonging life and ameliorating symptoms.

This week, the CGIAR Gender and Agriculture Research Network meet at the International Rice Research Institute in Los Baños, in the Philippines. Debate is expected to focus on how to make sure CGIAR research factors gender and social difference into its strategy and results, to enhance future planning and innovation.

Engaging with rural women farmers for technology dissemination and value chain development was the focus of the United Nations’ regional “Sharefair for Rural Women’s Technologies” held in Nairobi, Kenya. ICRISAT was represented by Dr Esther Njuguna-Mungai, Scientist – Gender Research, CGIAR Research Program on Grain Legumes, and two women innovators of the ‘Harnessing Opportunities for Productivity Enhancement’ Project.

Uganda Biotechnology Information Center (UBIC) organized a one-week biotechnology internship programme for students from secondary schools and tertiary institutions who submitted winning essays in the National Biotechnology Essay Writing Contest in 2014. The activity was held from January 11-16, 2015.

An interdisciplinary team from the United Kingdom, France, and Switzerland, has produced real time images of what happens when plants beat off insects and respond to disease and damage. Their research, published in Nature Communications, focused on the plant hormone jasmonic acid, a defense compound which is released during insect attack and controls response to damage and disease.

In Madagascar, the battle against an ongoing plague of locusts risks being lost as funds to continue operations to subdue widespread infestations of the crop-hungry insects run out, posing a serious food security challenge for 13 million people. Failure to carry through the joint 2013-16 FAO/government anti-locust programme would annul the more than $28.8 million mobilized so far and could trigger a food-security crisis in a huge part of the country.

Through the analysis of the data collected from the physical examination of Chinese farmers, a study shows that GM rice significantly decreases pesticide use and adverse effects on farmers' neurological, hematological, and electrolyte system. The study is published in Science China Life Sciences journal.

Agricultural gene banks will cease from simply serving as storage of plant seeds, but will now be used to find traits that can be utilized to develop better crop varieties. The new initiative, called DivSeek aims to unlock the potential of crop diversity stored in gene banks around the world and make it available to all so that it can be used to improve productivity

This is the invitation from Ngonidzashe Chirinda, a soils researcher at CIAT that is more than interested in finding a concrete answer to a complex challenge in deeper layers of soils: how do we cost-effectively get the carbon to deeper soils layers? In order to store more of it and in that way contribute in reducing greenhouse gases emission that feed global warming and climate change.