A certain class of plant immune receptors has been identified to be highly informative about plant disease resistance. Nucleotide-binding Leucine-Rich Repeat receptors (NLRs) with additional integrated domains that act as ‘baits’ for the pathogen have been identified in rice and thale cress, and experimentally shown to be involved in disease …
African soils have been mined for their nutrients for far too long. Nutrients are removed in harvesting across the continent, but they aren’t being returned to the soil. This usually happens in the form of manures or fertilisers. As with a bank so too with soil: if you don’t deposit …
Researchers from Texas A&M AgriLife Research Dr. Shuyu Liu are about to close the knowledge gap on the location of key traits in the wheat genome and how to access them. The study included three wheat populations from two popular AgriLife Research cultivars, TAM 111 and TAM 112, and other …
African agriculturalist and science writer Isaac Ongu takes a look beyond the smear campaign leveled at the Cornell Alliance for Science. Read …
Cassava, a crop whose starchy roots feed 500m Africans, is in the process of getting a makeover which employs the best that agricultural science has to offer. And Chiedozie Egesi of the National Root Crops Research Institute in Umudike, Nigeria, who leads the NextGen Cassava project, told the meeting of …
South Africa will relax some of its tough rules on genetically modified crops so it can ramp up maize imports from the United States and Mexico to avert a potential food crisis amid a severe drought, officials said. Almost 90% of maize in South Africa is genetically modified and the …
Many smallholder farmer communities are challenging — transportation is difficult, electricity might be rare—but they’re filled with potential… Agricultural technology like GMOs can make a difference. Improved seed varieties can increase farmers’ yields, meaning farmers can harvest more from their land. That increase in yields doesn’t just change a farmer’s …
Before the Biosciences Eastern and Central Africa (BecA) hub was established at the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), scientists from Kenya and the region would flock foreign institutions to seek opportunities for research. Many would graduate from the institutions and opt to work in the host countries. But as …
If we can bring the same technologies to bear against crop diseases as well as human ones, we can help eradicate hunger – a less newsworthy and more slow-burning problem than Ebola, but far more deadly in terms of the human toll. Read …
A transdisciplinary group of scientists has succeeded in increasing iron (Fe) and zinc (Zn) levels in rice through biofortification—a breakthrough in the global fight against micronutrient deficiency or “hidden hunger.” Read …
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