The World Bank recently launched one of its largest climate smart agriculture initiatives in India. Through this $420 million initiative, the bank expects to reach over 25 million smallholder farmers working on 3.5 million hectares of land. The project will support climate-smart agricultural practices including crop diversification and planting of …
The calcineurin B-like protein (CBL)-interacting protein kinase (CIPK) signaling pathway responds to various abiotic stresses in plants. The research team of Xiao-Yu Cui and Yong-Tao Du from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences studied the CIPK23 gene from wheat (Triticum aestivum). Read more and for more detailed …
GR2E Golden Rice, a provitamin-A biofortified rice variety, completed its third positive food safety evaluation, this time from the United States Food and Drug Administration (US FDA). In an official response received by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) on 24 May (EST), the US FDA concurred with IRRI’s assessment …
A team of scientists from Purdue University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences has used CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology to develop a variety of rice that produces 25-31 percent more grain and would have been virtually impossible to create through traditional breeding methods.
The team, led by Jian-Kang Zhu, a distinguished professor …
“People in Mozambique are not worried about GMOs,” Rose Moreira, who works with National Agricultural Research Institute of Mozambique, told the Alliance for Science. “They are willing to have very good products from industry, commerce and technology. People are not looking at what they have on the shelves. They …
A project known as Banana21 commenced in 2005 to alleviate micronutrient deficiencies in Uganda and surrounding countries through the generation of farmer- and consumer-acceptable edible bananas with significantly increased fruit levels of PVA and iron. A genetic modification approach was adopted since bananas are recalcitrant to conventional breeding.
Based on the …
From health benefits to increased flavour and longer shelf-life, discover the new generation of GM foods designed with the consumer in mind. Read …
The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Co-operation (CTA) has launched a new project in Kinshasa to explore cassava’s economic potential in agricultural value chains in Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Cameroon.
According to CTA, a number of 10 cassava cooperatives will be targeted with a total membership of …
B4FA Fellow Michael Ssali writes:
Most African homes keep local chickens by free range system. They multiply naturally with hardly any input from the members of the household besides periodic cleaning of the room where the chickens go to roost at night.
Chickens are a good source of animal protein in …
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has canvassed the adoption of biotechnology in agriculture to end hunger across the world.
“If agricultural yields remains the same, we would need to cultivate more than double the present amount of land to feed that population. That is 82 per cent of our total land area …
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