crop development News
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Crop pests ‘vastly underestimated’ warns study
The number of different pests plaguing crops in the developing world may be vastly underestimated, contributing to severely reduced harvests in some of the world’s most important food-producing nations, say researchers. About 200 pests and pathogens per country fly under the radar of researchers and policymakers in the developing world due to a lack of technical capacity to detect them, ...
By SciDev.Net
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Global wild seed hunt begins
An international project to collect seeds from the wild relatives of 23 of the world's major food crops including maize, rice, wheat and potato, has received its first funding. Last week (10 December) Norway, home to the world's largest seed bank, in Svalbard in the Arctic, pledged US$50 million towards the collection, which is expected to take ten years to complete. Research and planning will ...
By SciDev.Net
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Genetic makeup of thousands of rice varieties placed in global seed data pool
Genome sequences of more than 3,000 rice varieties have been placed with the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) by the world's leading rice research institute in a move boosting plans to set up a global data exchange system for crop genetic resources. The Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the Treaty (ITPGRFA) made ...
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Can GM crops feed the hungry?
Golden Rice burst into the public imagination a decade ago, in the form of a cover article in Time magazine that claimed the genetically modified (GM) rice could 'save a million kids a year'. The rice gets its golden hue from an excess of beta carotene, a precursor to vitamin A that could help half a million children who go blind each year from an often-fatal vitamin A deficiency. But ten ...
By SciDev.Net
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Making agriculture sustainable
Agriculture is possibly the most important sector of global activity. It is a source of foods, fibers and, increasingly, fuel. It provides livelihoods and subsistence for the largest number of people worldwide. It is vital to rural development and therefore critical to poverty alleviation. Up to 40% of the land’s surface is used for agriculture, along with 70% of the world’s fresh water supply. ...
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Fight against wheat rust needs sustained investment
Developing countries need help with crop surveillance and the development of strains resistant to wheat rust, say agricultural research leaders. Today's food security situation is being worsened by strains of wheat rust disease that are emerging more frequently and spreading much faster and to new areas — changes fuelled by climate change and conducive environments in increasingly fragile ...
By SciDev.Net
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Arcadia Biosciences and African Agricultural Technology Foundation collaborate on test planting of nitrogen use efficient rice
Arcadia Biosciences, Inc., an agricultural technology company focused on developing technologies and products that benefit the environment and human health, and the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) today announced the planting of the first field trial of Nitrogen Use Efficient (NUE) rice in Africa. The NUE rice field trial is the result of more than five years of collaboration ...
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Global alliance to strengthen research–farmer links
An international alliance of research institutions will try to implement the results of agricultural research and to communicate findings to smallholder farmers in developing nations. The Association of International Research and Development Centres for Agriculture (AIRCA) was launched last month (30 October) at the Second Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development in Uruguay. ...
By SciDev.Net
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Sub-Saharan Africa news in brief: 4–17 November 2010
Below is a round up of news from or about Sub-Saharan Africa for the period 4–17 November 2010 Establish green technology fund, experts say Nigerian experts have called for a green technology fund to help tackle many environmental problems the country faces. At the end of the 4th National Stakeholders' Forum for Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development in Nigeria, participants ...
By SciDev.Net
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Ancient crops preserved for future generations in Arctic seed vault
Varieties of one of the world's most important staple crops will be stored for perpetuity deep in the Arctic ice today. José Graziano da Silva, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is joining scientific experts and delegations from Peru, Costa Rica and Norway to witness a ceremony here this afternoon that will help to preserve these vital ...
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A worldwide network of seed information is taking root
As an increasingly bloody civil war raged around them, a team of scientists in the Syrian capital Aleppo quietly packaged and shipped a series of nondescript cardboard boxes to an island not far from the North Pole. The boxes bore no sign of the conflict that had surrounded them or the precious material they contained. The scientists, from an International Centre for Agricultural Research in the ...
By SciDev.Net
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