food crop News
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CSR minute: Dow Joins with the nature conservancy to integrate sustainability into business practice; seedco launches program for children
The Dow Chemical Company and the Nature Conservancy have announced a collaboration to help Dow recognize, value, and incorporate nature into its global business goals, decisions, and strategies. The organizations will work together to apply scientific knowledge and experience to examine how Dow’s operations rely on and affect nature. The aim is to advance the integration of the value of ...
By 3BL Media
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Growing on derelict land – healthy food needs healthy soil
The Local Government Association has called for cash raised from landfill to be used to bring derelict land into use to meet the growing demand for allotments. Whilst Environmental Protection UK endorses this proposal, we take the opportunity to remind potential local food local growers that healthy food comes from healthy soil. Although the greening of derelict sites is to be encouraged, care ...
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Basic food crops dangerously vulnerable
In the case of wheat, for instance, as a deadly new strain of Black Stem Rust devastates harvests across Africa and Arabia, and threatens the staple food supply of a billion people from Egypt to Pakistan, the areas where potentially crop and life-saving remnant wild wheat relatives grow are only minimally protected. “Our basic food plants have always been vulnerable to attack from new strains of ...
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Committee advises halt to Indian Bt crop trials
A technical expert committee, appointed by the Supreme Court of India to advise upon open field trials for genetically modified (GM) crops, has recommended a ten-year moratorium on all Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) food crop trials. Bt crops are GM plants that kill insects using a toxic protein from the Bt soil bacterium. Currently there is a moratorium in India on Bt brinjal (eggplant) — ...
By SciDev.Net
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Safety first: India gives Monsanto a moratorium
Following nationwide protests against the introduction of India's first commercial genetically engineered (GE) food crop -- the Indian government has made a giant step towards charting a path for sustainable agriculture and food security. When India's Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) approved the crop back in October, without proper tests, there was national outrage among ...
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Industrial oils from above the ground, not below it
With pressure mounting to reduce dependence on petroleum products, CSIRO has convened the meeting to coincide with the International Symposium on Plant Lipids which is being held in Cairns from July 11-16. "In the face of increasing CO2 emissions and the knowledge that petroleum reserves are finite, it is imperative to develop and implement the technologies needed to help switch to a bio-based ...
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When biofuels and biosecurity meet
“New agricultural non-food crops, especially those developed to meet the growing demand for biofuels and other renewable industrial needs in the 21st Century, will have to meet triple bottom line – people, planet, profit – criteria,” says CSIRO Entomology’s Dr Andy Sheppard. “Sustainable management of pests in new crops and minimisation of any invasive threats these crops pose to the environment ...
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Parasitic plants cause huge damage to rice crops in Africa
Parasitic plants – plants that penetrate another plant and grow at its expense – have caused some $200 million worth of damage to the African rice harvest this year, at the cost of 15 million meals a day. If no effective measures are developed and implemented against these parasites, the damage will increase over the coming years by some $30 million a year. This has been revealed by a ...
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EC Launches Initiative Aimed at Connecting Stakeholders With Biobased Compounds
On April 10, 2020, the European Commission (EC) announced the launch of its new online service that connects crop and food producers with biorefineries. This European Union (EU) project aims to address food waste by enabling crop producers, food processors, and agricultural cooperatives to sell their waste as feedstock for use by two biorefineries in Spain and Italy. The multi-feedstock ...
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Carbon credits to be used to fund GM food crops
US biotech firm Arcadia Biosciences has announced a plan to help fund the planting of genetically modified rice with carbon credits. The company will work with the Chinese government to give farmers who plant their crops carbon credits, which they can then sell on the global carbon trading market. Arcadia is touting its GM rice as a greener alternative to the regular crop. The plant has had a ...
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Potato battery could help meet rural energy needs
The holy grail of renewable energy research may lie in the cooking pot, according to scientists. The search for a cheap source of electricity for remote, off-grid communities, has led to batteries that work on freshly boiled potatoes. One slice of potato can generate 20 hours of light, and several slices could provide enough energy to power simple medical equipment and even a low-power ...
By SciDev.Net
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Iowa Corn Promotion Board and Donald Danforth Plant Science Center Announce Research Cooperation
The Iowa Corn Promotion Board (ICPB) and The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center (Danforth Center), in St. Louis, Missouri, have announced a formal research cooperation to explore opportunities for innovation in nutrient utilization for Iowa’s corn farmers. The research cooperation has a goal of developing traits that will be used to improve farmer productivity and manage nutrients ...
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CSIRO and Chinese academy of sciences join forces
Scientists from CSIRO and CAS will meet in Australia next week to discuss and plan for future research collaborations, with a focus on rice and wheat, which along with corn make up the three most widely grown food crops in the world. Leading CSIRO and CAS researchers in the area of plant genomics will share their latest research findings and also map out the areas where future joint research ...
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Faster and better breeding of sustainable and healthy quinoa
An international team of scientists, including quinoa breeding experts from Wageningen University & Research, published the complete DNA sequence of quinoa – the food crop that is conquering the world from South America – in Nature magazine on 8 February 2017. Quinoa is rich in essential amino acids and nutritional fibres and does not contain gluten. The crop is important to ...
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Indian science academies rebuked in Bt brinjal debate
An attempt by India's science academies to contribute to the heated debate on genetically modified (GM) crops appears to have backfired after the country's environment minister rejected their controversial report. The inter-academy report, published last week (24 September), has been swiftly followed by a note of apology from the country's leading science academy for copying portions of the text ...
By SciDev.Net
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More energy efficient to grow crops for food than fuel
The food versus fuel debate has raged for years and a new study by Michigan State University will likely add more flames to this fiery ...
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West Africa has potential to strengthen its agricultural sector
Boosting productivity, fostering competitiveness and ensuring that small-scale farmers have greater access to markets are key to West Africa realizing its full agricultural potential, according to a new study released today by FAO and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). The publication, Rebuilding West Africa’s Food Potential, presents a range of successful case ...
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Rapid action needed to help protect food supplies in vulnerable regions
Agriculture is vulnerable to climate change, and in order to protect food security, food production will have to adapt to rising temperatures and unpredictable changes in rainfall. Agriculture in poorer countries with harsh climate conditions is likely to be most affected. New research predicts how these vulnerable areas are likely to be affected by climate change in the next 20 years. The ...
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Limiting bioenergy crops to marginal land would not work, says study
Large-scale cultivation of bioenergy crops on marginal land is unfeasible, according to a recent study. While limiting bioenergy crops to less productive land could cut the sector’s impact on food prices, the financial incentive to grow crops on more productive land may be too strong for landowners to ignore, the researchers suggest. During recent decades, there has been a growing interest ...
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OriginOil Shows How Algae Can Reduce Biofuel Dependence on Food Crops
OriginOil, Inc. (OTC/BB: OOIL), the developer of a breakthrough technology to extract oil from algae and an emerging leader in the global algae oil services industry, identified serious dislocations caused by single-crop fuel policies and pointed to algae as a way to help make crops and waste more sustainable, in a presentation at the 6th Annual ...
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