This week in Libreville, Gabon, more than 100 African agriculturalists met to discuss lessons learned from inaugural Biennial Review (BR) Report on the implementation of the 2014 Malabo Declaration – an agreement to track progress on agricultural goals for the continent every two years starting in 2018, endorsed by African …
This week, agricultural experts are meeting in Arusha, Tanzania, to improve the productivity of bananas, a food staple and source of income for millions of Tanzanian and Ugandan smallholder farmers. The “Breeding Better Bananas” project – which convenes researchers from Tanzania, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Czech Republic, India, Kenya, Malaysia, South Africa, …
This week, coordinator of the USAID Fall Armyworm Task Force Regina Eddy said in a press briefing that Kenya and other African countries provided the ideal climate for the spread of the Fall armyworm because of the absence of frost. She also indicated that the US is committed to aiding …
The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue has clarified the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) oversight of plants produced through innovative new breeding techniques. A release from USDA states, “under its biotechnology regulations, USDA does not regulate or have any plans to regulate plants that could otherwise have been developed through traditional breeding techniques …
This week, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) officially announced that it had no plans to regulate crops modified using genetic editing technology, including CRISPR, saying that removing genes or adding genes endemic to the species is an accelerated form of selective breeding, which saves time on traditional plant-breeding …
This week, Rose Gidado, the Assistant Director of the Agricultural Biotechnology Department at the National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA) in Nigeria and the Nigerian Country Coordinator for the Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology (OFAB), announced that Nigeria is ready to use biotechnology in agriculture to improve its food and economic …
Researchers at the University of Maryland College of Agriculture and Natural Resources have recently released a report that analyzed 40 years of data – from 1976 to 2016 – on Bt maize to quantify its benefits in the United States, where the genetically modified crop, adopted in 1996, comprises more …
This week, on the heels of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ (FAO) newly released guide on management of the Fall armyworm, scientist Kevin Folta interviewed GE insect research and technology company Oxitech’s CSO Simon Warner about the potential of genetically engineered insects to tackle the problem, by turning off …
Today is International Women’s Day, themed “Time is Now: Rural and urban activists transforming women’s lives” – putting a focus on rural women, who are typically forgotten and left out the development conversation, even though they represent more than a quarter of the world’s population. An infographic on rural women …
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