This week in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the Next Generation Cassava Breeding Project is launching Phase 2 of its initiative to breed improved, farmer-responsive varieties of cassava in support of food security in Africa. The international project, led by Cornell University and founded in 2012, originally set out to “shorten …
This week, the world celebrated the annual United Nations International Day of Women and Girls in Science, which supports the achievement of “full and equal access to and participation in science for women and girls, [as well as] gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.” According to the United Nations, “Science …
According to a research paper released this week, 2016 saw a high adoption rate of biotech crops, with a global area of 185.1 million hectares. The paper – published in GM Crops and Food on 2 February and authored by Drs Rhodora Aldemita and Randy Hautea of the International Service …
This week, B4FA were delighted to attend the launch meeting of the newly minted Community Network for African Vector-Borne Plant Viruses (CONNECTED) – a network of experts focused on vector-borne crop diseases in Africa funded by the UK government’s Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), which supports research on global issues affecting developing countries.
In the …
This week we headline the sequencing and resequencing of genomes of 101 plants for the African Orphan Crops Consortium (AOCC). The data are intended to establish tools for informing orphan crop breeding programmes and assessing genetic diversity in African crops. In particular, informative genetic markers are useful for everything from …
Biotech highlights from African agriculture this week: Kenya’s potato farmers are reported to be adopting a new practice to boost seed quality: using rooted apical cuttings as starter material for seed production, rather the traditional certified seed. The practice of taking cuttings from tissue culture, allowing them to grow roots, …
Before the end of 2017, Uganda President Museveni declined to sign the long-debated National Biotechnology and Biosafety Bill 2012, asking for clarification on various items including patent rights of indigenous farmers. The bill, passed by Ugandan parliament last year, provides a regulatory framework for biotechnology research, development, and release. This …
Happy new year greetings to all our readers around the world! This week we catch up with news from around the holidays, including a look forward from Food Tank highlighting 188 organizations concerned with supporting food security efforts to watch in 2018, including IFAD, the Crop Trust, the One Acre …
The first One Planet Summit was held in Paris last week, convening leaders and stakeholders to support and accelerate global efforts to fight climate change. The Summit, led by French President Emmanuel Macron, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres, aimed to “find new means of …
This week, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) released its latest Red List of endangered species revealing that the wild relatives of modern crops humans rely on – including rice, wheat and yam – are listed as threatened. Wild relatives of food crops are crucial as genetic insurance to safeguard …