Plants have a memory of pests that spans generations

by Amy Coombs In the age of industrial agriculture, seeds are often purchased in bulk from corporate growers that use heavy doses of pesticides. They then travel many miles to a farm where climate, soil and pest conditions are dramatically different. As a result, crops often encounter new ailments that never impacted first generation seed plants, [...]

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New crop varieties can cut poverty, study finds

Bernard Appiah  3 January 2012 | EN The new groundnut varieties are resistant to major pests and diseases Flickr/SwathiSridharan The thorny question of whether improved crop varieties do, in fact, lift peasant farmers out of poverty has been answered positively in a study of groundnut varieties, according to researchers at the International Maize and Wheat [...]

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Scientists ramp up sequencing of rice varieties

http://www.scidev.net/en/ Wednesday, 4 January 2012 Scientists ramp up sequencing of rice varieties Roderick dela Cruz  20 December 2011 | EN | 中文 Rice: eaten by over half the world’s population Flickr/ IRRI Images [MANILA] The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) has launched an ambitious collaborative effort to sequence the genomes of 10,000 rice varieties in [...]

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‘Super wheat’ resists devastating rust

Published in SciDev Net by Naomi Antony  17 June 2011 | EN http://www.scidev.net/en/news/-super-wheat-resists-devastating-rust.html Stem rust can destroy wheat crops Flickr/CIMMYT ‘Super varieties’ of wheat resistant to the deadly stem rust fungus Ug99 could replace wheat in affected areas in as little as two years — if farmers can be persuaded to adopt them, according to [...]

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Feed the Future Initiative

Fact Sheet The Norman Borlaug Commemorative Research Initiative: Leveraging U.S. Research to Reduce Hunger and Poverty Investing in agricultural research today contributes to the growth and resilience of the food supply tomorrow. When combined with other agricultural investments, improved technologies and practices can meet the need to feed an ever growing global population with less [...]

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