Biotech News

China has experienced large and sustained reductions in pesticide use as a result of adopting GMO cotton, according to the largest-ever scientific study on the impacts of Bt cotton use in that country. The study, lead-authored by Wei Zhang of the International Food Policy Research Institute, examines cotton pest severity and insecticide use at a county scale…

As we face our global food security challenges, are gene-editing techniques replacing the decades-old “genetic modification” as the go-to tool? Peter Beetham, a plant scientist and CEO of the agricultural biotech firm Cibus, writes in Scientific American about how this “new revolution in plant breeding” is ushering in a new era of agriculture innovation: As…

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) just released its 2018 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report. Two alarming facts immediately stand out. First, for the third straight year …. the number of undernourished people in the world has increased …. 821 million people are undernourished; about 50 million more…

One of the world’s leading agricultural research institutions wants to be sure there is enough safe, sustainably produced healthy food available for the world’s growing population. Increasing potential yields is the focus of research at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Dr. Arthur Mol is Vice Chancellor and Vice Chairman of Agricultural research. “I think I’m…

MANHATTAN, Kan. – The Kansas Wheat Commission has announced that it is putting its support behind a technology being advanced at Kansas State University and that one researcher says will bring “many new discoveries” in improving wheat. The university has been working with wheat gene editing since 2014, and recently published findings of a study…

Cassava’s increasing economic importance but difficulty to improve genetically are what motivated scientist Herve Vanderschuren from Institute of Molecular Plant Biology in Switzerland and colleagues to utilize genome editing to accelerate breeding for modified starch in cassava.  Cassava plays a big role as a staple food and a highly favored commodity in the multibillion starch…

A few months ago, I talked about some questions concerning genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that we hear from our friends and neighbors. Consumers have a lot of fear and animosity toward GMOs, and those who think GM crops are unsafe and harmful fail to understand why farmers would plant such crops. However, a lot of…

At the same time as Swedish agriculture is affected by the worst drought in recent memory, the European Court of Justice has made a decisive decision that will have far-reaching consequences for Swedish agriculture beyond this hot summer. [On July 25th], it was decided that crops in which targeted mutations are created using the genome…

Agricultural Research Service scientists have developed a reliable method to make it easier to breed a variety of crops with vastly improved traits. The technology is expected to speed up the process for developing new varieties of potatoes, rice, citrus and other crops that are better equipped to tolerate heat and drought, produce higher yields…

CROPLIFE Australia has welcomed findings from two international reports released last week, which found the use of genetically modified technology returned several environmental benefits to growers, and resulted in a direct global farm benefit exceeding $18 billion in 2016. The complementary independent reports were published by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications…