A team of plant geneticists and crop scientists has pioneered an economical approach to the selective breeding of maize that can boost levels of provitamin A, the precursors that are converted to vitamin A upon consumption. This innovation could help to enhance the nutritional status of millions of people in the developing world.

Scientists have developed a potentially powerful new tool in the fight against deficiencies in dietary vitamin A, which cause eye diseases, including blindness, in 40 million children annually, and increased health risks for about 250 million people, mostly in developing countries.

Scientists in the United States and India are reporting development of a high-protein variety of rice, dietary staple for half the world’s population. The study is scheduled for the Jan. 23 issue of ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a biweekly publication.

Every year in the world an estimated 20 million hectares of arable land are rendered infertile simply owing to water-induced erosion. It is therefore crucial to understand how these processes arise in order better to protect the layer of a few tens of metres of fertile soil essential for plant growth and therefore for sustaining agriculture.

How do many plants ship sugars from their leaves to flowers, roots, fruits and other parts of their structure? Using genetic engineering techniques, Cornell researchers have finally proven a long-standing theory of how this occurs.

IMP Director Barry Dickson and his group are interested in the genetic basis of innate behaviour. They focus on the reproductive behaviour of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Two years ago, the team was able to identify the fruitless gene as a key regulator of mating behaviour.

Scientists at Punjab Agricultural University, the International Rice Research Institute, and Virginia Tech have been successful in increasing average rice yields in northwest India using site-specific nutrient management strategies.

Farmers and vineyard owners have a new weapon in their pest management arsenal. A commonly used parasitoid, or parasitic insect that kills its host, has proven to be quite effective in the control of fruit flies in vineyards.

In recent years, there has been growing interest in the question, if the entry of veterinary medicinal products (VMP) into soils via manure application is of environmental relevance.

Global agriculture, already predicted to be stressed by climate change in coming decades, could go into steep, unanticipated declines in some regions due to complications that scientists have so far inadequately considered, say three new scientific reports.

Chinese agricultural scientists and rural communities have embraced diverse agricultural innovations through a partnership with the India-based International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), resulting in higher incomes and better living conditions for rural people.

When fruit fly larvae are poked or prodded, they fold themselves up and corkscrew their bodies around, a behavior that appears to be the young insects’ equivalent of a “judo move,” say researchers reporting online on November 29th in the journal Current Biology, a publication of Cell Press.