A new international research initiative, linking the private and public sectors for the first time and launched on November 9 at the 2007 Asian Seed Congress, aims to boost the research and development of hybrid rice for the tropics.

The world’s major rice-producing nations – including China and India – are calling for closer collaboration in efforts to feed Asia’s billions of rice consumers in the face of unprecedented new challenges.

An international team of scientists has produced a new type of rice that grows better and uses water more efficiently than other rice crops. Professor Andy Pereira at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) has been working with colleagues in India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Mexico and The Netherlands to identify, characterize and make use of a gene known as HARDY that improves key features of this important grain crop.

Using a novel “deep sequencing” technology that can in one fell swoop decode 50 million sequences representing well over a billion bases of DNA, a research team led by University of Delaware scientists is working to unmask where, why and how certain genes are switched on or off in rice--a crop vital to the world's food supply.

Some 10,000 years ago white rice evolved from wild red rice and began spreading around the globe. But how did this happen?

The Bush administration has used discussions between Israeli Transportation Minister and former Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns to insist that there should be no talks between Israel and Syria.

Just as a hard-charging person sometimes needs a calming partner to be more effective, so it is with a pair of critical proteins that promote cell division and growth in the rapidly expanding root tip of plants.