Daily Food & Ag Digest
Every day, the staff of the Genetic Literacy Project scours the Web for stories on a range of agricultural and food issues, including the GMO debate, conventional and organic farming, regulations, new breeding technologies and sustainability. We publish excerpts of those stories and encourage our readers to visit the original publications for the complete stories.
Plant breeding efforts strained by climate change and booming food demand. Is CRISPR the answer?
Human population growth has increased the demand for food crops, animal feed, biofuel and biomaterials, all the while climate change ...
Namibia begins pesticide spraying to end locust infestation threatening its crop-producing regions
Swarms of migratory locusts invaded fields in Kavango East and West... destroying crops and other vegetation in their wake, and ...
Video: Psychological impact of ‘junk food’ — Could fast food make you so impatient you forget to ‘stop and smell the roses’?
Fast food was invented to help us keep up with our fast-paced world. But it’s also had some unintended psychological ...
‘Regenerative medicine’ could help produce synthetic meat that mimics the texture and mouthfeel of steak
Tissue engineering of cultured meat is under development at several centers worldwide. However, most biosynthetic meat products are amorphous or ...
GMOs in the Philippines: Field trials confirm Bt eggplant highly resistant to pest attack
[Eggplant fruit and shoot borers are] responsible for the yield loss of up to 80% of eggplant farming in the ...
‘Realistic’ exposure to insecticide sulfoxaflor poses no notable risk to honeybees, study shows
Recent evidence suggests that one of the most prominent replacements of the banned neonicotinoids – the insecticide sulfoxaflor - harms ...
Foods made from gene-edited wheat may contain lower levels of potentially carcinogenic chemical acrylamide
Burnt bread contains a compound known as acrylamide, a chemical that can cause cancer. The darker the toast, the more ...
Law firms that led glyphosate-cancer litigation against Bayer want a ‘bigger slice’ of the record-breaking settlement
Plaintiffs’ firms that led the legal campaign against Bayer AG are fighting over $800 million in fees from the Roundup ...
Plants can ‘tell time,’ study shows, which could help farmers grow crops in varying environments
Published in the PNAS journal, Superoxide is promoted by sucrose and affects amplitude of circadian rhythms in the evening, details ...
African researchers use gene editing and other tools to breed heartier livestock
Livestock researchers in Africa are looking to genome editing and other new technologies to identify genes that could help them ...
Viewpoint: Regenerative agriculture—a marketing ‘buzzword’ for sustainable practices many farmers have used for decades
Canadian farmers [have been using sustainable farming practices] long before “regenerative” became a buzzword; indeed, long before wealthy people were ...
Facing stiff GM crop restrictions, Mexican cotton farmers may import illegal biotech seeds
During 2020, cotton production fell [in Mexico, as only] one million bales were produced, 500 thousand less than in other ...
We could face a global food crisis by 2050. Is synthetic biology the solution?
Synthetic biology has the potential to reshape our agriculture systems and to usher in a new era equitable and of ...
‘Green’ politics and consumer uncertainty keep GM crops outlawed in Europe. Will gene editing change the legal landscape?
Agronomy grad student Frederik Vilhelm Larsen, at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, wants to explore all the science that ...
How CRISPR can create more ethical eggs
Over the past couple of decades, Western consumers have shown an increasing appetite for more ethical eggs. The European Union and ...
Europe’s ‘most cherished’ grape varieties threatened by deadly diseases. CRISPR can help save them
How the latest breeding techniques are saving the taste of our most cherished grape vine varieties. European Seed (ES): Could ...
New South Wales, Australia poised to lift GM crop cultivation ban in July, sparking debate between farmers and environmentalists
[New South Wales Agriculture Minister Adam] Marshall said [lifting the state’s GM crop ban on July 1 will open] the ...
Soils around the world are in trouble, threatening food production. Here’s how we can save the ground beneath our feet
Soil is critical for the food everyone eats. Healthy soils matter not just for producing 95% of global food supplies, ...
Viewpoint: ‘No added hormones’? How food labels can be technically accurate but still misleading
Terms like 'GMO-free' and 'raised without hormones or antibiotics' are just some of the labels used on food products, and ...
How are genetically engineered crops regulated around the world?
By employing precise, efficient, yet affordable genome editing techniques, new genome edited crops are entering country regulatory schemes for commercialization. ...
Climate-proofing our food supply: Here’s how CRISPR will help us adapt to global warming
Biotechnologist Dr. Karen Massel from UQ's Centre for Crop Science has published a review of gene editing technologies such as ...
Viewpoint: Gene-edited crop developers need to win public trust. Transparency is how they can do it
In 2009, the genome editing tool CRISPR was introduced, which allows scientists to edit the DNA of organisms such as ...
Kenyan farmers clamor for GMO maize seed after visiting demonstration site
Impressed by the high yields realized in open field trials, Kenyan farmers are urging their government to speed up the ...
GM plants with bigger roots could suck more carbon out of the atmosphere, mitigating climate change
[S]cientists like Wolfgang Busch, Salk Institute for Biological Studies professor, are trying to harness the carbon-sucking power of plants to ...
Gene gun: The tool that revolutionized plant breeding and brought GMOs into agriculture
A plywood-mounted transformer, a voltmeter-equipped wand and a pair of bulbous vacuum tubes might appear to be just a random ...
China fines 8 biotechnology firms and research institutes for producing illegal GM seeds
[China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs has] found eight companies and research institutes that illegally produced or carried out ...
‘Bridging that gap between scientists and ordinary folks’: How storytelling combats anti-GMO advocacy
Many Africans still don’t understand scientists, or what they do. Scientists are widely seen as aloof and detached — a ...
