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.
CRISPR, EXZACT technologies boost gene-editing efficiency in plants from 1% to 90%
The perfect seed doesn’t exist—but can it? Breeders have tried without success for decades to perfectly combine yield, disease tolerance ...
Agriculture Department: No gag order on its scientists
Employees of the scientific research arm at the Agriculture Department were ordered Monday to cease publication of “outward facing” documents and news ...
USDA’s GAIN report: China to grow its own GE crops by 2020
Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from the US Department of Agriculture's Global Agricultural Information Network (GAIN) annual report ...
How GMO crops can help feed world’s growing population in time of climate change
Editor's Note: This article was written by Stuart Thompson, a senior lecturer in Plant Biochemistry at the University of Westminster ...
USDA, FDA proposals on gene editing aimed at ‘modernizing biotech regulations’
Editor's note: This story discusses proposed plans for new regulations for gene-edited plants and animals by the FDA and the USDA ...
Decoding wheat genome enhances production in the face of severe climate disruptions
Editor's note: Wheat rust and spot blotch are two fungal diseases that cause a devastating amount of crop damage around ...
Bill Gates: ‘Disease resistant, biofortified cassava one of reasons I’m optimistic about Africa’
A recent opinion poll found that the majority of Americans are optimistic about 2017. Although 2016 was a tough year ...
Will Trump cut funding of UN agency accused of ‘shoddy science’ for designating glyphosate probable carcinogen?
Editor's note: This article discusses the International Agency (IARC) for Research on Cancer, a sub-group of the World Health Organization ...
#GlyphosateIsVital: British farmers take to social media to defend herbicide’s environmental benefits
The Twitter campaign under the hashtag #glyphosateisvital has been backed by a number of British farmers, who have posted tweets ...
Science moms: Girl Scouts ‘cave’ to anti-science protests by introducing non-GMO cookie
… The campaign to pressure the GSUSA into dropping ingredients sourced from plants engineered with modern molecular techniques, better known ...
Kenyan scientists challenge government officials to lift GMO field trials moratorium
Scientists and students have been piling pressure on the government to lift the ban on GMOs that has been in ...
Organic yields lag conventional by 20% in developed countries, 43% in Africa, meta-analyses find
In most regions of the world, row-crop farming is primarily conducted in [large] fields, but knowledge of processes and management ...
Bangladeshi farmers worry growing more GMO potatoes could hurt exports, particularly to Russia
After a recent initiatives to grow more resilient GM potatoes, the Bangladesh Fruits, Vegetable and Allied Products Exporters' Association worry ...
Trump claims credit for Bayer, Monsanto keeping jobs, biotech research in US
President-elect Donald Trump met with the chief executives of German chemical giant Bayer and agriculture company Monsanto [during the week of January 10] and discussed ...
USDA will not regulate Scotts’ and Monsanto’s glyphosate-resistant GMO grass
APHIS [Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service] received a petition from the Scotts Company of Marysville, OH, and Monsanto Company ...
How Israeli software improves crop yields through genetic analysis
NRGene is working with Syngenta Ag and Monsanto Co. to detect plant traits that can produce higher-yielding crops, and with ...
Insect resistant Bt corn losing effectiveness against earworm, study finds
Editor's Note: This article discusses a research paper called "Field-Evolved Resistance in Corn Earworm to Cry Proteins Expressed by Transgenic ...
GMOs, biotechnology pose challenge for international relations
Just look at genetically modified foods. In the US, GMOs are regarded, at least by regulators, as perfectly safe for ...
Kenya could lose millions in donor funding after stopping biotech crop trials
Kenya stands to lose millions of shillings in donor funding after the government failed to permit biotechnology crop trials, a ...
Gene-edited animals face uncertain future under proposed FDA regulations
Editor's note: The comment period for these regulations -- as well as those proposed by the USDA -- opened on Jan ...
Seed industry, farmers ‘pleased’ with proposed USDA genetic engineering rules
Editor's note: The comment period for these regulations -- as well as those proposed by the FDA -- opened on Jan ...
Canadian farmer: Genetically engineered crops lower prices, increase sustainability
Editor's Note: The author of this article, Bob Bartley, is a Canadian farmer who grows genetically modified corn, canola, and ...
Does Environmental Working Group’s “Dirty Dozen” list discourage Americans from eating fresh produce?
Editor's note: This article examines the potential influence of the Environmental Working Group's annual Dirty Dozen list of foods with the ...
Nature Genetics editorial: Make agriculture biotechnology accessible to the public
In the current era of rapid technological advance in reading and writing genomes, we advocate universal access to some safe ...
How do you know what information to trust about glyphosate, GMOs? Do a ‘SMELL test’
Editor's Note: This article, written by Country Guide agriculture columnist Gerald Pilger, discusses how to determine whether an article is ...
Two patent lawyers weigh in on the advantages of genetic modification technology
Editor's Note: This article discusses patent attorneys Brian Reese and Nishat Shaikh recent piece published in the genetic engineering and ...
Former Georgia governor Sonny Perdue tapped as next agricultural secretary
Donald Trump has chosen former Georgia governor Sonny Perdue to be his secretary of agriculture, completing a protracted search with ...
