Genetically modified (GM) crops were first introduced to farmers in 1995 with the intent to provide better crop yield and meet the increasing demand for food and feed. GM crops have evolved to include a thorough safety evaluation for their use in human food and animal feed. Safety considerations begin at the level of DNA whereby the inserted GM DNA is evaluated for its content, position and sta...

In recent years, Nigeria witnessed significant labour migration coupled with reduction in rural agricultural productivity. Youths abandoned farms for ventures with high returns and less drudgery in cities thus labour availability in peak agricultural seasons became scarce. The declining farm population constituting mostly women and old men are not capable of producing sufficient food for the no...

Drivers behind food security and crop protection issues are discussed in relation to food losses caused by pests. Pests globally consume food estimated to feed an additional one billion people. Key drivers include rapid human population increase, climate change, loss of beneficial on-farm biodiversity, reduction in per capita cropped land, water shortages, and EU pesticide withdrawals under pol...

Ex-situ conservation of crop diversity is a global concern, and the development of an efficient and sustainable conservation system is a historic priority recognized in international law and policy. We assess the completeness of the safety duplication collection in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault with respect to data on the world's ex-situ collections as reported by the Food and Agriculture Orga...

• Beans are vital sources of protein, iron and other micronutrients in Rwanda and Uganda. • The average yield gain over local varieties from adopting improved bean varieties is 53% in Rwanda and 60% in Uganda. • Rwandan households planting improved bean varieties gain, on average, an extra 42 kg of the crop over local varieties per agricultural season, increasing household revenue by US$50. • F...

With a growing world population and a trend towards more resource-intensive diets, pressure on land and water resources for food production will continue to increase in the coming decades. Large parts of the world rely on rainfed agriculture for their food security. In Africa, 90 % of the food production is from rainfed agriculture, generally with low yields and a high risk of crop failure. One...

The Green Revolution, through the adoption of new crop varieties, irrigation, and agrochemicals, saved about 1 billion people from famine by increasing global food production (FAO 2011). We now recognize that these enormous gains in agricultural production were accompanied by harm to agriculture’s natural resource base, jeopardizing our future ability to meet human food, fuel, and fiber needs f...

Tamanna Sultana1*, G. P. Savage1, D. L. McNeil2, N. G. Porter3 and B. Clark4 1Food Group, Animal and Food Sciences Division, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand. 2DNRE, Victorian Institute of Dryland Agriculture, Melbourne, University, Horsham, Victoria, Australia. 3New Zealand Institute for Crop & Food Research. Ltd, Christchurch, New Zealand. 4Chemistry Department, University of Cante...

Crop plants are subjected to multiple abiotic stresses during their lifespan that greatly reduce productivity and threaten global food security. Recent research suggests that plants can be primed by chemical compounds to better tolerate different abiotic stresses. Chemical priming is a promising field in plant stress physiology and crop stress management. We review here promising chemical agent...

Increasing crop yields to ensure food security is a major challenge. Mutagenesis is an important tool in crop improvement and is free of the regulatory restrictions imposed on genetically modified organisms. The forward genetic approach enables the identification of improved or novel phenotypes that can be exploited in conventional breeding programmes. Powerful reverse genetic strategies that a...