Could perennial crops be an answer to climate change?

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Reblogged from The Economic Times BENGALURU: While India reaped the benefits of the Green Revolution in the 1960s, her neighbour China is now taking the lead in another area of sustainable agriculture — developing crops that meet the challenges posed by global warming. Chinese agricultural scientists are working to convert seasonal crops into perennial crops…
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Climate-friendly rice wins 2015 Popular Science award

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A new strain of low-methane rice has won Popular Science’s “Best of What’s New” award 2015 for engineering. The new kind of rice, known as SUSIBA2, has been developed by splicing a single gene from barley into rice plants to reduce the amount of methane the rice produces and, ultimately, the amount released into the…
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Factsheet of the month: January 2016 – Blast in Paddy

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Scientists from the University of Delaware, USA, have recently uncovered critical information about the effect that deadly rice blast fungus has on rice plants, which could lead to more effective effective control measures in the fight against this disease. The team found that Magnaporthe grisea, the fungus responsible for rice blast, causes an increase in…
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Rice pests are no longer winning: the Khmer Smile is back

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Contributed by Heng Chunn Hy and Ho Chea, General Department of Agriculture, Phnom Penh, Cambodia Hy Broey, a farmer from Choeung Tik Khor village in Prey Veng Province, Cambodia, came with her problem to the plant clinic. She had many problems in rice planting and production, especially during the tillering stage. By attending plant clinics…
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Tiny wasp that is having a big impact on pests in the Mekong

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Rice is the most important crop in the Greater Mekong sub-region of Southwestern China, Laos and Myanmar, providing food, work and income for a diverse range of people living all along the Mekong river. However, the yield of this crop in the Mekong region is still missing the mark in terms of potential, partly as…
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Ecological Engineering Approach for Rice Pest Management-Need to Popularise its Advantages

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           Example of Ecological engineering in Vietnam (Photo credit: Dr HV Chien) The rice ecosystems are inhabited by more than 100 species of insects. Twenty of them can cause potential economic losses. With the change in the climatic factors and modern cultural practices adopted for production a drastic change has been…
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Factsheet of the month: November – Brown planthopper of rice

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Last week, Nature published an article on the story of rice, from a wild grass to the stable crop we know today. Rice is one of the most important crops in the world as it forms the basis of the diet of a large portion of the human population. Due to the high importance of…
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Backstopping visit to Bangkok, Thailand

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As the last part of our data management trip, Claire and I headed to Bangkok for the 11th and 12th of September. We joined a group of plant doctors and farmers at the plant clinic/rally in Nong Kung village, Suppaya district, Chainat province. We saw a demonstration on biocontrol, looked through pamphlets and information available to…
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A plant doctor’s fight against rice blast in Tamil Nadu, India

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Story by Malvika Chaudhary, CABI in India Photo: Saurav Paul Vargur is a small village in the Tamil Nadu state of India where paddy is grown on a large scale. The plant clinics in this region are very popular with farmers. For plant doctor Sarangpani it was a usual day, anticipating the regular crowd of paddy farmers in…
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Update: New Pest & Disease Records (11 Jun 14)

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We’ve selected a few of the latest new geographic, host and species records for plant pests and diseases from CAB Abstracts. Records this fortnight include Phytophthora cinnamomi in the rhizosphere of agricultural crops in southern Bahia (Brazil),  the first report of Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense tropical race 4 associated with Panama disease of banana outside…
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