Scientists with the European Space Agency have shown that plants and flowers can be grown on the Moon by demonstrating that marigolds can grow in crushed rock very much like the lunar surface, with no need for plant food. According to a report by BBC News, the new research was presented at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) meeting in Vienna. The new step, taken in the experiment, is to remove the need for bringing nutrients and soil from Earth.

The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) brought together governments, internatonal organizations and private sector and civil society organizations to address the challenges of food security, food supply, food prices. The task was to assess the current state and future potential of formal and informal knowledge, as well as science and technology, (i) to reduce hunger and poverty, (ii) to improve rural livelihoods, and (iii) to facilitate equitabble, sustainable development.

wheat fungi may have reached pakistan: A fungus, deadly for wheat, may have reached Pakistan two years earlier than predicted, said researchers at a recent meeting in Syria. The meeting was to

Researchers probe the secrets of how plants cope with water stress to improve crop yields.

Four years ago, the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) was born. This ground-breaking exercise brought together government, non-governmental organisations and industry representatives, including Syngenta, to assess world agriculture. Potential authors were nominated and selected - and I was among them. All the authors were expected to draw on their own experience and interpretations of the available evidence, including that taken from peer-reviewed literature, but to leave their affiliations behind.

The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) was set up to take stock of our knowledge, technology and policy, and help find a way to feed the world without destroying it . With $12 million funding from the World Bank, UN Environment Programme, UN Food and Agriculture Organization and others, it has been a staggering enterprise, involving dialogue between farmers, industry, governments, non-governmental organisations and other civil society groups.

Under the current scenario of farming with changing natural resource base, food habits, industrialisation, maize having adaptability across diverse soil and climatic conditions has emerged as an important crop for food and nutritional security and farm economy. Among all the cereals, the growth of maize production is highest (4.2%), which is much higher than the major crops (rice and wheat). April 2008

Growing food has always been a struggle, and it is only thanks to modern agricultural research that most people now have enough to eat. Today we need that research more than ever.

A wheat disease that could destroy most of the world's main wheat crops could strike south Asia's vast wheat fields two years earlier than research had suggested, leaving millions to starve.

The sequencing of maize genomes and the development of new strains are enabling faster exploitation of this key crop's natural diversity.

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