Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 8474 / SEEDWORLD.COM JANUARY 2017 INDUSTRY NEWS Delivering the people, industry, business and product news you need to know. Submissions are welcome. Email us at news@issuesink.com. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) released its annual report on “The State of Food and Agriculture” focusing on impacts of climate change on agriculture and the implications for food security. According to the report, there is an urgent need to support smallholders in adapting to climate change. Farmers, pastoralists, anglers and community foresters are dependent on tasks that involve climate and at the same time, these groups are also the most vulnerable to climate change. Thus, there is a greater need for access to technologies, markets, information and credit for investment to adjust their production systems and practices to climate change. The report is available at fao.org. When plants need water, their leaves droop and they start to look dry. But what’s happening on a molecular level? Scientists at the Salk Institute have made a leap forward in answering that question, which could be criti- cal to helping agriculture adapt to drought and other climate- related stressors. The new research suggests that in the face of environmental hardship, plants employ a small group of proteins that act as conductors to manage their complex responses to stress. The results may help develop new technologies to optimize water use in plants. Advanta Seeds and Texas A&M AgriLife Research announced a new partnership for seed technol- ogy research and development with the establishment of a new biotech research station. The establishment of the research station will enhance the areas of mutual benefit between these two organizations. These include the breeding of sorghum, tropical and subtropical corn, tomatoes and hot peppers, as well as applying molec- ular markers to plant breeding in sunflower, canola, wheat and rice among other crops. The station aims to support all global research programs of Advanta Seeds. U.S. Department of Agriculture scientists and their collaborators have established a strong link between honeybee health and the effects of diet on bacteria that live in the guts of insect pol- linators. In a study published in the November issue of Molecular Ecology, the team fed caged honeybees one of four diets: fresh pollen, aged pollen, fresh supple- ments and aged supplements. After seven days, the team eutha- nized and dissected the bees and used next-generation sequencing methods to identify the bacteria communities that had colonized the bees’ digestive tract. A sister species of the Varroa destructor mite is developing the ability to parasitize European honeybees, threatening pollinators already hard pressed by nutri- tional deficiencies and disease, shows a Purdue University study. Researchers found that some pop- ulations of Varroa jacobsoni mites are shifting from feeding and reproducing on Asian honeybees, their preferred host, to European honeybees, the primary species used for crop pollination and honey production worldwide. To bee researchers, it’s a grimly famil- iar story: V. destructor made the same host leap at least 60 years ago, spreading rapidly to become the most important global health threat to European honeybees. Using computer model simulations, University of Illinois scientists have predicted that modern soybean crops produce more leaves than they need to the detriment of yield — a problem made worse by rising atmospheric carbon dioxide. They tested the prediction by removing about one-third of the emerging leaves on soybeans and found an 8 percent increase in seed yield in replicated trials. They attribute this boost in yield to increased photo- synthesis, decreased respiration, and diversion of resources that would have been invested in more leaves than seeds. Grasses of the future being devel- oped by AgResearch scientists are expected to result in healthier animals, better production on the farm and less impact on the environment. Tony Conner, the Forage Science Group leader at