The decision comes after a 1,200 MT consignment of rice was seized by Rosselkhoznadzor officials at the port of Novorossiisk because the rice contained dead grain pests. Thailand doesn't have a system to monitor the presence of residual dangerous substances in export rice, Russian officials said, although the country had the possibility of carrying out such tests. At the time Rosselkhoznadzor officials visited Thailand, and it was discovered the local standards of food safety control...

The main idea was to involve this Governmental institution in research on ecological farming systems and local Rice varieties. Farmers adopted those varieties and gained bumper crops for a few years but after that the yields fell down even lower than the local varieties because of many problems with the HYVs. The farmers of Sheikhupura had more than 4000 rice varieties in their hands and now they are have only five varieties to cultivate he said. Currently, some Adaptive Research Farms are...

McGhee, HHMI's Architect and Senior Facilities Officer, has announced that he will leave the Institute on September 1, 2007, to join the faculty of the Rice University School of Architecture as Professor of Practice and director of a future graduate program in the design of research labs. McGhee, HHMI's Architect and Senior Facilities Officer, has announced that he will leave the Institute on September 1, 2007, to join the faculty of the Rice University School of Architecture as Professor...

Warm winter weather, combined with the prolonged drought that has gripped a wide swathe of China, has put crops at risk across the country, officials have said. SeedQuest - Central information website for the global seed industry. Unseasonably high temperatures last winter [2006-2007] caused wheat, the country's 2nd most important crop after rice, to grow extraordinarily fast in many areas, making it more vulnerable to drastic weather changes, the Ministry of Agriculture said yesterday [3...

Landlessness experienced by millions of farmers in Asia is worsened by liberalization dictated by the WTO and the monopoly of agrochemical TNCs over rice production. Debunking government s claim that HYVs improved the lot of farmers, AMGL Chair Joseph Canlas explained that while it is true that the average palay yield per hectare has grown, the cost of fertilizer, pesticides and other farm inputs has risen from 30 percent to 40 percent of the total production cost per hectare. IRRI has...