About 259 million people in 58 countries and territories experienced acute food insecurity in 2022. That’s an increase from 193 million people from 53 countries in 2021, according to the Global Report on Food Crises recently released by the Food Security Information Network.

The report's 2022 findings reveal that the number of people experiencing hunger is the most it has been for the past seven years. Economic shocks due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine were found to be the main drivers of food crises. They occurred in the world's poorest areas because of significant dependence on imported food and agricultural products that are vulnerable to global food-price impacts. Weather extremes such as drought, flooding, tropical storms and cyclones also contributed to the food crises. Visit fsinplatform.org for more information.

Climate hubs go global

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently launched the International Climate Hub. It builds on the agency’s experience with 10 regional Climate Hubs throughout the United States and the Caribbean to compile, share and expand knowledge and implementation of climate-smart agriculture and forestry practices in the United States.

The international portal, led by the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service, focuses on collaborations between USDA and its global partners to provide climate-change policy and technical support.

The International Climate Hub also provides new tools such as the COMET-Planner Global, which enables users to see how different production practices can estimate carbon-dioxide sequestration in any part of the world. The Global Agricultural and Disaster Assessment System helps assess the effect of natural disasters on agricultural production by providing real-time data to assess crop conditions. That includes daily precipitation data, vegetation index, crop masks, land-cover data, irrigation and water data, elevation and infrastructure data. Visit climatehubs.usda.gov for more information.

Root-boosting genes discovered

Researchers have discovered plants that contain root oncogenic loci genes that originate from Rhizobium rhizogenes bacteria. The bacterium R. rhizogenes can transfer its genes to host plants and transform them.

The researchers at the University of Copenhagen working on potted plants noticed that the transformed plants also had significantly more and longer roots. The team hypothesized that the bacterial genes could help make plants drought resistant. The hypothesis is currently being tested using wild and naturally altered plants in a drought experiment.

If current European policies regarding genetically modified organisms are maintained, R. rhizogenes could help accelerate natural development of drought-resistant crops. That’s because the method doesn’t alter the bacterium's natural genetics. The research team has achieved positive results in making oilseed rape drought resistant with strengthened roots. Visit plen.ku.dk – search for “Henrik Lutken” – for more information.

Crop tastes great, less tilling

Kernza is making its way into breweries. As a perennial it doesn’t need to be replanted every year like wheat and barley, which are traditionally used to brew beer. Reseeding annual plants often requires farmers to till their fields, a practice that causes soil moisture loss and erosion, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service.

Kernza also can be used in many products as a substitute for traditional wheat. So scientists at the Agricultural Research Service are participating in a national research project to develop the crop. The agency’s national field trials are coordinated across eight states.

The work seeks to quantify the link between Kernza production with environmental and brewing outcomes. In the parlance of the Kernza community, the perennial grain “tastes great, less tilling,” said Alison Hamm, a biological science aid at the Agricultural Research Service’s Soil Management and Sugarbeet Research Unit in Fort Collins, Colorado. Hamm leads a survey of grain quality from breeding programs across the country. Visit ars.usda.gov for more information.

Genomic scrutiny spots fungus

Genomic surveillance could help manage emerging crop diseases and identify traits for developing disease-resistant crops, according to a study by researchers from the University College London and an international team.

The study highlights the threat to global wheat yields from pests and diseases such as wheat blast, a fungal disease found on three continents. To better understand wheat blast and its genetic makeup, researchers combined genome analyses and laboratory experiments where they determined the susceptibility of wheat varieties to wheat blast fungus and the susceptibility of wheat blast to fungicides.

The researchers found that the recent emergence of wheat blast in Asia and Africa was caused by a single clonal lineage of the fungus, with outbreaks in Zambia and Bangladesh originating independently. They also found that wheat varieties carrying the Rmg8 gene were resistant to the fungal infection and that the fungus was sensitive to the fungicide strobilurin.

The study was published in PLOS Biology. Visit journals.plos.org – search for “wheat blast” – for more information.

Droughts disrupt soil microbes

Soil stores more carbon than plants and the atmosphere combined. Soil microbes are largely responsible for putting it there. But the increasing frequency and severity of drought could disrupt that ecosystem.

Soil health and future greenhouse-gas levels could be affected if soil microbes adapt to drought faster than plants do. Better understanding of how microbes respond to drought is needed to manage the situation in both agricultural and natural settings, said Steven Allison, a microbial ecologist at the University of California-Irvine.

The study recently was published in Trends in Microbiology. Visit  cell.com – search for "Steven D. Allison” – for more information.