The flood-tolerant rice to be grown in Bangladesh

Flood-tolerant rice is to be grown in Bangladesh, Tengrinews.kz reports citing a representative of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. USDA genetic science helped lead to the flood-tolerant rice variety that shuts down during flooding conditions but resumes growth afterwards, said Cindy J. Smith, Chief advisor for Government, Academia, and Industry Partnership. "Developed in conjunction with the University of California and the International Rice Research Center in the Philippines, new varieties are helping transform the food security in Feed the Future focused countries such as Bangladesh. The secondary is capacity building. (...) We are focused on building capacity in countries like Bangladesh, Haiti, Ghana, and Tanzania, as well as regions in East Africa and Central America. This initial focus countries and regions were selected because of the strength of their political institutions and vision for confronting hunger," told Cindy J. Smith. According to The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization 925 million people were undernourished last year. This is an improvement from 2009, but is still an unacceptably high level, underlined the representative. 'Our goal of a nation and international community is clear: to bring down this number by increasing the availability and accessibility of nutritious food around the world,' she continued. They will have to increase food production by 70 percent to feed a global population of 9.3 billion by 2050. Moreover, some other crops are under research. For example, American scientists help combat the threat of plant disease. Ug99, a devastating fungus, spreads across wheat crops in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East with the potential to threaten crops that feed one billion people. 'USDA is partnered with researchers in Kenya to help find wheat strains that are resistant to Ug99,' Cindy J. Smith informed at the press conference for foreign journalists.