A paper recently published in Scientific Reports stated that while human activities are the largest contributor to biodiversity loss through direct loss of habitat and indirectly through climate change, the events that contribute to species extinctions often result from consumption and services in areas far-removed from the affected species. The study showed that international trade is responsible for 29.5% of the global species extinction footprint.

At the UN Food System Summit last September, the shift to food that contributes to the health of the planet and humankind became the biggest agenda, and a diverse range of stakeholders, not only international organizations and governments, but also civil society and the private sector, expressed their commitment to change. Among them, the Rockefeller Foundation, an influential force in international agricultural research, announced the launching of the Good Food Strategy, which aims for a world where quality food is physically and economically accessible to all people.

Dr. Guntur V. Subbarao, JIRCAS Senior Researcher, will speak at the TED2022: A New ERA to be held from April 10-14, 2022 in Vancouver, Canada. Dr. Subbarao’s research on BNI-enhanced wheat has garnered worldwide attention and won the Cozzarelli Prize for 2021 from PNAS and the National Academy of Sciences.

On April 4, 2022, the third part of the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was released, addressing the need for systemic change to curb global warming. Effective implementation of mitigation measures in the agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) sector, which accounts for approximately 22% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, also requires a systems perspective that takes into account national circumstances.

In the field of development assistance, there is a growing focus on psychological research that results in behavior change. This is because the diffusion of agricultural technologies requires a process by which target farmers change their traditional behaviors and transition to new technologies. The JIRCAS project has integrated this psychological approach by aiming for the effective diffusion of agricultural technologies in Madagascar. The study found that the Likert method, a psychological test scale widely used in high-income countries, is not applicable to poor farmers in Madagascar and developed an alternative test scale. This achievement was featured in the Japanese Journal of Personality, and is expected to be useful for valid psychometrics for rural areas in developing countries.

Plants have developed unique defense systems to protect themselves from pathogen and pest attacks. Among plant resistance, partial resistance is a type of resistance that allows disease development but suppresses it to a low degree, and is effective against a wide range of disease races. In a study recently published in the international journal Phytofrontiers, a new experimental breeding line was developed by introducing a single partial resistance gene of six representative partial resistance genes into a basic line susceptible to rice blast, a serious disease that threatens rice production, and the effects and characteristics of the partial resistance genes were clarified.

A promotional video for the Fy Vary project, which is being implemented by JIRCAS in collaboration with Madagascar, is now available on YouTube.

Blood cockle is a marine bivalve mollusk of the Arcidae family that contains hemoglobin in its fluid, with the largest growing to about 5 cm in shell length. This species is common as a food source in Southeast Asian countries and is also cultivated. The main fishing grounds for this species are the estuarine areas where mangrove forests and mud flats are formed, and the surrounding shallow-water areas. This article presents a case study of mass mortality of blood cockle in a sowing aquaculture fishery in Thailand during the rainy season, and considers measures to stabilize production.

The top page of the JIRCAS website has been renewed as of Tuesday, March 22, 2022. In this renewal, we have revised the design and menu structure of the top page to make it easier to view, user-friendly, and more visually informative.