UK and India Partner on $32M Agriculture Program

-

The UK's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council will manage a new grant program that will use £20 million ($31.7 million) to fund a range of research projects in the UK and India aimed at improving food security in the developing world, according to BBSRC.
Funded by BBSRC, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK Department for International Development, and the Indian Department of Biotechnology, the new initiative will award grants to support research approaches, which could include genomics, to improve the sustainability of food crops.
The funding under the Sustainable Crop Production Research for International Development Initiative will be awarded to research teams that can show how their work may improve food security and boost crop sustainability within the next five-to-10 years.
The new initiative will place particular emphasis on improving the "sustainable production of staple food crops across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia," Sam Dryden, director of Agricultural Development at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said in a statement.
"These include cassava, maize, rice, sorghum and wheat. By placing significant emphasis on these crops the initiative partners expect to be able to improve food security and quality of life for the largest possible number of people," Dryden explained.
According to Stephen O'Brien, UK Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development, millions in the two regions depend on staple crops such as maize and rice as a source of food and income. "Reducing the unpredictability of growing crops helps to ensure that the poorest countries are able to feed their people, cope with sudden global food price changes, and ultimately boost economic growth," he said.
BBSRC Chief Executive Douglas Kell added that "Scientists and organizations across the world have the capabilities and expertise to make a real difference in meeting the global food security challenge but no single organization or country can do this on its own."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sequence Analysis is still sexy:Dual Descriptor Method for Biological Sequence Analysis

-
The emergence of “Systems Biology” in recent years highlights the systematic viewpoint of bio-system modeling. Building on such a background, Dual Descriptor Method, a generic methodology for biological sequence analysis is proposed. From a systematic perspective, Dual Descriptor is defined as a two element set of Composition Weight Map and Position Weight Function which aim at reflecting the composition and permutation information of a sequence. An alternate training algorithm is provided to get an optimum description of the building patterns of the sequences. In this paper , dual descriptor method has been applied to the analysis of two typical problems of molecular biology: gene identification and the prediction of protein function. Satisfactory and insightful results are achieved. Owing to the generality of this methodology, dual descriptor method has wide application perspective for many problems of pattern recognition, especially those involved in “Systems Biology”. Be a part of
Read more

Abbott Laboratories Buys Piramal Healthcare Limited Biz for $3.72B

-
Abbott May 21 announced a definitive agreement with Piramal Healthcare Limited to acquire full ownership of Piramal's Healthcare Solutions business (Domestic Formulations), a leader in the Indian branded generics market, for an up-front payment of $2.12 billion , plus $400 million annually for the next four years, giving Abbott the No. 1 position in the Indian pharmaceutical market. This further accelerates Abbott's emerging markets growth following the recent acquisition of Solvay Pharmaceuticals and announcements last week of Abbott's collaboration with Zydus Cadila as well as the creation of a new stand-alone Established Products Division to focus on expanding the global markets for its leading branded generics portfolio. "This strategic action will advance Abbott into the leading market position in India , one of the world's most attractive and rapidly growing markets," said Miles D. White , chairman and chief executive officer, Abbott. &quo
Read more

List of Cheminformatics Companies & Institutions

-
Accelrys ACD/Labs (Advanced Chemistry Development, Inc.) Afferent Systems Inc. Agilent Technologies Aureus Pharma Barnard Chemical Information Ltd. (John Barnard and Geoff Downs) SEE: digital chemistry Bio-Rad Laboratories BioReason BioSolveIT BlueObelisk.org Bruker Daltonics Inc. Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre CambridgeSoft Corporation CARB Center for Advanced Research in Biotechnology (NIST/University of Maryland) Cengent Therapeutics (Genes to Leads). Acquired by Inncardio, Inc. Center for Molecular Modeling (NIH) Centre for Molecular and Biomolecular Informatics CMBI (formerly: CAOS/CAMM: Dutch National Center for Computer-Assisted Chemistry and Molecular Modelling) Cerep ChemAxon ChemDiv, Inc. (Chemical Diversity) Chemical Abstracts Service Chemical Computing Group, Inc. Chemical Simulations Group ChemInnovation Software ChemNavigator ChemSW (Chemistry Software for Windows, formerly: WindowChem) Chenomx Inc. CIS Chemical Information System CombiChem.net CompuChem C
Read more