Volume 1 Issue 2, February 2020

A food system framework breaks down entrenched sectoral categories and existing adaptation and mitigation silos, presenting novel ways of assessing and enabling integrated climate change solutions from production to consumption.

Transgenic corn expressing anti-inflammatory antibodies presents a new avenue for mitigation of the enteric disease coccidiosis, providing new possibilities for antimicrobial-free management of poultry diseases.

To highlight vulnerabilities of future food production under climate change, we need a better understanding of crop yield variability drivers. Soil moisture, which plays interdependent roles in water demand and supply, determined from satellite observations can markedly improve the predictive skill of US maize yield models.

An engineered increase in Rubisco production has increased photosynthetic capacity, rice yield and nitrogen use efficiency in an experimental paddy field. This demonstrates a key means to sustainably increasing yield and global food security.

A comprehensive review of the constitutive nature, design approaches, structural properties and applications of food gels, pertinent to the food science, nutrition and health communities.

Poultry coccidiosis results in about US$3 billion global production losses per year, and is managed by prophylactic antimicrobial use. Lessard et al. have developed chicken feed based on transgenic corn for mitigating coccidiosis, resulting in reduced intestinal lesions and improved body weight and feed conversion in Eimeria-infected corn-fed animals compared to untreated controls. Corn-fed and salinomycin-treated birds had comparable outcomes, indicating potential for antimicrobial-free management of coccidiosis.

Understanding the response of agriculture to heat and moisture stress is essential to adapt food systems under climate change. Using newly available satellite soil moisture data, this study finds that the combined influence of soil moisture and atmospheric evaporative demand is important for accurately predicting US maize yields.

Transgenic rice engineered to increase photosynthetic activity through overproduction of ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase–oxygenase (Rubisco) shows increased rice yields, with improved nitrogen-use efficiency, in an experimental paddy field.

Popular ideas about the Mediterranean diet are reviewed and questioned with respect to regional data on food intake and cultural diversity. With the UNESCO declaration of the Mediterranean diet as an Intangible Cultural Heritage, a far more holistic approach to food habits and environmental patterns has been developed.