Publications

This book represents the proceedings of the FAO international technical conference dedicated to Agricultural Biotechnologies in Developing Countries (ABDC-10) that took place in Guadalajara, Mexico on 1-4 March 2010. A major objective of the conference was to take stock of the application of biotechnologies across the different food and agricultural sectors in developing countries, in order to learn from the past and to identify options for the future to face the challenges of food insecurity, climate change and natural resource degradation.

During the period 2002-10, FAO undertook an intense activity of biosafety capacity development, largely centred on enhancing the capacities of regulators and other technical staff involved in the implementation of biosafety frameworks, along with other components. The training programme was tailored to meet the needs of a very specific audience: biosafety regulators, policy-makers and members of national biosafety committees, with diverse educational backgrounds, not necessarily well versed in all the biosafety-related fields.

The FAO Biotechnology glossary is a convenient reference source for researchers, students, technicians and translators. It provides consolidated, comprehensive and accessible definitions of over 3,000 terms and acronyms that are used regularly in biotechnology, including genetic engineering, and closely allied fields. The original English version, prepared by A. Zaid, H.G. Hughes, E. Porceddu and F. Nicholas in 2001, has progressively been translated into nine languages, the most recent ones being Chinese (2010) and Polish (2011). The Glossary has also been released as a multilingual CD-ROM.

The October 2010 issue of the scientific journal Biomass and Bioenergy contains this article by J. Ruane, A. Sonnino and A. Agostini, which is an abbreviated and updated version of the background document prepared for an e-mail conference hosted by the FAO Biotechnology Forum on the same subject.

This study is the result of the in-depth review of FAO’s capacity building activities in biosafety. It provides a general presentation of FAO’s conceptual framework on biosafety – the FAO Biosecurity framework – and illustrates the portfolio of past and current biosafety projects at national, regional and global level, together with their structure, components and financing modality. This publication is expected not only to contribute to planning FAO future activities in this area, but also to provide strategic inputs to the formulation of shared biosafety capacity building strategies at the global level.

There is currently an enormous need to mobilize agricultural extension services for food security and to achieve a range of rural development goals. Urgent efforts are required to enhance access to and knowledge about new technologies, to ensure that farmers and other actors in value chains can deal with changing markets, to enable farmers to understand new challenges arising due to the changing climate, to support rural communities to manage their natural resources more effectively, and to assist farmers to make optimal use of their available resources to ensure food for their families.

In the last two decades, it has been observed an evolutionary process in Nicaragua extension services, through the has had the opportunity to observe an evolutionary process in Nicaragua extension services. The main purpose of this study is to contribute to the design of the extension based processes, which are aimed at improving the conditions of underdeveloped agricultural systems, using the analysis and evaluation of different extension methodologies and modalities of contracting this service.

The objective was hence to put the emphasis on the process and on considering the features of pluralism, demand and market-orientation. There was no emphasis on a particular advisory model which gave room for developing a country-specifc system based on existing institutional and organizational capacities and targeted to the poor and vulnerable producers. Oone of the main objectives of the initiative was to promote farmers' participation in the design process and their empowered role in the future advisory system.

This chapter provides an overview of the techniques, current status and issues involved in using marker-assisted selection (MAS) for genetic improvement in developing countries. Molecular marker maps, the necessary framework for any MAS programme, have been constructed for the majority of agriculturally important species, although the density of the maps varies considerably among species. Despite the considerable resources that have been invested in this field and despite the enormous potential it still represents, with few exceptions, MAS has not yet delivered its expected benefits in commercial breeding programmes for crops, livestock, forest trees or farmed fish in the developed world.

Cette série d'ouvrages est consacrée au développement d'une stratégie sous régionale de renforcement des capacités en matière de dissémination des connaissances et des technologies agricoles dans l'espace CEMAC sur labase du diagnostic des situations nationales des pays membres.