Last summer, as the United States faced the worst drought since 1988, the Council for Biotechnology Information shared stories of seed companies who were working with farmers across America’s farm belt to conduct field trials of drought-tolerant corn varieties, including Monsanto’s DroughtGard^TM Hybrids, DuPont Pioneer’s hybrid AQUAmax^TM, and Syngenta’s Agrisure Artesian^TM.

Initial results of these field trials were positive, and the positive feedback has continued. This week, Syngenta announced that expanded results from 2012 field trials confirmed the drought-resistant variety’s impressive yields, reinforcing the importance of the role of agricultural technologies in mitigating the effects of drought on the U.S. and global food supply in the future.

Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development at Harvard’s Kennedy School, produced a working paper that discusses the contributions of scientific knowledge to agricultural innovations.

In particular, his paper “Technological Abundance for Global Agriculture: The Role of Biotechnology,” points out that developing countries can use biotech methods to drive agricultural productivity and increase food security.

According to Professor Juma, “Areas of the developing world lagging in the utilization and accumulation of technology have the ability to not only to catch up to industrial leaders in biotechnology, but also to attain their own level of research growth.” Read more.