New Zealand and Chinese scientists have begun a joint study into how to improve seeds so that farmers can produce more and bigger grains to help feed the world's growing population.

University of Canterbury Professor Paula Jameson and senior research fellow Dr. Jiancheng Song, of Yantai University, in east China's Shandong Province, had published a paper finding the wheat genes that could be prime targets for increasing grain size and grain number, said a statement from the University of Canterbury on Tuesday.

"The beauty of wheat is that there are so many different varieties in the world. Now we have worked out what genes are important for changing hormone levels to increase grain size and number, we can use traditional breeding techniques to find the varieties of wheat that already have this feature," Jameson said in the statement.

Thousands of people have avoided getting skin cancer thanks to Canadian scientists who invented the UV index and the gold-standard tool for measuring the thickness of the Earth's ozone layer. But now Canada's ozone science group no longer exists, victim of government budget cuts.

"Everyone who was still left in the ozone group has been re-assigned," said Prof Thomas Duck of the department of Physics and Atmospheric Science at Canada's Dalhousie University.

In 2011 Canada unexpectedly experienced its first ever ozone hole over the Arctic. "The ozone problem is not solved," Duck told the Guardian.

"Some people want to tell you the Conservatives have abandoned their green pledges, but nothing could be further from the truth," the climate minister, Greg Barker, told his party conference in Birmingham on Tuesday. He repeated the denial several times, protesting a little too much. The only spontaneous applause from the sparse audience during the energy and environment session on the main stage was in favour of killing badgers.

Owen Paterson, the new environment secretary, has been uncompromising on the imminent badger cull, aimed at curbing TB in cattle. He even laid claim to the policy as his own: "I started this policy in opposition." The person who introduced him went even further, giving his work on fisheries credit as the "intellectual underpinning" for Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's Fish Fight, though I'm not sure anyone has told Hugh.

Paterson exudes confidence and felt sufficiently at home at the NFU's reception on Monday night to deride opposition to the badger cull as "sad sentimentality." Moments before, a woman from Blue Badger - Conservatives against the cull - had been forcibly told by a farmer that she needed re-education.

Iraq could become the world's second-largest oil exporter within two decades and double its output by 2020, a major study has found.

The International Energy Agency said Iraq can overtake Russia for exports and be responsible for nearly half of all anticipated growth in global output.

But the country's government must overcome internal disputes over oil rights with the autonomous Kurdish region in the north and increase current investment from $9bn (£5.6bn) in 2011 to $25bn a year on average for the rest of the decade, the authors warned.

The IEA's chief economist, Fatih Birol, explained: "Developments in Iraq's energy sector are critical for the country's prospects and also for the health of the global economy.

The GMO mass experiment on the public is producing results--terrifying ones. GM toxic elements can be found in nearly all pregnant women and children. (Update of the article featured in Genetic Roulette movie.)

The toxins designed into genetically modified crops are finding their way into the bloodstreams of all pregnant women and their fetuses. This shocking result belies the genetic modification industry's claims that such toxins are destroyed by the digestive tracts of people who eat the animals fed these GMO crops. Obviously, that claim was based on nothing.

(If you've seen reports claiming less than 100% are affected, it's because they picked up the wrong figures from the study, as shown below.)

Abstract

Conversion of food to ethanol in the US since 2005 is a major cause of global food price increases during that time and has been shown to be ineffective in achieving US energy independence and reducing environmental impact. We make three key statements to enhance understanding and communication about ethanol production's impact on the food and fuel markets: (1) The amount of corn used to produce the ethanol in a gallon of regular gas would feed a person for a day, (2) The production of ethanol requires so much fossil fuel energy that its energy benefit is only about 20%, and (3) The cost of gas made with ethanol is actually higher per mile because ethanol reduces gasoline's energy per gallon.