Nutrition, health & food security
Ending hunger and enabling safe, affordable, healthy diets for the world's most vulnerable people.
Objectives
Through research and innovation, CGIAR aims to address these challenges and contribute to collective global targets for nutrition, health, and food security:
- Ending hunger for all and enabling affordable healthy diets for the 3 billion people who do not currently have access to safe and nutritious food (SDG 2).
- Reducing cases of foodborne illness (600 million annually) and zoonotic disease (1 billion annually) by one third (SDG 3).
Activities
To contribute to these collective global targets, CGIAR Initiatives will:
- Provide evidence and options for improving diets and human health through food systems outcomes, policy research, and technical and institutional innovations for making healthy sustainable diets affordable, targeting consumer behavior, local urban and informal markets, and social protection.
- Accelerate innovation in agronomy, livestock, and fisheries management to increase and diversify food supply and to manage zoonotic diseases, food safety, and anti-microbial resistance.
- Advance research on a wider range of foods and farming systems, including vegetables, insects, and urban farming, with a focus on affordable diets and perishable foods.
- Focus on dietary diversity, quality, and resilience underpinned by custodianship and distribution of a wide variety of genetic materials of crops and their wild relatives, and livestock; breeding of nutrient-dense legumes, roots, tubers, bananas and cereals, including biofortification and market relevant traits; and breeding of more productive livestock and fish to increase the supply of nutrient dense animal-source foods.
All CGIAR Initiatives will contribute to Nutrition, Health, and Food Security. Below, browse a selection of Initiatives that primarily contribute to this Impact Area.
News
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COP30: Eight countries back RAIZ - the Brazil-led finance accelerator to scale farmland restoration worldwide
The Resilient Agriculture Investment for net-Zero land degradation (RAIZ) accelerator offers a ‘quadruple-win’ for climate, biodiversity, food...
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Independent Insight in Sync: ISDC and Evaluation Advising CGIAR’s Portfolio
This excerpt was taken from CGIAR’s Independent Advisory and Evaluation Service (IAES) recent blog. Independent advice works best when it’s...
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ICRISAT’s Solar-Powered Water Hyacinth Harvester Recognized Among India’s Top 100 Innovations of 2025
ICRISAT’s Novel Solar-Powered Water Hyacinth Harvester has now earned a place in the prestigious Top 100 Indian Innovations 2025, published by...
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Scaling for Impact: Integrating WEFE Nexus Innovations Across Borders and Sectors
Bridging science, policy, and practice to accelerate climate-resilient solutions in Central Asia By Maha Al-Zu’bi (IWMI & CGIAR Scaling for...
Publications
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Armed conflict communitybased cash transfers and social cohesion Evidence from a randomized intervention in Ethiopia
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Pork safety across Vietnams traditional markets microbial contamination and vendor knowledge attitudes and practices
Foodborne diseases are a major cause of illness in low- and middle-income countries, and most are due to fresh foods sold in traditional markets....
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The effect of teacher training and community literacy programming on teacher and student outcomes
Motivated by extremely low levels of basic reading skills in sub-Saharan Africa, we experimentally evaluate two interventions designed to enhance...
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How much do our neighbors really know The limits of communitybased targeting
Social assistance programs in developing countries often rely on local community members to identify potential beneficiaries. As community members...