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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CGIAR and Google leverage AI to develop the crops the world needs the most
By building an AI-powered “digital brain” that analyzes field data from across the globe, CGIAR and Google aim to improve breeding efficiency,...
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SAAF names three winners of its 2026 Innovation Challenge
From a single skin biopsy, it may soon be possible to rebuild an entire African chicken breed or fish in a laboratory. That idea, submitted by a...
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Beyond organic: How Kenya is reshaping food systems with participatory guarantee system and agroecology
Researchers and partners in Kenya are advancing Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) integrated with agroecology to make safe, sustainable food more...
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Banana, the crop that defeated a food crisis in Tanzania
In Tanzania, nearly half of banana farmers in Kagera have adopted improved varieties introduced through a partnership led by ENABEL and KU Leuven,...
Publications
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Progress Report Ethiopias Partnership for Accelerating Agricultural Solutions Scaling PAASS
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Factors influencing Newcastle disease vaccine use in village chicken flocks in rural Burkina Faso
Background: Newcastle disease (ND) is endemic in traditional poultry farming in Burkina Faso. Despite government's efforts, international...
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Impact of invasive weed Parthenium hysterophorus Asteraceae on mosquito abundance and plantfeeding behavior in an arboviral endemic region in Kenya
Background: Invasive alien species (IAS) are rapidly altering ecosystems, undermining biodiversity, ecosystem processes, and interspecies...
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Changes in heightforage of Egyptian children from 1995 to 2014 Implications for improving child health outcomes
Background Stunting is a serious health problem in Egypt. Stunting rates and height-for-age z-score (HAZ) distributions changed notably in Egypt over...