News Overview

Diversification of farms is often advocated for bringing diet diversity to rural households and improving nutrition, but how does it compare to market access? This blog traverses an extensive review of literature on the subject that was recently published. The review sought to determine the association between market access and dietary diversity in developing countries. Verdict: the answer lies in

To increase adoption of new improved varieties in Africa, a webinar was recently organized under the aegis of the AVISA project to familiarize seed system stakeholders with SEEDx, a mobile application developed by ICRISAT that facilitates data-driven decision making. Dr Chris Ojiewo, AVISA project Co-Principal Investigator, outlined SEEDx and informed that it allows real-time capturing of data on varieties and

Congratulations to our colleagues at ACRE Africa and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) whose project “Eyes on the Ground: Providing Quality Model Training Data through Smartphones” has been selected for Lacuna Fund’s first cohort of supported projects in the agricultural AI (artificial intelligence) for social good domain. In the Eyes on the Ground project, the team from ACRE Africa and IFPRI will use smartphones

Scientists are calling for accelerated adoption of new hybrid maize varieties with resistance to maize lethal necrosis (MLN) disease in sub-Saharan Africa. In combination with recommended integrated pest management practices, adopting these new varieties is an important step towards safeguarding smallholder farmers against this devastating viral disease. A new publication in Virus Research shows that these second-generation MLN-resistant hybrids developed

Virtual launch event  January 29, 2021, 9:00-10:00 AM EST Forest tenure pathways to gender equality: A practitioner’s guide REGISTER HERE * * Upon registration, you will receive a confirmation email from “IFPRI Events” with the unique link to join the webinar on the day of the event. You will also be able to save it as a Calendar item.  There is

To truly understand the role of gender and inequities in the food system, nutrition and health in low- and middle-income countries, one has to consider gender in the context of all three elements of the food system, namely, the food supply chain, consumer behaviour and the food environment. To this end, a new scoping review (Dec 2020) has been published

UPDATE: The Call for Abstracts is now closed. For the latest information on the 2nd International Agrobiodiversity Congress (scheduled for 15-18 November 2021), please click here.Despite widespread recognition of the urgent need to change the way we grow and consume our food we are far from reaching this goal. Food production remains the single largest driver of environmental degradation and biodiversity

Progressive heterobeltiosis for bunch weight in bred ‘Matooke’ banana hybrids (NARITAs), when grown together with their parents and grandparents in Uganda; A: ‘Entukura’ (3x female grandparent), B: ‘1438K-1’ (4x female parent) and C: ‘NARITA 17’ (3x hybrid)   Plant breeders are generally looking for heterosis, where the offspring of a cross performs significantly better on some measure than the average