News Overview

The pressure to achieve global food security demands that we rethink current production systems and shift rapidly toward more sustainable models. New IFPRI/PIM/Ceres2030 policy brief explains. Click to access the brief The pressure on agricultural production systems to achieve global food security — particularly in today’s context of growing populations, changing food demand, and threats of natural resource degradation and

The world of water management is replete with stories about traditional systems that break down, such as the one we reported in November from Karnataka, South India. Age-old, decentralized approaches to managing water and watersheds do fall apart, leaving farmers high and dry. However, a remarkable study published in the Journal of Hydrology documents just how rapidly farmers can reap

This month, CGIAR achieved a major milestone by publishing an initial set of grants data to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) Standard. CGIAR now joins over 1,200 other IATI publishers — including governments, multilateral institutions, and private sector and civil society organizations — that have published more than a million development cooperation and humanitarian activities. This marks the first time

Tagging products with barcodes for easy price retrieval in supermarkets is now a regular practice that people often take for granted. But beyond supermarkets, barcodes can be employed across a whole spectrum of settings, including by scientists in their research. The Accelerated Breeding Better Bananas project has developed, adapted, finetuned, and deployed a fully operational Banana breeding Tracking Tool (BTracT), which uses

The Young Africa Works-IITA project commenced the first cohort of its training program in Lagos, Kaduna, and Kano states in Nigeria. This capacity-building activity began on 1 February and focuses on training 40,000 young Nigerian women and men between 18 and 35 years to become self-employed or gain employment in agri-food systems. The training is running concurrently in the three

BY HONOR DEARLOVE The COVID-19 pandemic presents new challenges to publicly-funded food and agricultural research institutions, as government deficits and weakening economies threaten their traditional funding. A Feb. 2 IFPRI virtual policy seminar explored the ways that these organizations can move forward in a changed landscape, as well as the new opportunities that COVID-19 has created for realizing positive transformation in food

A whopping 49% increase in cropping area, 153 % increase in production and 68 % increase in productivity since 2000 – these numbers show the phenomenal expansion of pigeonpea in Malawi sparked by wilt-resistant medium-duration varieties developed by ICRISAT scientists. The new varieties provided a sustainable solution to farmers affected by the dwindling ‘Chiperoni’ rains in Southern Malawi, a traditional pigeonpea growing

If millets are regaining their lost place in Indian menus, considered as top contenders for biofuel production and validated as nutritious fodder for cattle, the partnership with the ICAR-Indian Institute of Millets Research since ICRISAT’s inception in 1972 has played a significant role. The many milestones that the institutes had achieved together were shared at the 6th Foundation Day celebrations. Introducing the chief