The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is contributing to make Mexico’s agriculture more productive, sustainable and resilient, according to a new report by The Economist Intelligence Unit and Barilla Foundation. The study focuses on food loss and waste, sustainable agriculture, and nutritional challenges to assess how sustainable and resilient are the food systems of the 20 largest and
Understanding the relationship between climate change and plant health is key to conserving biodiversity and boosting food production today and for future generations. Human-driven climate change is the challenge of our time. It poses grave threats to agriculture and is already affecting the food security and incomes of small-scale farming households across the developing world.
Tan spot disease, caused by the fungus Pyrenophora tritici-repentis, may be less well-known than other pathogens of wheat such as rust and blast, but its potential to become a major threat to wheat-growing regions worldwide is a serious concern. In Kazakhstan, one of the main wheat growing nations in Central Asia, farmers have struggled with tan spot epidemics since the
It is a laborious and time-consuming process: chopping plant matter by hand to feed to livestock. In Cox’s Bazar district, in eastern Bangladesh, it is common practice. A mechanized fodder chopper can do the job more quickly and efficiently — yet this simple but effective machine has not seen much use in the region. To address this, a collaboration between
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are increasingly being applied across a diverse range of disciplines. Many aspects of our lives and work are now benefiting from these technologies. Disease recognition, for both human and plant health, is no exception. Ever more powerful AI/ML techniques are now opening up exciting opportunities to improve surveillance, monitoring and early warning for
Every year, the spores of the wheat blast fungus lie in wait on farms in South America, Bangladesh, and beyond. In most years, the pathogen has only a small impact on the countries’ wheat crops. But the disease spreads quickly, and when the conditions are right there’s a risk of a large outbreak — which can pose a serious threat
Smallholder farmers are often torn between maize seed varieties that have multiple desirable traits. Since they cannot always have it all — there are limits on what traits breeders can integrate in any given variety — they face the dilemma of which seed to pick at the expense of an equally desirable option. Trait preference trade-offs among maize farmers in
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed vast inequalities when it comes to food security. But there is an even larger and more concerning crisis waiting for us: global food shortages caused by climate change. According to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, total global warming is likely to rise around 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next two