News Overview

Egypt is among the top aquaculture producers globally, and tilapia alone accounts for 47.7% of the country’s per capita fish supply, 55.1% of fish production, and 68.6% of total aquaculture production. The growth of tilapia production increased rapidly in the last four years, following the release of the genetically improved Nile tilapia strain to Egyptian farmers. Fish farms are concentrated

The IITA Uganda Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) Program supports the Ugandan Government in its commitment to increasing coffee quality, volumes, and smallholder farmer livelihoods. The Institute’s activities closely align with the country’s agricultural agenda, with the IITA team collaborating with the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) to implement the Uganda Coffee Roadmap. By developing the Stepwise Climate Smart Investment Pathway (Stepwise) approach, IITA Uganda and

IITA embraced the One-CGIAR initiative in the past year because a unified CGIAR will be a more effective and impactful organization. Since then, the Institute has participated in the unfolding plans and is strategically positioned to contribute to the One-CGIAR agenda in sub-Saharan Africa. Significant developments have been taking place at IITA and  CGIAR, with bigger plans for 2021.  Following discussions with the Directors General, the CGIAR Executive Management Team (EMT)

An anonymous gift of $2.65 million to support Cornell and partner research in Tanzania will improve distribution of new and more resistant varieties of cassava while empowering women and marginalized groups in the East African nation. Cassava is a fundamental staple and basis of food security for 500 million people across Africa and a major source of employment and income

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

In a just-published op-ed, Martin Kropff, Director General, International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and Nteranya Sanginga, Director General, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), talk about CGIAR centers’ investment on long-term breeding to increase genetic gains in an important food crop like maize using many new tools and technologies. In the op-ed, Kropff and Sanginga make the case

Pandemic! That word strikes at the heart of global sensitivities right now. But while most people are thinking of the coronavirus disease 2019, a.k.a. COVID-19, this post is focused on something else. In a just-published paper, CGIAR scientists talk about the risks of globalization of pests and pathogens and their impact on food systems. Imagine if a pandemic or epidemic affects a crop