Improved varieties are helping increase groundnut production, farm incomes, improving lives and empowering women in Mali’s major groundnut producing hubs of Kayes and Sikasso, where lack of access to such varieties had contributed to low yields of less than 1 ton/ha, well below the global average of 1.6 ton/ha. Over the last three years, ICRISAT has been coordinating the Upscaling
BY BJORN VAN CAMPENHOUT,ELS LECOUTERE AND DAVID SPIELMAN During the past several years, we have been working intently on a field experiment with smallholder farmers in Uganda randomly assigned to get access to information in the form of short engaging videos. Because women and men are both involved in farming in the typical Ugandan farm household, we took a particular interest in the gender
A new potato or sweetpotato variety represents only the “tip of the iceberg,” concealing hundreds, if not thousands, of hours invested in testing and developing that variety. As scientists at CIP work to produce better performing varieties to help the world’s smallholder farmers, we must first test these varieties under a wide range of conditions… The post Canopy temperature provides
Solar irrigation technology has the potential to empower more than 12 million women farmers across Nepal who constitute the backbone of the country’s farming system. The post Empowering female farmers through improved access to water technologies first appeared on International Water Management Institute (IWMI).
Water isn’t just a natural resource; it is also a peoples’ resource, shared between communities, sectors and even countries, making coordination and cooperation essential to prevent scarcity. In India, water as a “common” resource is not only threatened by the growing impact of climate change but also by the rising demands placed on the country’s agricultural system, which must feed
BY SWATI MALHOTRA,FUTOSHI YAMAUCHI AND HIROYUKI TAKESHIMA As many developing countries face enormous food system challenges such as the double burden of malnutrition, with both undernutrition and obesity on the rise, Japan’s rare nutrition success story—it has achieved zero hunger and is also unaffected by rising overweight—offers a positive example to the world. It owes this success partly to a
A quiet transformation is underway at the Kenya Agriculture & Livestock Research Organisation (KALRO). New facilities are being developed, flows of digital data are coming online, ways of working and partnerships are being redrawn. All this, as part of a new way of investing in crop breeding research in a bid to finally end hunger in the region. Over the last
Nearly four decades of repeated crossing and selection for heat and drought tolerance have greatly improved the climate resilience of modern wheat varieties, according to new research emerging from a cross-continental science collaboration. At the same time, climate change has likely slowed breeding progress for high-yielding, broadly adapted wheat, according to the new study, published recently in Nature Plants. “Breeders