News Overview

By Dr. Akmal Akramkhanov, ICARDA Senior Scientist – Sustainable Land Management, and Anastasiya Shyrokaya, MSc Bonn University  Land degradation, caused by secondary salinization, soil erosion and desertification, poses a major threat to Uzbekistan’s economic development and environmental sustainability. Over the past decades, many of the country’s agroecological zones have experienced widespread losses of fertile topsoil and nutrients, and vast tracts

“Young people are on the frontlines of the struggle to build a better future for all,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres, in the lead up to International Youth Day. Today we examine our important agricultural academic capacity-building activities through two distinct, yet harmonious voices: that of a senior ICARDA scientist, and that of the master’s student he supervised during the

The AI-powered mobile app PlantVillage Nuru has been expanded to include potato diseases, allowing farmers to identify and manage diseases in their field.  In 1845, farmers in Ireland reported seeing a “blight of unusual character,” a “fearful malady” with no known cure. That malady spread quickly and caught farmers unaware. By the end of the next year, three quarters of the Irish potato crop was decimated.   In response, the world’s first agricultural and advisory

Throughout history, pond-based aquaculture has been an important source of food and income for many communities. Today, with farmed fish accounting for more than half of all fish eaten globally, pond-based aquaculture continues to provide substantial economic, nutrition and food security benefits in the regions it is practiced. Increasingly, however, these aquaculture systems – most popular in peri-urban settings –

Aquaculture internship programs help youth to gain experience and fill in industry gaps for win-win benefits. Read more

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

BY SWATI MALHOTRA AND ROB VOS Global hunger has been on the rise since 2014, and the world is not on track to achieve the goal of Zero Hunger (SDG2). If current trends continue without concerted and collaborative actions to tackle the challenge, 840 million people will come under the grip of hunger by 2030. The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the

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