Archives: Projects

CGIAR Initiative: Excellence in Agronomy

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on October 11, 2022. Posted in Uncategorized.

Smallholdings represent over 80% of the world’s farms, mostly located in the Global South, and supply 50% of global food. Enhanced agronomy management has a great potential to increase productivity, sustainability, efficiency and competitiveness of these smallholdings, which is characterized by low and variable yields and profitability, smallholder farming challenges include water scarcity, climate change, low resource use efficiencies and declining soil health. These result in negative impacts on food and nutrition security, equitable livelihoods and ecosystem health. 

Smallholder farmers seasonally make critical agronomic decisions regarding crop choice, planting dates and pest, disease, weed, soil fertility and water management, often based on suboptimal practices and information. Traditional agronomic research enhances our understanding of basic processes, but with limited connection to stakeholder demand and often based on outdated approaches. The development, deployment and uptake of interventions is hampered by social, economic and institutional constraints, further confounded by adherence to conventional supply-driven innovation strategies.

Objective

This Initiative aims to deliver an increase in productivity and quality per unit of input (agronomic gain) for millions of smallholder farming households in prioritized farming systems by 2030, with an emphasis on women and young farmers, showing a measurable impact on food and nutrition security, income, resource use, soil health, climate resilience and climate change mitigation. 

Activities

This objective will be achieved through:

Facilitating the delivery of agronomy-at-scale solutions, including development and technical/user-experience validation and the co-creation and deployment of gender- and youth-responsive solutions to smallholder farmers via scaling partners.
Enabling the creation of value from big data and advanced analytics through the assembly and governance of data and tools; application of existing analytics and solutions for specific use cases; supply of information on climate impacts, inclusivity and sustainability of agronomic solutions; and national agricultural research system capacity strengthening.
Driving the next generation of agronomy-at-scale innovations by addressing key knowledge gaps and facilitating innovation in agronomy research through engagement with partners.
Nurturing internal efficiencies for an agile and demand-driven agronomy research and development community through internal organization and external partnerships for prioritization, demand mapping and foresight.

CGIAR Initiative: Plant Health

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on October 11, 2022. Posted in Uncategorized.

Effective plant health management is critical for improving the productivity, profitability, sustainability and resilience of agrifood systems. Yet, farming communities, especially in low- and middle-income countries, struggle to contain existing and emerging plant pests and diseases. Each year, these threats cause on average 10–40% losses to major food crops, costing the global economy around US$220 billion. The highest losses are associated with food-deficit regions with fast-growing populations.

Increasing international trade and travel, coupled with weak phytosanitary systems, are accelerating the global spread of pests and diseases. The situation is exacerbated by climate change, with agricultural intensification and diversification driving the emergence of new threats. These burdens fall disproportionately on poorly resourced communities, especially women and youth in rural areas.

Diagnostic capacity, global-scale surveillance data, risk prediction/forecasting and rapid response and management systems for major pests and diseases are still lacking. Inadequate information and knowledge of and access to climate-smart control options leave smallholders and marginalized communities ill-equipped to respond to biotic threats. Environmental and health effects of toxic pesticides, exposure to mycotoxins and acute unintentional pesticide poisoning are major concerns.

Objective

This Initiative aims to protect agriculture-based economies of low- and middle-income countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America from devastating crop pest incursions and disease outbreaks by developing, validating and deploying inclusive innovations, and by leveraging and building viable networks across an array of national, regional and global institutions.

Activities

This objective will be achieved by:

Bridging knowledge gaps and networks for plant health threat identification and characterization, focusing on strengthening the diagnostic and surveillance capacity of national plant protection organizations and national agricultural research and extension systems, and facilitating knowledge exchange on pests and diseases.
Building capability of relevant national stakeholders for risk assessment, and data management and guiding preparedness for rapid response, focusing on controlling the introduction and spread of pests and diseases by developing and enhancing tools, standards and policies.
Improving integrated pest and disease management, focusing on designing and deploying approaches against prioritized plant health threats in targeted crops and cropping systems.
Designing and deploying tools and processes for protecting food chains from contamination, specifically, through innovations for reducing mycotoxin contamination to protect health, increase food/feed safety, enhance trade, diversify end-use and boost income.
Promoting gender-equitable and socially inclusive scaling of plant health innovations to achieve impacts through multistakeholder partnerships, inter-disciplinary research, effective communications and capacity development.

Fast Tracking Climate Solutions from CGIAR Germplasm Banks

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on October 10, 2022. Posted in Uncategorized.

The Fast Tracking Climate Solutions from CGIAR Germplasm Banks project, led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), is expanding the use of common bean and maize biodiversity, held in trust for humanity in the genebanks of CGIAR, to develop the raw ingredients of new climate-smart crop varieties for small-scale farmers in the Northern Triangle: Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Aligned with, and building upon the Mining Useful Alleles for Climate Change Adaptation from CGIAR Genebanks project, this project aims to identify common bean accessions in genebanks that contain alleles, or gene variations, responsible for characteristics such as heat, drought or salt tolerance, and to facilitate their use in breeding climate-resilient crop varieties. Additionally, within the maize work, the project focuses on transferring valuable novel genetic variation identified from landraces under the aligned project into breeding materials suitable for variety development in the Northern Triangle.

Through this project, breeders will learn how to use genebank materials more effectively and efficiently to develop climate-smart versions of important food crops.

Building on ten years of support to CIMMYT from the Mexican government, CGIAR Trust Fund contributors, the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, and the ongoing Mining Useful Alleles for Climate Change Adaptation from CGIAR Genebanks project, this project combines the use of cutting-edge technologies and approaches, high-performance computing, GIS mapping, and new plant breeding methods to identify and use accessions with high value for climate-adaptive breeding of varieties needed by farmers and consumers.

Objectives:

Support faster and more cost-effective discovery and deployment of climate-adaptive alleles from the world’s germplasm collections.
Test integrated approaches for the rapid and cost-effective discovery and deployment of climate-adaptive alleles.

CGIAR Initiative: Digital Innovation

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on September 26, 2022. Posted in Uncategorized.

Digital innovations can enable an unprecedented transformation of food, land and water systems for greater climate resilience and sustainability. To realize this potential, multidisciplinary expertise across the CGIAR must find solutions to three challenges affecting the Global South:

The digital divide: digital technologies and infrastructure do not meet people’s needs, especially women and rural populations. More than 600 million people live outside the reach of mobile networks, two-thirds of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
Weak information systems: available information is inadequate or does not reach those who need it most. More than 300 million small-scale producers lack access to digital climate services. Weak information systems prevent evidence-based policy responses and lead to missed opportunities to reduce poverty and increase economic growth.
Limited digital capabilities: digital literacy and skill levels across the Global South remain low, particularly for marginalized and food-insecure individuals and groups such as women.

Objective

The Digital Innovation Initiative aims to develop and support digital innovations to stimulate the inclusive, sustainable transformation of food, land and water systems in the areas of investments that policymakers could make to close the digital divide, information delivery systems that allow more people to take action against predicted risks, and ways for partner organizations and marginalized communities to enhance digital capabilities, access resources and opportunities.

This objective will be achieved through:

Generating evidence on impacts of digital innovations and collaborative partnerships to create an enabling environment for digital ecosystems, unlocking local innovators’ access to investments and advanced technologies.
Developing a suite of tools and guidelines to bridge the digital divide, ensuring that gender equality and social inclusion underly the development of digital innovations, research programs and their implementation.
System dynamics modeling to understand complex dynamics in agrifood systems and support natural resource management authorities in equitably allocating water and land resources and managing risks.
Real-time food system monitoring to provide timely and reliable information to stakeholders by applying AI-driven analytics of satellite remote sensing, internet-connected sensors, and other ground-truthed data from multidisciplinary sources.
Strengthening partners’ capacity to collect real-time data, conduct data analytics and make data-driven decisions to enable equitable digital platforms and services.

CGIAR Initiative: Sustainable Intensification of Mixed Farming Systems (SI-MFS)

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on September 20, 2022. Posted in Uncategorized.

Most agricultural production in the Global South takes place in mixed farming systems, which allow farmers to diversify risk from single crop production, use labor efficiently, access cash and add value to products. Key drivers — climate change, population pressure, urbanization, water scarcity, changing diets, volatile food prices — mean that flexible and accelerated changes in mixed farming systems will be needed to achieve global targets such as the Sustainable Development Goals. Sustainable intensification, or the production of more food on the same piece of land while reducing the negative environmental impact, is a viable avenue.

Two types of hurdles must be overcome to adequately meet the challenge at farming systems level. One hurdle is to ensure efficient coordination, integration and transfer of innovations, information, tools and standardized methodologies. A second hurdle is to integrate multiple biophysical and socio-economic thematic-level outputs and identify strategies that minimize trade-offs and maximize synergies, resulting in multiple impacts at scale.

Objective

This Initiative aims to provide equitable, transformative pathways for improved livelihoods of actors in mixed farming systems through sustainable intensification within target agro-ecologies and socio-economic settings.

Activities

This objective will be achieved through:

Analyzing status, trends and future dynamics of mixed farming systems to identify entry points for equitable sustainable intensification, to mitigate negative impacts of change and seize emerging opportunities for livelihoods.
Building methods and tools for sustainable intensification of mixed farming systems to support decisions on what kind of sustainable intensification might work where, and for whom, in specific contexts.
Participatory co-design of mixed farming systems with evidence-based, validated sustainable intensification innovation packages that are responsive to improving efficiency, equity and resilience, in regions where mixed farming systems dominate the landscape.
Advancing and supporting scaling of innovations, through strategic partnerships and building the capacity of relevant actors in scaling approaches — a gender-transformative approach will be central to all innovation and scaling design to enhance equity.
Capacity-building for mixed farming system design and analyses, to support long-term impact on university and college students, scientists, extension agents, farmers, private sector, policy makers and development actors.

Outcomes

Proposed 3-year outcomes include:

Smallholder farmers use resource-efficient and climate-smart technologies and practices to enhance their livelihoods, environmental health and biodiversity.
Research and scaling organizations enhance their capabilities to develop and disseminate innovations.
Smallholder farmers implement new practices that mitigate risks associated with extreme climate change and environmental conditions and achieve more resilient livelihoods.
Women are youth are empowered to be more active in decision-making in food, land and water systems.
National and local governments utilize enhanced capacity to assess and apply research evidence and data in policymaking processes.

Gene Editing for Reducing Aflatoxin in Groundnuts

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on September 5, 2022. Posted in Uncategorized.

The Gene Editing for Reducing Aflatoxin in Groundnuts project seeks to advance safer and nutritious groundnut varieties with durable genetic resistance to Aspergilli infection and aflatoxin contamination via gene editing. These new technologies will help address associated health and disease burdens, malnutrition, and trade and economic losses for smallholder farming communities in sub-Saharan Africa and globally. The main output of this project will be gene-edited varieties with reduced levels of aflatoxins.

CGIAR Initiative: Securing the Food Systems of Asian Mega-Deltas (AMD) for Climate and Livelihood Resilience

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on August 24, 2022. Posted in Uncategorized.

Securing the Food Systems of Asian Mega-Deltas (AMD) for Climate and Livelihood Resilience aims to create resilient, inclusive and productive deltas — which maintain socio-ecological integrity, adapt to climatic and other stressors, and support human prosperity and wellbeing — by removing systemic barriers to the scaling of transformative technologies and practices at community, national and regional levels.

This objective will be achieved through:

Adapting deltaic production systems by identifying, synthesizing, evaluating, adapting and scaling interventions to ensure systems can adapt to and mitigate the effects of salinity, flooding, drought, terminal heat and sinking land.
Nutrition-sensitive deltaic agrifood systems, developed through the promotion of sustainable production and consumption of nutritious foods in Asian mega-deltas, by involving institutional stakeholders in the co-production of nutrition-sensitive interventions.
De-risking delta-oriented value chains by assessing the potential of digital climate advisory and complementing services to address climate risks among vulnerable groups, supporting development of improved and inclusive digital and bundled services, and identifying and developing financing models and partnerships to achieve scale.
Joined-up, gender equitable, inclusive deltaic systems governance, informed by transdisciplinary research evidence, local knowledge and political economy insights used to coordinate multi-stakeholder dialogues for more coherent water-agriculture-environment policies and strategies; collaborative, networked implementation practices; and gender-equitable and socially inclusive governance innovations.
Evidence-based delta development planning at the macro-level to ensure plans/policies incorporate inclusive and climate-proof approaches to food systems transformation.

CGIAR Initiative: Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia (TAFSSA)

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on August 24, 2022. Posted in Uncategorized.

Working across South Asia, the Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia (TAFSSA) Initiative will deliver a coordinated program of research and engagement across the food production to consumption continuum to improve equitable access to sustainable healthy diets, improve farmer livelihoods and resilience, and conserve land, air, and groundwater resources.

TAFSSA aims to propel evidence into impact through engagement with public and private partners across the production-to-consumption continuum, to achieve productive, environmentally-sound South Asian agrifood systems that support equitable access to sustainable healthy diets.

This objective will be achieved through:

Facilitating agrifood systems transformation through inclusive learning platforms, public data systems and partnerships: building new and enhancing existing learning platforms; improving the evidence base; increasing quality data availability and accessibility; and demonstrating the value of integrated agrifood systems datasets.
Transforming agroecosystems and rural economies to boost income, generate jobs and support diversified food production within environmental boundaries: generating linkages between farmers, landscapes and markets to diversify agricultural production, increase farmers’ incomes and foster rural entrepreneurship within environmental boundaries.
Improving access to and affordability of sustainably produced healthy foods through evidence and actions across the food system: creating favorable environments for diversification; improving access to inputs for and marketability of sustainable nutritious food; and improving access to healthy food for the poor through changes in food retail environments.
Understanding behavioral and structural determinants of sustainable healthy diets: studying dietary practices of food consumers; identifying determinants of food choices; and testing innovations to support consumption of sustainable healthy diets.
Building resilience and mitigating environmental impact: examining how South Asia can produce healthy diets within an environmentally safe and socially equitable operating space, and in consideration of ongoing climate change and farmers’ resilience to shocks.

Institutionalizing Monitoring of Crop Variety Adoption using Genotyping (IMAGE)

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on July 26, 2022. Posted in Uncategorized.

Institutionalizing Monitoring of Crop Variety Adoption using Genotyping (IMAGE) is a five-year program with the aim of establishing, institutionalizing, and scaling routine monitoring of improved variety adoption and turnover using genotyping.

It is led by country teams in Ethiopia, Nigeria and Tanzania, supported by Context Global Development and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Reliable monitoring: IMAGE will assess the varieties that farmers are growing of four staple crops within the three target countries and marking the rate of improved variety adoption through recurring surveys and comparative analysis.

Vision for change: IMAGE supports inclusive agricultural transformation by providing insights and evidence for seed sector actors to enhance government agency capacity, improve stakeholder coordination, and lead to better resource allocation for varietal development and commercialization.

IMAGE provides the opportunity to leverage past monitoring pilots and for cross-country learnings while advancing genetic reference libraries, establishing protocol adoption, and building towards institutionalization over five years. This is done through six objectives:

Comparable estimates of varietal adoption and turnover will be generated and made available to stakeholders
Standardization of best-practices and supporting technologies
Establishment of sustainable business cases
Pilot study results on varietal identity preservation in seed value chains for each country-crop combination
Institutionalized system of varietal monitoring for long-term, sustainable national partner implementation
Generated data used by seed sector stakeholders to make key decisions

Scaling Out Small Mechanization in the Ethiopian Highlands

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on June 2, 2022. Posted in Uncategorized.

The project goal is to provide smallholder farmers with appropriate mechanization technologies that reduce drudgery during farm operations.

The objectives of the project are:

To promote small-scale mechanization through awareness and demand creation, and service provision of appropriate technologies
To create employment along the mechanization value chain.

The project sites are located in Amhara, Oromia, SNNP (Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples) and Tigray regions of Ethiopia.

The target beneficiaries of the project include smallholder farmers who use traditional methods of farming, the youth who can be employed in service provision activities along the mechanization value chain, service providers, and private sector companies involved in equipment manufacturing and importing.

Through the project, smallholder farmers access planting, harvesting, post-harvest processing (threshing and shelling), irrigation and transport services from service providers located in their communities. The project operates under the Africa-RISING program led by ILRI in Ethiopia.

Guiding Acid Soil Management Investments in Africa (GAIA)

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on June 1, 2022. Posted in Uncategorized.

Healthier soils, plant nutrition and improved land management contribute to more productive and profitable smallholder enterprises. The Guiding Acid Soil Management Investments in Africa (GAIA) project will address key knowledge gaps related to soil health and improved agronomy. It will use scalable innovations to provide reliable, timely and actionable data and insights on soil health and crop performance, at farm and regional levels.

Novel diagnostic approaches, data assets, decision aids and better farm management practices are increasingly being scaled and integrated with other data, products and services. These services can be integrated with solution-focused, bundled services that support farmers in their timely management and operational decisions. They can also be integrated with input delivery systems, including digitally enabled agricultural advisory systems.

Key expected results in the next five years include:

National soil information services fully integrated with functioning agronomy research pipelines within key international and national research organizations of at least seven focus countries in sub-Saharan Africa and SA.
Soil information services solutions are integrated with agricultural advisory services into overall decision agriculture platforms at the national level.
Innovative diagnostic tools and decision aids are increasingly used at farm and regional level.
All investments routinely apply FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) data principles and practices.

The vision of success of this project is the rehabilitation of acid soils at scale in East Africa — thanks to data-driven and spatially-explicit recommendations — leading to maximized (and inclusive) returns on investment for farmers, private companies and governments. While the analysis and outputs will be targeted to the specific needs of partner counties (Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania), the methodology, workflows and much of the analysis will be of relevance for other countries in the region. While the specific focus of the project is on acid soils, the frameworks will be adaptable and applicable to other soil health and geospatial agronomic challenges. The ultimate goal is sustainable intensification of African smallholder farming systems.

In line with its vision and goal, GAIA will deliver three primary outcomes:

Increase depth and utility of data and evidence related to acid soil management in the region.
Provide support to governments and the private sector to stimulate investment in acid soil management in the region.
Improve access and use of data related to acid soil management in the region.

Nitrogen-Efficient Wheat Production Systems in the Indo-Gangetic Plains through Biological Nitrification Inhibition (BNI) Technology

Written by Bea Ciordia on May 30, 2022. Posted in Uncategorized.

The Nitrogen-Efficient Wheat Production Systems in the Indo-Gangetic Plains through Biological Nitrification Inhibition (BNI) Technology project aims to raise awareness of the benefits of new nitrogen-efficient wheat production systems among stakeholders in India.

By introducing technologies that maintain crop yield and quality, even with a reduced amount of nitrogen fertilizer, this project will also lessen the footprint of food production systems and combat environmental degradation.

Rapid Point-of-Care Diagnostics for Wheat Rusts (MARPLE)

Written by Bea Ciordia on May 30, 2022. Posted in Uncategorized.

MARPLE (Mobile And Real-time PLant disEase) diagnostics is a new innovative approach for fungal crop pathogen diagnostics developed by Diane Saunders’s team at the John Innes Centre.

MARPLE is the first operational system in the world using nanopore sequencing for rapid diagnostics and surveillance of complex fungal pathogens in situ. Generating results in 48 hours of field sampling, this new digital diagnostic strategy is leading revolutionary changes in plant disease diagnostics. Rapid strain level diagnostics are essential to quickly find new emergent strains and guide appropriate control measures.

Through this project, CIMMYT will:

Deploy and scale MARPLE to priority geographies and diseases as part of the Current and Emerging Threats to Crops Innovation Lab led by Penn State University / PlantVillage and funded by USAID’s Feed the Future.
Build national partner capacity for advanced disease diagnostics. We will focus geographically on Ethiopia, Kenya and Nepal for deployment of wheat stripe and stem rust diagnostics, with possible expansion to Bangladesh and Zambia (wheat blast).
Integrate this new in-country diagnostic capacity with recently developed disease forecasting models and early warning systems. Already functional for wheat stripe rust, the project plans to expand MARPLE to incorporate wheat stem rust and wheat blast.

Scaling Conservation Agriculture-Based Sustainable Intensification in Ethiopia (SCASI)

Written by Bea Ciordia on May 30, 2022. Posted in Uncategorized.

The Scaling Conservation Agriculture-Based Sustainable Intensification in Ethiopia (SCASI) project aims to improve soil health and sustainably increase the productivity of major crops through widespread adoption of proven Conservation Agriculture-Based Sustainable Intensification practices and technologies, hence increasing the income of Ethiopia’s smallholder farmers and their resilience to climate change and variability.

Bangladesh Integrated Pest Management Activity (IPMA)

Written by Bea Ciordia on May 30, 2022. Posted in Uncategorized.

The Bangladesh Integrated Pest Management Activity (IPMA) project aims to strengthen the capacity of agricultural stakeholders in Bangladesh by controlling and preventing the spread of current and emerging threats to ensure more efficient, profitable, and environmentally safe agricultural production and productivity.

Objectives

Increase the availability and affordability of integrated pest management measures for the prevention and spread of current and emerging threats
Strengthen the capacity of Bangladesh agricultural stakeholders, such as academia, financial institutions, government, judiciary, media, civil society, the private sector, and value chain actors, to implement integrated pest management measures
Enhance the adoption of integrated pest management by smallholder farmers to increase agricultural production and productivity, while reducing environmental hazards caused by indiscriminate use of pesticides