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Threat of cassava mosaic disease, strengthening resilience to climate disasters, dominate conversations between CIAT and Vietnam agricultural institutions
Vietnam’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) officially renewed this week their scientific cooperation in agriculture and rural development, in a signing ceremony held at the Ministry’s national headquarters in Hanoi. The MOU marks the expansion of the MARD-CIAT collaborative agenda that will now seek to: increase crop and livestock productivity, improve quality of food and nutrition among Vietnamese food producers and consumers, improve management of the country’s natural resources, and to strengthen resilience of Vietnamese farmers, including against climate-induced natural disasters.
A move to improve pasture management and cut down greenhouse gases from cattle
The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), from the UK Research and Innovation initiative, it’s working with CIAT and three UK Universities in two projects to improve pasture management and cut greenhouse gases (GHG) from cattle, in partnership.
Can direct benefits from PPP schemes trickle down beyond private business to the rest of society?
How do you measure public-private partnership schemes’ impacts to the society and environment? To answer this question, researchers from CIAT and the CGIAR Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security (CCAFS) Research Program used the social return on investment (SROI) analysis, an appraisal and evaluation methodology that captures financial, social and environmental outcomes by using indicators and proxies to go beyond the standard financial measurement.
Passion is the key to Dr. Elizabeth Álvarez’s success in the field of science
Elizabeth Álvarez is an Agricultural Engineer from the National University of Colombia, Palmira campus. She started her scientific activities at CIAT in 1980, where she always stood out for her relentless scientific curiosity. This is the reason why, as the working stage in her life came to an end a few months ago, some of her colleagues from the Cassava Program have stated that she has left a great void.
Hoan and sweetpotato: a sweet, budding love affair
Nguyen Thi Hoan, a farmer in Vietnam, reaps the rewards of improved sweetpotato farming practices.
CIAT turns to space technology for monitoring crop performance
CIAT and several Colombian and U.K.-based organizations are partnering to develop a platform that will allow rice and palm growers in Colombia to have thriving livelihoods without harming the environment.
GCP21 calls for regional approach to stem the outbreak of cassava mosaic disease in Southeast Asia
The Global Cassava Partnerships for the 21st Century (GCP21) has called for urgent regional approach to halt the spread of cassava mosaic disease (CMD) that is threatening cassava production in Southeast Asia—a region that accounts for about 55 million tons of cassava and host billions of dollars in cassava investment. The GCP21 is rallying stakeholders in Southeast Asia to come together to address the challenge posed by CMD. A regional meeting will soon be held with a view to developing a detailed plan of action and collaboration on interventions needed, in order to prevent the disease from negatively impacting the vibrant cassava industry in the region.
The first three years of the Global Staff Exchange Program… what have we learned?
Three years have passed since the implementation of this Program, so it was time to get feedback on this Program from the participants and leaders who have sent and received participating staff. For this reason, a survey was conducted among this group of people involved. Here is a summary of the results obtained.
The ‘unsexy’ essential to making agricultural predictive models
Hugo Andres Dorado Betancourt and Daniel Jimenez of the CIAT data team explain the importance of data cleaning to develop models that can predict the future, such as yields.
Farming in transition: How smallholder farms in the Mekong could thrive amid a changing landscape
In the continuing journey to identify what makes smallholder farming systems in the Mekong sustainable and resilient, the Hands and Minds project finds out a number of things: (1) livestock intensification could be done in a way that could both increase profitability and reduce labor demands; (2) smallholders could be farming increasingly infertile soils, and this can be reversed by adopting management practices that efficiently manage nutrients from various sources in the farm; (3) the interaction between farmer and extension worker is crucial in enabling farmers adopt eco-resilient practices.