CIAT turns to space technology for monitoring crop performance

by Maria Eliza Villarino | Jun 27, 2018

Artist impression of Sentinel 5p satellite. Photo by: Airbus In a not-so-distant future, rice and oil palm producers in Colombia will have access to realistic estimates of what their yields will be and the amount of greenhouse gases their fields emit in near...

The ‘unsexy’ essential to making agricultural predictive models

by Maria Eliza Villarino | Jun 5, 2018

Data cleaning includes filling missing values in data sets. Photo by: geralt (via Pixabay) Data science involves creating models that can predict the future, such as what the yields will be for the next planting season. This work, arguably, is “sexy.” There’s an...

Climate-smart agriculture profiles: Successes, lessons and new frontiers

by Maria Eliza Villarino | May 16, 2018

Dr. Evan Girvetz, a senior scientist at CIAT, speaks during a national stakeholder workshop on climate risk profiling held in Nairobi, Kenya. Photo by:  Georgina Smith / CIAT Over the last few years, CIAT, under the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change,...

How drone-assisted breeding can help stop rice hoja blanca disease

by Maria Eliza Villarino | May 15, 2018

Technicians perform visual scoring of select rice breeding lines that resistant and susceptible to the hoja blanca virus. Photo by: FLAR It’s a sight no rice farmer in Colombia or elsewhere in Latin America would like to see: stunted rice plants with bleached white...

In Nairobi summit, CIAT to officially launch Africa climate-smart agriculture profiles

by Maria Eliza Villarino | May 9, 2018

Sebastian Grey makes a presentation on the Ethiopia climate-smart agriculture (CSA) country profile. He is the CIAT CSA country profiles coordinator. Photo by: T. Muchaba / CCAFS CIAT is rolling out climate-smart agriculture (CSA) profiles for four additional African...