Apple Cup rivals collaborate on world’s main fruit crop PULLMAN, Wash. — An international team of scientists from Italy, France, New Zealand, Belgium and the USA have published a draft sequence of the domestic apple genome in the current issue of Nature Genetics. The availability of a genome sequence for apple will allow scientists...
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Image via Wikipedia In a tiny village near Kisumu city in Kenya, scientific researcher Mary Anyango Oyunga spends most of her time educating women about something they have always done – grow sweet potatoes. But Oyunga’s message to the female farmers in Kisian village is new, even though it is based on her...
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Image via Wikipedia Two of the most pressing issues facing Kenya ’s food security challenge relate to how the country will respond to climate change and how we will meet our food and livelihood requirements through maize and other crops. Our project has focused on maize as a window through which to explore...
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Policies needed to address potential conflicts, but report views bioenergy as crucial to ‘unlocking Africa’s latent potential’ Ouagadougou (23 July 2010)—Crops can be produced for bioenergy on a significant scale in west, eastern and southern Africa without doing damage to food production or natural habitats, according to a report produced by the Forum...
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Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona’s Food Technology Plant Special Research Centre and Faculty of Veterinary Medicine will train specialists in the field of agri-food and contribute to the development of this sector in the African country of Angola Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and Universidade José Eduardo dos Santos in Angola will work jointly...
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Introduction In May 2008, the World Bank Institute (WBI), in collaboration with the Danish Government, Global Development Network, Economic and Social Research Foundation in Tanzania, and other World Bank units, organized a conference in Tanzania. The conference was designed to facilitate learning and discuss concrete achievements on key policies, practices, and actors that...
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Every day, millions of rural people who depend on agriculture confront technical, economic, social, cultural, and traditional obstacles to improving their livelihoods. To cope with these obstacles, the rural poor draw on indigenous knowledge and innovate through local experimentation and adaptation. Indigenous knowledge alone, however, is not enough to deal with the complex...
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MIT chemical engineer Paula Hammond lends her nanotechnology expertise to farmers in Africa. Cassava is a tropical root vegetable and staple crop for millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa. However, it’s tricky to handle: Once the root is removed from the ground, it spoils within one to three days, so farmers must get...
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The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) today announced a SEK80 million (US$10.67 million) grant from the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) to support the set up of a multidisciplinary competitive funding mechanism for biosciences and product-oriented innovation activities in eastern Africa (Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda,...
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Awards highlight myth-busting research on human and soil health, key breakthroughs in confronting water scarcity, and extraordinary successes in rice improvement Montpellier, France (30 March 2010)—With chronic food shortages afflicting 2.5 million people in Niger, agricultural scientists are rolling out a solution for subsistence farmers that consists of small, market-oriented vegetable plots. Nearly...
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