ICTforAg is an annual convening where agricultural stakeholders and technology experts come together to share knowledge, find solutions, and form partnerships to address challenges in agri-food systems across low- and middle-income countries. The main goal of ICTforAg is to grow communities and catalyze meaningful conversations, insights, and collaborations, increase participation of participants from the developing world, promote knowledge sharing and learning, and inspire practitioners to develop inclusive and sustainable ICT solutions.

Improving plant performance in salinity-prone conditions is a significant challenge in breeding programs. Genomic selection is currently integrated into many plant breeding programs as a tool for increasing selection intensity and precision for complex traits and for reducing breeding cycle length. A rice reference panel (RP) of 241 Oryza sativa L. japonica accessions genotyped with 20,255 SNPs grown in control and mild salinity stress conditions was evaluated at the vegetative stage for eight morphological traits and ion mass fractions (Na and K).

Field experiments were conducted in two different agroecological locations of Ibadan and Ikenne in Nigeria from August through December during the 2019 and 2020 cropping seasons. The studies were set up to reduce reliance on inorganic nitrogen fertilizer and to embrace the use of nitrogen-fixing bacteria to improve legume production to increase farmers' output and profitability. Ten accessions of the Bambara groundnut (BGN) were used in the trials. Seeds of each BGN accession were coated with each of the following Bradyrhizobium japonicum strains (B.

The cassava whitefly Bemisia tabaci causes damage in cassava through the feeding and vectoring of plant viruses that cause cassava mosaic and cassava brown streak diseases. This study sought to explore the efficacy of cutting dipping in flupyradifurone for whitefly control and the impact of the mode of application on whitefly parasitism under farmer field conditions. The insecticide treatment significantly reduced adult whiteflies by 41%, nymphs by 64%, and cassava mosaic disease (CMD) incidence by 16% and increased root yield by 49%. The whitefly parasitism rate by Encarsia spp.

The quest to transform and hasten the role of smallholder farms in agricultural development and food security through farmer firm linkages has dominated development interventions in low-income countries for several decades. This has mostly been pursued through single- or multi-contract schemes implemented in isolation. Several studies have analyzed the efects of these schemes on smallholder farms with mixed results. A new paradigm is to use Agricultural Public Private Partnership (Ag-PPP) to achieve wider and sustainable impacts.

Climate change-induced heat stress combines two challenges: high day- and nighttime temperatures, and physiological water deficit due to demand-side drought caused by increase in vapor-pressure deficit. It is one of the major factors in low productivity of maize in rainfed stress-prone environments in South Asia, affecting a large population of smallholder farmers who depend on maize for their sustenance and livelihoods.

Context
Collection and analysis of large volumes of on-farm production data are widely seen as key to understanding yield variability among farmers and improving resource-use efficiency.
Objective
The aim of this study was to assess the performance of statistical and machine learning methods to explain and predict crop yield across thousands of farmers’ fields in contrasting farming systems worldwide.
Methods

This report aims to provide a structured analysis of a stakeholder assessment related to
sustainable animal productivity for livelihoods, nutrition, and Gender Inclusion in Mali. This
analysis is part of the CGIAR initiative SAPLING, with the primary goal of understanding and
identifying the role of various stakeholders, their potential contributions, and avenues for
collaboration to ensure the successful implementation of SAPLING’s innovation packages
(IP) and the desired outcomes of the initiative. This work aims at: i) Identifying wich relevant

Climate change and year-to-year climate variability have resulted in widespread, pervasive impacts to ecosystems and people in Africa, including increases in the intensity of weather extremes such as droughts and floods. While these shifting and varying temperature and precipitation patterns have affected the productivity of many climate-sensitive sectors, the agricultural sector has been the most impacted, resulting in reduced food availability and increased food prices, ultimately jeopardising food security, nutrition, and livelihoods of millions of people.

The Enviro-Champs initiative was developed as a community driven, citizen science initiative in Mpophomeni township in Kwa-Zulu Natal (KZN), South Africa. Over time, the scope of work done and data collected by the Enviro-Champs has expanded. There is now recognition both locally and globally that the Enviro-Champs initiative shows great promise for national and global upscaling. However, several areas within the initiative remain where it could be improved, especially technologically.

Abstract This commentary discusses new advances in the predictability of east African rains and highlights the potential for improved early warning systems (EWS), humanitarian relief efforts, and agricultural decision‐making. Following an unprecedented sequence of five droughts, 23 million east Africans faced starvation in 2022, requiring >$2 billion in aid. Here, we update climate attribution studies showing that these droughts resulted from an interaction of climate change and La Niña.