Work package 4 maps rice areas using remote sensing, geographic information system (GIS), and crop modeling. This work builds on the Remote sensing-based Information and Insurance for Crops in Emerging economies (RIICE, http://www.riice.org/) co-developed by IRRI and implemented in South and Southeast Asian countries. RIICE technology is being introduced across Africa to enhance its rice monitoring system. A set of field protocols and forms was developed for seasonal field data collection.

Picture-Based Insurance is a new, innovative way of delivering affordable, comprehensive, and easy-to-understand crop insurance. By relying on visible crop characteristics derived from farmers’ own smartphone pictures, it aims to minimize the costs of loss verification and detect damage at the plot level, making crop insurance more attractive and accessible to small farmers.

Future climate models indicate an enhanced severity of regional drought and frequent rewetting events, which may cause cascading impacts on soil nitrogen cycle and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, but the underlying microbial mechanism remains largely unknown. Here we report an incubation study that examined the impacts of soil moisture status and nitrification inhibitor (DCD) on the N2O-producers and N2O-reducers following the application of urea and composted swine manure in an acid soil.

Undesirable changes in surface water and groundwater resources and land quality for biophysical and institutional reasons will further endanger the livelihoods of people in Central Asia. The farmers' understanding of these problems and the adaptation and solution strategies they opt for are the critical variables in devising relevant policies. Our findings captured significant disparities between farmer-perceived water shortages and officially documented water availability, as well as soil salinity discrepancies.

The new Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems (WEMNS) is a streamlined tool for measuring women’s empowerment, intended for use in large-scale, multitopic surveys conducted by national statistical systems. WEMNS is designed to measure empowerment in households with all types of livelihoods, in both urban and rural areas, complementing the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), which focuses on agricultural households.

This report describes the process carried out for the development of a component in the e-Agrology mobile application, which allows the farmer to accept informed consent, thus authorizing the sharing of data on their agricultural production.

On 7 February 2024 at the InterContinental Cairo Semiramis, CGIAR Centers – Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, ICARDA, IWMI, IFPRI, and supported by the CGIAR Accelerate for Impact Platform (A4IP) – in collaboration with the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology of Egypt (ASRT) and under the auspices of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research of Egypt (MOHESR) hosted the "Consultation Workshop: Deep Diving into the Agri-tech Innovation Ecosystem in Egypt".

On 7 February 2024 at the InterContinental Cairo Semiramis, CGIAR Centers – Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, ICARDA, IWMI, IFPRI, and supported by the CGIAR Accelerate for Impact Platform (A4IP) – in collaboration with the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology of Egypt (ASRT) and under the auspices of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research of Egypt (MOHESR) hosted the "Consultation Workshop: Deep Diving into the Agri-tech Innovation Ecosystem in Egypt".

Wheat blast is a devastating disease caused by the fungal pathogen Magnaporthe oryzae pathotype Triticum that has spread to both neighbouring and distant countries following its emergence in Brazil in the 1980s. Under climate change conditions, wheat blast is predicted to spread primarily in tropical regions. Here we coupled a wheat crop simulation model with a newly developed wheat blast model, to provide quantitative global estimates of wheat blast vulnerability under current and future climates.