Climate Services for Resilient Development (CSRD) is a global partnership that connects climate science, data streams, decision support tools, and training to decision-makers in developing countries. CSRD addresses the climate challenges faced by smallholder farmers in South Asia. The partnership is led by the United States Government and supported by the UK Government Department for International Development (DFID), the UK Meteorological Office, ESRI, Google, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the American Red Cross.

Understanding drought tolerance mechanisms of cassava is a pre-requisite to improve the performance of the crop in water-scarce regions. Several hypotheses have been formulated to suggest how cassava can withstand a prolonged period of drought. We performed field trials under drought conditions with a selection of 37 cassava genotypes to identify phenotypic and molecular patterns associated with drought tolerance. Plant morphologies varied significantly between cassava genotypes under drought conditions in Kenya, which indicates a strong genetic basis for phenotypic differences.

Climate change is increasingly threatening the livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. Increased climate variability, including changes in mean temperatures, variation in the onset of rains, and increases in extreme weather events, are directly affecting the growing seasons of commercial and subsistence crops, significantly disturbing socio-economic activities in the agricultural sector and leaving many smallholder farmers in a situation of food insecurity and malnutrition.

In many African countries south of the Sahara, farmers depend on the cultivation of vegetatively propagated crops (VPCs) for both consumption and commercial purposes. Yet yields for these crops remain at low levels due, in part, to seed market imperfections that constrain farmers' access to improved varieties and high-quality planting material.

Genebanks play an essential role in a world where agricultural biodiversity has been lost from farming habitats, malnutrition
persists as global population continues to rise, and farm productivity is vulnerable to climate change. We demonstrate the

CTA developed the programme VALUE4HER, with the aim of increasing value for women in agribusinesses through improved market access and business linkages; improved knowledge, skills, and capacities; and digitally enabled socio and business networking. Adopting three mutually reinforcing approaches, the project embarked on a pathway to increase performance of women agribusinesses and ultimately improve incomes for women agribusinesses leaders.

A Climate-Smart Village (CSV) monitoring survey was carried out in Senegal from 14 to 24 November, 2019 by CCAFS WA and CCAFS/CIAT team. Prior to the survey, a one-week training workshop was organized in Kaffrine, from 8 to 13 November 2019 to build the capacities of the local implementation team.

Maize is an important staple crop for the majority of the population in Uganda. However, in tropical and subtropical climates, maize is frequently contaminated with aflatoxins, a group of cancer-causing and immuno-suppressive mycotoxins produced by Aspergillus section Flavi fungi. In Uganda, there is limited knowledge about the causal agents of aflatoxin contamination. The current study determined both the aflatoxin levels in pre-harvest maize across Uganda and the structures of communities of aflatoxin-producing fungi associated with the maize.

Management practices such as tillage, crop rotation, irrigation, organic and inorganic inputs application are known to influence diversity and function of soil microbial populations. In this study, we investigated the effect of conventional versus organic farming systems at low and high input levels on structure and diversity of prokaryotic microbial communities. Soil samples were collected from the ongoing long-term farming system comparison trials established in 2007 at Chuka and Thika in Kenya. Physicochemical parameters for each sample were analyzed.

This book chapter focuses on zoonoses that are not transmitted primarily through food. Establishing systematic data collection is the first step to manage zoonoses. Management is complicated by heterogeneity: zoonoses may have a significant and debilitating effect on some communities but not on others. Understanding the spatial distribution of the burden of zoonoses is important to better focus control efforts. A significant constraint is the lack of collaboration between medical and veterinary authorities: institutionally speaking, zoonoses typically find themselves homeless and ignored.

In response to major shocks, governments and international humanitarian agencies often use direct seed distribution as a first level response to help communities stabilize or restart their farming systems. In contrast, CRS uses Seed and Voucher Fairs (S&VFs). After many years of successfully implementing S&VF, CRS developed a new type of seed fair that specifically focuses on the relief-development continuum and diversity, both in household dietary diversity for improved nutrition, and crop diversity for increased farming system resilience.