Sustainable environmentally, economically viable, and socially acceptable ways are important factors in increasing food production and achieving food security. To achieve increasing food production, the capacity development of key stakeholders especially extension agents and youth farmers is of great necessity, toward increasing the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices.

The CGIAR Gender Equality Initiative organized a stakeholder workshop on 23 – 24 May 2023. The workshop focused on exploring the technology and innovation bundles that have the potential to revolutionize farming practices and enhance the resilience of women farmers.

Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) is able to grow and complete its life cycle while being rooted in highly saline soils. Which of the many well-known salt-tolerance strategies are combined to fine-tune this remarkable resilience is unknown. The precise location, whether in the shoot or the root, where these strategies are employed remains uncertain, leaving us unaware of how the various known salt-tolerance mechanisms are integrated to fine-tune this remarkable resilience.

This Report was produced as part of the CGIAR Excellence in Agronomy (EiA) Initiative’s effort to ensure that women and youth are well integrated into to the work of the Initiative’s Use Cases and that the EiA Initiative is achieving its gender- and youth-specific impacts: that women and men, youth and non-youth equally participate in and benefit from the agronomic solutions developed, validated, and piloted by Use Cases, and that social innovations that empower women and transform unequal power relations and restrictive social and gender norms are piloted and promoted.

Despite their crucial role in combating hunger, malnutrition, and poverty, many plant species cultivated as fruits, vegetables, roots, and tuber crops remain neglected and underutilized worldwide, and Sri Lanka is no exception. Integrating these crops into farming systems has the potential to create nutrient-dense, climate-resilient, and sustainable agricultural practices.

In rural areas where malnutrition is higher and households poorer, growing diverse fruit trees-especially indigenous fruits-can provide multiple benefits. These fruit trees can be a valuable source of secondary income in rural areas such as Guinayangan, where coconut cultivation is the primary source of income. They are also a viable strategy to promote climate-smart agriculture which can strengthen the resilience of farmers; and to diversify agricultural systems for better nutrition within the community.

The Indian subcontinent is the primary center of origin of rice where huge diversity is found in the Indian rice gene pool, including landraces. North Eastern States of India are home to thousands of rice landraces which are highly diverse and good sources of nutritional traits, but most of them remain nutritionally uncharacterized.

Tea is a very important cash crop in Vietnam as it provides crucial income and employment for farmers in poor rural areas. Unfortunately, the dominance of long-term, conventional tea cultivation has caused severe soil health degradation and environmental pollution. At the same time, as tea production may provide a better net income compared with other annual crops such as rice and vegetables, farmers have been converting parts of their allocated land to cultivate tea plants.

The methodology is applicable to measures that reduce anaerobic decomposition of organic matter in rice-cropping soils. Such measures include changing the water regime during the cultivation period from continuously to intermittently flooded conditions and/or a shortened period of flooded conditions, using the alternate wetting and drying method, adopting aerobic rice cultivation methods, and switching from transplanted to direct-seeded rice (DSR). This methodology can be applied to large and small-scale or micro-scale projects or PoAs.

The webinar, hosted by the digital innovation initiative under work package 4, focused on Food System Monitoring and featured a panel of experts who shared insights from their work in various countries. The speakers highlighted the benefits of digital transformation in agriculture, particularly in regions with limited traditional information sources.

The policy brief provides an overview of the updated Kenya Social Accounting Matrices (SAMs). The current Kenya SAM which incorporates latest rebased national accounts data, supply and use tables and household budget survey, is an update of the previous SAM compiled for 2009 transactions. SAMs are used in conjunction with analytical techniques to strengthen the evidence underlying policies. The updated Kenya SAM 2021 identifies 90 production activities and commodities (products) across agriculture, industry, and services sectors.