This perspective describes the opportunities and challenges of data-driven approaches for crop diversity management (genebanks and breeding) in the context of agricultural research for sustainable development in the Global South. Data-driven approaches build on larger volumes of data and flexible analyses that link different datasets across domains and disciplines. This can lead

Landraces are traditional crop varieties that often have special adaptations to the farming environment in which they have evolved and are therefore a valuable source of useful traits for plant breeders. In most agriculturally advanced countries, landraces of the main crops have generally been superseded by modern varieties. An exception to this in the United Kingdom is the cultivation on the Scottish archipelagos of Orkney, Shetland and the Outer Hebrides of three cereal landraces: bere, a 6-row barley (Hordeum vulgare), small oat (Avena strigosa) and Hebridean rye (Secale cereale).

Over the past 20 years, recurrent and violent conflicts between farmers and Fulani pastoralists have persisted in Northern Ghana. These conflicts mainly revolve around access to and utilisation of natural resources such as land and water. Conflicts of interest have led to the social marginalisation of the Fulani community, leading to their exclusion from formal landscape governance processes.

Acid tropical soils may become more productive when treated with agricultural lime, but optimal lime rates have yet to be determined in many tropical regions. In these regions, lime rates can be estimated with lime requirement models based on widely available soil data. We reviewed seven of these models and introduced a new model (LiTAS). We evaluated the models’ ability to predict the amount of lime needed to reach a target change in soil chemical properties with data from four soil incubation studies covering 31 soil types.

The Innovation for Africa Climate Risk Insurance, InACRI project, addresses the current poor performance and uptake of index-based crop insurance products in Kenya. As part of the outputs to improve adoption the project developed a farmer guide to provide them with information on crop insurance such as the advantages of crop insurance, types of crop insurance, what to consider when choosing an insurance policy, the claims process, and the costs associated with crop insurance.

Published in the special issue of the Climate Tribune for the 2023 Gobeshona Global Conference, the article provides a comprehensive overview of the CGIAR Initiative on Asian Mega-Deltas (AMD). The AMD initiative aims to create resilient, inclusive, and productive deltas, which maintain socio-ecological integrity, adapt to climatic and other stressors. Additionally, the article talks about AMD’s focus of work in Bangladesh, including the target geographic areas.

Climate change impact has no global and gender boundary, yet how gender norms mediate crop farmers' responsive approaches to rapid climate warming received little attention. Men and women crop smallholder farmers in Nasarawa state experience the impacts of rapid climate warming differently. This study examines the gender-responsive approaches to rapid climate warming among crop smallholder farmers in Nasarawa. Temperature data for 36 years was used to establish change.

CONTEXT: Global and national agricultural development policies normally tend to focus more on enhancing farm productivity through technological changes than on better use of existing technologies. The role of improving technical efficiency in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction from crop production is the least explored area in the agricultural sector. But improving technical efficiency is necessary in the context of the limited availability of existing natural resources (particularly land and water) and the need for GHG emission reduction from the agriculture sector.

The Call for Applications resulted in a total of 849 applicants, out of which 288 met the high-quality standards for prequalification. The accelerator program successfully attracted women-led or co-led agribusinesses, with 69% of applicants featuring at least one woman in the founding team. The majority of applicants (72%) indicated that they were targeting smallholder farmers in their business model, and 52% claimed to have a digital innovation, highlighting the potential for technology in transforming the food systems sector.

Agriculture is threatened by ever increasing temperatures and this trend is predicted to continue for the near and distant future. The negative impact of rising temperatures on agri-food systems is also compounded by the erratic and highly variable rainfall in most parts of southern Africa. Minimum and maximum temperatures’ variability and trend analysis were undertaken using daily time series data derived from 23 meteorological stations spread across Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Identification of hybrids for commercialization is crucial for sustainable maize production in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). One hundred and ninety test crosses, 10 tester × tester crosses + 10 hybrid checks were evaluated across 11 environments, 2017 to 2019. Inheritance of grain yield under Striga infestation, optimal and across environments was influenced by additive genetic action, but there was greater influence of nonadditive gene action under drought stress conditions.