Improving fertilizer use efficiency has remained a challenge, particularly for small-scale farming in undulating ‘abnormal’ landscapes of East Africa. Milne's 1930s concept on ‘Catena’ was considered as a breakthrough in understanding soil variability and its implication on productivity in East African highlands. However, there is limited information on how the ‘Catena’ features could be used for fine tuning fertilizer recommendations.

Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is a widespread problem in the sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Here the population is predominantly reliant plant-based diets. Thus, identification of popular food sources with higher vitamin A contents is a suitable means for addressing VAD. For example, Burundi has a VAD prevalence of 46%. In this region, bananas and plantains are a cheap staple food crop and therefore, offer a good avenue for supplying vitamin A in the diets.

Understanding the impact of multiple anthropogenic threats on tree species is urgently needed for estimating population decline and enabling coordinated and efficient conservation actions. We applied a spatially explicit framework to assess the vulnerability of three highly valuable Asian rosewood species (Dalbergia cochinchinensis, D. cultrata, D. oliveri) to five key threats across their native ranges in six countries of the Greater Mekong Subregion.

Improving agricultural productivity in Ethiopia is crucial to alleviate poverty and meet growing food demand amid environmental stress and climate change. Agricultural innovation and access to digital agricultural solutions have the potential to boost productivity while reducing negative environmental footprints in agriculture and food system value chains. However, most smallholder farmers in Ethiopia have limited access to digital farming solutions.

In its Phase 1 (September to December 2022) the Climate, Security and Food Systems theme workstream of the HDP coalition worked together with its members to collate state-of-the-art evidence on the connection between climate, food, and peace and security. This brief summarises the latest research conducted by CGIAR FOCUS Climate Security for the country of Kenya as validated by the members of the Climate, Security and Food systems workstream. CGIAR FOCUS Climate Security has developed a Climate Security Observatory (CSO) within the ONECGIAR Climate Resilience Initiative.

The Darwin Initiative funded project “Bridging Agriculture and Environment: The Southern African Crop Wild Relatives Network” aims at establishing strategic partnerships and networks of protected areas for Crop wild relatives’ (CWR) conservation and use. One of the key components of this project is “Access and Benefit Sharing” (ABS).

RUFORUM conducted a scoping study to identify areas of CSA/CIS convergence for member universities from 20th November to March 2022. Consultations were made with the Deans of the Faculties of Agriculture and related disciplines of Congolese member universities in eastern DRC, through zoom and then individual questionnaires to identify the focal persons who are involved in Climate Smart Agriculture teaching and research.

The advent of improved lentil varieties (ILVs) in the mid-1990s solved the disease problem which almost halted lentil production in Bangladesh. Levels of adoption of ILVs have been documented in the literature, but little is known about their impacts. Applying an instrumental variables regression to data collected from a sample of 1,694 lentil plots and DNA fingerprinting for varietal identification, this study provides estimates of the plot-level impacts of adoption of ILVs in Bangladesh.

Climate services for agriculture (agrometeorological services) are only possible through collaborative, interdisciplinary efforts. To this end, a national-scale service operated by centralized governments will mandate institutional coordination for data sharing, in addition to designated staff time and budget commitments for effective and sustainable operation; however, previous efforts have revealed that institutional coordination, particularly between meteorology and agriculture, represents the most difficult part preventing successful implementation in most countries.