Owing to climate change impacts, waterlogging is a serious abiotic stress that affects crops, resulting in stunted growth and loss of productivity. Cassava (Manihot esculenta Grantz) is usually grown in areas that experience high amounts of rainfall; however, little research has been done on the waterlogging tolerance mechanism of this species. Therefore, we investigated the physiological responses of cassava plants to waterlogging stress and analyzed global gene transcription responses in the leaves and roots of waterlogged cassava plants.

Scaling of innovations is a key requirement for addressing societal challenges in sectors such as agriculture, but research for development programs struggles to make innovations go to scale. There is a gap between new complexity-aware scientific theories and perspectives on innovation and practical approaches that can improve strategic and operational decision-making in research for development

"In November 2020, CGIAR commissioned Michigan State University’s Center for Gender in Global Context (GenCen) to conduct a capacities and needs assessment (CNA) to determine, with the participation of stakeholders throughout CGIAR and (to a lesser extent) the broader agricultural research for development (AR4D) network, how the GENDER Platform could best strengthen the capacities needed to achieve the Platform’s desired outcomes. Four overarching questions guided the CNA:
• What is quality gender research?

Capacity development is an important part of the Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA) strategy to make climate services and climate-smart agriculture more accessible to millions of smallholder farmers across Africa.

Ethiopia is the world’s second largest producer of faba bean (Vicia faba L.), and the crop has largest share of area and production of all pulses grown in Ethiopia. Faba bean is valued for its source of protein, income, and animal feedstock, and an important rotational crop. However, its current productivity is very low due to an emerging faba bean gall (FBG) disease and other biotic constraints. Initially, FBG disease-causing pathogen remained unconfirmed, but it was assumed to be caused by Olpidium sp.

This paper analyses the ways in which CGIAR Centers use digital sequence information (DSI) in their efforts to conserve and sustainably utilize the world’s most important crop and livestock genetic diversity.

ClimBeR Governance 4 Resilience (Work Package 4) developed a framework to scale innovations for transformative impact. The framework has four elements: 1) Changing the narrative, 2) Deepening the analysis, 3) Strengthening the alliances, 4) The process of change: applying lessons learned. This framework is being applied to ClimBeR research on governance in Kenya, Morocco, Senegal, Guatemala and the Philippines.

Urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) is widely distributed throughout the Global South. Despite urban population growth and diversifying food habits, UPA delivers an important part of urban food supply, as well as other types of services to cities, such as employment and waste reuse. Nevertheless, the extent and importance of UPA varies between different urban areas, while challenges like limited recognition, land conversion, and water pollution and competition threaten the potential of UPA to contribute to urban resilience.

The CGIAR Initiative on Climate Resilience, ClimBeR, aims to transform the climate adaptation capacity of food, land, and water systems in Senegal and five other countries (Kenya, Zambia, Morocco, Philippines, Guatemala), ultimately increasing the resilience of smallholder production systems to withstand severe climate change effects like drought, flooding, and high temperatures.

A river basin – the breadbasket of millions – battered by floods just a few months earlier, slowly dries up; struck by climate change, over-abstraction of water and degradation of soils and land. As the river flow and reservoir levels fall, hydropower production declines. Farmers start to rely more heavily on groundwater, but access to energy for their irrigation wells is expensive. Many, especially women, are without access and a voice; others pump too much and ratchet up the water stress of the whole basin. Soils turn to dust, crops wilt, livestock and wildlife perish.

As interest grows in supporting multi-stakeholder forums (MSFs) to address land-use and climate change, it is important to understand how these processes operate from the perspectives of their participants. The academic literature on their equity largely presents a dichotomy: participatory processes either allow for horizontal decision-making with more equitable and effective outcomes for local populations, or they mask technologies of governance that do not address – and may reinforce – structures of inequality.

Non-technical summary:
We summarize what we assess as the past year's most important findings within climate change research: limits to adaptation, vulnerability hotspots, new threats coming from the climate–health nexus, climate (im)mobility and security, sustainable practices for land use and finance, losses and damages, inclusive societal climate decisions and ways to overcome structural barriers to accelerate mitigation and limit global warming to below 2°C.
Technical summary: