Cassava breeders rely on a wide range of information to succeed in their task of developing genetically superior varieties for adoption in the production, processing and market value chains. The published literature on cassava has risen exponentially in the past quarter century, and provides a fundamental basis for application of scientifically sound research practices. Yet, most publications are rather narrowly focused, and the task of integrating knowledge and techniques across a vast literature for purposes of planning and executing a breeding program can be overwhelming.

The Government of Uganda has implemented programs and policies to improve the agricultural sector’s recent underperformance. Uganda’s two main food security crops, bananas and cassava, have been critically affected by two diseases: Banana Xanthomonas Wilt (BXW) and Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD). The effectiveness of agronomic and cultural practices to control these diseases has been limited, requiring better alternatives. The Ugandan R&D sector in collaboration with international partners have developed genetically engineered innovations that can control both diseases.

The global food system is causing large‐scale environmental degradation and is a major contributor to climate change. Its low diversity and failure to produce enough fruits and vegetables is contributing to a global health crisis. The extraordinary diversity of tropical tree species is increasingly recognized to be vital to planetary health and especially important for supporting climate change mitigation. However, they are poorly integrated into food systems.

Small plot size and land fragmentation are serious problems affecting agricultural productivity in many African countries. These problems are even serious in Ethiopia where population pressure is increasing and available farmlands per household are contracting. An entry point to tackle this problem can be voluntary land consolidation (VLC). Experiences elsewhere mainly in Eastern Europe and Asia demonstrate significant yield increase associated with increased efficiency and productivity through VLC.

Amazonia holds the largest continuous area of tropical forests with intense land use change dynamics inducing water, carbon, and energy feedbacks with regional and global impacts. Much of our knowledge of land use change in Amazonia comes from studies of the Brazilian Amazon, which accounts for two thirds of the region. Amazonia outside of Brazil has received less attention because of the difficulty of acquiring consistent data across countries.

Vegetation buffers local diurnal land surface temperatures, however, this effect has found limited applications for remote vegetation characterization. In this work, we parameterize diurnal temperature variations as the thermal decay rate derived by using satellite daytime and nighttime land surface temperatures and modeled using Newton’s law of cooling. The relationship between the thermal decay rate and vegetation depends on many factors including vegetation type, size, water content, location, and local conditions.

The chirps package provides functionalities for reproducible analysis in R (R Core Team, 2020) using the CHIRPS (Funk et al., 2015) data. CHIRPS is daily precipitation data set developed by the Climate Hazards Group (Funk et al., 2015) for high resolution precipitation gridded data.

Recent socioeconomic development, increased transport and new agricultural technology are endangering the survival of traditional agriculture and the Yi people’s traditional knowledge of cultivating Tartary buckwheat. The cultural heritage of Tartary buckwheat cultivation among the Yi

Protecting flood prone locations through floodwater recharge of the depleted aquifers and using it for protecting dry season irrigated agriculture is the rationale for a form of intervention termed as ‘underground transfer of floods for irrigation’ (UTFI). This helps reduce the intensity of seasonal floods by tapping and storing excess floodwater in aquifers for productive agricultural use. This paper presents a case study of managing the recharge interventions in the context of the Ramganga basin, India.

To complement an ongoing CCAFS project ‘Enhancing capacities for MRV of sustainable livestock action in East Africa (Kenya and Ethiopia)’, implemented by UNIQUE forestry and land use, ACIAR is supporting CCAFS to implement a Small Research Activity (SRA) entitled ‘Building capacities for an integrated livestock MRV system in Ethiopia’. The objective of the SRA is to support improvements in methods and procedures used to produce and manage the livestock activity data required for measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) of greenhouse gases (GHG) in Ethiopia.

The working paper presents a framework for assessing country-specific needs, opportunities and priorities for improving measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) of livestock greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and emission reductions. The framework consists of 13 guiding questions that are implemented in an eight-step assessment. The steps are:
Phase 1: Clarify the context
Step 1: Assess current and future expected trends in the livestock sector and their GHG emissions implications.
Step 2: Identify policies and measures that are expected to impact GHG emissions.

The fast-growing palm oil economy has stimulated a significant expansion of oil palm plantations in Indonesia. The uncontrolled development of large oil palm plantations has raised complex socio-ecological issues, including changes of ecological landscapes, organization of production, and farming household livelihood systems. For two oil palm villages with different ecological settings, this article describes changes in land cover, how production is organized, and the income structure changes due to rural economic development.