Innovations
Working with smallholders to understand their needs and build on their knowledge, CIMMYT brings the right seeds and inputs to local markets, raises awareness of more productive cropping practices, and works to bring local mechanization and irrigation services based on conservation agriculture practices. CIMMYT helps scale up farmers’ own innovations, and embraces remote sensing, mobile phones and other information technology. These interventions are gender-inclusive, to ensure equitable impacts for all.
Blast and rust forecast
Climate adaptation and mitigation
New project to deliver wheat disease warnings directly to farmers’ phones in Bangladesh and Nepal.
Conservation agriculture key to better income, environment protection: Study
Climate adaptation and mitigation
Source: The Hindu Business Line (17 Apr 2020)
New study in India reports conservation agriculture increases crop yield and income, reduces the use of natural resources, and offers climate benefits.
Breaking Ground: Sylvanus Odjo finds the right technology for each farmer
Innovations
CIMMYT postharvest specialist tests drying and storage technologies to help reduce grain losses.
A less risky business
Climate adaptation and mitigation
Through new project, tools and insurance services will help small farmers in eastern Africa reduce investment risks and losses related to climate.
Arms Race Part 1: Ug99
Environmental health and biodiversity
Source: Plantopia (9 Apr 2020)
CIMMYT senior scientist Dave Hodson discusses striking parallels between wheat rust and global human epidemics on new podcast.
Seeing is believing
Climate adaptation and mitigation
At demonstration farms, Kenyan farmers discover the stress-tolerant maize varieties they were looking for.
One-minute science: Cesar Petroli and genomic profiles
Capacity development
Developing genomic profiles of DNA samples can accelerate the breeding process.
Shared responsibilities and equal economic benefits
Capacity development
Small-scale agricultural mechanization service provision model supports women’s empowerment in the Ethiopian agriculture sector.
New publications: Breeders can benefit much more from phenotyping tools
Innovations
Researchers discuss how phenotyping can assist breeding and make the case for investing in new methodologies.
Crowdsourced data feeds fall armyworm surveillance in Bangladesh
Innovations
Web app helps extension agents and farmers monitor the spread of fall armyworm.
Equal and climate-smart
Climate adaptation and mitigation
Women in Malawi are inspiring the next generation of smallholder farmers to adopt climate-smart technologies.
With 30,000 surveys, researchers build the go-to dataset for smallholder farms
Innovations
Source: Phys.org (3 Mar 2020)
Survey tool can help farmers face challenges of climate change, food security, nutrition, farm productivity and social inclusion.
Breeder friendly phenotyping
Innovations
Modern phenotyping tools are crucial for crop improvement and breeders can profit much more from them.
New publication: Scaling agricultural mechanization services in smallholder farming systems
Innovations
Study shows service provider models in Africa, Latin America and South Asia increase smallholder access to agricultural machinery, but can remain dependent on projects to tackle major bottlenecks for scaling.
Smartphones drive data collection revolution, boost climate-smart agriculture in Bangladesh
Climate adaptation and mitigation
For the first time widespread monitoring examines how farmers are coping with climate stresses.