Mr Nutri Bean: Educating children to increase consumption of iron and zinc rich beans

The higher iron and zinc rich beans called NAROBEAN 1, 2, 3, 4C and 5C can significantly improve nutrition and are particularly beneficial for children and expectant mothers.
Read Further

A lesson in ‘resilience’: realities and misconceptions

Forest_in_Germany
Resilience is about changing in response to a disturbance; changing the ways parts of the “system” are connected, emphasizing some and de-emphasizing others. It’s the capacity to absorb disturbance and re-organize to keep functioning in the same way.
Read Further

Is chocolate under threat?

Otherwise known as ‘the food of the gods’ Theobroma Cacao is cocoa - the key ingredient from which chocolate is produced. The various species of cocoa such as Criollo and Forastero mainly originate from the Amazon jungle and are planted and produced in Colombia, Brazil, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Indonesia, Ghana, Ecuador and Nigeria
Read Further

“It’s science that solves problems”

I love science because it allows me explore my dreams. Agricultural science is about finding solutions for farmers, helping them reduce diseases in their fields and increase their yields so that they lose less and gain more.
Read Further

Pesticide Management Bill 2020 dawns a new era of sustainable agriculture in India

Pesticide Management Bill
India is among the leading producers of pesticides in Asia. The Insecticides Act 1968 was brought into force with effect from August 1971 with a view of regulating the import, manufacture, sale, transport, distribution and use of insecticides in order to prevent risk to human beings and animals, Dr Malvika Chaudhary writes. The Central Insecticides…
Read Further

Investigating a way to reduce the cost of poultry feed in Ghana

Ghana imports poultry meat to the tune of about US $374 million every year. This is because local production of poultry is hampered by the high cost of protein feed for chickens- representing 70% of total production cost.
Read Further

First biological control laboratory created in Pakistan to research poisonous aflatoxins

The first biological control laboratory to research poisonous aflatoxins has been created in Pakistan as part of a collaboration between CABI and the Crop Diseases Research Institute (CDRI) at the nation’s National Agricultural Research Centre (NARC). The facility, under the Aflatoxin Control Programme in Pakistan, aims to ensure the state of food security in the…
Read Further

The Legume Alliance

Reblogged from N2Africa. Back in 2015, a group of like-minded organizations came together to explore the idea of forming an alliance to improve the information provided about improved legume techniques for farmers. The idea of this Legume Alliance was to test a new integrated approach to developing and sharing agricultural information. Farmers did not always…
Read Further

Field trials of biocontrol product are paving way for aflatoxins control in Pakistan

Aflotoxin sampling
By Dr Sabyan Faris Honey, CABI, and Deborah Hamilton, USDA CABI as lead implementing partner along with its technical partner, Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) is working on a public-private partnership program led by U.S. company, Ingredion and its Pakistani subsidiary, Rafhan Maize to protect health and nutrition of Pakistan’s citizens by keeping food supply…
Read Further

Food for thought: Fungal biological resources to support international development – challenges and opportunities

Powdery mildew spores on wheat – the second most important food crop in the developing world after rice (Copyright CABI).
At first glance it might be hard to see how the exploitation of microbes, especially fungi, can have the power to help humanity meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), feed the world’s growing population and improve the bioeconomies of poorer nations. But a team of international scientists from CABI, the Westerdijk Institute and the…
Read Further