‘Women can be good leaders and science managers’
In the week that the UN Decade of Family Farming was launched, Segenet Kelemu, the Director General of the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe), tells CABI’s sister organisation SciDev.Net that women can be good leaders and science managers. In a candid interview, she reveals how she came from humble beginnings (having to…
“The warnings of impending doom are real but the timeframe is very much up for debate”
Did you know that more than 100 billion bananas are eaten every year in the world, making them the fourth most popular agricultural product? You might also be surprised to learn that Uganda has the highest average per capita consumption in the world, where residents eat an average of 226kgs of bananas per person per…
Truly international expertise on tomato production
By Rachael Russell Ep Heuvelink’s Tomatoes is part of CABI’s Crop Production Science in Horticulture series. First published in 2005, it became an essential resource for growers, extension workers, industry personnel, and horticulture students and lecturers. Since then, our knowledge on tomato has greatly increased; tens of thousands of scientific papers have been published and…
Climate-smart pest management holds the key to future global food security
CABI scientists Luca Heeb, Dr Emma Jenner and Dr Matthew Cock, have issued a stark reminder to the world – we must embrace climate-smart pest management (CSPM) if we are to ensure the food security of a global population predicted to reach 10 billion by 2050. In the paper ‘Climate-smart pest management: building resilience of…
What do bees ‘see’ and how does it inform our understanding of vision?
By Adrian Horridge, F.R.S. Bees are familiar to all, and tests to discover what they see can be repeated in any temperate part of the world, requiring little basic science but lots of thought to grasp this anti-intuitive but wonderfully adapted newly described visual system. In advance of World Bee Day on the 20th May,…
Cultures don’t meet, people do: Ethnocentrism and essentialism
By Arjan Verdooren There is a goal that virtually all methods and models of intercultural communication have in common – explicitly or implicitly. This goal is countering ‘ethnocentrism’: the tendency to assume one’s own worldview as normal and natural, and judge others on the basis of this worldview. Ethnocentrism is associated with closed-mindedness, inflexibility and feelings…
CABI helps Pakistan Museum of Natural History showcase scourge of noxious parthenium weed
CABI in Pakistan is helping the Pakistan Museum of Natural History (PMNH) showcase the scourge of the noxious parthenium weed, otherwise known locally at ‘Gajar Booti’, to members of the public visiting its Bio Gallery exhibit. Parthenium is regarded as one of the major threats to native species, environment and ecosystems in more than 48…
App-based agriculture for a tech-savvy farmer
Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa is undergoing a digital revolution bought about through the advancement and increasing availability of mobile technologies. Improved affordability has placed mobile devices in the hands of more African’s than ever before, with 444 million subscribed users in 2017. Take Tanzania for example where the average cost of mobile phones has fallen…
Guest blog: ‘Keeping in mind the real use of our research’
In this guest blog, Dr Haseeb Md. Irfanullah discusses the findings of a recent workshop he was a rapporteur of in Bangladesh on the potential impact on policy and practice of agricultural research in the country. A research system is basically made up of four components: accessing, conducting, communicating, and utilizing research. While we often…
Fat cats – what can they tell us about human obesity, and vice versa?
It’s estimated that between a third and two thirds of pet cats are overweight, depending on the assessment method used. Cats suffer from obesity and diabetes mellitus in ways that are very similar to the obesity and type 2 diabetes found in humans. But can these similarities tell us anything useful about how to tackle…