Upload 954 files to main/part_2

main/part_2/0014966181.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"6b00fd71a5d8dba3357fe20c02a548d7","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11027-021-09954-5.pdf","id":"-1252711140"},"keywords":["Agroecology","Agroforestry models","Climate shift","Multipurpose trees","Resilience","Tree architecture"],"sieverID":"0d446064-9c36-4deb-af22-228eec45b9f5","content":"Agroforestry (AF)-based adaptation to global climate change can consist of (1) reversal of negative trends in diverse tree cover as generic portfolio risk management strategy; (2) targeted, strategic, shift in resource capture (e.g. light, water) to adjust to changing conditions (e.g. lower or more variable rainfall, higher temperatures); (3) vegetation-based influences on rainfall patterns; or (4) adaptive, tactical, management of tree-crop interactions based on weather forecasts for the (next) growing season. Forty years ago, a tree physiological research tradition in aboveground and belowground resource capture was established with questions and methods on climate-tree-soil-crop interactions in space and time that are still relevant for today's challenges. After summarising early research contributions, we review recent literature to assess current levels of uncertainty in climate adaptation assessments in and through AF. Quantification of microclimate within and around tree canopies showed a gap between standard climate station data (designed to avoid tree influences) and the actual climate in which crop and tree meristems or livestock operates in real-world AF. Where global scenario modelling of 'macroclimate' change in mean annual rainfall and temperature extrapolates from climate station conditions in past decades, it ignores microclimate effects of trees. There still is a shortage of long-term phenology records to analyse tree biological responses across a wide range of species to climate variability, especially where flowering and pollination matter. Physiological understanding can complement farmer knowledge and help guide policy decisions that allow AF solutions to emerge and tree germplasm to be adjusted for the growing conditions expected over the lifetime of a tree.Global circulation models (or ensembles of such models), parameterised for a range of policy-relevant and credible greenhouse gas emission scenarios, project how temperature will increase and how rainfall, depending on location, will either increase or decrease in the coming decades (Pachauri et al. 2014). Although the land use sector can contribute to a world where global warming is capped at 1.5 °C (Roe et al. 2019), the global cohesiveness and political will needed to achieve that is lacking. With current crops and cropping patterns, without adaptation, ongoing and expected climate change challenges food supply (Smit and Skinner 2002;Fischer et al. 2002Fischer et al. , 2005;;Schmidhuber and Tubiello 2007). The predominant narrative on how agriculture should adapt to these changes is through major crop improvement programmes, supported by new genomics and gene-level change, that generate the new crop varieties with greater tolerance to drought and high temperatures, especially for the primary staple crops (Burke et al. 2009;Varshney et al. 2011;Dempewolf et al. 2014). Next to emission reduction ('mitigation'), this type of climate change adaptation is advocated as the main way to avoid global food insecurity in the future (Porter et al. 2014). Agricultural adaptation strategies suggest that farmers substitute crops, explore alternative livelihood strategies or relocate (Rippke et al. 2016), but do not think of modifying local climate by tree planting. Yet, that is what evidence shows they might do, outside the purview of mainstream research.Recent advances in agroecology and agroforestry research (Sinclair et al. 2019;van Noordwijk 2019a, b, c;van Noordwijk et al. 2019a, b, c, d) bring important nuances and challenges to this narrative in the following four main ways that will be the entry points to this literature review.A. Long-term persistence of AF systems in fragile environments such as Sahelian or Mediterranean drylands is based on maintenance of the buffer functions trees and soils protected by trees provide (Bayala et al. 2019b). The crop-level microclimate in any location is modified and modifiable by a change in tree cover from what climate station data and the models that are calibrated on such data (van Noordwijk et al. 2013(van Noordwijk et al. , 2014) ) project.The temperature range of microclimatic effects of trees so far exceeds global warming (Ovalle-Rivera et al. 2015), whilst rainfall dependence on continental land cover may involve a 10-20% shift (increase with more upwind tree cover, decrease with upwind deforestation) in many areas relevant for agricultural production (Ellison et al. 2019).Rather than taking projected local climate change as a given (only actionable via global emission control), there is scope for local and regional actions, focusing on the water balance and hydroclimatic relations (Robiglio et al. 2017;Creed and van Noordwijk 2018), as is increasingly done in managing the cooling services provided by urban trees (Pretzsch et al. 2021). B. Climate change is mostly climate shift, with the change in local suitability of crops and crop varieties likely to have existing solutions in adjacent or, sometimes distant, 'climate analogues' (where current climate is similar to what is projected for a target location) (Bos et al. 2015). A focus on social learning, germplasm exchange and social-ecological system governance may be more relevant than (or at least complement) crop breeding and 'tree improvement' (Sinclair et al. 2019). Given the large number of trees and the low degree of genetic 'domestication' of most species used, tree adaptation research is mostly through a combination of tree-site matching, supported by geographic informa-1 3tion systems, attention to local ethnobotanical knowledge and germplasm exchange and hence the consideration of whole system adaptation responses rather than focussing on only one component (Kmoch et al. 2018). C. Tree diversity with potential relevance for AF varies over at least three orders of magnitude (1-10, 10-100, 100-1000 species in the regional tree species pools from which AF recruits its trees) depending on location (van Noordwijk et al. 2019a). Tree-site matching research has shown wide ranges of climatic tolerance and phenotypic adjustments of aboveground and belowground morphology, with opportunistic and episodic fruit and seed production as apparently adaptive traits (Huxley 1999a). Phenology data (as scarce as they are) has documented a wide range of species-level and individual variation, with differential access to landscape-level water reserves as a likely contributor (Do et al. 2005;Valdez-Hernández et al. 2010). This lack of predictability is a problem where regular production for established market channels is the norm, creating 'needs' for horticultural management (irrigation, drainage, fertilisation, pruning) (Goldschmidt 2013).In the genotype-environment-management interaction, aspects other than global climate change are likely to dominate (van Noordwijk et al. 2019b). Elsewhere, especially in high tree-diversity environments or where the focus is on wood or resins, variability in individual tree-level performance is less of an issue, and portfolio risk management under uncertainty (using principles documented for crop diversity, van Noordwijk et al. 1994) is the primary line of defence (Ordoñez et al. 2014). D. The conventional view of the development trajectory for agriculture, namely a general trend of simplification, specialisation and increased inputs, is challenged by agroecology (Altieri and Nicholls 2017;HLPE 2019). The alternative of complexity, diversity and recycling, that includes trees and AF, has been shown to increase resilience to climate change in specific contexts, but its widespread adoption is likely to be constrained by market failures, maladapted policies and the paucity of evidence about the performance of agroecological practices across contexts that 'locks-in' industrial models of agricultural improvement and adaptation (Sinclair et al. 2019).These four challenges to a 'business as usual' model of agricultural development in response to the climate change challenges call for a multi-pronged approach to policy and practice for adapting agricultural and food systems to global climate change. It may have to go beyond what current 'climate-smart' approaches to agriculture set out to achieve (McCarthy et al. 2011;Carter et al. 2018;Kimaro et al. 2019;Rosenstock et al. 2019b), and build on earlier ideas of AF at the interface of climate change adaptation and mitigation (Verchot et al. 2007;Schoeneberger et al. 2012). A new appreciation of the relevance of AF and related practices for the climate change agenda is emerging as part of the recent IPCC land-use report (IPCC, 2019;Smith et al. 2019). The 2019 update of the IPCC guidelines for national greenhouse gas inventories for the first time explicitly includes default data (for Tier 2 accounting) for a range of AF land uses (Cardinael et al. 2018;Ogle et al. 2019). National Adaptation Plans increasingly make explicit reference to agroforestry (Meybeck et al. 2020).The wide diversity of extant AF practices across the (sub)tropics (Nair 1993;Beer et al. 1987;van Noordwijk et al. 2019b) was the main focus during the first two decades of formal AF research, but this focus lacked a tractable approach to measuring performance across contexts that has now become a major focus of AF research 'in' development (Coe et al. 2014;Sinclair and Coe 2019). A fresh look at microclimatic effects of trees, adaptive social-ecological systems (and their germplasm exchange in search of locally suitable 1 3 trees, crops, and tree-crop combinations) and the phenological and adaptive responses of trees to temporal variability in water availability and temperature may help us identify relevant concepts and research methods that stem from earlier physiological research that have traction in addressing the current climate emergency.The passing in November 2019 of one of the founding fathers of tropical AF research, Peter A Huxley (Lundgren et al. 2020), and the availability of his synthesis volume (Huxley 1999a), stimulated us to explore his potential contributions to current scientific questions. At the start of AF research, three lines of research were developed that not only cross-fertilised but also competed for limited research budgets and time allocations.The first focussed on trees, often 'multipurpose trees', that differed from the timber-oriented tree interest in conventional 'forestry' research. Beyond rapid production of straight poles, trees were identified that helped maintain or improve soil fertility and provided fodder, fruits, resins, medicinal bark, or other products, as well as appropriate levels of shade and complementary rooting habits that ensure compatibility with crops (Sinclair 1996). At least some trees exhibit niche differentiation with crops (Anderson and Sinclair 1993;Cannell et al. 1996;Bayala and Prieto 2019;Bayala et al. 2019a). Large databases were set up to document the hundreds (or thousands) of trees with recorded uses. An ongoing debate on 'prioritisation' addresses the challenge that explicit genetic 'tree improvement' can only deal with a few tree species at the required level of research intensity (Dawson et al. 2011(Dawson et al. , 2014;;Jamnadas et al. 2019), whilst farmers and rural communities may require tree diversity to ensure the productivity and resilience of their livelihoods and landscapes (Vandermeer et al. 1998;Smith-Dumont et al. 2019;van Noordwijk et al. 2019avan Noordwijk et al. , 2019b)).The second AF research line looked at the structure-function interactions for any tree in combination with (annual) crops and livestock from the perspective of resource (especially light, water, nutrients) capture, interpreting aboveground and belowground architecture from the perspective of active leaf area and fine-root presence (Luedeling et al. 2016). The third line of research started from a classification (typology) of 'AF systems' based on the trees, crops and livestock components (Nair, 1985;Sinclair 1999), exploring which systems have emerged under what conditions, which ones are expanding and which ones contracting. These three lines of research resulted in correspondingly different emphases of research activity (Table 1). For research lines I and III, it has been a challenge to tease apart climate change as a driver of change from the many other factors (e.g. demography, rural-urban interactions, physical and economic access to markets) that influence farm dynamics. Two types of climate change adaptation have been identified in the literature: firstly, an increase in tree diversity in order to be prepared for increased variability and have options available for adaptive management decisions, and secondly, targeted interventions in order to be prepared for a projected trend in conditions (van Noordwijk et al. 2011a;de Leeuw et al. 2013;Hoang et al. 2014;Catacutan et al. 2017). In funding streams for climate change adaptation, there is a preference for the second type of adaptation, but most farmer surveys have so far provided evidence of the first type (Bayala et al. 2014).Examples of debates that seek to reconcile different types of evidence and generalisations can be found, for example, in the recent challenge to a basic hypothesis of shade tree-based resilience in coffee and cocoa production systems (Vaast et al. 2016).A recently published study (Abdulai et al. 2018) provided evidence that shaded cocoa in a specific location became more rather than less vulnerable to climate variability, and that previously presumed contributions of AF to resilience of cocoa production are not universal (type II evidence in Table 1). It became clear in the ensuing scientific debate that the research results only applied to a specific fast-growing tree that did not complement the rooting pattern of cocoa and left substantial amounts of subsoil water unutilized at the time of drought-induced tree mortality (Norgrove 2018;Wanger et al. 2018). In terms of type II evidence, the initial experiments suggested this had not been the 'right tree for the right place', rather than a generic test of whether shaded cocoa systems can contribute to climate resilience. This echoes many other incidences of where generic claims are made from quite specific experiments. For example, measured effects of a few individual trees of three species (including Senna spectabilis, known to be an aggressive competitor with crops) exacerbating negative impacts of reduced tillage on maize yield in Rwanda and Ethiopia led to claims that combining conservation agriculture with trees was not viable across East Africa (Ndoli et al. 2018) despite its adoption by farmers with a range of other tree species and contexts in the region (Iiyama et al. 2017;Nyaga et al. 2019). Representativeness of case studies is easily overclaimed (Dewi et al. 2017). Further evidence of climate-buffering impacts of trees on coffee, wheat and rice will be discussed below.Seven interrelated research questions that arise from such considerations (Fig. 1) and are addressed in this review are as follows: 7. How do social and economic changes associated with the changing climate and response to it affect the adoptability of AF?We leave question 1 to be addressed together with question 7 at the end of this review. A restriction to the general applicability of ideas and results is that silvo-pastoral systems (Jose and Dollinger 2019;Jose et al. 2019) with trees and livestock, rather than annual crops, as main components and a dominant form of AF in Latin America (Somarriba et al. 2012) offer different challenges and opportunities on the adaptation side but will get little attention here. The focus of our review is on the opportunities for as well as limits to adaptation (van Noordwijk et al. 2011a;Dow et al. 2013) through agroforestry and the research efforts and methods to derive location-specific answers, but we leave the more specific guidance on how to apply this knowledge to other texts referred to.We re-read early publications of AF research on agro-climate, tree phenology and treebased microclimate modification, identifying aspects relevant for current discourse, and assessing recent progress or gaps in such progress. We traced citations in the recent literature of publications from the early days of AF research. Teams of authors with a direct connection to early AF research were formed with those with current cutting-edge research experience in climate change adaptation research in and through AF.In one of his first publications after starting the research effort at the newly established International Council for Research in Agro-Forestry (ICRAF), Peter Huxley (1980) wrote: 'Is there really a place for yet another research discipline? I believe there is, on two main counts. The first, and more pragmatic is that any new amalgam of research ideas needs to be positively encouraged and identified as such, whether it springs from entirely original concepts and practices or not. This is especially so when the component research disciplines, in this case of agriculture and forestry, have established themselves almost as separate entities. The second is that a positive thrust towards the multiple use of land through AF techniques generates a definite need to appraise and re-assemble our research tactics, to consider the increased complexities in space and time which must be dealt with in such systems. We might add, also, that we have to enquire whether our methods of evaluating the outputs of AF systems, in terms of the multiple products and benefits which can accrue, are up to the job.' 'Very few existing agroforestry systems have been studied critically and so far, many still await even broad description. Most agroforestry systems have arisen through the enterprise of indigenous rural communities who have, themselves, evolved them. Whether it is a home garden in Indonesia, a multi-storeyed mixture of trees and agricultural crops in Central America, or a silvo-pastoral system of fodder shrubs and grasses in the Sahel, suggestions for changing the inputs in terms of spatial arrangements, the temporal sequences of crops, or the very plant components themselves are unlikely, in many cases, to be based on measurement data because we have so few to work with.'Peter Huxley came to ICRAF with 20 years of research experience in Libya, Uganda and Kenya, with a strong interest in agriculture, climate, tree phenology and coffee, but also ideas about agricultural education and the gap between agriculture and forestry in terms of educational traditions. In his Tropical Agroforestry book (Huxley 1999a), Peter handed over the baton to the next generations of AF researchers with '…the first book to provide a comprehensive, analytical account of the principles as well as the practical applications of agroforestry. The focus is on understanding how agroforestry systems function whilst considering the conflicts and compromises that arise because of the farmers' requirements and the biological potentials and restraints of growing woody plants with crops.' 'We should always remember that people are the key elements in agroforestry. Being inclined towards biology I can only refer to some of the socio-economic aspects in this book (and without claiming much authority)'.Before the rise of global circulation models that account for climates across the globe, local observers of weather patterns that contribute to the long-term mean (30 years by definition) climate had developed a rich language that related wind direction to the type of weather that could be expected, interacting with local topography (e.g. forested mountain slopes, lakes). Huxley and Beadle (1964), for example, analysed short-range variation in weather patterns in Uganda as part of that tradition. It led to a focus on cloudiness as a factor in determining radiation energy, with attention to the diurnal pattern of, for example, morning sunshine and afternoon clouds and rainfall (Huxley 1965). For the humid tropics, seasonal variation in cloud cover may be as important for plant growth as variation in rainfall, especially for deep-rooted trees that can make use of the sunny dry season. The extent of Acacia-Commiphora dry bushland in Africa was found to relate to bimodal versus unimodal rainfall regimes, rather than annual isohyets (White 1983).Relevant metrics for characterising the climate in which trees are known to occur, and can be expected to thrive elsewhere, were a major issue at the start of AF research (Huxley et al. 1983). There was reason to expect that beyond temperature and mean annual rainfall, other aspects played a role. Early observations of differences in tree distribution by isohyet on sandy and clay soils in Sudan (Jackson 1957;Harrison and Jackson 1958;van Noordwijk 1984) pointed to the importance of local water buffering rather than rainfall as a determinant of tree growth. Given the headquarter location of ICRAF in Kenya, the bimodal rainfall patterns around the equator demanded attention, as both the 'long' and 'short' rainy season were highly variable and, in some years, defying their names. For some trees, the relatively short dry period between these two rainy seasons does not lead to leaf senescence and a new leaf flush; on the other hand, others do respond. The way climates are perceived by trees and crops can thus differ (Huxley 1985b(Huxley , 1999b)). Whilst the location of the Machakos research station in Kenya (1° 14′ S, 37° 27′ E) in the bimodal rainfall zone was initially seen as an advantage (two and contrasting cropping seasons per year yielding interesting data; Huxley and Westley, 1989), the limited 'representativeness' of its climate for the tropics as a whole played a role in abandoning it in the 1990s. Beyond merely the presence/absence of tree species, a more detailed observation of tree phenology in response to seasonal and climatic variation was deemed to be important (Huxley et al. 1989).1 3With the wealth of climate data now available and the 'Big Data' toolbox of analysis, the question of which climate variables have the most skill in accounting for tree distributional patterns can be tackled more directly. For example, Rana et al. (2018) developed MaxEnt models of recorded Alnus species distribution data in Nepal, using a subset of least correlated bioclimatic variables for current conditions , topographic variables and Land Use Land Cover (LULC) data. The major climatic factor that contributes to Alnus nepalensis distribution in Nepal appears to be precipitation during the warmest quarter of the year and precipitation during the driest quarter for Alnus nitida. Neither of these climatic variables has so far been captured in standard AF tree databases. Booth (2018) recently compared phenomenological (correlative) models with mechanistic (physiological) models and suggested that further progress is possible in bringing these strands of knowledge together.The choice of climate data for determining site suitability for a wide range of tree species can now be left to a final analysis of multiple empirical pathways (Ranjitkar et al. 2016;Lu et al. 2017;Gaisberger et al. 2017;de Sousa et al. 2019). An 'ensemble habitat suitability' can be calculated as the weighted average of suitability estimates predicted by different algorithms (Kindt 2018). Analysis by Noulèkoun et al. (2018) suggested that the climate parameters for predicting tree growth in the year of establishment (longest dry spell in rainy season) differ from those for the subsequent growth of trees with established root systems (overall balance of potential evapotranspiration and rainfall). There is also literature describing the way tree distribution and dynamics respond to rainfall trends over periods of several years and the interactions of these with human activity (Maranz 2009;Mbow et al. 2015;Brandt et al 2016Brandt et al , 2017)). Where large-scale tree mortality is noted, anthropogenic disturbances of the water balance and pest and disease outbreaks linked to reduced tree genetic diversity can be hard to distinguish from the effects of extreme events and climate change. Statistical downscaling of climate data to finer resolutions as in the WorldClim data that is widely used in species distribution modelling (http:// www. world clim. org/ versi on1) is reliable for means, but has more uncertainty for the extremes, where the degree of spatial and temporal autocorrelation of events is uncertain.The relationship between locally generated clouds and rainfall has received considerable attention, as evidence of 'terrestrial recycling' of rainfall, beyond ocean-derived precipitation. Early Global Circulation Models (GCMs) used elevation-temperature relations as they focussed on the global energy balance (modified by atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations) as a driver of atmospheric pressure differentials and circulation, but ignored many other local features, including a two-way interaction between vegetation and rainfall. Even though the basic data that allow the analysis of terrestrial recycling have been around for nearly two decades (Bosilovich and Schubert 2002) coupled with compelling analysis by van der Ent et al. ( 2010) that drew attention to the strong geographic patterns in source and sink areas of terrestrial rainfall recycling, it has taken a long time for the upwind-downwind relationship in rainfall and land cover with high rates of evapotranspiration (wetlands, lakes, forests, irrigation schemes) to be noticed (Ellison et al. 2017(Ellison et al. , 2019;;Wang-Erlandson et al. 2018). Important aspects of underlying mechanisms in rainfall triggering by atmospheric particles of biological origin (Morris et al. 2014;van Noordwijk et al. 2015a) and direct influence of forests on air circulation ('biotic pump ' Sheil and Murdiyarso 2009) remain frontiers of this science 1 3 (Creed and van Noordwijk 2018). It appears that there is less geographic variation in the mean residence time of atmospheric moisture (around 8 days; van der Ent and Tuinenburg 2017) than in the windspeeds, and thus, the distances travelled before water vapour leads to rainfall (from around 200 km at windspeeds of 1 km/h to 2000 km at 10 km/h or more). Accounting for effects of cloud cover on radiation (Park et al. 2017) can help translate scenarios that differ in fire/haze production and/or forest-based cloud cover to local climate consequences.Trees are not a taxonomic entity and many plant families contain both trees and non-woody annuals, suggesting that 'woodiness' is an adaptive life-history trait with pros and cons. Huxley (1999a, b) explored the 'woodiness' question in detail. Perenniality postpones the risky phases of seedling establishment and allows plants to make use of 'windows of opportunity' for reproduction that open at long intervals. It also allows for the accumulation of growth resources and gains made in exploring aboveground and belowground space, with leaves and fine roots as ephemeral extensions of the woody architecture that persists. Cannell and Huxley (1969) analysed seasonal differences in the pattern of assimilate movement in branches of Coffea arabica, a study that informed later thinking about plant research and AF (Huxley 1983). The direct observational records of tree flowering, fruiting, leaf flush and leaf senescence in Huxley and van Eck (1974) remained an inspiration for the deeper analysis of tree phenology (Akunda and Huxley 1990), but the resources and patience needed to record the basic data have become hard to assemble.The search for genes that make a tree a tree (Groover 2005) has clarified that genes responsible for wood production are also present in plants that do not have the tree habit (Petit and Hampe 2006). Genes involved in the vascular cambium of woody plants are also expressed in the regulation of the shoot apical meristem of Arabidopsis (Groover 2005). This might explain why woodiness can (re)emerge so readily, as observed in many island radiations (for example Böhle et al. 1996).Predicting changes in tree phenology in response to climate change remains a major challenge for most tree species (Schwartz 1999). There is still often no clarity on what exactly drives transitions between phenological stages. Even greater uncertainty surrounds the sensitivity of tree phenology to changes in these drivers. Reasonable descriptions of tree development during periods of active growth have been achieved with relatively simple thermal time models (Linkosalo et al. 2006), yet it is unclear to what extent such relationships will hold as the climate changes. Whilst this question could be resolved, to some extent, by multi-environment studies, such research is absent for most species (Schwartz 1999).What remains even more in the dark, but is arguably more critical for adaptation planning, are the mechanisms behind the resumption of active tree growth after a period of inactivity (Campoy et al. 2011). Such phase transitions are observed for most species in locations with pronounced cold or dry seasons (Campoy et al. 2011), and they 1 3 often involve a dormant period during which trees drop all their leaves and suspend active growth. A difference in leaf phenology can impact water use efficiency, gaseous exchange, tree growth and productivity of accompanying crops (Muthuri et al. 2009). In exceptional cases, such phases can even occur during periods that feature climatically favourable conditions, as has been widely reported for Faidherbia albida, a species that thrives in semi-arid environments, even though it loses its leaves during the wet season (Roupsard et al. 1999(Roupsard et al. , 2020)). What drives such transitions is often unclear, with variation in photoperiod (Heide, 2008), temperature (Guo et al. 2015), water availability, and insolation (Borchert et al. 2015) reported as influential factors in various situations. The relative importance of all these factors is often ambiguous, and systematic experiments that could overcome this uncertainty are usually lacking. To some extent, and where sizeable datasets exist, statistical methods can elucidate some relationships (Luedeling and Gassner 2012;Ranjitkar et al. 2013), but such studies rarely generate the physiological insights that might allow reliable predictions under conditions that are different from those under which tree behaviour has been observed (Luedeling 2012).Even for the winter dormancy period of deciduous trees in cold-winter climates, possibly the most extensively modelled phenological phenomenon, our quantitative understanding of the environmental cues and physiological processes involved is insufficient for reliable predictions of climate change impacts (Luedeling 2012). Whilst there is a general agreement on the importance of chilling and forcing temperatures, the role of other drivers, such as humidity, daylength and management, is still under debate (Schwartz 1999). Even though a few models have been developed for predicting dormancy release, the empirical basis of most of these models is slim, prediction successes have been modest, and model development has been stagnant for several decades (Luedeling 2012). Especially when it comes to the critical environmental signal of chill accumulation, existing models are unreliable when used along temperature gradients (Luedeling and Brown 2011;Luedeling et al. 2009), casting doubt on any phenology predictions for future climate scenarios.What remains elusive in phenology research is a prediction framework that is based on a sound understanding of the physiological processes that underlie tree phenology. There is some hope, however, that such a framework will eventually become possible. For example, recent research has generated increasing clarity on dormancy-related processes, including the genetics of dormancy (Bielenberg et al. 2008), epigenetic regulation (Rios et al. 2014), the role of plant hormones (Liu and Sherif 2019) and oxidative stress (Beauvieux et al. 2018), regulation of intercellular communication (Rinne et al. 2018) and carbohydrate dynamics (Dietze et al. 2014). The current frontier in tree dormancy modelling -and in phenology modelling more generally -is the integration of the knowledge generated over the past few decades into a comprehensive process-based understanding of the drivers of tree phenology and the processes they trigger.In AF research, a next step is that tree phenology matters for shade impacts on intercropped cereals, with late-flushing trees shading crops after their flowering stage, reducing yield but increasing protein content of the grain (Artru et al. 2017). In a study of phenology of a W. Amazon fruit-bearing shrub, Eugenia stipitate, flowering and fruit production was found to be influenced by the companion trees used in AF when tested in Costa Rica (van Kanten and Beer 2005), whilst the balance between vegetative growth and fruit production in other fruit-bearing shrubs was found to depend on AF context (Delgado et al. 2016). Phenotypic plasticity of roots in mixed tree species AF systems (Kumar and Jose 2018) can alter tree-soil-crop interactions.Before joining ICRAF, Huxley became interested in 'systematic spacing designs' in intercropping research (Huxley and Maingu 1978). Spacing influences both aboveground and belowground distances between plants, and microclimate effects (shade, windspeed, humidity) on water demand for transpiration. It interacts with the volume of soil available per plant for buffering water supply to roots, and the degree of common access and thus competition. As a research approach, Huxley proposed both experiments with tree and crop densities as a primary variable, and direct observation of the microclimatic effects and belowground interactions (Huxley 1985a(Huxley , b, c, 1987(Huxley , 1996;;Huxley and Mead 1988;Huxley et al. 1989Huxley et al. , 1994)). Microclimate effects also play a role in the incidence and management of pests and diseases in AF (Huxley and Greenland 1989). In the overview of a physiological approach to tree-crop interactions (Ong and Huxley 1996), the direct coupling of water and energy balances is discussed as the determinant of 'production possibility frontiers' in mixed tree-crop systems, with nutrient cycling and erosion control as manageable constraints.Microclimate research traditions provide important insights to local ways to deal with global climate change (Stigter 2007(Stigter , 2016)). Shading has been represented in increasingly refined 1D, 2D and 3D models of tree canopies (Quesada et al. 1989;Reid and Ferguson 1992;Charbonnier et al. 2013;Rosskopf et al. 2017). Simple models for light competition in discontinuous tree stands within AF shifted to a 2D representation of space (Talbot and Dupraz (2012). Canopy development was linked to the C (Nygren et al. 1996) and N balance (Nygren and Leblanc 2015), as in the shade and mulch model of alley-cropping systems (van Noordwijk 1996). More comprehensive process-level understanding of tree-soilcrop interactions, informed by various tree-crop interface experiments, has been captured in the 2D Water, Nutrient, Light Capture in Agroforestry Systems (WaNuLCAS) model (Van Noordwijk et al. 2011b), and used, for example, in a bioeconomic exploration of plant density and thinning scenarios for teak (Tectona grandis)-maize systems (Khasanah et al. 2015), water use in trees of different leafing phenological stages in semi-arid Kenya (Muthuri et al. 2004) and exploration of intercropping options for oil palm (Khasanah et al. 2020).Similar ideas informed a more detailed 3-dimensional tree canopy-crop model (Dupraz et al. 2019) and efforts to make existing crop models responsive to the presence of trees (Luedeling et al. 2016;Smethurst et al. 2017;Burgess et al. 2019). Stand-level light interception models have been modified for horizontally and vertically heterogeneous canopies (Forrester 2014), and used to study latitudinal influence on the light availability for intercrops in an AF alley-cropping system (Dupraz et al. 2018). Detailed microclimatic effects of tree canopies were modelled by Vezy et al. (2018), building on earlier concepts (Wang and Jarvis 1990;Wang et al. 2006). Modelling short-wave radiation distribution in an AF system (Zhao et al. 2003), competition for water (Wanvestraut et al. 2004) and shading response (Zamora et al. 2009) has helped in understanding the cotton/pecan alleycropping systems in the USA. Tree shelterbelt design and management requires predictive 1 3 understanding of wind flow patterns associated with shelterbelt structure, tree height and optical porosity (Zhou et al. 2005;Mize 2008).Aboveground microclimate interacts with the soil water balance, with tree effects including hydraulic equilibration. Bayala et al. (2015) reviewed advances in knowledge of processes in soil-tree-crop interactions in parkland systems in the West African Sahel, focussing on coupled energy and water balance and two-way hydraulic redistribution (Bayala et al. 2008) as a mechanism by which moisture in deeper soil layers, accessed only by tree roots, becomes available to crop roots. The degree to which such processes contribute to the agronomically proven positive effects on millet and cowpea in Ziziphus-based cropping systems remains to be explored (Bado et al. 2020). Hydraulic equilibration in intercropping deeper and shallower rooted plants (Kizito et al. 2012;Izumi et al. 2018) has been portrayed as 'bio-irrigation' (Bogie et al. 2018). It depends, however, on conditions where deeper soil water reserves are replenished during episodes with temporary rainfall excess over evapotranspiration (van Noordwijk and Ong, 1999;van Noordwijk et al. 2014). Panwar et al. (2020) investigated the diurnal response of surface and air temperatures to evaporative conditions for different vegetation types and found that surface temperature, in contrast to air temperature, reflected evaporative cooling in short-stature vegetation. In forests, however, aerodynamic conductance dominated over evaporative cooling, and surface temperature was not a good predictor of current evapotranspiration.Shade trees in coffee and cocoa have been analysed for the disadvantages and desirable characteristics of a range of shade trees (Beer 1987;1988;1991), and translated to farmerlevel management options (Beer et al. 1997). Specific AF practices that may improve agricultural performance responding to climate change include shade trees buffering rising temperatures to stabilise the yield of crops like coffee (Rahn et al. 2014(Rahn et al. , 2018)), and increasing the yield of food staples through lowering daytime temperatures and reducing heat stress (Sida et al. 2018;Wangpakapattanawong et al. 2017). Agroecological research beyond AF has demonstrated the relevance of diversity, increasing the resilience of crops to climate-induced pest and disease pressures (Harrison et al. 2019) or increased soil carbon and mulch associated with increased water infiltration and holding capacity and reduced soil evaporation (Ilstedt et al. 2016;Bayala et al. 2019b), improving the resilience of crops to drought (Minasny and McBratney, 2018). A recent meta-analysis of studies carried out in sub-Saharan Africa showed that on average, AF systems in sub-Saharan Africa increase crop yield whilst maintaining delivery of regulating/maintenance ecosystem services (Kuyah et al 2019).Before joining ICRAF, Huxley had gained experience with direct observation (Huxley and Turk, 1975) and 32 P tracer studies of coffee (Huxley et al. 1974). He was keen to bring a 'whole-plant physiology' approach to the study of aboveground and belowground trees and the way woody architecture defines the bounds of opportunistic resource capture (Huxley 1994(Huxley , 1999a)). Root system research was constrained not only by the spatial variability of the soil as substrate and the adaptive responses of plant root systems to such heterogeneity but also by the challenges of graphical representation (Rao et al. 1993). Woody root architecture proved to be a direct basis not only for understanding belowground competition for water resources (Ong and Huxley 1996) but also for clarifying complementarity, as water can flow in both directions: towards the shoot and from wetter to drier layers of soil.Bayala and Prieto (2019) reviewed water acquisition, sharing and redistribution by roots in AF systems. Van Noordwijk et al. (2015b) summarised the current understanding of the way woody root system architecture relates to tree physiology via adjustments in shoot/root ratio (van Noordwijk and de Willigen 1987) and local response to soil heterogeneity. Fractal branching rules apply for woody parts aboveground and belowground, but their parameters may be unrelated (Van Noordwijk and Mulia 2002). Aboveground allometry differs for solitary trees from those growing in closed stands, but tree shape plasticity is species-dependent (Harja et al. 2012). A recent fractal branching study on the shea tree (Vitellaria paradoxa) in Mali analysed differences in tree architecture between climate zones, with consequences for allometric relations (Sanogo et al. 2021). Mulia et al. (2010) reconciled a generic fractal branching pattern with such opportunistic response, operating at different time scales. Van Noordwijk et al. (1998) reviewed the understanding of plant roots in relation to global climate change, exploring the internal resource economy of maintaining fine-root biomass versus the carbon costs of new root expansion when favourable conditions for nutrient and water uptake return. Empirical research showed very different root system responses amongst tree species to soil drying and shoot pruning (Jones et al. 1998), incorporating the avoidance of hydraulic redistribution by cutting off the fine roots that might leak night-time water into zones that are not functional for the tree. There is little direct physiological evidence yet on how genotypic variation deals with such trade-offs. The few available estimates of fine-root turnover (van Noordwijk et al. 2004) match the theory so far, but progress in compiling relevant datasets has been slow. Kuyper et al. (2004) reviewed mycorrhiza management in AF, but there is still a need to clarify the role of common mycorrhizal networks in hydraulic redistribution mechanisms as an ecological mechanism to buffer against droughts and ensure productivity in regions with increasing variability in rainfall (Bayala and Prieto 2019).Many tree-soil-crop interactions in AF have focused on N availability (Haggar and Beer 1993;Haggar et al. 1993;Rowe et al. 1998) and N retention (Harmand et al. 2007). Studies of nutrient cycling in traditional AF systems (Glover and Beer 1986;Kass and Somarriba 1999) and intensively managed AF systems of cacao and timber species (Imbach et al. 1989;Somarriba and Beer 2011;Somarriba et al. 2014) helped to understand generic patterns and their site-specific manifestation.Recent advances and perspectives on belowground functioning of AF systems (Cardinael et al. 2020) include, beyond the water and nitrogen cycle, advances on functional trait classifications of roots (Isaac and Borden 2020;Borden et al. 2020) and an understanding of how competition with winter crops induces deeper rooting of walnut trees in a Mediterranean alley-cropping AF system (Cardinael et al. 2015a, b). Further progress on tree root system is in recognition of the soil binding and soil anchoring functions that together reduce landslide risks on sloping land, subject to high-intensity rainfall events (Hairiah et al. 2020a, b).Spatial patterns of variability of fine roots in coffee AF (Mora and Beer 2013) and fine-root dynamics of coffee in association with two shade trees (van Kanten et al. 2005) have helped to better understand niche differentiation. Spatially explicit impacts on 1 3 distribution of soil organic carbon in alley cropping combine aboveground and belowground inputs (Cardinael et al. 2015a, b). Where earlier reviews of ecological processes in tropical and temperate AF systems paid equal attention to belowground and aboveground processes (Batish et al.2007), subsequent research emphasised the close linkage between these two categories in linking nutrient and carbon cycles (Payan-Zelaya et al. 2013;Udawatta et al. (2017).Recent reviews established that AF boosts soil health in the humid and sub-humid tropics (Muchane et al. 2020) and that it influences soil fauna and their functions (Marsden et al. 2020). Beyond general conclusions on AF and ecosystem services (Jose 2009), greater mechanistic precision becomes feasible and can help in assessing risks and potential responses to global climate change. For example, increased rates of litter decomposition increase risks of bare soil conditions during part of the year. Yet, the effects of global warming on litter decay rates appear to be mixed as temperature effects interact with moisture and litter quality (Kumar 2008). Annual litterfall rates in plantations and AF systems (2-10 mg ha −1 y −1 ) are 50-100% of peak foliar biomass (Kumar 2008), with woody fractions around 15% of the total.Belowground interactions that affect C storage in soils have been a major research interest in the past decades. Contrary to expectations of proportionality of aboveground biomass and soil C storage, a recent meta-review found that experimental effects of elevated CO 2 concentrations on soil carbon storage are inversely proportional to their effects on aboveground biomass (Terrer et al. 2021). Positive effects on soil C were found in nutrientlimited situations with small aboveground biomass responses. Neutral (or even negative) soil C changes where aboveground biomass response was strong, as was common where trees were involved in the experiments. These findings are aligned with early predictions for elevated CO 2 effects from a 'functional equilibrium' perspective on the root:shoot relations in plants in nutrient-limited situations but not where water is limiting as increased CO 2 concentrations will modify the stomata level exchange between H 2 O vapour loss and CO 2 uptake (van Noordwijk et al. 1998). In the relationship between modified root biomass and soil C storage, root (and mycorrhizal hyphae) turnover will increase soil C inputs. However, root-mediated mineralisation (for example by phosphatase release) may work in the opposite direction. Whilst most of the literature on AF and C sequestration stays at the level of tree planting (Kumar and Nair 2011;Anderson and Zerriffi 2012;Jose and Bardhan 2012;Chapman et al. 2020) or measured soil C stocks (Shi et al. 2018;Chatterjee et al. 2018;Corbeels et al. 2019), some studies have delved deeper into the processes of root-aggregate interactions (Albrecht and Kandji 2003) and simultaneous effects on soil macroporosity (bulk density) and C org concentrations (Hairiah et al. 2020a, b;Saputra et al. 2020). Other studies have addressed the lack of visibility of trees in agricultural lands in current C accounting systems at the national scale (Rosenstock et al. 2019a, b, c), as precondition for economic incentives to reach the farmgate.Huxley has left an important legacy of research methods as well as results, through the methods he used, that he wrote about and that he encouraged others to develop and describe. His approach was one of balancing careful attention to theory whilst being practical and opportunistic (Huxley 1985b). He emphasised the specific challenges of research in AF, saying '…we cannot simply borrow analogous examples of research methodology from agriculture or forestry as they stand in order to reach a solution, but there are specific reasons why we have to adapt, develop and improvise new modifications' (Huxley 1985c). Much of Huxley's own research was at the plant level, but he saw it embedded in a process of understanding farming systems and interacting with farmers. These elements were brought together in Huxley and Mead (1988) that proposed both the flexible approach to on-farm experimentation and observational studies based on the careful measurement around existing individual trees, both of which are now widely used. He was intrigued by novel experimental layouts (Huxley et al 1994;Huxley 1985a). This included promoting the use of systematic designs in AF research and agronomy, a trend that has not continued in AF as results often proved inconclusive. His work with Roger Mead led to the development of an entirely novel class of experimental design they labelled HAHA (hedge alley hedge alley) that turned out to be interesting for design theory, but again maybe not useful given the way AF research developed (ICRAF 1988, Nester 1994). Huxley was ahead of his time in recognising the need for careful data management of highly structured datasets and supported the development of early software tools for doing that (Roger and Muraya 1991). Likewise, he was ahead of trends in using visual methods to detect and display patterns in data when these had to be drawn by hand (Huxley 1965;Huxley and Van Eck 1974;Huxley et al 1994).Many case studies provide evidence (type I in Table 1) on the relevance of AF for climate change-resilient agriculture (Nguyen et al. 2013;Coulibaly et al. 2014;Simelton et al. 2015;Gram et al. 2018;Castro et al. 2018;Quandt et al. 2019). Progress on types II and III evidence described in Table 1 is patchier yet. The systematic designs promoted by Huxley are only rarely used, as the interpretation of results is not straightforward, given confounding effects aboveground and belowground. Another layer of complexity is the landscape scale both for the observational and systematic designs that will require a combination of field-level yield mapping, remote sensing and modelling for long-term data collection/ assessment to investigate how resilient to climate change AF systems are and to what extent they mitigate it (Bayala et al. 2015).With the increased interest in temperate-zone AF, farm economic considerations are as important as biophysical ones (Wojtkowski 1998;Jose and Gordon 2007;Jose et al. 2012;Pantera et al. 2018), but there is also interest in the ways trees can help return some of the functionality lost when agricultural mechanisation and intensification homogenised the landscape (Mosquera-Losada et al. 2012;Den Herder 2017;Kay et al. 2019). Design of long-term AF field trials (Lovell et al. 2018) will often have to shy away from fully factorial designs feasible in crop monocultures and follow a farming system approach, in which a few differently managed systems are compared to controls. Instead of standard statistical approaches, biophysical modelling is used to test the fit of predicted versus measured outputs of the systems to analyse the functioning of the mixtures. Parameter-sparse AF models (Keesman et al. 2011) can zoom in on farm management decisions but will not allow exploration of conditions beyond the conditions for which models were parameterized.On the other end of the research spectrum, the ecological toolbox of analysing diverse and spatially complex systems (Somarriba et al. 2001;De Souza et al. 2012;Deheuvels 1 3 et al. 2012;Cassano et al. 2014) needs to be coupled to the social methods to appreciate diversity in expectations, goals and management practices (Jerneck andOlsson, 2013, Jerneck andOlsson 2014;Sari et al. 2020;Mulyoutami et al. 2020).Whilst in principle, trade-offs between crop intensification and ecosystem services exist in most forms of AF (Vaast et al. 2005;DeClerk et al. 2012;Vaast and Somarriba 2014), many systems operate so far below yield potential that considerable win-win opportunities exist, reducing risks whilst increasing performance under normal circumstances (De Beenhouwer et al. 2013;Schroth et al. 2016;Gomes et al. 2020).In the line of Huxley, research combining the best of process-level understanding with AF designs with a proven track record (Ong et al. 2015) may have been the most successful yet in the dry tropics (Bayala et al. 2015). Combining direct canopy interception and transpiration data of trees with effects on water infiltration, influenced by trees, Ilstedt et al. (2016) derived an estimate of an optimal intermediate tree density for such parklands, from a perspective of groundwater recharge. Further analysis of how such optimum depends on climate variability and climate change is in progress.Much of the analysis of AF systems responding to climate change has been on the level of 'dealing with the consequences' of ongoing climate change and contributing to mitigation at the greenhouse gas emission driver level (Syampungani et al. 2010;Duguma et al. 2014;Mbow et al. 2014a). In terms of the AF research lines and the actionable consequences at the farm level (Table 1), progress is largely confined to line I, especially category IA. Publications from all tropical continents report farmers knowledge on the relevance of tree cover for climate buffering and preferences for specific trees in the local context (Nyong et al. 2007, Chaudhury et al. 2011;Pramova et al. 2012;Thorlakson and Neufeldt 2012;Charles et al. 2013;de Zoysa and Inoue 2014;Lasco et al. 2014a, 2014b, Pandey et al. 2015;Lasco et al. 2016;Newaj et al. 2016). This matches the recorded global increase in tree cover on farmed lands, but with regional differences (Zomer et al. 2016;van Noordwijk et al. 2019b). Explicit attention to tree diversity management on a farm (line IB) in this context is scarce yet (van Noordwijk et al. 2019b;Rosenstock et al. 2019a). Explicit adjustment of species choice to expected climate (Line IC) was discussed, for example, in Luedeling et al. (2014), Booth (2018) andde Sousa et al. (2019). Studies of tree-level response to long-term interannual climate variability are scarce yet (Mokria et al. 2017). There still also is a challenge of novel future climatic conditions without presentday climate analogue (Luedeling et al. 2014), whilst increased atmospheric CO 2 concentrations change the stomatal water use efficiency and can change the hydroclimatic requirements for tree growth.Research line II, explicit adjustment of quantity and quality of tree cover to match expected and ongoing climate change, is still relatively scarce. The most discussed is the adjustment of shade levels in tree crops such as coffee and cocoa (Tscharntke et al. 2011). Trees are commonly selected to survive in and reduce urban heat islands (Lanza and Stone 2016;Pretzsch et al. 2017), but not yet explicitly to serve as air coolers in cropped fields that otherwise may be too hot (Ellison et al. 2017). Attention to such applications is, however, emerging (Roy et al. 2011;Tewari et al. 2014). Most of the examples in this category deal with the interface of energy and water balance. Specific attention to the relatively high 1 3 intensity of land-use change in 'water towers' is needed (Dewi et al. 2017). The trade-offs between downstream and downwind water availability depend on coherent metrics, as discussed by van Noordwijk et al. (2016van Noordwijk et al. ( , 2019c)).We are not aware yet of applications in research line III, partly as season-level weather forecasts are not yet reliable. A recent finding that may make El Niño events predictable a year in advance (Meng et al. 2020) may open new avenues for such applications. At scales above the farm level, however, there are impacts on cloud cover, biological rainfall generation (BRG, as the counterpart of biological nitrogen fixation (BNF), van Noordwijk et al. 2015a), and meso-climate/microclimate that can be influenced by land cover, and thus potentially be managed. Ambitious, quantitative schemes that relate farmer-level choice and options to interventions at landscape and regional scale that may influence rainfall patterns and interact with global circulation models include many relations that deserve further analysis and targeted data collection.Such analysis may show that the policy agenda for climate change resilience can be more encompassing than is currently realised. At the start of an explicit interest in sustainability research 30 years ago, Huxley (1989Huxley ( , 1995) ) contributed ideas that seek systemlevel relevance for mechanisms and relations understood at the component level. Such an approach, as challenging as it is, can still help in fully accounting for the various ways in which tree cover at regional and landscapescales can modify the climate, interacting with global circulation and greenhouse gas effects. Ultimately, policy interest is not in achieving climate change adaptation as such (with or without the use of AF), but in progress across the totality of the Sustainable Development Goals of Agenda 2030. Prospects for growing recognition of a rural development pathway that takes agroecology and AF seriously are increasing (Mbow et al. 2014b;van Noordwijk et al. 2018van Noordwijk et al. , 2019d)), with special attention to areas of high vulnerability such as small islands (van Noordwijk 2019c). To contribute to such progress, however, AF research methods will have to keep evolving, building on 40 years of progress (van Noordwijk and Coe 2019). 1 33. There still is a shortage of long-term phenology records to analyse tree biological responses across a wide range of species to climate variability, especially where flowering and pollination matter, linked to the way the plant perceives temperature and drought signals, and impacts on pollinator presence at the required time and place. 4. Physiological understanding of aboveground and belowground resource capture can complement farmer knowledge and help guide policy decisions that allow AF solutions to emerge and the choice of tree germplasm to be adjusted for the growing conditions expected over the lifetime of a tree. 5. The emerging recognition for agroforestry as part of national climate change adaptation strategies is encouraging but requires backup by quantitative risk analyses."}

main/part_2/0018911949.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"cbca131b558b5b92eee849e281defc34","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/0c911342-e8cd-4abd-a543-66e1cfebacb3/retrieve","id":"-306436147"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"67bfd811-9ca3-48c4-8d04-82b33dad4a5f","content":"Titles in this series aim to disseminate interim research on the scaling of climate services and climatesmart agriculture in Africa, in order to stimulate feedback from the scientific community.Facilitators: Joseph Adomako, PhD, from CSIR-CRI, and Reginald Kyere from IITA Participants: Seven individuals, comprising four call center staff and three operation staff from Esoko. In terms of gender, there were five males and two females.The primary goal of this training was to introduce participants to technology upscaling through piloting. Specific objectives included promoting validation and uptake of Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) innovations and identifying and scaling out One-health & CSA technologies.Identified and prioritized climate-and gender and social inclusion-smartness of CSA packages.Created awareness and identified scaling mechanisms for best-bet CSA options. Some key topics covered during the training included:• Yam arthropod pests and disease management demonstrations.• Demonstration of Stress-Tolerant Maize Varieties and Hybrids.• Demonstration of stress-tolerant/dual-purpose cowpea varieties and hybrids.• One-health sweet potato weevil management demonstrations.• One-health notions, benefits, challenges, and One-health risk assessments were also discussed.Participants gained insights into eco-friendly pest and disease management technologies, stress-tolerant crop varieties, and dual-purpose cowpea options. They also acquired knowledge about One-Health principles and practices.• Successful completion of arthropod pest and disease management demonstrations.• Positive feedback on stress-tolerant maize and cowpea varieties.• Increased awareness and adoption of climate-smart pest management practices for sweet potato production.Facilitators: Awudu Amadu Gariba and Elvis Opoku from PPRSD.Participants: Seven call center staff and four operations staff from Esoko were present; comprising nine males and two females.The primary goal of the training was to equip call center staff with essential knowledge and skills for early warning on disease and pest control, specifically focusing on crops identified under AICCRA. The intended outcomes included improved identification, prevention, and management of pests and diseases affecting crops.The training covered key topics, including types of pests, stages of attacks, host plants, and damage symptoms. Specific emphases were given to major pests and diseases affecting AICCRA crops piloted under the AICCRA-Ghana project.Participants gained valuable insights into the identification and management of pests and diseases, particularly those affecting maize, sweet potatoes, yam, tomatoes, and cowpeas. The training emphasized practical skills and knowledge applicable to their roles in disease and pest control.Notable achievements included the successful completion of hands-on activities and positive feedback regarding the practical applicability of the training content. Participants demonstrated a keen understanding of the importance of early warning systems in crop protection and the importance of applying integrated pest management approaches (IPM) for pests and diseases.Participants in both training sessions actively immersed themselves in discussions and practical activities, revealing a notable enthusiasm and commitment to the subject matter. The interactive nature of the sessions fostered meaningful exchanges of ideas and experiences among participants.Despite the overall success, both trainings encountered challenges such as time constraints and technical issues related to audiovisual aids. However, these challenges were promptly identified and addressed as presentations were made with pictures and symptomatic images of the diseases.The positive feedback garnered from the training underscored the practical relevance of the content to participants serving as advisors to farmers. Suggestions for additional practical exercises and case studies were thoughtfully acknowledged, with consideration for incorporation into future sessions.Here are some feedbacks from participants who attended both training sessions:3 In anticipation of future training, the following are recommended areas for consideration. Specifically, participants express the need for on-field identification training, focusing on plant stress. Additionally, they emphasize the importance of incorporating practical experiences to provide them with hands-on familiarity with emerging CSA/CIS technologies. These suggestions underscore the participants' eagerness to continually enhance their knowledge and practical skills for the benefit of the farmers they serve. The following are quotations from some participants:\"While we appreciate the theoretical aspects of the training, we express a desire for more practical sessions to further enhance our skills.\"\"We would like to have a hands-on training experience in the field. Furthermore, the training has equipped participants with CIS/CSA technologies related to the selection of crop varieties and innovative propagation methods. This proficiency has enabled them to provide farmers with recommendations that not only conserve resources such as space, planting materials, and inputs but also contribute to maximizing agricultural yield. The Esoko follow-up assessment clarifies how this 4 acquired expertise has translated into practical, on-the-ground guidance for farmers seeking assistance through the helpline.\"We have been equipped with CIS/CSA technologies for selecting varieties and employing propagation methods for certain crops. This enables us to advise farmers to optimize space, conserve planting materials, and minimize inputs while maximizing yield\".Under the broader context of the One Health Initiative, the training has instilled in participants a holistic perspective. Farmers are now advised with considerations for eco-friendly farming practices that encompass the well-being of humans, animals, the environment, and the ecosystem. This holistic approach, emphasizing the use of natural extracts and organic farming methods, has become a cornerstone of the guidance provided by participants on the Esoko farmer helpline.\"The training has significantly enhanced our understanding of and advising farmers on adopting eco-friendly and sustainable technologies for pest and disease management, such as utilizing neem extract for pest and disease control\".Moreover, the assessment highlights that participants have gained insights into promoting soil fertility through the application of plant extracts, steering away from reliance on synthetic fertilizers. This shift in advice reflects a commitment to sustainable and environmentally conscious farming practices.\"The training helped us to advise farmers on promoting soil fertility through the use of plant extracts, moving away from reliance on synthetic fertilizers\".The collaboration between Esoko and AICCRA has resulted in a series of training initiatives aimed at enhancing the knowledge and capabilities of their call center staff. The training sessions were led by distinguished facilitators from PPRSD and CRI and focused on essential skills in disease and pest control, as well as CIS/CSA technologies in agriculture. These training sessions were transformative and stood as a testament to Esoko's unwavering commitment to improving the skills and knowledge of their staff.The conclusion drawn from these collaborative training sessions is clear: Esoko, in partnership with AICCRA, has successfully empowered its call center staff with the tools and insights necessary to navigate the complex landscape of disease and pest control while embracing CIS/CSA technology upscaling in agriculture. This collective knowledge positions participants as valuable assets About AICCRA "}

main/part_2/0022153193.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"5bd547178b23822f8d0bb027742f22a9","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/9a3728f7-8cc2-42f3-ae81-d7d412dee20e/retrieve","id":"697900481"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"199870fa-4555-4dbf-8d3d-4fa028c7bc3b","content":"Desmodium heterocarpon (L.) DC. subsp. ovalifolium (Prain.) Ohashi (CIAT 13651)Desmodium heterocarpon (L.) DC. subsp. ovalifolium (Prain.) Ohashi fue introducido a Colombia en 1973 por el Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT) y se conoce comúnmente como Desmodium ovalifolium. Los estudios realizados en Colombia por la Corporación Colombiana de Investigación Agropecuaria (Corpoica), el Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical-CIAT en colaboración con el Instituto Colombiano Agropecuario (ICA) muestran que esta leguminosa es una alternativa de bajo costo para rehabilitar pasturas degradadas y para cobertura del suelo en plantaciones de caucho y palma aceitera con un menor costo de establecimiento y manejo en comparación con el tradicional uso de kudzu. Teniendo en cuenta los buenos resultados obtenidos con el D. ovalifolium CIAT 13651 en varios ecosistemas de Colombia, Corpoica lo liberó como cultivar Maquenque. Este cultivar se adapta bien a un amplio rango de sitios, localizados entre 0 y 1300 m.s.n.m., con una precipitación anual superior a 2000 mm.; no tolera períodos prolongados de sequía. La planta crece y produce semillas en una gran diversidad de suelos, desde Oxisoles de baja fertilidad en las sabanas y el Piedemonte de los Llanos Orientales y la Amazonia, hasta Ultisoles en laderas de Cauca y la zona cafetera. La semilla de D. ovalifolium es pequeña y tiene buena germinación; 1 g contiene, aproximadamente, 500 semillas con una pureza de 90%, una germinación de 60% y una emergencia en el campo de 50%. Con base en estos valores, la cantidad de semilla por hectárea de esta especie recomendada para siembras asociadas con gramíneas es de 0.5 kg y para siembras como cobertura en plantaciones de 1 a 2 kg. Cuando se utiliza material vegetativo se necesitan 50 m 2 de semillero para cubrir 1 ha. Los mayores rendimientos de forraje con esta leguminosa se han obtenido en la época de lluvias en sitios con suelos de fertilidad entre media y alta. En la zona cafetera se han alcanzado producciones de MS de 17 t/ha por año. En la Orinoquia colombiana, en suelos de menor fertilidad, los rendimientos de MS de accesiones de D. ovalifolium son variables entre sitios. En el Piedemonte llanero (2800 a 5000 mm anuales) la producción varía entre 8.6 y 10.3 t/ha por año, en la Altillanura plana (1800 a 2600 mm) varía entre 5.5 y 8.3 t/ha por año y en la Serranía, con precipitación similar a la Altillanura, la producción de MS varía entre 1.5 y 3.1 t/ha por año. En las condiciones del Piedemonte de los Llanos Orientales, D. ovalifolium florece a partir de junio y su máxima floración se presenta entre septiembre y octubre. La maduración de las semillas ocurre aproximadamente 1 mes después de la emergencia de las vainas.Durante el establecimiento se deben aplicar cantidades mínimas de los nutrientes esenciales. En las condiciones de la Orinoquia colombiana, con suelos de baja fertilidad y una alta saturación de aluminio (60 a 90%), con la aplicación de 40, 40, 20 y 15 kg/ha de P, K, Mg y S, respectivamente, se encontró una producción de MS 35% mayor que con el testigo sin fertilización. En la estación Santa Rosa, Villavicencio, al evaluar varias leguminosas como abono verde y cobertura del suelo en el cultivo de arroz, se encontró que D. ovalifolium CIAT 13651 (cv. Maquenque) produjo 1.5 t/ha de MS, 2 a 3 meses después de la siembra. En la Altillanura se encontró una acumulación anual de 7.5 t/ha de residuos de hojas y tallos de D. ovalifolium en pasturas asociadas con Andropogon gayanus. Se estima que estos residuos reciclan al suelo 60, 4.9, 11.8, 60, 13.5 y 8 kg/ha de N, P, K, Ca, Mg y S, respectivamente. El establecimiento y desarrollo del cv. Maquenque bajo cultivo de caucho en la Altillanura han sido buenos como lo indica una cobertura mayor que 80% en la época de lluvias, siendo superior a la cobertura lograda con kudzu tradicional (55%). Desmodium ovalifolium tiene un valor nutritivo moderado en comparación con otras leguminosas forrajeras. El contenido de proteína cruda(> 11%) de esta leguminosa es aceptable, mientras que su digestibilidad (45% a 50%) es moderada. Esto se debe principalmente a sus altos contenidos de taninos, que afectan la degradabilidad de la proteína a nivel ruminal, la digestibilidad de la materia seca y el consumo. En el Piedemonte de la Orinoquia fertilizado con 5 y de la Amazonía se ha observado buen consumo y aceptación por parte de animales del D. ovalifolium fertilizado con S con una contribución importante en las ganancias de peso y desarrollo reproductivo.Desmodium ovalifolium Wall. es una leguminosa de usos múltiples recientemente reclasificada como Desmodium heterocarpon (L.) DC. subsp. ovalifolium (Prain.) Ohashi. Fue introducida a Colombia en 1973 por el Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT) y se conoce comúnmente como Desmodium ovalifolium. Después de un proceso de investigación conjunto entre el CIAT, el ICA, y Corpoica durante más de 20 años en diferentes ecosistemas de Colombia Amazonia, Orinoquia, las laderas del Cauca y la zona cafetera se ha encontrado que esta leguminosa tiene buena adaptación a las condiciones de clima y suelo predominantes, alta producción de biomasa, buena capacidad de asociación con gramíneas mejoradas y buena cobertura del suelo. Estas características agronómicas son indispensables para mejorar sistemas de producción agrícolas y ganaderos, bien sea para la protección del suelo y rehabilitación de pasturas degradadas, o como fuente de alimentación para el ganado.Los estudios realizados en los Llanos de Colombia muestran que D. ovalifolium CIAT 13651 es una excelente alternativa para rehabilitar pasturas degradadas de Brachiaria en la Altillanura y en el Piedemonte y que presenta una excelente cobertura del suelo en plantaciones de caucho y palma aceitera con un menor costo de establecimiento y manejo en comparación con el tradicional uso de kudzu. También son interesantes los resultados obtenidos con la asociación de esta accesión con A. pintoi CIAT 18744, ya que la combinación de ambas especies conduce a una cobertura del suelo más estable en las épocas de clima variables que son normales en la región.Por lo anterior, Corpoica con la colaboración del CIAT, y el apoyo financiero del Ministerio de Agricultura y Desarrollo Rural (MADR) ponen a disposición de los productores el nuevo cultivar Maquenque -D. heterocarpon (L.) DC. subsp. ovalifolium (CIAT 13651) como alternativa para mejorar la productividad de sistemas agrícolas y pecuarios en diferentes ecosistemas de Colombia. Desmodium heterocarpon subsp. ovalifolium es originario del sureste asiático (Tailandia, Indonesia, Filipinas, Vietnam, Laos y Malasia); se encuentra entre 20° 30 norte y 04° sur. Es una especie predominantemente de tierras bajas y trópico húmedo con clima caliente y altas precipitaciones (1200 a 4500 mm/año). El hábitat natural de la planta son los bordes de bosques de galería y plantaciones de palma y caucho, en general sitios influenciados por la sombra (Schultze-Kraft, 1997). Fue introducido a América tropical en la década del 70 y a Colombia en 1973 por el Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT). El germoplasma disponible de D. ovalifolium ha sido recolectado en regiones tropicales húmedas y subhúmedas entre 5 y 900 m.s.n.m., con 1200 a 4500 mm de precipitación anual y un período seco hasta de 6 meses (Schultze-Kraft, 1997).Las plantas de D. ovalifolium son herbáceas, perennes de germinación epigea con hábito de crecimiento postrado y estolonífero y pueden alcanzar hasta 80 cm de altura. Tienen un sistema radicular con una gran cantidad de raicillas secundarias y terciarias. El tallo es cilíndrico y emite raíces en los nudos inferiores que se encuentran separados entre 5 y 10 cm. Las hojas en su estado inicial son unifoliadas y luego trifoliadas, los foliolos son ovalados a ovalados-acuminados, con el foliolo central más largo que los laterales, glabros y brillantes en la superficie dorsal, de color verde oscuro; las inflorescencias son compactas, con flores en racimos de color púrpura o rosado intenso que se vuelven azulados al completar la apertura. Produce vainas densamente pubescentes, el fruto es un lomento dehiscente con 2 a 8 artejos Planta de Desmodium ovalifolium cv. Maquenque con inflorescencias de color púrpura. (Foto cortesía de A. Schmidt). cuadrados de 2.5 a 3 mm de largo con una semilla cada uno. La semilla es pequeña de color amarillo o marrón (Grof, 1982;Schultze-Kraft y Benavides, 1988;Schultze-Kraft, 1992). Una característica importante de esta especie es su tolerancia a la sombra, lo que le permite crecer asociada con cultivos permanentes comerciales como la palma africana y el caucho. La coleccion disponible de D. ovalifolium muestra poca variabilidad morfológica, lo que hace difícil la identificacion visual de las diferentes accesiones y exige una fuente confiable de semillas comerciales para la siembra. No obstante las diferentes accesiones de esta especie muestran comportamiento diferentes.Desmodium ovalifolium se adapta bien a un amplio rango de sitios en Colombia, localizados entre 0 y 1300 m.s.n.m., pero prefiere zonas bajas (< 400 m.s.n.m.) con una precipitación anual superior a 2000 mm; no tolera períodos de sequía superiores a 4 meses. La planta crece y produce semillas en una gran diversidad de suelos, desde Oxisoles de baja fertilidad en las sabanas y el Piedemonte de los Llanos Orientales y la Amazonia hasta Ultisoles en laderas de Cauca y la zona cafetera (Schmidt y Schultze-Kraft, 2001). Se adapta a suelos con un pH entre 4 y 7, y tolera inundaciones de corta duración. La especie se adapta bien en condiciones de sombra, pero es susceptible a la quema (Franco et al., 1990;1992a,b).En diferentes regiones del país y localidades de la Orinoquia se ha evaluado un amplio número de accesiones de D. ovalifolium que se encuentra en la Unidad de Recursos Genéticos del CIAT, destacándose por la producción de biomasa y de semilla los materiales D. ovalifolium CIAT 350, 13089, 13092 y 13651. Esta última accesión (cv. Maquenque) se destaca por su tolerancia a nematodos, densa cobertura, menor altura de planta y alta producción de semillas.Las prácticas agronómicas para el establecimiento del cv. Maquenque dependen del uso pastura o cobertura del suelo y de las características y tipo del suelo donde se cultive.La intensidad de labranza para el establecimiento del cv. Maquenque debe estar de acuerdo con las características físicas del suelo. En los suelos arenosos de la Altillanura la labranza debe ser reducida para evitar las pérdidas por erosión laminar. La preparación con un pase de cincel es suficiente, ya que tres pases o más son excesivos para estos suelos y ocasionan la reducción de su volumen y la tasa de infiltración de agua (Cuadro 1) (Amézquita, 1998). En la finca Matazul, localizada en la Altillanura, al evaluar varios sistemas de siembra de arroz, incluyendo D. ovalifolium, se encontró que la tasa de infiltración de agua en el suelo tendió a incrementar en el primer semestre de 1997 y presentó un descenso en el segundo semestre de ese año. No obstante, cuando se incluyeron Pueraria phaseoloides (kudzu) + D. ovalifolium el descenso en la infiltración de agua fue menor, especialmente cuando estas leguminosas se incorporaron en forma temprana. sobrepreparación del suelo para prevenir el enterramiento o lavado de la semilla; y (4) finalmente distribuir la semilla a voleo en mezcla con cal o calfos (Guzmán y Vera, 1991). Por este sistema es posible establecer la leguminosa sola (semillero) o asociada con especies de Brachiaria. Un sistema económico para establecer esta leguminosa consiste en mezclar las semillas con las de arroz de secano al momento de la siembra.En la Altillanura y el Piedemonte de los Llanos Orientales, el cv. Maquenque presenta un desarrollo inicial lento cuando se establece entre cultivos jóvenes de palma o caucho, no obstante, se ha observado que después de 6 meses alcanza coberturas del suelo de 72%. En cultivos viejos de caucho el cubrimiento del suelo ha sido menor (28%) como resultado de la mayor competencia por luz y nutrientes del suelo (Peters et al., 2000).Cuando no se dispone de semilla suficiente, la siembra puede hacerse con material vegetativo utilizando estolones (Grof et al., 1981). En suelos frágiles (pendientes), D. ovalifolium se puede sembrar por estolón (Suárez y Cardona, 1993a). En general se considera que el establecimiento de esta leguminosa es fácil y que es muy persistente bajo condiciones de pastoreo.Cambios en la infiltración de agua en el suelo a través del tiempo según el sistema de siembra y tipo de cultivo. Finca Matazul, Llanos Orientales de Colombia. En las zonas en que se utilice material vegetativo se necesitan 50 m 2 de semillero para cubrir una hectárea. En el Caquetá, cuando esta leguminosa se sembró asociada con B. humidicola en surcos distanciados 80 cm presentó una cobertura de 36%, 20 semanas después de la siembra (Gil et al., 1991). En Carimagua (Llanos Orientales), también utilizando material vegetativo en la siembra, presentó una cobertura del suelo de 85% cuando se estableció asociada con B. humidicola o B. dictyoneura, 7 meses después de la siembra.En la zona cafetera los mejores resultados se obtuvieron cuando D. ovalifolium CIAT 350 se estableció con material vegetativo y labranza cero, utilizando un herbicida preemergente (Suárez, 1992). Con este sistema, 12 semanas después de la siembra se obtuvo una cobertura del suelo superior a 50%, una alta competencia con especies invasoras y una menor pérdida de suelo por erosión.Debido a su vigor y buen establecimiento, así como su relativa baja palatabilidad para los animales en suelos de baja fertilidad, D. ovalifolium con frecuencia tiende a ser dominante en pasturas asociadas, sobre todo cuando se utilizan densidades de siembra muy altas (> 2 kg/ha de semilla). Para evitar este problema se recomienda utilizar entre 0.3 y 0.5 kg/ha de semilla en surcos alternos con la gramínea sembrada a voleo.Durante esta etapa del cultivo es importante tener en cuenta que existen algunos factores bióticos negativos que pueden interferir el normal desarrollo de D. ovalifolium. En esta etapa pueden ocurrir ataques de hormigas (Atta sp. y Acromyrmex sp.) y grillos (Grillidae sp. y Agrotes sp.). El control de estas plagas debe estar acompañado por un manejo oportuno de las malezas y un pastoreo controlado cuando la especie se utiliza para mejorar pasturas.En las zonas bajas tropicales existe una amplia gama de malezas nativas que compiten con los cultivos. Una vez establecido, D. ovalifolium cv. Maquenque tiene una alta capacidad de competencia contra la invasión de malezas, debido a su crecimiento agresivo, a la tolerancia a bajos niveles de fertilidad en el suelo y a la resistencia al ataque de plagas y enfermedades. Durante las fases iniciales de establecimiento ocasionalmente se observa una alta invasión de malezas, especialmente en la Amazonia y en el Piedemonte de los Llanos Orientales. En estos casos, se recomienda la aplicación de herbicidas preemergentes (Ferguson y Sánchez, 1984).Una vez establecida la leguminosa, el corte mecánico con machete, guadaña o rotativa ayuda a reducir la competencia de las malezas, especialmente gramíneas y especies anuales de hoja ancha.Cuadro 2. Producción de materia seca de accesiones de diferentes leguminosas utilizadas para cobertura de suelos (2 meses después de la siembra Plantas de Desmodium ovalifolium cv. Maquenque con inflorescencia y semillas. (Foto cortesía de B. Hincapié).Los mayores rendimientos de forraje con esta leguminosa se han obtenido en la época de lluvias en sitios con suelos de fertilidad entre media y alta (Cuadro 3). En la Altillanura del Meta, C.I. Carimagua, se encontró que la producción de MS de D. ovalifolium cv. Maquenque varió entre 5 t/ha por año en suelos franco-arcillosos y 8 t/ha por año en suelos franco-arenosos, en cortes cada 8 semanas. En la zona cafetera se han alcanzado producciones de MS con D. ovalifolium CIAT 350 de 17 t/ha por año (Suárez et al., 1985) y en Urabá de 20 t/ha, en cosechas cada 8 semanas. En la Orinoquia colombiana, en suelos de menor fertilidad, los rendimientos de MS de accesiones de D. ovalifolium son variables entre sitios. En el Piedemonte llanero (2800 a 5000 mm anuales) la producción varía entre 8.6 y 10.3 t/ha por año, (Acosta y Pérez 1992b) en la Altillanura plana (1800 a 2600 mm) varía entre 5.5 y 8.3 t/ha por año (Diaz y Franco, 1992; Cárdenas y Diaz, 1992) y en la Serranía, con precipitación similar a la Altillanura, la producción de MS varía entre 2.9 y 3.1 t/ha por año (Díaz et al., 1992).En las sabanas de Arauca con suelos franco-arcillosos y en el extremo oriental del Vichada con suelos franco-arenosos y entre 1500 y 1800 mm/año de precipitación, se han encontrado rendimientos de MS de 6.7 y 2.9 t/ha, respectivamente (Acosta y Pérez, 1992b).Producción de forraje de diferentes accesiones de Desmodium ovalifolium en evaluaciones agronómicas en diferentes localidades de Colombia. (42 a 56 días de rebrote). Una característica del Desmodium ovalifolium cv. Maquenque es que presenta alta producción de semillas. Es de floración temprana y prolongada en el tiempo e inicia la floración entre 150 y 180 días después de la siembra y al inicio de la época de lluvias, desde abril hasta octubre. Los rendimientos de semilla obtenidos en la Altillanura son altos, siendo mayores cuando el cultivo se maneja dentro de una plantación arbórea (marañón), donde alcanza una producción de 400 kg/ha por año. Cuando el cultivo se establece sin sombra el rendimiento de semillas alcanza 300 kg/ha por año. La producción de semillas de esta leguminosa también puede ser un subproducto importante cuando crece como cobertura en cultivos comerciales de palma y caucho. La semilla puede ser almacenada por un largo período de tiempo, sin pérdida de su viabilidad.Con el fin de garantizar un buen desarrollo de las plántulas de D. ovalifolium cv. Maquenque en Oxisoles de la Altillanura y en Ultisoles de ladera se recomienda aplicar al momento de la siembra en mezcla con la semilla una fertilización básica consistente en 22, 22, 11 y 22 kg/ha de P, K, Mg y S, respectivamente, más 0.5 t/ha de cal. Cuando esta leguminosa se utiliza para la alimentación animal en los Llanos Orientales de Colombia se recomienda la aplicación de 44 kg/ha de azufre con el fin de mejorar su calidad y palatabilidad menor contenido de taninos y mayor contenido de N soluble en las hojas (Salinas y Lascano, 1983). En suelos de mayor fertilidad, como los de la zona cafetera, se ha observado un buen desarrollo de D. ovalifolium propagado por material vegetativo sin la aplicación de fertilizante en el momento de la siembra.La fertilización para el establecimiento o mantenimiento de esta leguminosa debe hacerse de acuerdo con los resultados del análisis de suelos. En condiciones de la Orinoquia colombiana, con suelos bajos en contenido de nutrientes y una alta saturación de aluminio de (62% en Yopal hasta 94% en Puerto Carreño), con la aplicación de 40, 40, 20 y 15 kg/ha de P, K, Mg y S se encontró una producción de MS 35% mayor que con el testigo sin fertilización (Figura 1) (Pérez, 1982).Una vez que la leguminosa se ha establecido en pasturas o como cobertura en plantaciones se debe aplicar fertilizantes de mantenimiento cada 2 años. Normalmente se recomienda aplicar la mitad de las dosis de P, K, Mg y S utilizadas en el establecimiento. Por otra parte, no se requiere aplicar N, ya que se ha encontrado que esta leguminosa por sus características de alto desarrollo radicular y de la parte aérea de la planta, puede producir hasta 7 t/ha de hojarasca (Ara et al., 1991) y reciclar al suelo 200 kg/ha de este nutriente.Durante la fase de establecimiento ocasionalmente pueden ocurrir ataques de hormigas y grillos, que normalmente no alcanzan a producir daños de importancia en el cultivo. Por el contrario, enfermedades como la falsa roya (Synchytrium desmodii) y los ataques del nematodo de la agalla del tallo (Pterotylenchus cecidigenus) y del nudo de la raíz (Meloidogyne sp.) pueden causar daños severos (Lenné, 1981(Lenné, , 1985)). Sin embargo, la alta produccion de semillas de D. Ovalifolium, que se acumula en el suelo, favorece su rápida recuperación.Por sus características morfológicas, persistencia, rápido crecimiento y cobertura, esta leguminosa permite un alto reciclaje de nutrientes y una buena capacidad para controlar la erosión, como lo demuestran los estudios de Suárez (1992) en la zona cafetera, donde la pérdida de suelo con cobertura de D. ovalifolium CIAT 350 fue menor que 1 t/ha por año, siendo inferior a lo considerado como aceptable en la zona cafetera. Los resultados de investigaciones en los Llanos Orientales con D. ovalifolium cv. Maquenque indican que es una leguminosa importante en el reciclado de nutrientes y en la adición de nitrógeno al suelo, lo cual tiene efectos benéficos sobre la sostenibilidad de los sistemas de producción agropecuarios.En la estación Santa Rosa, Villavicencio, al evaluar varias leguminosas como abono verde y cobertura del suelo en el cultivo de arroz de secano, se encontró que D. ovalifolium cv. Maquenque produjo 1.5 t/ha de MS, 2 a 3 meses después de la siembra. Aunque con la inclusión de esta leguminosa los rendimientos de grano de arroz durante la cosecha de 2000 (3.4 t/ha) fueron inferiores a los alcanzados con la aplicación de dosis crecientes de nitrógeno hasta 240 kg/ha (4.3 t/ha), en el segundo año la producción en las parcelas que incluyeron la leguminosa permaneció constante, mientras que con dosis de 160 y 180 kg/ha de N disminuyeron significativamente (< 3.3 t/ha de grano) (Plazas et al., 2001).Se estima que más del 50% de las pasturas en el trópico húmedo se encuentran en estado avanzado de degradación (Serrão y Toledo, 1990). Entre las causas de esta degradación se pueden mencionar la pérdida de fertilidad, la baja persistencia de las leguminosas en asociación con gramíneas, la presencia de plantas invasoras, la compactación y la erosión del suelo, y el ataque de plagas y enfermedades.Desmodium (CIAT 350) afectada por el nematodo del tallo (foto cortesía de Luis H. Franco).Una alternativa para rehabilitar pasturas degradadas en sabanas bien drenadas del Piedemonte de los Llanos Orientales es el uso de D. ovalifolium cv. Maquenque que se adapta mejor a suelos ácidos de baja fertilidad que otras leguminosas utilizadas con propósito. En pasturas mejoradas de B. decumbens con baja disponibilidad de MS y alta invasión de malezas, se encontró que la introducción de esta leguminosa utilizando 250 g/ha de semilla mejoró el desarrollo de la gramínea lo que permitió, después de 1 año, la ceba de novillos.Como consecuencia de estos resultados y del menor costo de la semilla, en comparación con otras opciones de leguminosas, los productores de la región han mostrado interés en la adopción de esta tecnología para recuperar pasturas degradadas.Asociación de Desmodium ovalifolium cv. Maquenque con Brachiaria humidicola. Nótese la alta capacidad de carga animal de esta asociación. (Foto cortesía de C. Lascano).En las zonas donde se cultiva palma de aceite y caucho Llanos Orientales, Piedemonte, Amazonia, Urabá y Santander existe la necesidad de desarrollar alternativas para el manejo sostenible de las plantaciones, reducir la infestación de malezas, mantener y mejorar la fertilidad del suelo, controlar la erosión y aumentar la biomasa de la fauna en el suelo.En 1999, en el departamento del Meta se sembró en condiciones naturales (sin sombra) y bajo sombra un grupo de accesiones de leguminosas de las especies A. pintoi, D. ovalifolium y P. phaseoloides. Basados en los resultados iniciales, este trabajo se extendió con el fin de evaluar diferentes métodos de establecimiento para otros materiales promisorios usados como cobertura (D. ovalifolium cv. Maquenque, entre ellos), en comparación con la cobertura normalmente usada de P. phaseoloides (kudzu) (Plazas et al., 2001).Los estudios se hicieron en plantaciones jóvenes y viejas de palma de aceite y caucho en las sabanas y en áreas del Piedemonte de los Llanos Orientales. En el Cuadro 4 se observan los efectos en la cobertura del suelo de los diferentes métodos de establecimiento para D. ovalifolium cv. Maquenque. Las siembras se hicieron en agosto de 2000 y las mediciones se tomaron a los 6 meses (época seca) y 15 meses (época de lluvias) después de la siembra. El establecimiento y desarrollo de D. ovalifolium cv. Maquenque bajo cultivo de caucho en la Altillanura ha sido bueno como lo indica una cobertura superior al 80% en la época de lluvias (Cuadros 4 y 5), siendo superior a la cobertura lograda con kudzu tradicional (55%). En las plantaciones antiguas y más densas de palma de aceite en la altillanura, la cobertura en el establecimiento de las leguminosas no fue buena debido a la mayor sombra de los árboles (Cuadro 4).Bajo plantaciones de caucho en las sabanas bien drenadas, D. ovalifolium cv. Maquenque solo y en mezcla con A. pintoi mantuvieron una cobertura del suelo superior a 80% entre las hileras sin sombra de plantas de caucho. La cobertura con A. pintoi y P. phaseoloides fue más baja, oscilando entre 15% y 23% para el primero y entre 17% y 55% para el segundo. Cobertura del suelo (%) con diferentes leguminosas y formas de cultivo (con sombra y sin sombra) en plantaciones de caucho y palma, 2 años después de la siembra, en dos sitios de los Llanos Orientales de Colombia. El desempeño de las diferentes coberturas de leguminosa bajo cultivo de palma en el Piedemonte no fue registrada en la época seca ya que el manejo de cultivo de palma incluye el corte de la vegetación. En la época de lluvias se lograron las mejores coberturas con D. ovalifolium cv. Maquenque y la mezcla de éste con A. pintoi.Como resultados de estos estudios se puede concluir que la excelente cobertura del suelo en plantaciones de caucho y palma (joven) y el bajo costo de establecimiento de D. ovalifolium cv. Maquenque, en comparación con el tradicional uso de kudzu, lo presentan como una nueva opción para los productores de esta región. También son interesantes los resultados obtenidos de la asociación de este cultivar con A. pintoi CIAT 18744, ya que la combinación de ambas especies conduce a una cobertura del suelo más estable en las épocas de clima variables que son normales en la región.Trabajos realizados por Lascano y Salinas (1982) en un Oxisol del C.I. Carimagua, permitieron identificar el azufre como elemento clave para mejorar la calidad y consumo de D. ovalifolium CIAT 350. La fertilización de mantenimiento con 117, 25, 36, 22 y 44 kg/ha de Ca, P, K, Mg y S, respectivamente mejoraron la disponibilidad de forraje y el consumo por los animales, a la vez que el contenido de taninos en las hojas se redujo en comparación con el testigo sin fertilización. Posteriormente se comprobó el efecto positivo del azufre en la fertilización, al duplicar la producción de forraje de esta leguminosa (entre 2 y 2.8 t/ha de MS), con respecto a los tratamientos de fertilización que no incluyeron azufre (1.4 t/ha de MS).Desmodium ovalifolium tiene un valor nutritivo moderado en comparación con otras leguminosas forrajeras tropicales. El contenido de proteína cruda (PC) es aceptable y varía entre 11% y 20%, aunque su digestibilidad es baja y varía entre 45% a 50%. El valor nutritivo de esta leguminosa está relacionado con altos contenidos de taninos, que afectan la degradabilidad de la proteína a nivel ruminal, la digestibilidad de la materia seca y el consumo.Algunos parámetros de calidad del D. ovalifolium están relacionados con las características de clima y suelo, presentando mayores contenidos de proteína y digestibilidad en suelos de mediana a alta fertilidad con adecuada distribución de lluvias, que en suelos de baja fertilidad en zonas con períodos prolongados de sequía. Las determinaciones realizadas en el Laboratorio de Nutrición del C.I. La Libertad indican que la concentración de PC en el forraje de esta leguminosa durante el período lluvioso fluctúa entre 10% y 15%, y en la época seca entre 8% y 10%. La digestibilidad varió entre 41% y 57% en épocas seca y lluviosa, respectivamente. La concentración de Ca (1% -1.5%) es alta, el Mg (0.28%) es adecuado, pero el P (0.12%) y el S (0.09%) son bajos.B. humidicola, las ganancias de PV animal variaron entre 327 y 383 kg/ha por año (Maldonado y Velásquez, 1990). En la Altillanura (C.I. Carimagua), donde el contenido de nitrógeno de la gramínea era bajo y la leguminosa dominaba a la gramínea se obtuvo una baja productividad animal (207 y 287 kg/ha por año) en asociaciones con B. humidicola y B. decumbens respectivamente, durante 2 años de evaluación (Toro, 1990) (Cuadro 6).En el municipio de Acacías, Piedemonte llanero, se evaluó el comportamiento productivo de novillas doble propósito durante la fase de levante (12 a 21 meses) en términos de ganancia de PV animal y desarrollo reproductivo, encontrándose que las novillas en pasturas de B. decumbens asociado con D. ovalifolium CIAT 13089 ganaron 431 g/día en comparación con 287 g/día en la gramínea sola. Con esta ganancia de peso las novillas en pastoreo de la asociación llegaron a 320 kg a una edad entre 22 y 23 meses, cuando el peso inicial fue de 183 kg. Las novillas que pastaron la asociación iniciaron su actividad ovárica entre los 16 y 18 meses de edad, mientras que en la gramínea sola ésta ocurrió entre 22 y 25 meses de edad, con un peso entre 268 y 295 kg (Pérez et al., 2000).La identificación, selección, liberación formal y promoción de nuevas variedades y cultivares forrajeros es producto de esfuerzos conjuntos de individuos e instituciones nacionales e internacionales de investigación y fomento, y de empresas públicas y privadas del sector agropecuario. La Corporación Colombiana de Investigación Agropecuaria (Corpoica)  "}

main/part_2/0025473381.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"c69246df2fe2484f7ad39f0b626c8d38","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/95d32675-c4de-42bc-b8f7-fbb902780b50/retrieve","id":"665160777"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"b68bbe6c-597f-4b44-aa73-61da9a858a35","content":"Partícipatory varietal seleetion (PVS) w.s used to try to identify an alternative to the most popular rice variety, Pusa 44, in the Patiala dis!rict ofthe Punjab. Pusa 44 (released in 1993 in India but not recommended for the Punjab) is grown in over 50% oflhe rice area in Patiala. It is highly susceptible lo bactcrialleafblight (BLB) bu! is preferred by fanners becanse of its high yield .nd resistance to lodging. Pusa 44 is late maturing .nd needs to be transplanted very e.rly in the seasoo--as early as the first week in May, when temperatures are very high. This greatly increases demand for irrigabon water .nd accelerates the lowering ofthe water table, a serious problem in Patiala and the Punjab. 11 .Iso causes an increase in humidity in Ihe hot season, contribuling 10 the bUlld-up of inseel populations on the rice, which is a continuous hosl after the harvest of sunflower. Becaus. of Ihe lack of a suitabl. alternative, no recommended variety has replaced Pusa 44 so far.In me program described here, 121ndian state-released varieties were provided to fanners to test. Among these 12 varieties, only two were reeommended for the Punjab (PR 111 and PR 114). We tested out-of-slale varieties since formal multilocational trials do nol always determine the precise adaptation of a variety. Three varieties, lR64, 006, and PR 114, were identified as betterperfonning lhan Pusa 44, and of mese, me best option was IR64. Tbis variety yielded more man Pusa 44, even when transplanted Ibree lo four weeks later. Tbis has several additional benefits; it can reduce me need for irrigation water by 20\"10 lO 30\",1, and allow green manuring, lo improve soí! fertility, between the wheat and rice crops. lR64 is resistant lO BLB and has better grain quality than Pusa 44. Further lesting of IR64 for release in Punjab is being undertaken.Rice is the most important monsoon-season crop grown in lhe Punjab. The area under rice has increased progressively over lhe last 20 years, reaching 2.5 million hectares in 1998-99. The average yield of 3.5 t ha• l in 1997-98 (Ihe highest for any state in lhe country) decreased to 3.2 t ha-l in 1998-99 due lo lhe attack of tungro virus rusease. Allhough there has been an increase in the area and total production in lhe state, there has not been any appreciable increase in productivity over the past decade.The increasing area planted lo rice is the result of a decrease in lhe area planted to cotton and other less profitable crops. The increasing area under rice presents a number of problems:• increased water use • problems of soH heallh arising frorn a continuous rice-wheat rotalion • environmental problems, such as lhe effects on human health of chemicals used to control pests and diseases• seasonal use of labor• increased mechanization, wilh reduced labor opportunities for the poor Two features of the large-scale cultivation of rice are relevant lo Ihe present study:l. the widespread transplanting ofrice early in the season, contrary lo extension recommendatíons 2. trends in varietal adoption, such as the widespread cultivation of a single variety We discuss these issues here and presenl evidence in support of an altematÍve approaeh to that of conventional extension: participatory varietal seleetion for new varieties.Time of transplanting is a major factor Ihat substantially ínfluences rice yíe!d. A transplanting schedule has becn recornmended by lhe Punjab Agricultura! University (PAU) to get the highest yie!d and prepare lhe fields in time for the following wheat crop. It is recommended that varieties Jaya, IR8, and aH Punjab rice (PR series) varieties should be transplanted ITom ! 0-20 June, with the exception oflhe early-maturing variety PRI03, which should be transplanted ITom 20-30 June. PAU has issued a general guideline stating lhat where lhe rice area is large, lhe transplanting period should extend equally around 20 June (pAU 1996).Surveys conducted in the Punjab (Singh 1998(Singh , 1999) ) over four years (1996)(1997)(1998)(1999) revealed lhat transplanting in the Punjab starts ITom 1 May (figure 1). By lhe end ofMay, about 22% of the rice erop is transplanted, and by lhe middle of June, about 65% of the crop is already in lhe field. This early planting is more conspicuous in the Patiala district, where about 50% of lhe rice is transplanted by lhe end ofMay and 89% by mid-June. Why farmers praclice early transplanting contrary lo extension recornrnendations is an interesting question, Participatory rural appraisals (PRAs) done with farmers reveal sorne ofthe reasons farmers transplant late:• the availability of tube-well irrigation and a cheap, fia! rate for electricity• the continued employrnent oflabor afier the wheat harvest• the limited choice of early-rnaturing varieties, since high-yielding cultivars tend to have longer maturation periods and need earlier transplantingEarly transplanting ofrice has led to multiple problems such as the foIlowing:• a loweríng of the water table from greater exploitation of ground-water resources (During May and June, the water requirements for crops are at their peak. The early transplanted crop requíres 20% to 30% more water [PAU 1996].)• the loss of nutríents frem evaporation in the extremely hot months, resulting in increased use of chemicals aríd degradation of the environment In Patiala, the adoption of nonrecornmended varieties was higher than in the Punjab as a whole (average of 53% over rour years), Among nonrecornmended varieties, Pusa 44 has the highest adoption, Itoecupiednearly 50% ofthe areain the Patiala distriet in 1996 to 1999, Pusa 44 is highly susceptible to bacterialleafblight (BLB), and the large-scale cultivation ofPusa 44 has helped to build up the BLB pathogen, which causes losses in other varieties. However, farmers prefer Fusa 44 for its high yield and resistance lo lodging, Three participatory approaches were used in thís study: new varieties alongside their local variety under farmcr management, with evaluation of many cultivar traits by hoth scienlists and furmers 2. informal research and development (IRD), in which furmers evaluate new varietíes with little intervention from scientists; evalualÍon is mainly !Tom the examination of adoption trends 3. single-replicate design (mother trials), with aH varieties grown togelher as demonstration plots to assess the relative performance of varieties (researcher-designed but farmer-managed trials)Eleven villages (Kalifewala, Chalaila, Kalwa, Barsat, Bhedpura, Gajjumajra, Kaidopur, Dhengera, Partapgarh, Kartarpur, and Jauramajra) were selected to represent agroclímatic situations in the Patiala district. Three villages(Gajjumajra, Bhedpura, and Barsat) represented salt-affected arcas with soils having a pH hetween 9.0 and 9.5. Ofthese II villages, F AMP AR trials were conducted in six and IRD. in the rest. AH viHages have either metaled or good earthen approach roads. AH of the agriculturalland is irrigated !Tom canals or tube wells.Farmers were selected lo represent small, medíum, and large landholdings. Willingness to experiment with new varieties was tbe key factor in selecting farmers. A total of 497 farmers were involved in participatory research in the kharif(monsoon season) of 1999.Twelve varieties were tested in participatory trials: IR36, IR64, HKR 120, HKR 126, Pant Dhan 4, Pant Dhan 10, Gurjari, Kalinga TIl, Govind, Pusa 834, PR 111, and PR 114. Of these, varieties, PR 111 and PR 114 are recornmended for the Punjab. All other varieties are out-of-state released varieties. Small bags (2-5 kg) of seed (varying according lO the demand of farmers) were given to farmers with the understanding tbat they would grow the new variety alongside their local variety under the same management and that they would participate in the evaluation.The plol area for F AMPAR trials varied from 40-5000 m 2 Mos! trials had an area of more Ihan 1000 m 2 under any variety, Sorne farmers, particularly in IRD víllages, pooled ¡he seed 10 grow a larger area.Researchers and farmers jointly evaluated the trials. Frequent farm walks, focus-group discussions, and household-Ievel questionnaires were used for recording farmera' perceptions. Graín yield data were reeorded jointly; researchers measured the plot size and farmers weighed Ihe plol yield.Demonstration plots of all varieties grown in the same field in a single-replicate trial were grown in aH villages as mother trials.Ofthe 12 varieties tested with farmers, Ihree (IR64, IR36, and PR 114) were preferred but IR64 was ¡he most preferred. We shall restrie! the description of trials to IR64 only. Variety IR64 was tested with 43 farmera (26 in FAMP AR villages and 17 in IRD villages) and compared to Pusa 44.The greatest power of participatory trials was experienced in Ihis study when IR64 was lested over a span oftime representing the whole ofthe transplanting period in Ihe Punjab. This was no! delibera!ely designed bu! was a result of the reasonably large sample size Ihat represented the normal practices of farmers. This was nol possible in earlíer on-station trials that were invariably sown over a restricted, usually late, periodo These on-station trials, done in 1985, 1986, and 1987, did nol iden-tifY IR64 because il yielded less than the check varieties in trials that were transplanted in July.IR64 had a significant yield superiority of 5% over Pusa 44 in 43 trials, givíng an extra 300 kg of grain ha'¡ over a base of 6550 kg (figure 2). IR64 showed the besl performance (a 12% yíeld increase over Pusa 44) when transplanted from 21-24 June. The yield advantage decreased when IR64 was transplanted earlier or laler in June, which fits very well with the exlension recornmendation to spread transplanting equally around 20 June.An important feature ofIR64 ,is Ihat it matures 26 days earlier tban Pusa 44, This trait, along with high yield, favora its adoption in various situations (figure 3).Farmers' perceptions for traits other than grain yield (figure 4) identified IR64 to be superior to Pusa 44 for number of tillera per plant and resistance to BLB, slem borer, and leaf folder. IR64 is shorter so il is resistanl to lodging, whích allows it to be responsive to inputs, Advantages 0lIR64 over Pusa 44 IR64 had the following advantages over Pusa 44:• superior grain quality and higher yields• earlíer rnaturity, leading to a saving of iITÍgation water• resislance lo BLB and tolerance to whíte-backed plant hoppers• resistance to lodging • allowing a green-manure crop Of summer mung (Vígna radiata [L] Wi\\czek) to be grown between the wheat harvest and rice transplantingAdoption and further tesnng of IR64 AH participating farmers saved IR64 seed in 1999 for growing in kharíf2000. There was considerable seed exchange from farmer-to-farmer. Seed demand in kharif2000, from farmers who had seen the trials was considerable, but only five tones of seed could be procured and supplied lo farmers. Sorne entrepreneuriaI farmers and farmers' groups in the state have already become active in producing and procuring IR64 seed.As a consequence of the participatory trials in Patiala, PAU ís retesting IR64 at a number of research statíons under appropriate management. The Krishi Vígyan Kendra (KVK), Patiala, has undertaken large-scale testing on farmers' fields in PatiaIa and other districts ofthe Punjab in kharif 2000.To exploit the advantage ofIR64's early maturity, new agronomic practices and cropping patterns are being tested by the KVK Patíala in more than 40 triaIs with farmers. These are on growing summer mung and green manuring with sesbania in kharif2000."}

main/part_2/0031809700.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"1fa39bb3f6dc33971a16dfe9585af5d4","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://repository.cimmyt.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/0882eaa5-bd7d-48de-9635-d59d00aec9d6/content","id":"-1953704430"},"keywords":["Anatomical changes","México","cyst-forming nematode","poaceae"],"sieverID":"473aaad7-45f0-436d-beff-cbee3b90d21b","content":"Se describen las alteraciones anatómicas causadas por C. galinsogae en las raíces de cebada (Hordeum vulgare) cv. Esmeralda, recolectadas a 10, 20 y 40 d post-emergencia de las plantas, en Singuilucan, Hidalgo. Se trata de un patógeno descrito recientemente, del cual se desconocen las lesiones que induce en la hospedera.El examen histológico mostró a los 10 d juveniles (J2, J3) en el tejido cortical, observándose rompimiento de las células aledañas. A los 20 d, los juveniles (J3, J4) se encontraron próximos al cilindro vascular. Además se observó la inducción de primordios laterales cerca del nematodo. Los sitios de alimentación, pequeños e irregulares, abarcaron menos de 50% del cilindro vascular y el tejido cortical, con disolución de paredes celulares internas y engrosamiento de las celulares externas, y con desorganización, desplazamiento y rompimiento del xilema y floema. A 40 d, en los cortes transversales, los sincicios tuvieron mayor tamaño, abarcando de 50 a 60% del cilindro vascular. A nivel celular los cambios fueron similares a los observados a los 20 d, además de encontrarse abundante almidón. Las hembras maduras se observaron en la corteza rodeadas por una capa de felógeno y los machos aparecieron doblados en el mismo tejido. Palabras clave: Alteraciones anatómicas, México, nematodo formador de quistes, poaceae.T he nematodes of the Heteroderidae family induce morphological changes in the cells of their host in order to form feeding sites known as syncytia. The cells of the host are modified to provide food for the females during their development (Mundo-Ocampo, 1985).C. galinsogae (Tovar-Soto et al., 2003) is a cystforming nematode, parasite in roots of barley (Hordeum vulgare, L.), wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), maize (Zea mays L.), and some weeds growing in the barley fields in the High Valleys of the State of Hidalgo, México. (Zúñiga et al., 2001;Tovar-Soto et al., 2003).VOLUMEN 41, NÚMERO 5 maíz (Zea mays L.) y de algunas arvenses que crecen en los campos de cebada (Hordeum vulgare, L.), en los Valles Altos del estado de Hidalgo, México. (Zúñiga et al., 2001;Tovar-Soto et al., 2003).Las especies del género Cactodera tienen como hospedantes principalmente a miembros de Cactaceae, Chenopodiaceae y Amaranthaceae (Evans y Rowe, 1998); aunque algunas especies se han encontrado parasitando a miembros de Polygonaceae, Betulaceae, Portulaceae, Rosaceae, Caryophyllaceae y Cruciferae (Evans y Rowe, 1998;Cid del Prado y Rowe, 2000, Sharma et al., 2001). Existe poca información de especies de Cactodera parásitas de cereales como cebada y otros cultivos (Peng y Vovlas, 1994). Por ser C. galinsogae una especie recientemente descrita, no se conocen las alteraciones anatómicas que induce en las raíces de cebada, aspecto relevante para entender el efecto que este parásito tiene con sus hospedantes agrícolas. Por tanto, el objetivo de este estudio fue describir las alteraciones anatómicas inducidas por C. galinsogae en las raíces de cebada cv. Esmeralda y relacionarlas con las fases de desarrollo del nematodo.Durante el ciclo agrícola primavera-verano de 2002, a 10, 20 y 40 d post-emergencia, se recolectaron raíces de cebada (cv. Esmeralda) en un campo naturalmente infestado con C. galinsogae en la localidad La Raya, Singuilucan (Hidalgo). Como testigos se recolectaron en el mismo campo raíces de plantas sin infectar. Las raíces recolectadas en cada fecha fueron depositadas en una bolsa de polietileno y transportadas al Laboratorio de Nematología del IFIT del Colegio de Postgraduados, en donde se lavaron y cortaron en trozos de 0.5 cm y posteriormente se fijaron con FAA. Parte del material fue teñido con fucsina ácida-lactoglicerol y transparentado en esencia de clavo, y los fragmentos de raíz se montaron completos en resina sintética para observar las fases del nematodo (De la Jara et al., 1994). La otra parte de las raíces se incluyó en parafina para efectuar cortes longitudinales y transversales de 8-10 µm de espesor con un microtomo de rotación y teñidas con safranina-verde rápido (Carvajal-Sandoval, 1996).A 10 d de post-emergencia de las plantas, en los cortes transversales y longitudinales de los testigos se observó una separación clara entre la epidermis, la corteza y el sistema vascular (xilema, floema), pero en ninguno hubo alteración alguna (Figuras 1 A, B). En las monocotiledóneas el sistema radical está formado por raíces adventicias originadas en el tallo; estas raíces se ramifican y forman el sistema radical fibroso (Esau, 1982). En los cortes longitudinales de los problemas (raíces infectadas) aparecieron juveniles J2 yThe hosts of genus Cactodera species are mainly members of Cactaceae, Chenopodiaceae, and Amaranthaceae (Evans and Rowe, 1998), although some species have been found parasitizing members of Polygonaceae, Betulaceae, Portulaceae, Rosaceae, Caryophyllaceae, and Cruciferae (Evans and Rowe, 1998;Cid del Prado and Rowe, 2000;Sharma et al., 2001). There is little information about species of Cactodera as parasites of cereals like barley and other crops (Peng and Vovlas, 1994). The anatomical changes induced to barley roots by C. galinsogae are not known for its being a recently described species, an important aspect for understanding the effect (impact) this parasite has on its agricultural hosts. Therefore, the objective of this study was to describe the anatomical changes induced by C. galinsogae to the roots of barley cv. Esmeralda, and to relate them with the developmental stages of the nematode.During the agricultural cycle spring-summer 2002, barley roots (cv. Esmeralda) were collected in a field naturally infested with C. galinsogae in the locality of La Raya, Singuilucan (Hidalgo) at 10, 20, and 40 d after plant emergence. In the same field, roots of plants without infestation were collected as control. The roots collected at each date were deposited in polyethylene bags and taken to the Laboratorio de Nematología del IFIT of the Colegio de Postgraduados, where they were washed and cut into 0.5 cm pieces and afterwards fixed with FAA. Part of the material was stained with fuchsine lacto glycerol acid and made transparent in clove essence, and the root fragments were set complete in synthetic resin so that the nematode phases could be observed (De la Jara et al., 1994). The rest of the roots was included in paraffin and stained with fast green-safranin to make 8-10 µm-thick lengthwise and cross sections using a rotation microtome (Carvajal-Sandoval, 1996).At 10 d after plant emergence, a clear separation among epidermis, cortex, and vascular system (xylem, phloem) began to show in the longitudinal and cross sections of the controls, but in none of them there was any change (Figures 1A,B). In monocotyledons the root system is formed by adventitious roots, originated in the stem; these roots are ramified and develop the fibrous radical system (Esau, 1982). In the lengthwise cuts of the problems (infected roots), J2 and J3 juveniles appeared in the cortex, where there was thickening and breaking of epidermis cell walls and the cortical tissue, besides the formation of a cavity made by the juvenile at migrating (Figure 1C, D). Intracellular migration of J2 is of destructive type and ends when the nematode transforms a cell very close to the vascular J3 en la corteza, en donde hubo engrosamiento y ruptura de paredes celulares de la epidermis y del tejido cortical; además de la formación de una cavidad que hizo el juvenil al migrar (Figura 1C, D). La migración intracelular de los J2 es de tipo destructivo y termina cuando el nematodo transforma una célula muy próxima al cilindro vascular en la célula sincicial inicial (CCI) (Wyss, 1992), a partir de la cual se desarrolla el sincicio por la disolución parcial de paredes celulares y por la fusión del protoplasto de las células vecinas (Wyss y Zunke, 1986). Estas mismas fases (J2 y J3) se encontraron en las raíces transparentadas con esencia de clavo, embebidas en la corteza (Figura 1E). Después de 20 d, en los cortes en plano transversal se observaron sitios de alimentación, pequeños, e irregulares, formados por 4 a 8 células, abarcando parte del cilindro vascular y el tejido cortical, el citoplasma del sincicio mostró la presencia de almidón, la disolución parcial de paredes celulares internas y el engrosamiento de las paredes externas, además hubo desplazamiento moderado del xilema y floema (Figura 1 F, G).En el plano longitudinal de los cortes hubo sincicios alargados, localizados en la parte anterior del nematodo, y en donde se apreció la desorganización, el desplazamiento y la ruptura del xilema y floema, el citoplasma del sincicio se mostró denso y granuloso (Figura 1 H). En este mismo plano, los sitios de alimentación, inducidos por las futuras hembras del nematodo, juveniles J4 midieron de 210 a 250 µm de largo por 58 a 80 µm de ancho. Además se desarrollaron primordios laterales en algunas raíces próximos a los nematodos (Figura 1 I). La proliferación de raíces laterales por algunos miembros de Heteroderidae ha sido documentada por la literatura (Bockenhoff et al., 1996). En las raíces trasparentadas se observaron los J4, embebidos en la corteza y muy próximos al cilindro vascular (Figura 2 A).A los 40 d post-emergencia, en los cortes transversales los sincicios ocuparon 50 a 60% del cilindro central, encontrándose los nematodos principalmente en las raíces secundarias y terciarias. El citoplasma del sincicio, además de denso y granuloso, tiene una gran cantidad de almidón (Figura 2B). La literatura refiere que algunos nematodos inducen la formación de almidón en el juvenil j4 después de iniciar la formación del sincicio, los cuerpos de almidón están presentes mientras las paredes celulares están disolviéndose, pero desaparecen cuando la hembra empieza a ovipositar (Dropkin, 1969). Las dimensiones de los sincicios en este plano fueron de 64 a 80 µm de largo×40 a 54 µm de ancho. El xilema y floema se mostraron desorganizados por los sitios de alimentación que los empujaron (Figuras 2 B, C), lo que coincide con observaciones hechas por Baldwin y Bell (1985) y Endo (1987) para cylinder in the initial syncytial cell (CCI) (Wyss, 1992), from which the syncytium develops by partial dissolution of cell walls and fusion of the protoplasts of the neighbour cells (Wyss and Zunke, 1986). These same stages (J2 and J3) were found in the roots transparentized with clove essence, within the cortex (Figure 1E).After 20 d, in the cuts on transverse plane, small and irregular feeding sites were observed, made up of 4 to 8 cells, covering part of the vascular cylinder and the cortical tissue; cytoplasm of the syncytium showed presence of starch, partial dissolution of internal cell walls, and the thickening of the external walls; besides, there was moderate xylem and phloem displacement (Figures 1F, G).In the longitudinal plane of the sections, there were elongated syncytia located in the front part of the nematode; and in which disorganization, displacement, and xylem and phloem breaking were appreciated, the syncytium cytoplasm appeared dense and granular (Figure 1H). In this same plane, the feeding sites induced by the future nematode females, the J4 juveniles were 210 to 250 µm long by 58 to 80 µm wide. Furthermore, lateral primordia developed in some roots next to the nematodes (Figure 1 I). Proliferation of lateral roots by some members of Heteroderidae has been documented in the literature (Bockenhoff et al., 1996). In the transparentized roots, J4 were observed within the cortex and very close to the vascular cylinder (Figure 2 A).At 40 d after plant emergence, in the cross sections syncytia occupied 50 to 60% of the central cylinder, nematodes mainly being found in secondary and tertiary roots. Syncytium cytoplasm, besides being dense and granular, has a large amount of starch (Figure 2 B). Literature reports that some nematodes induce starch formation in the J4 juvenile after initiating the formation of the syncytium; starch bodies are present while cell walls are dissolving, but disappear when the female starts oviposition (Dropkin, 1969). Syncytia dimensions in this plane were 64 to 80 µm length by 40 to 54 µm width; xylem and phloem appeared disorganized by the feeding sites that pushed them aside (Figures 2 B,  C), which agrees with observations made by Baldwin and Bell (1985) and Endo (1987) for other Heteroderidae. Furthermore, adult females appeared lodging in the cortical tissue next to the vascular cylinder, around which thickening of cell walls was seen, which formed a layer of cork cambium (Figure 2 D); this substance is related to biochemical defence mechanisms, present in the vascular plants to counteract pathogen attacks (Agrios, 1998). In the transparentized roots, females, males, and juveniles were found, the females with their front part submerged in them, and the rear end of their body outside the roots; besides, otros heteroderidos. Además aparecieron hembras adultas alojadas en el tejido cortical próximas al cilindro vascular, alrededor de las cuales hubo engrosamiento de paredes celulares que formaron una capa de felógeno (Figura 2 D); la presencia de dicha sustancia está relacionada con los mecanismos bioquímicos de defensa presentes en las plantas vasculares para contrarrestar el ataque de patógenos (Agrios, 1998). En las raíces transparentadas se encontraron hembras, machos y juveniles; las hembras, con la parte anterior embebida the magnitude of the lesion induced by the females could be appreciated, evident by the black coloration of the root (Figure 2 E); the males appeared bent within the roots; in some roots, also J2, J3, and J4 juveniles were observed, which indicates overlapping of generations (Jones et al., 1998) (Figure 2 F).In barley roots, C. galinsogae induced syncytia, localized in the vascular cylinder and the cortical tissue. In the former there were disorganization, lateral displacement, and xylem and phloem breaking, which en éstas, y con la parte posterior de su cuerpo fuera de las raíces, además, se apreció la magnitud de la lesión inducida por las hembras, puesta de manifiesto por la coloración negra de la raíz (Figura 2 E); los machos aparecieron doblados dentro de las raíces; en algunas raíces, se observaron además juveniles J2, J3 y J4, lo que indica el sobrelapamiento de generaciones (Jones et al., 1998) (Figura 2 F).C. galinsogae indujo, en raíces de cebada, sincicios localizados en el cilindro vascular y el tejido cortical. En el primero hubo desorganización, desplazamiento lateral y ruptura del xilema y floema; lo que coincide con lo reportado por Suárez et al. (1985) y Endo, (1987), quienes indicaron que los sincicios también pueden iniciarse en las células de la endodermis, del periciclo o en células adyacentes al cilindro vascular, frecuentemente opuestas a los polos del protoxilema. Los sincicios inducidos por algunos miembros de Heteroderinae tienen tamaño y forma variada. C. eremica Baldwin & Bell,1985 induce la formación de sincicios grandes, arriñonados, con desorganización de gran parte del cilindro vascular en las raíces de Atriplex confertifolia (Torr. & Frém.) S. Wats, 1849, (Baldwin y Bell, 1985). Punctodera chalcoensis Mulvey, Stone & Sosa-Moss, 1987 induce sincicios en las células de la endodermis y en las células adyacentes del periciclo, en las raíces de maíz (Suárez et al., 1985). En esta investigación se encontró congruencia entre los diferentes grados de desarrollo de los sitios de alimentación inducidos y las fases de desarrollo de C. galinsogae, como se muestra en las imágenes de las raíces transparentadas.C. galinsogae indujo sincicios irregulares, alojados en el cilindro vascular y en la corteza de las raíces secundarias y terciarias de cebada (cv. Esmeralda), en donde produjo la desorganización, desplazamiento y ruptura del xilema y floema.Las alteraciones inducidas por C. galinsogae a nivel celular fueron: disolución y engrosamiento de paredes celulares, citoplasma del sincicio denso y granuloso, con presencia de almidón, e inducción de primordios laterales en las raíces de cebada cv. Esmeralda.En las raíces trasparentadas se observaron las fases de J2 y J3 a los 10 d; J3 y J4 a los 20 d; y hembras maduras, machos y juveniles J2, J3 y J4 a los 40 d post-emergencia de las plantas.Este trabajo se deriva la tesis doctoral del primer autor, quien agradece al Instituto Politécnico Nacional haber otorgado los permisos agrees with what was reported by Suárez et al. (1985) and Endo (1987), who indicated that syncytia may also originate in the cells of the epidermis, endodermis, the pericycle, or in cells adjacent to the vascular cylinder, often opposite to the protoxylem poles. Syncytia induced by some Heteroderinae members are of varied size and shape. C. eremica (Baldwin & Bell, 1985), induces the formation of large kidney-shaped syncytia with disorganization of a large part of the vascular cylinder in the roots of Atriplex confertifolia (Torr. & Frém.; S. Wats, 1849); Punctodera chalcoensis (Mulvey, Stone & Sosa-Moss; 1987) induces syncytia in endodermis cells and in the cells adjacent to the pericycle in maize roots (Suárez et al., 1985). In this research, coherence was found among the different degrees of development of the induced feeding sites and the development phases of C. galinsogae, as shown in the images of the transparentized roots.C. galinsogae induced irregular syncytia lodging in the vascular cylinder and in the cortex of secondary and tertiary barley roots (cv. Esmeralda), where they produced dis organization, displacement, and xylem and phloem breaking.The changes caused by C. galinsogae at cell level were: dissolution and thickening of cell walls, dense and granular cytoplasm of the syncytium with starch presence, and induction of lateral primordia in barley roots cv. Esmeralda.In transparentized roots, phases J2 and J3 at 10 days, J3 and J4 at 20 days, and mature females, males, and J2, J3, and J4 juveniles at 40 days after plant emergence were observed.-End of the English versionpara sus estudios. También agradece al CONACYT el apoyo financiero al proyecto de investigación 31676-B. Agrios, N. G. 1998. Fitopatología. 2ª edición. Noriega Editores, D. F. 838 p. Baldwin, G. J., and H. A. Bell. 1985. Cactodera eremica n. sp., Afenestrata africana (Luc et al., 1973) n. gen., n. comb., and an emended diagnosis of Sarisodera Wouts and Sher, 1971 (Heteroderidae). J. Nematol. 17: 187-201. Bockenhoff, A., A. M. D. Prior, W. M. F. Grundler, and J. K.Oparka. 1996. Induction of phloem unloading in Arabidopsis thaliana roots by the parasitic nematode Heterodera schachtii. Plant Physiol. 112: 1421-1427."}

main/part_2/0032339741.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"b95a0a94f30db043b58f754254da6a4d","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/e137c9b5-3423-415b-a288-413426b3ce9d/retrieve","id":"-2709617"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"d143ecd7-bc5b-4e43-898d-b39c477429fe","content":"This collection of publications represents a body of work with immense value. It presents innovative approaches in community development that are a result of the collaborative participatory study, supporting a co-creation process but also provides a scaling-up mechanism for these innovations. I can't be more proud of Dr. Julian Gonsalves and everyone involved in this effort for remaining true to Dr. Yen's conviction and IIRR's credo to \"go to the people… learn from them, plan with them, work with them… start from what they know… teach by showing.\" This is a compelling collection that will inspire many more generations of rural and community development advocates to continue working with people and translating locally-learned lessons to scale so that they are not at risk of being forgotten.A key to many of the greatest advances in rural poverty reduction and sustainable natural resource management has been pioneering grassroots participatory action research undertaken in farmer's fields. Action research has enabled rural populations to be active and powerful players in piloting new ideas, new technologies, and new resource management practices. It has enabled the translation of sometimes complex ideas into practical approaches adapted to local contexts and cultures. There truly is no substitute for group based learning involving local farmers and producers. IFAD is extremely proud to have been associated with many of the products listed in this compendium, and to have been a partner of IIRR for so many years. Congratulations on this excellent compendium.Many items bring back memories -e.g. coastal management guides for Philippines mid 90s, scaling up, etc.! I think of all those writeshops -such a new way and efficient way of preparing guidance .This is wonderful compendium and key institutional memory of highly relevant analysis, information and practical guidance on integrated and sustainable agriculture and natural resources management for South and South East Asia, addressing directly the most pressing ongoing development and environment, poverty and food security challenges in a changing climate. I have seen first hand for nearly 30 years how IIRR have developed these an intensely participatory manner for frontline practitioners, often through the highly innovative 'writeshops'.We have severe climate change challenges ahead. we need to be bold, creative and provocative in order to establish ambitious action programs that see a fundamental shift in food systems to tackle the climate crisis. In my thinking around a theory of change to achieve such an ambition, one element of the theory of change concerns empowering local organisations, local leadership, youth, marginalised groups and vulnerable populations. These groups need to be empowered to shape their future, to demand the services they need to fulfil their livelihoods and to stand up to powerful actors in the food system in order to get the prices, services and incentives that help them meet the challenges. For our development community this means understanding and valuing local practices, understanding local differentiation and power inequalities, and finding ways to participate with local communities in the change process. The work of IIRR has provided a fundamental set of tools, approaches and insights into how this can be achieved. Congratulations, and we look forward to further collaboration, bringing policy, services, technologies and empowering approaches together.IIRR's predecessor's mission in rural development began in the 1920s in China. Thousands [maybe millions?] of impoverished people have been beneficiaries of learning about how to uplift their own lives since then. Fast forward to 2021, almost a century later, and the concepts and mission of the IIRR continue to be relevant in rural communities. Among the more treasured legacies of this important grassroots development work has been the creation and broad access to various collection of documented lessons, techniques and practices based on actual community engagement and outcomes. Such lessons were the hallmark of a mantra established by the earlier practitioners, including Dr. James Yen, Dr. Juan Flavier, Dr. Isaac Bekalo and Dr. Julian Gonsalves, to learn from and teach the people. These strategies, constantly refined from continuing engagement with different rural communities, now across Southeast Asia and East Africa, continued to be used today. Fortunately, Dr. Gonsalves has continued to be an active and passionate leader involved in the community work to this day, and has re-assembled a collection of proven ideas and research that can continue to form foundation of grassroots community development. Congratulations to Dr. Gonsalves on his continuing dedication to rural development.For almost a century, rural development applied research practitioners such as Dr. James Yen, Dr. Isaac Bekalo, and Dr. Julian Gonsalves have been experimenting and determining what works in rural communities worldwide. They have accumulated a storehouse full of well-documented experiences, all with a focus on benefiting rural communities. These topics are as relevant today, if not more so, than they were decades ago; but, as the Broadway musical says, \"if that light's under a bushel, it's lost something kind of crucial*\". It's time that the storehouse is opened and the glowing contents therein made accessible to the Public. Dr. James Yen, who founded the Rural Reconstruction Movement said \"Go to the people… Start with what they know. Build on what they have.\" This is the approach followed by Dr. Gonsalves and his colleagues. I applaud his efforts to uncover this treasure trove of documented experiences and let them shine for researchers, policy makers and practitioners alike.This compilation of IIRR booklets, many already online and developed by write-shop participants describing their projects reveals IIRR's commitment to serving the needs of small farm households as the background of agriculture, fisheries, food production and rural commerce in their country.IIRR has been instrumental since 1960 in training legions of development workers to work in participatory partnerships with farm families to develop their resources, building on indigenous knowledge and equipping them with new technologies. IIRR's global outreach came to world attention when in 1986 the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation elected IIRR to receive the award for International Understanding. The Board of Trustees citation recognized \"IIRR's training of agrarian development workers from four continents, enabling them to share experience and ideas for more effective progress.\"Julian Gonsalves has made a significant contribution in bringing together IIRR's lessons learned, many of which he himself helped make happen through his technical expertise and devotion to rural reconstruction.At the heart of IIRR's work is learning. Guided by Dr. James Yen, and the Rural Reconstruction philosophy and principles of \"learning by doing\" and participatory action research: \"Action without Research is stagnant; Research without Action is sterile.\" Thanks to the \"writeshop\" approach that provided a process of engaging various stakeholders to reflect and document. Each one in this collection is a result of distilling on the ground experiences. Every experience has a story to tell. Every story has a lesson to uncover.It is an amazing effort to put together this collection of experiences and lessons, for development workers to reflect and bring new meaning and purpose in today's context. Thank you and Congratulations!The role of IIRR in leading and facilitating the co-generating knowledge, co-inventing processes, and coimplementing practices has never been more important as it is now. As the global community mobilizes for what can be considered as our 'Hail Mary Shot' in relation to combating the trajectory of the global average temperature towards the 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels mark, IIRR once again needs to be on the frontline in working with the people and communities who stand to bear the impacts of the changing climate. This assemblage of wisdom and knowledge co-generated by IIRR with the people will serve as the muchneeded fuel that will propel people's effort to empower themselves and take their rightful place on the frontlines in the fight against the looming climate crisis. With these treasures of knowledge and practices, as those before us did, the current generation and succeeding ones would have these building blocks that they can use to build even better and timely solutions.I remember an instance about two years ago when I was with some of the leading faculty-researchers of the Visayas State University -Alangalang Campus. I was serving as a resource person, representing IIRR, during their research capacity-building program for their faculty and staff. One of the participants, a senior member of the faculty of the university, approached me. He proudly told me that he still has in his possession IIRR's Manual on Regenerative Agriculture. He was happily sharing with me and with the other faculty members who were there that his copy was even a mimeograph copy. That was the 'high-tech' way of reproducing knowledge products during that era. I was so happy to hear his story and his testimony as to how this humble product of IIRR has helped him and many others learn and practice regenerative agriculture. I made a promise to him that the next time we see each other, I will give him a copy of the newer version of IIRR's knowledge product, especially one that has regenerative agriculture in it. It did not take long, that same year, I visited the Visayas State University -Alangalang Campus as part of the regular activities of the Leyte Sab-a Peatland Restoration Initiative Project. I gifted him with a copy of the Integrated Community Food Production. A Compendium of Climate-Resilient Agriculture Options (2016). You can just imagine how joyful he was at that moment. IIRR also turned over several publications to the Library of the But here in the Philippines, while in that year-long lockdown we witnessed a spontaneous peoples' response to the pandemic. Everywhere, people starting to grow vegetables, ornamentals and flowers. Plant sellers and fruit and food stands rose in response. Indeed, Filipinos have been calling each other \"Plantitas\" and \"Plantitos\" (a term combining plant and tito/tita, Filipino for uncle and auntie). There is also a growing movement now for more natural solutions, redeeming back nature. School gardens, community gardens and now community pantries are surfacing all across the Philippines. We all started to reconnect with the natural environment and have started to realize the importance of the natural resources to our food systems.Having lived in the Philippines since 1984, I have a special interest in what happens here in the country side: I have noted dynamism and a science-based approach within the Department of Agriculture (DA) in transforming agriculture in recent years and, especially in response to food insecurity during the pandemic. The DA's multi-faceted programs and financing led by Scientist and Secretary William Dar are already reaching every province in the country. A major revival and transformation is underway in the Philippines, on a scale I had not previously seen or imagined. This campaign is helping us all realize that agriculture matters; is worth investing in and giving attention to.The need to build back better, and to do so in ways that transform our food systems cannot be contested. The road to recovery is a complex one. It must be done in a manner that is affordable, inclusive, scalable and sustainable, while helping address inequality and poverty. We need to think of how we can build back, while restoring and conserving our natural resources. We need to ensure that we are not depleting the very resources (soil, water and biodiversity) on which our future depends on. The restoration, protection and management of our natural ecosystems, farms and landscapes will generate a range of services on which we humans depend. We need to factor in nature and natural processes in this effort to address development challenges made even more difficult, as a result of the pandemic.The knowledge to do this (mostly) already exists. Internet connectivity and global databases and knowledge repositories help us access what most of us need. However, this past year, while on lockdown, assisted by my colleague Dulce Dominguez, and, with no special funding support, we decided to compile in a single location (this publication) practical knowledge resources on a wide range of topics garnered through workshops, conferences and writeshops undertaken over 35 years. Over one thousand individuals, over 400 organisations from over 40 countries were involved in these knowledge acquisition events I was associated when at the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR). The global community of experts and practitioners was then always generous in partnering, sharing knowledge and practical solutions. Most publications were made available with no restriction for further reproduction. We were not charged for the time contributors spent in these \"writeshops\". Intellectual property rights were less of an issue, and partnerships were more easily forged. Donors relied a lot less on competitive bids, they valued the case we made on the basis of conviction, mutual respect and trust. The richness of this compilation is a tribute to that generous spirit of the development community I had the privilege of being associated with.At the risk of leaving out many, I would like to single out CCAFS, The Ford Foundation, IDRC (Canada), IFAD (Rome), BMZ and GTZ (then) and DWHH (Germany) to acknowledge their engagement in a large number of these efforts. In these efforts to harness knowledge and exemplary practices, undertaken over multiple months (culminating in intensive week-long, 10hour a day workshops) were many communication specialists who walked the journey: Jimmy Ronquillo, Paul Mundy, IV Domingo, Ray Montes, Mamet Magno, Ric Cantada, Joy Rivaca, Lilibeth Sulit-Villela, Hydee de Chavez, Bernadette Joven, Don Marquez, Tony Quizon, Ariel Lucerna, Celso Amutan, Dulce Dominguez, Angie Algo, Jel Montoya, Michael Victor, Dindo Campilan and more recently, Eisen Bernardo and Giulia Soria (to mention a few). I would also like to mention Miguel Braganza, Greg Ira, Scott Killough, Daniel Selener, Tawfiq El-Zabri, Firew Kefyalew, Phrang and Isaac Bekalo for further advancing the writeshop processes.There were other stakeholders who were involved, who have shared deep insights and reflections, via \"messages\" that were included, in different sections of this compilation. Please find time to read those messages of what real partnerships involve and imply, and what we might, inadvertently be missing out, in our current search for investments.Today, we are on the lookout for game changing solutions (with over a thousand already being identified) for transforming our food systems. Hopefully, you might find a few more game changing ideas here that you can immediately act on, as individuals or organisations. These are public goods and developed with that promise.Julian Gonsalves PhD Senior Advisor IIRR , Silang Cavite , Philippines Email : [email protected] a regenerative agriculture system, food and energy security at the household level, income engagement and ecological soundness are all equally important goals. In the interest of equity and social justice, the small and marginal farmers are the priority audience.1. A regenerative or sustainable farming system relies more on the internal resources of the farm than on external resources. ❑ Seeds are saved on a year-by-year basis.❑ Household/family labour use is maximized.❑ Rainwater is harvested and soil moisture is conserved within the farm. ❑ Nutrients are provided from crop residues and other organic sources, such as animal manure and biofertilizers. ❑ Fodder, timber fuel and food are farm grown.enterprises/monocrops) is emphasized.❑ Diversified farms offer a range of products for sale rather than large quantities of a single product. Marketing can be done locally. This reduces transportation costs and eliminates or reduces the umber of middlemen. This means higher returns for the farmer. ❑ Most of the labour is provided by the farm family. The labour demand is evenly spread in a diversified fam as opposed to single-enterprise farms where labour-demand peaks are a phenomenon to contend with. ❑ Genetic diversity within crops is encouraged. Tow or more varieties of each crop are grown rather than just one variety. Similarly, mixed tree planting is preferred over single-species planting.❑ Atmospheric nitrogen (as much as 78% of the air is nitrogen) is tapped by introducing leguminous crops into the annual cropping cycle, e.g., bean rotations following rice or corn or leguminous trees within the crop area. ❑ Biofertilizers, green leaf manure and green manures are emphasized. As much as a 30-50% reduction of the recommended chemical nitrogen can be achieved. ❑ Intercropping and rotation systems based on cereal-legume combinations are encouraged. ❑ Plant wastes (e.g. straw, stubble) are recycled by composting, feeding livestock or merely incorporating into the soil. ❑ If chemicals such as pesticides are used, every attempt is made to ensure their safe, efficient and effective use. This conserves these varieties for future generations.❑ The presence of trees on the farm encourages deeper penetration of rain water into the soil surface. ❑ Terraces, contour bunds (structures) and vegetative barriers reduce run-off from the farm. ❑ Crop residues and mulch reduce runoff water and soil moisture evaporation. ❑ Minimum tillage is practiced as a way of conserving sub-soil moisture reserves. Sowing legumes directly into the stubble or residues of the previous crop (without ploughing the land) is one such example: ❑ Where feasible, small farm ponds based on run-off water are constructed for future recycling.❑ Energy needs (for heating and cooking) provided by farm-grown fuelwood. ❑ Tillage, transportation and processing are based on renewable energy resources, including animal power and human labour. ❑ The increased reliance on organic manures reduces the need for fertilizers manufactured with fossil fuel.❑ The area under annual crops is adjusted, devoting more space to perennial crops. The reduced area under annual crops is then intensively cultivated. ❑ Perennial crops are, in the long run, more reliable sources of income, are less susceptible to drought and diseases and require les overall labour. ❑ Growing mixed tree species of different heights serves to maximize the use of aboveground vertical space, thus using solar energy more efficiently, e.g. multistoried treecropping or mixed-species fence lines. ❑ Fast-growing trees are raised in the slopy, elevated or marginal portions of the farm to exploit the income-generating potential of trees for housing materials, fuel, etc.❑ Livestock are critical component within an integrated operation. They provide an opportunity for recycling crop-wastes and provide manure for soil fertility enhancement. ❑ Livestock and trees can be integrated with fish culture or cereal crops to reduce production-input costs. Livestock enterprises must rely primarily on internal resources of the farm (azolla, fodder, trees, rice bran, etc.) and less on external resources. Trees and grasses for feeding livestock are raised in degraded and underutilized parts of the farm, such as fences and terrace risers.Some forms of aquaculture are practiced on the farm, especially within the rice paddies or in small-farm ponds fed by run-off water. Often aquaculture efforts are linked with livestock enterprises and, in turn, pond sediment is used to fertilize vegetables grown on the pondbank.9. Economic viability and income enhancement. Some of the ways this is done are the following: the intensification of outputs per land unit area through crop rotation, multistoried cropping, intensive market gardening, processing of farm outputs, integration of enterprises, the reduction of external input costs, direct marketing of produce and product diversification. 12. Working with nature. A practitioner of sustainable agriculture sees the need to restoring and regenerating he natural resource base upon which everything (including human life) depends. One works with nature's forces to nurture its own capacity to contribute to the regeneration process. To this extent, external inputs are brought in, but only after a critical assessment of their potential contributions to the long term sustainability of the farm.Notes: Climate change impacts, the increased prevalence of natural disasters including extreme weather effects now require that we factor in ways to build resilience of our farms. The role of small farms in serving as carbon sinks is also stressed, though most of what was mentioned above (in 1992) already contributes to helping farms sequester and store carbon (mitigation in new language). The objectives of conservation of agrobiodiversity, enhancement of ecosystems health, and the restoration of small landscapes are also achieved. Giving attention to diversification, intensification and income generation supports the special needs of women and the disadvantaged. Finally most smallholders consider income enhancement as an important goal, after meeting household food needs: therefore market linkages and the strengthening of local food chains also surfaces as a priority consideration.Thank you so much for sharing your 'lockdown project'. Seeing this compilation of publications brings back some fond memories from the late 80s and early 90s when I started my professional career working with IRRI, ICLARM and CLSU in the Philippines. I remember well reading Low external input rice production technology information kit as a young researcher working in the Philippines on the diversification of rice farming systems with aquaculture. The integrated nutrient cycling using an ecosystem approach and the importance of the aquatic part of the system with fish and nitrogen-fixing plants were intriguing. I was therefore delighted to be invited shortly after its publication to attend a workshop on another technology information kit, this time on Farmer-Proven Integrated Agriculture-Aquaculture, and this was right up my alley and like a sponge I soaked up all the important information presented there.Identifying and sharing farmer proven examples has been a challenge, and continues to be a challenge for those of us working on agricultural and rural development. I always thought that the 'writeshop' approach promoted by IIRR was a rather unique and very powerful way of soliciting, synthesizing, documenting and disseminating successful examples of development interventions. Working together in a team with fellow researchers, editors, graphics designers and layouters to get contents and visual appearance of these examples right seemed a great way to develop a toolkit, despite the obvious disadvantage of having to spend much time away from your actual desk -I was going to learn only much later during my professional career that it will be exactly this investment of your time that will make the difference in development work, that you must spend the time to listen, to learn, and to jointly explore, in a participatory way, together with those people whose lives you are trying to influence and change to the better.Today, with the benefit of hindsight of about 30 years of development experience, I am more convinced than ever that it is this investment of time that is critical for success. From this early experience came conviction, and from conviction dedication to do more to investigate and research and then to document and disseminate this knowledge. Taking up a position on integrated aquaculture and farming systems at FAO in the mid 90's offered this opportunity under a leadership that facilitated and encouraged a new and innovative way of working. Joining hands with IIRR and many other partners was a logical consequence, and it resulted in two important joint publications: the Primer on Integrated Agriculture-Aquaculture (IIA) and the resource book on Utilizing Different Aquatic Resources for Livelihoods in Asia.Whilst some publications such as the primer have been made available online and also translated in several languages, some others were only available in hardcopy, sometimes only as a loose collection of handouts, and I still keep some of these in my personal library. As we move on with development work, the information in these publications continues to be of immense value, and I am therefore absolutely delighted to see this effort of making all parts of the collection available to everyone. Research Institute researchers who were responsible for the evils of the green revolution. IIRR was accepted as a neutral facilitator and was able to bridge that gap to everyone's benefit. The first SESAN regional meeting occurred in 1988 and lead to a multicounty network including a publication and a number of follow up workshops and publications reflected in this compilation. I still have the picture of that first SESAN regional meeting on my wall.Congratulations to my long-time friend Julian for pulling all this together.So many agriculture and natural resource management technologies, approaches and tools are tested and piloted but few ever make it based the end of the project and even fewer are passed on to other projects, practitioners or communities. It is one of the great tragedies of the development community. Knowledge capitalisation is essential if we are not to repeat our mistakes and truly allow our knowledge and experiences to travel beyond the pilot site. We developed the Lao Upland Shifting Cultivation Sourcebooks in order to share all the proven technologies and approaches to a wider group of people. In total 72 solutions were documented in the sourcebook format. Before this, consultants and projects spent months talking to the same people about 'what works' and where they could find information on what was happening. All of a sudden it was 'right there' in an easy to use and navigate format. University professors in Laos told me that it was an essential teaching resource as for the first time they could give students easy to read explanations and real life examples of tools and approaches that can be used in their own communities.I worked with Julian on 3 sourcebooks and the joy as a knowledge manager was the ability to expose and bring to the front all the incredible learning that had taken place that was hidden in journal, research publications and reports. An important spin of all these products was the learning and networks that was established by those who contributed to them. It provided new insights and partnerships.Today \"sustainable\" development is changing -looking for transformative change, high impact, and 'viral' projects. I am happy to see this compilation as the sourcebook and capitalisation process should not be forgotten! Thank you for the compilation of publications.I remember many of them and still have hard copies that I still use. I was involved in the development of the Participatory Methods in CBCRM publications. I still very clearly remember being at IIRR for the writing workshop. We were all together for one week in a peaceful location.We had a great group of people there and it was so much fun talking, sharing and writing.I still have the three books and use them as a reference for trainings around the world. The work that IIRR did those many years helped a generation and future generations of practitioners, academics and researchers.It is a proud legacy.It was the year 2000 when IIRR realized that freshwater aquaculture, though a very important resource for resource poor and landless, does not get adequate attention from the point of view of learning from each other's successes and failures. The idea of coming up with a publication that later came to be known as 'Utilizing different aquatic resources for livelihoods in Asia: a resource book' was thus conceived. What many organizations initially thought was too ambitious an idea to attempt representation from several Asian countries with strategic players participating, later realised it is doable when Dr. Gary Newkirk of IDRC expressed interest to be a contributor both technically and financially. The trigger eventually brought in all major aquaculture players in the region -IDRC; FAO of the UN; Network of Aquaculture Centers in Asia-Pacific; ICLARM (Now World Fish Center); AIT (Aquaculture Outreach Program); The Netherlands Embassy -Manila, Philippines; German Agro Action; Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center and of course IIRR came together with a publication that even a couple of decades later, sits on several portals including those of FAO and World Fish Center.No eBook available Farmer Field Schools: From IPM to Platforms for Learning and Empowerment (2002) http://bit.ly/34X8yQpThese knowledge products are of unique strategic use-value because they helped: 1) transform research outputs into user-friendly and use-ready information for a wider audience of decision-makers and action planners, 2) blend science with field-tested experiences and local knowledge, and 3) elicit and value the perspectives from multiple diverse stakeholders along the knowledge-into-use continuum.It was 20 years ago that I first came across IIRR and Julian, when working in the Pacific leading a large project tasked with developing appropriate sustainable agricultural practices for the diversity of farming systems in 16 countries across Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia. The project was riding the wave of the farmer-first and farmer-led movement and we were negotiating our way from participatory rural appraisals through participatory learning and action to participatory technology development. The language was as complex as the locations. In many ways it was the catalogue of resources IIRR were producing at that time which helped us as a project to come to terms with the challenges we faced. We also ended up sending extension staff from the region to participate in IIRR short-term training on participatory approaches from which they came back transformed as practitioners. I am glad and proud to be able to continue the association with IIRR to this day.Glancing through this fabulous inventory of publications that Julian has put together is like the proverbial trip down memory lane. Some are still on the shelf over my shoulder as I write. I had the opportunity to be part of the Canadian international nongovernmental organization, spearheading the secretariat of the project on Strengthening Resilience of Tsunami effected communities. A multipronged concept was demonstrated in a wholistic way the building and revitalizing local capacities in South Asia, post disaster. Every process adopted was relevant in bringing changes and building resilience to the affected communities. As part of the evaluation, we learnt there were many models and frameworks that had evolved and development practitioners, including field scientists and researchers have very little time to reflect or document their experiences.The concept of Writeshops, which I was part of in four different occasion, lent a space for recipient development professionals to contribute and actually write their stories and experiences from the field. This approach was new, very insightful, and became a platform that allowed sharing of approaches, that created newer ways to communicate research and development work. One became author for the articles they contributed during these workshops. It gave immense scope to learn more on the good practices, tools, stories of change and evidences could be better documented by the field researchers themselves. Even today, this concept is being replicated in NGOs.In development work, we may claim to have the \"know-how\", but often lack the \"do-how\" that can only come from actual field experience. Yet practitioners are often too busy, lack the needed writing skills, or else are simply unaware of the true value of their work.The participatory writeshop process, pioneered by Julian Gonsalves at IIRR has brought together development practitioners and thinkers to gather tested practices, and to package these into print and other forms for wider access and use. This compendium is more than just a collection of methods and techniques for doing development; they emphasize the importance of changing values, reversing roles, and institutional re-orientations.In one of the workshops I joined, one participant commented that \"participation\" also does put a burden on poor people and communities. Many of us worked late into the night to discuss and produce a new article the next day on the \"Hidden Costs of Participating Communities\" which was included in the book. Of course, the beer helped.After seeing some of these Sourcebooks and how they provided research findings in understandable formats, we had the opportunity to work with Dr. Julian Gonsalves and the team to develop a sourcebook from 15 years' research under the CGIAR Systemwide Program on Collective Action and Property Rights. It was an intensive process of distilling the information into straightforward language that still captured the essence of the findings. Working with cartoonists enabled us to use visual language to convey key lessons. This has enabled us to reach a much wider audience, from grassroots NGO workers to high-level government officials, and a new generation of researchers.Congratulations for this powerful collection of timeless sources of knowledge and experience.The collection presents a wide array of topics concerning community development worldwide and spans almost four decades-from sustainable farming technologies to natural resources management ---to participatory approaches---to community-based adaptation and resilience ----what an amazing gateway for development practitioners, policy makers and applied researchers. The topics presented here, are more than ever, relevant to present times. No knowledge is old--it only turns to wisdom---and this collection is all that! I therefore salute Dr. Julian Gonsalves and everyone behind this powerhouse collection. Let this be known and used by everyone!To begin with, the first is the very notion of bringing together different experts or even members of the same project/team to reflect and write on their practical experiences in itself seemed to be a huge input into the process of collective thinking, reflection and co-knowledge creation. This is something that most programmes or projects do not invest in or even facilitate.The second is the impact it has on the 'experts'. I have noticed a whole process of unlearning happening with an appreciative learning taking place. More than anything, I also noticed that they were made to dig deeper into their knowledge and experiences and thus helped them learn more of their academic or lived experiences. Everyone I have worked with as an editor seemed to have emerged more satisfied and even enlightened at what was possible or what they have missed.I also noticed that the process made the experts think out of the box and as an impact, their participation in the write-shop was therefore, a capacity building process too. They not only learner or were introduced to the nuance of precise writing in simple language, but also made them see different perspectives, which I believe will be translated or carried forward to their laboratories or the field.The team of field practitioners and production staff were sequestered in a beach resort, insulated from distractions. The skeptics thought that the sight and sound of the sea will make it impossible for them to concentrate on their task. After three days, their output proved them wrong -a collection of illustrated information sheets on a range of simple technologies: home gardening, sloping land agriculture, backyard animal production, aquaculture, among others.The 1987 materials production workshop (now commonly referred to as a writeshop) was the first that IIRR organized. This \"mother of all writeshops\" later became the template -with adaptation -for a number of others that followed dealing with a variety of subject matters, in partnership with different agencies, and conducted in several countries.You have done an amazing job collecting, organizing and posting all of these reports! Very impressive indeed. This is an amazing resource for those active in the field, and now you have made it widely accessible. Congratulations! IIRR has been one of the significant influencers of effective Rural Development practice throughout the world during the 20th century. Since 1921, when Dr Y C James Yen founded the Mass Education Movement in China, and later --in 1960 --with the founding of IIRR and its regional centers of excellence in Ghana, Colombia, Guatemala and the Philippines; IIRR and its dedicated leadership, staff and volunteers; working together with its research communities and partners, have pioneered hundreds of innovations that have enabled poor, disadvantaged and excluded communities remake their lives.The publications included in this anthology present to the reader many of these innovations, which are as relevant to good practice in 2021 as they were in 1921 and the century in between. I commend these publications to you and feel confident they will continue to inspire still more scaling-up! "}

main/part_2/0043467884.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"bc361708e9aa88d791db9bbcf3ed9445","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://dataverse.harvard.edu/api/access/datafile/:persistentId/?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/24041/QPCYMH","id":"1341586791"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"ab717236-a98d-4105-bee1-10406997edef","content":"Variable Codes Demographic data A.1.1. Name of Household head A.1.2. Sex of Household head 1=Female, 0=Male A.1.3. Age of Household head A.1.4. Age of Spouse of Head1 A.1.5a. Education level of household head 1=no formal education, 2=some primary education, 3=completed primary education, 4=some vocational or teacher training, 5=completed vocational or teacher training, 6=some O-level secondary education, 7=completed O-level secondary education, 8=some A-level secondary education, 9=completed A-level secondary education, 10=post-A-level education A.1.5b. Education level of Spouse of head A.1.5c. Highest level of education attained by any household member A.1.6a. Primary source of income of household head see codebook A.1.6b. Primary source of income of Spouse of head see codebook A.1.6c. Primary source of income for the household see codebook A.1.7a. Household size A household includes all members of a common decision making unit (usually within one residence) that are sharing income and other resources. Include workers or servants as members of the household only if resident at least six months in the household A.1.7b. Number of males aged 16 years and above A.1.7c. Number of females aged 16 years and above A.1.7d. Number of members aged below 16 years Survey respondent A.1.8. Name of primary respondent A.1.9. Sex of the respondent 1=Female, 0=Male A.1.10. Age of the respondent A.1.11 Relationship to household head 1=head; 2=spouse, 3=father, 4=mother, 5=son, 6=daughter, 8=in-laws 9=sister/brother 10=Grandchildren 11=servant 12=other (specify)* Codes for sales outlet: 1=on farm, 2=cooperative or farmer group, 3=ginnery, 4=bicycle traders, 5=Exporter 6=Export market 9=other (specify)_______________ *** Codes for major events/source of storage loss: 0=none, 1=fire, 2=flood, 3=drought, 4=major crop disease Specify(__________), major pest specify(______________), 99=other (specify)_______________ D.7.12. What are the major cotton marketing constraints (Please list in order of importance)1 Type of herbicide: 1=Round up 2=Gramaxone 3=Mamba , 4=Other, specify 2 Type of chemical fertilizers: 1 = NPK; 2 = Urea; 3 = CAN; 4 = SSP; 5 = Ammonium Phosphate; 6 = DAP; 9 = Other (Specify) 3 Source of herbicide/chemical fertilizer/pesticide: 1=Bought; 3 = Given by NGO not related to NAADS; 4 = Given by NAADS/NGO working for NAADS/Private NAADS Service Provider; 5 = Given by Government; 6 = Given by a friend/relative; 99 = Other (specify) 4 Type of organic fertilizer: 1=Green manure; 2=animal manure; 3=compost; 99=other (specify) 5 Type of pesticide: 1=Biopesticides, 2=Acheampong, 3=Bt, 4=Neem, 5=Diapel, 6=Biovit, 9=Extracts of Neem and Kyaya Grandifolia, 10=Thionex, 11=Nordox, 12=Other, specify 6 Pest/disease: 1=Bollworm 2=Lygus bug 3=Aphids, 4=Jassids, 5=False coddling moth, 6=Cotton stainers, 7=Whitefly Bemisia, 8=Spider mites, 9=Bacterial blight 10=Wilt, 99=Others, specify D 5. Please list inputs used for each parcel and plot for the COTTON SEASON OF 2006 (please make sure the parcel and plot numbers correspond to the tables in D3). Other farmers nearby (not in the association), 2. Other farmers in the association, 3. When I visit the market, 4. Radio or papers, 5. Non-governmental organizations operating in the area, 6. Government extension, 7. Ginnery, 99. Other, Specify___________ E.2.11 Are you able to obtain the information (e.g. channels, prices, preferences) you need for marketing your crop?____ (Yes=1, No=0)Access to Credit and Finance (e.g., inputs, agri-business, assets, etc.) (consider all sources and both cash and in-kind)  "}

main/part_2/0052595542.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"66ba6c3f90618ce7a81a972156bb0045","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/11b4c465-b23c-426d-abca-323c1a74cc5c/retrieve","id":"-1173596954"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"6ad53fcc-97c4-45e5-ab29-e8bb41a158ca","content":"Prior to the promotion A3 poster, flyer and banner were posted on notice boards, cafeteria entrance, and library doors. Mekelle University prepared additional notice for all staff about the seminar and posted in many places.Promotion was prepared in a seminar form with a brief presentation on EAP content, online/ offline demonstration of the portal, and discussion and feedback on the content and management issuesThough it is a short seminar, at the beginning of each seminar, participant expectation from the seminar was asked to get general idea on what sort of resources participants want to be on EAP. Few of the expectations put forward were; Many points were raised during the discussions; many appreciations about the initiative, interesting questions, good feed backs to improve EAP and their concerns. On this report, I focused mainly on the main questions raised and feedbacks given for improvement.1. EAP is a good source to find information on Ethiopian agriculture and easily and to save time. Do we need subscription to use it? ( Mekelle research) 2. Could we make reference to EAP through endnote? (Mekelle research) 3. How seriously was the esthetic and functionality of EAP was considered? (REST) 4. Should we be confident of all the documents that we use on EAP and use as reference? (REST) 5. There are differences in data and information from various organizations; for instance, what research institution reports could be different from what MoA is reporting. How do you harmonize this? (REST) 6. If EAP makes access to free publications and resources only, then how is it different? Why does it not make access to paid publications? ( REST) 7. The EAP is such a huge initiative, resources come from various sources. Is there a plan on how to work with line ministries (eg. Science and technology) and various organizations to avail agricultural resources that are published? (Mekelle University)Feedbacks: Here are very important feedbacks from the various organizations that I think should be considered.1. Information on annual growth of agriculture in the country and basic documents of all agro ecologies, eg. Livestock resources, milk consumption in a certain agro-ecology….. would be very useful for us to use. We know that there are some sensitive documents that should not go out, but apart from that it would be wonderful if basic information is put on EAP (BoA, REST) 2. Would be very useful if regional reports on agricultural productivity are put on EAP. "}

main/part_2/0076439497.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"1ffeac29673a7e49a7a2ccc67b3df0e0","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/33836003-5688-4d1b-8042-c80e48543b24/retrieve","id":"-1620786529"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"d5ac3b39-9d29-453e-95dd-7add33db5c03","content":"The adoption of happy-seeder technology by 0.5 million farm-households on 1.3 million hectares in north-west India contributed to increased yields, profits, water and nutrient saving.• 2 -Informed investments of USD 170 million in India for scaling up the Happy Seeder technology (https://tinyurl.com/2ge7xn4e)Sub-IDOs:• Reduced net greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, forests and other forms of land-use (Mitigation and adaptation achieved)• More efficient use of inputs Building on the earlier research output and evidence base by CCAFS, CIMMYT, WHEAT with NARS, further high-level synthesis of public and private cost: benefit of CCAFS prioritized technological solution compared to others published was published in Science in August 2019 (Reference 1). Using this evidence, a strong national-level joint media campaign was organized by ICAR leadership to promote confidence-building among all stakeholders to aggressively scale the happy seeder technology (Reference 2). These efforts also led to the engagement of private sector for making an investment on scaling happy seeder technology and accordingly Sonalika tractors and Tata Trusts together with CIMMYT-CCAFS and other partners have invested to promote happy seeder in 7 districts of North-West India. With this science evidence mediated enabling environments, enhanced capacity and community awareness, during 2019, the adoption of no-burn, happy seeder (no-till) technology was increased significantly with the adoption of 1.3 million hectares of north-west India (Reference 3 Technical Committee Report) by more than ~0.5 million farm families having a population of ~2.5 million. Similar estimates based on remote sensing data confirms 18.8% reduction in residue burning as compared to 2018 (Reference 4 IARI press release). However, the beneficiary urban and rural population due to reduced air pollution are quite significant and estimated at 50 million people. With recycling of 10 million tonnes of residues through eliminating burning using happy seeder, a total of 55, 25 and 250 million kg of N, P and K nutrients were recycled, most part of which would have lost with burning. In addition, with the adoption of the happy seeder, in this speedily depleting groundwater aquifer region, >2000 million m3 groundwater was saved which remains in aquifers for future food security. The adoption of no-burn, no-till agriculture using happy seeder technology not only contributed to increased yields, farmer profits and water and nutrient saving but also reduced the air pollution and reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from on-farm activities by more than 78 per cent relative to all burning options (Reference 1) and this translates to about ~4 million Metric Tons of CO2-eq from the adopted area during 2019."}

main/part_2/0087122571.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"8e991a47d0faf15f471f798dd0611355","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/0b4789ae-c7ad-43d9-862e-77c769fa7258/retrieve","id":"-1004725463"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"05b02582-6357-495d-8715-4821660c2493","content":"We extend our sincere thanks in particular to Kuakoon Piyachomkwan, Sunee Chotineeranat, Rungtiva Wansuksri, Sittichoke Wanlapatit, Kasaporn Sukata, Nisarat Niramitvasu, and several other people for their support before, during and after the workshop.Last but not least, we express our deep appreciation to Klanarong Sriroth, who inspires and makes the Starch Update conference possible.Cassava farming and post-harvest processing is a major economic activity in South-East Asia, Africa and Latin America. Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam are among the leading cassava producers with 30.2, 23.9, and 9.8 million ton roots in 2013, respectively. Thailand is the first world exporter of cassava products (starch and chips). At the same time, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar have experienced a rapid growth in cassava cultivation and processing since the mid-2000s (8.0, 1.1 and 0.6 million tons roots in 2013, respectively) (FAOSTAT).In Africa and Latin America, cassava is consumed as staple food by 500 million people. It is increasingly processed into transformed products (e.g. ready-to-cook or ready-to-eat) as a result of changing expectations by growing middle-class consumers and urban populations.In many countries, cassava processing takes place in small-and medium-scale factories. Process inefficiencies, in particular energy losses, are significant and impact on both production costs and the environment. Considering the high potential for growth of the cassava industry, driven by the expanding global population and economic development, it is critical to optimize cassava processing technologies to ensure the industry develops in a sustainable manner.To optimize cassava processing technologies, the CGIAR RTB program (http://www.rtb.cgiar.org/) has conducted a benchmarking study of cassava starch and flour technologies in several countries, as part of the 2013-2015 project \"Driving livelihood improvements through demand-oriented interventions for competitive production and processing of RTBs\" (RTB Post-harvest project). Key findings were as follows:-Artificial drying is faster than sun drying and is increasingly used by factories in order to increase their production capacities.-Artificial drying represents 70-75% of the total energy used by a typical cassava starch factory. Therefore energy efficiency improvements can focus on the drying operation in priority to achieve impacts. Other operations with low energy-efficiency included rasping, pressing, cooking/toasting, and also need to be addressed..-Flash drying (Figure 1), the most suitable type of drying for cassava starch and flours, is efficient at large-scale (200-300 ton of product/day), with 80-90% energy efficiency. At small-scale (< 50 ton of product/day) energy efficiency is only 40-60% due to inadequate dryer designs. Improvements are therefore essential considering that most cassava processing takes place at small and medium scale. A subsequent study, also part of the RTB Post-harvest project, used computer-based simulations of the drying operation to establish that such improvements to small-scale dryers are possible. Key innovations from this study include: (i) A numerical model of flash drying to simulate drying at both small and large scales.(ii) Multi-objective optimization methods to determine the optimum dimensions and operating conditions of flash dryers for different production capacities.(iii) Guidelines to design energy-efficient flash dryers.These innovations are now available to interested stakeholders in the cassava processing industry. In particular, the flash drying model can be useful for cassava factories or equipment manufacturers looking to improve the energy efficiency of their dryers.-To communicate the findings of recent research on cassava processing by the CGIAR RTB program to interested parties from the private and public sectors, in particular cassava processing factories, equipment manufacturers, universities, and government agencies supporting the development of the cassava industry.-To create networking opportunities and plan future collaborations on the development of the cassava industry.-Universities and research institutes: Researchers on cassava processing, mechanical engineering of agro-industrial equipment.In addition to the lectures and presentations of the Starch Update conference, activities specific to the workshop were as follows:-Wednesday 2/12/15 whole day: Visit to a cassava starch factory, Chorchaiwat Industry Co. Ltd in Chonburi province.-Thursday 3/12/15 afternoon: Industrial presentations on starch drying and cassava processing -Friday 4/12/15 afternoon: Scientific presentations and discussions (Figure 2).The full program is presented in Annex 3.The afternoon session on Friday 4/12/15 was organized in three parts. In the first part, speakers from CIRAD, IITA, and Universität Hohenheim talked about the technical aspects of drying. In the second part, speakers representing universities, research centers, and government agencies from Myanmar, Indonesia, Philippines and Colombia presented the situation of cassava farming and processing in each country, focusing in the constraints faced by small-scale processors. In the third part, speakers from Hanoi University, Univalle and CIAT/CIRAD discussed about the effects of the different cassava starch processing technologies on the final product, including product quality and users/consumers preferences. The workshop finished with a lively open discussion about challenges that the cassava starch industry faces in South-East Asian countries.Figure 2. List of speakers and presentations of the workshop.Question 1: How to measure air humidity and air flow in the dryer?Answer: Using captors installed on the dryer. Small modifications in parameters can drive big changes in dryer efficiency.Question 1: Maximum air temperature that can be used in the dryer to not have gelatinization of the starch? Answer: It was assumed in modeling the dryer that heat convection from the air to the starch controls the heat transfer process in the dryer. This is not true for the entire length of the pipe. Heat conduction within the particle becomes important in some sections. However, to take into account both phenomena (convection and conduction), two partial differential equations must be solved simultaneously for the entire pipe, which adds complexity to the mathematical model of the dryer.Question 2: Is the blueprint of the dryer designed in Colombia available (Mr. Thura)?Answer: The results produced by the RTB Post-harvest project are open-access, so the blueprints and other documents should become available publicly in the course of 2016, after they are finalized. Most likely they will be downloadable from the RTB website http://www.rtb.cgiar.org/ Questions on the presentation of Sebastian Romuli Question 1: Mr. Fidrianto asked about the optimum tapioca starch velocity for drying.Answer: In his research, S. Romuli used grits, not starch.Questions on the presentation of Kyaw Thura Question 1: Marcelo Precoppe asked where the starch processing technology came from.Answer: It came from Nepal.Comment on the presentation: Dominique Dufour emphasized the importance of starch companies in Myanmar to be connected to the grid, to have reliable access to electricity and develop production capacity.Question 1: Dominique Dufour asked if small and large-scale cassava starch factories have the same markets.Answer: Small-scale starch factories are mainly oriented for food production.Question 2: Arnaud Chapuis enquired about the price for starch from small and largescale factories.Answer: Small-scale factories use a traditional method for starch production, therefore, the price of starch is higher than for starch produced in large-scale factories.Question 1: Thierry Tran enquired about limitations for cassava farming in the Philippines.Answer: Limitations for cassava farming in Philippines include: Climate constraints, costs (labor, production), and low support from the government.Question 1: Was the drying time the same for the four different drying method? Answer: Yes, same time and same batch of starch were used for all the experiments using different drying techniques.Question 2: Arnaud Chapuis asked if the different methods presented different convective drying.Answer: Oven drying uses no air flow. Question 3: Borja Cantero-Tubilla asked about the statistical significance of the results, that is to say, if statistical tests (ANOVA and Duncan Multiple Rank Tests) were run to determine real differences in starch characteristics because of different drying methods.Answer: Yes, the tests were run and displayed in the presentation.There was no time left for questions after the presentations of Martin Moreno and Dominique Dufour.The round table discussion focused on the topic \"What would be the key priority(ies) to improve cassava processing in your country\", or \"What improvements would be most useful for cassava processing in your country\". Concerns included equipment performance, technology adaptation for shifting to larger production scales, environmental issues, as well as water savings.In Indonesia, the use of semi-traditional methods for cassava starch production was identified as a drawback to increase the capacity of factories. Current sun-drying of starch limits production capacity, and more efficient drying solutions would be useful, e.g. flash drying. Also, it is necessary to improve quality standards and consistency of starch produced, as the starch produced from traditional processes differs from the starch resulting from industrial processes.In Myanmar, the use of flash drying was also perceived as a necessary technological improvement to increase production capacity. Myanmar starch factories do not have any flash dryer at the moment (except possibly a large-scale factory in the North of the country).In Philippines, there was a strong interest to improve processing facilities, in particular chipping and mobile drying equipment. Introducing good manufacturing practices (GMP) to increase food quality is also important. Market diversification can be a way to increasing the value of cassava starch, e.g. marketing as gluten-free or Halal products.Martin Moreno stressed the necessity of working on the carbon footprint of the cassava starch production processes, and to find ways to generate profits and reduce pollution at the same time. A mechanism for the profits from selling cassava starch and cassava products to go back to the farmers to improve infrastructures in small farms would make cassava farming more environmentally sustainable and efficient. A challenge for cassava starch production in Latin American countries was water resources management, water treatment, and reducing wastewater pollution, especially in small-scale factories where wastewater is partially treated in open lagoons. This topic was not covered in the presentations of the workshop. As an example, El Nino causes 5 months-long drought periods that force starch companies to stop activity. The target is to use 15 L of water per kg of starch produced, instead of 30-40 L currently. Thierry Tran advocated for a decrease in cassava starch production costs by decreasing utilities used in cassava production, which at the same time will have a positive environmental effect.In concluding comments, Marcelo Precoppe emphasized the importance of what he called \"put science in reality\". For Marcelo, all the theoretical efforts in dryers optimization could be useless if the users are not involved in these efforts. Participatory development of technology is the only way science improvements in cassava starch production will be adopted and implemented in real factories.Visit to Chorchaiwat Industry Co. Ltd in Chonburi province.Starch Update and drying workshop presentations.From left to right, top to bottom. Speakers of the Starch Update plenary lectures. Thierry Tran introducing the starch drying workshop. General view of the conference room. Marcelo Precoppe presenting \"Improved energy efficiency of small-scale pneumatic dryer used for cassava processing in Tanzania\". Arnaud Chapuis presenting \"A model of pneumatic drying to optimize the energy efficiency of small-scale cassava starch and flour processing: design guidelines\". Sebastian Romuli presenting \"Physical properties of wet and dry starch grits as affected by particle size: Implications for pneumatic drying\".From left to right, top to bottom. Kyaw Thura presenting \"Situation of cassava processing in Myanmar\".Bambang Triwiyono presenting \"Situation of cassava processing in Indonesia\". Annabelle Briones presenting \"Situation of cassava production and processing in the Philippines\". Luong Hong Nga presenting \"Effects of drying on starch properties\". Martin Moreno presenting \"Cassava starch production and the issues of starch drying in Colombia and Latin America\". Dominique Dufour presenting \"Effects of cassava processing on product quality: Rasping, cooking and other unit operations. Perspectives for future research\".Professor Klanarong Sriroth presenting certificates to workshop speakers.Professor Klanarong Sriroth presenting a certificate to Dominique Dufour. Group picture for workshop participants and organizer (Thierry Tran). Dinner at the Sukosol gardens."}

main/part_2/0089567898.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"1a31e58f8586eea8716f23f812afb815","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/234b00eb-1906-45ea-a960-578c763bd815/retrieve","id":"-1341587165"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"dfeb489f-f650-4e72-ab87-d4c325dddb5c","content":"The CGIAR Research Program on Grain Legumes had its second full year of operation in 2014 and this saw implementation of its product orientated structure and the implementation of its gender strategy. The year was also marked by developments presaging the future plans for the program: the Plan of Work and Budget prompted a request from the Consortium Office for the redescription of the program in terms of activities (Flagship Projects) rather than outputs and outcomes. As for other Research Programs Grain Legumes was requested to prepare a plan for 2015 and 2016, the Extension Phase, and it was decided to defer the implementation of the Flagship structure until the Extension Phase of the project. Accordingly the Annual Report for 2014 retains the Product Line format, and individual Product Line Reports, describing the project in more detail can be found at the URL http://1drv.ms/1Eyu0bo. The year saw major upheavals in terms of the W1+W2 budget with this being reduced from $23.2M in 2013 to $14.7M at the start of 2014 and further reduced to $13.8 in November of that year, these changes being due to a decline in W1 funding. The W3 and bilateral budget was more stable at $36.8M. This 18% drop in funding caused severe difficulties for the program as a whole, as the W3+bilateral funding is not redeployable and is fixed by the relevant centre's contract with a donor. In effect the reduction in the budget that is under the control of the research management committee was reduced by 64%. This trend has continued such that the 2015 W1+W2 budget is now reduced by 75% from that of 2013 (and is 51% of the W1 budget from the extension phase). This reduction in W1 funding places great strain on the ability of the Research Program to manage the program of work effectively diminishing the authority of the Research Management Committee and trust in this structure as a mechanism for coordinating the CGIAR's activities in this area. Despite these difficulties a significant event outside the CGIAR was the UN declaration (A/RES/68/231) of 2016 as the International Year of Pules 1 . Grain Legumes is actively involved in the preparation and planning for these events.(Cicer arietinum) and lentil (Lens culinaris). The first two crops are outside the scope of this CRP (although they were originally considered in the project proposal) and so are not discussed here. In Bangladesh lentil represents a considerably greater volume of production (though chickpea is of greater significance in neighbouring parts of India); lentil in Bangladesh is the focus of this report. Grain Legumes has strong partnership with the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) which is the national body responsible for variety production and release. Farmers have good reasons for leaving land fallow in the winter season as harvesting a successful winter crop is a challenge because of depleting soil moisture and terminal drought with sudden rise in temperature. If even a part of this land could be cultivated, food security would improve substantially. Grain Legumes scientists from ICARDA and ICRISAT together with their colleagues in Bangladesh, Nepal, India and Myanmar have developed effective, low-cost technologies for cultivating fallow land. New varieties and crop management methods are now available and farmers in all these countries are beginning to use these technologies, with strong support from government agencies. The approach has already proven its potential in Bangladesh (and elsewhere). The major example of documented uptake of lentil varieties in Bangladesh, which grows about 165,000 ha of lentil and has traditionally imported more than half of its consumption. A key scientific enabler in establishing a thriving rice-lentil system Bangladesh is new higher-yielding short duration varieties (BARI Masur 4, BARI Masur 5, BARI Masur 6 and BARI Masur 7, which draw on ICARDA breeding lines) of lentils resistant to common diseases (rust and stemphylium blight), and extensive training of rice farmers in managing lentil crops. This has led to increase in lentil production from 126,000 tonnes in 2001 to 210,000 t at present, mainly because of yield increase from 790 kg/ha in 2001 to 1270 kg per ha. The improved technology has spread to more than 85 percent of the lentil area in Bangladesh alone, bringing in an additional annual income of US $26.6 million. For small-scale farmers numbering ~ 1 million, obtaining a harvest of lentils from the same piece of land has not only improved their livelihood but also nutrition for their families.Product Line 2 'Heat tolerant chickpea, common bean, faba bean and lentil' addresses yield loss due to elevated temperature, particularly at seed set or seed filling. Surveys of germplasm accessions of Phaseolus at CIAT, Cali identified sources of heat tolerant lines that can resist at least 3°C higher average temperatures; many of these correspond to lines generated from interspecific crosses between tepary bean (Phaseolus acutifolius) and common bean (P. vulgaris). While pollen fertility seems to be indicated by pod and seed formation, grain filling must also be improved since high temperatures inhibit proper translocation of photosynthates to developing seed. In earlier studies S. griseoplanus SAI-25 had been identified as a bacterial strain with insecticidal activity against H. armigera. In the current reporting period the nature of this insecticidal activity was traced to a single metabolite, shown by a combination of techniques (http://1drv.ms/1byCWlS Activities under OT 5.7) to correspond to the cyclic dipeptide cyclo(-Trp-Phe).Financial details are given in section I, below the distribution of expenditure among Product Lines (etc.) is summarised. Product Lint -PL, M -Management, G -centrally funded gender activities.With the exception of Management costs which are exclusively W1+W2 funded, the proportion of W1+W2 funding represents about 30% of project costs, with a minimum of 24% (PL8) and a maximum of 42% (PL7). Centre funds were contributed exclusively by CIAT.The CGIAR Research Program on Grain Legumes organises its activities according to two orthogonal principles: Product Lines and Strategic Components. Product Lines (PL) have been developed to identify those interventions that are most likely to have a significant impact. These have been identified based on an analysis of demand, constraint, region and opportunities, so Product Lines focus on outputs. This analysis is presented in the project description document. Strategic Components (SC) represent enabling pathways to achieve our goals of improving the production, sale and consumption of grain legumes, and so focus on outcomes. These are also described in the project description document, which is available at: http://1drv.ms/1iesUse. These Strategic Components are closely allied to the Flagship Projects proposed in the extension Phase (see the extension phase proposal at: http://1drv.ms/1JNop1s).In combination these identify activity clusters and define the pathway to achieving our five Intermediate Development Outcomes (IDO).IDO1 Food Security: Improved and stable access to grain legumes by urban and rural poor IDO2 Income: Increased and more equitable income from grain legumes by low income value chain actors, especially women IDO3 Nutrition & Health: Increased consumption of healthy grain legumes and products by the poor for a more balanced and nutritious diet, especially among nutritionally vulnerable women and children IDO4 Productivity: Improved productivity of farming systems, especially among smallholder farmers IDO5 Environment: Minimized adverse environmental effects of increased production and intensification of grain legumes See http://1drv.ms/1fahduM for a description of the IDOs, Theory of Change and Impact Pathway and http://1drv.ms/1P9xcMc for a description of our Value Proposition.Biocontrol agents: It was demonstrated by olfactometric studies that female egg parasitoids Gryon fulviventre use olfactic cues emitted by adult male Clavigralla tomentosicollis, possibly aggregation pheromones whose nature is being investigated.Chickpea: Heat tolerance (ICCV 93054, ICCV 91007, FLIP97-263C, S090694, S090812, S091352, S090315, FLIP93-146C, FLIP07-329C, S090243, S090341, FLIP07-310C); machine havestability (ICCV 03205, ICCV 03112, ICCV 04111 and ICCV 08102); machine harvestabilty combined with ascochyta blight resistance (ICCV 86836); resistance to herbicides -imazethapyr (ICCV 03104, ICCV 03402, ICCV 95138, ICCV 97115, ICCV 10), pendimethalin and alconifen (FLIP07-33C, FLIP08-256C, FLIP07-28C, FLIP07-344C, FLIP08-69C and FLIP08-69C), and fusarium wilt (IG70283, IG 8914 and IG 9630); 11 lines with combined resistance to fusarium wilt and ascochyta blight (FLIP-01-40C, FLIP-01-47C, FLIP-01-52C, FLIP-01-57C, FLIP-03-125C, FLIP-01-24C, FLIP-01-58C, FLIP-92-148C, ICCV-96836, ICCV-10515, ICC-4182). The chickpea breeding line NBeG 47 which will be proposed for release in 2015, is suitable for mechanical harvesting as a candidate variety for release in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana States of India. It was at par in yield with the most popular cultivar JG-11 in 21 demonstrations conducted on farmers' fields Common Bean: Most notable are the heat tolerant lines discussed in section A. Most are derived from interspecific crosses with tepary bean (P. acutifolius); more such crosses are being generated. Pythium resistant lines (required at high temperature) were identified in heat tolerance nurseries. Cowpea: Seven cultivated cowpea varieties (TVu-12432, TVu-5957, TVu-997, TVu-16514, TVu-15011, TVu-4806, TVu-13297) and five cowpea wild relatives (TVNu-1070;TVNu-1537;TVNu-1589;TVNu-1762 and TVNu-37) were identified as resistant to Striga gesnerioides. Faba bean: Tolerance to herbicide metribuzin [F5 /(Fam2-1-1 X F7/8984/05)-THTRTR-93-4, F5/(F7/8975/05 X sel2004latt.47-1)-THTRTR-23, F8/HBP/SOD/2000-2415/2009 and F5 (F7/8983/05 X sel2004lat393-1)-THTRTR-76]; suitability to machine harvesting and tolerance to herbicide metribuzin (TERPYT-016-1, TERPYT-016-3, TERPYT-017-6, TERPYT-032-4, TERPYT-032-5, TERPYT-038-8, TERPYT-049-1, TERPYT-058-4, TERPYT-058-6, TERPYT-064-4, TERPYT-067-1, TERPYT-071-4); resistance to parasitic weed Orobanche crenata (12B70024-2, 12B70028-3, 12B70031-1 12B70037-1 12B700463 12B70051-2, 12B70061-1, 12B70082-1, 12B70085-1, 12B70085-3). Groundnut: Two transformation events #5 and #6 overexpressing lipoxygenase gene (PnLOX3) have been evaluated under challenge infection in India by A. flavus under confined micro-sick plots. They are promising candidates for Aflatoxin management. The differentially expressed proteins of target genes are being characterized as possible new sources of low aflatoxin contamination. Genome wide introgression lines developed based on One interspecific cross, Tifrunner x ISATGR 40. 40 F1 seeds were generated have been used to generate BC1F1 seeds in 2014.Screening of a total of 120 markers covering entire genome completed on four parental genotypes of two wide crosses. A total of 94 polymorphic SSRs were identified. MAGIC population based on eight-way crosses were completed, F1's raised in 2014 5800 F2 plants will be raised in 2014/15. Phenotyping for oil content in the F2:3 population derived from ICGV 07368 X ICGV 06420, and for fatty acids in F2:3 population of ICGV 06420 X SunOliec 95 R is completed Lentil: Screening of lentil germplasm and breeding material against heat, key diseases (wilt, stemphylium blight and rust), machine harvestable traits (pod drop, pod dehiscence, first pod bearing node height, plant height and tendril), parasitic weed (orobanche), and post emergence herbicides (Imazethapyr and Metribuzin) has resulted in identification of useful donors as mentioned in the detailed report. Suitability to machine harvesting (010S 96131-2, 010S 96134-3, 06S 53110-02, 010S 96130-1, 010S 96155-2, 06S 53110-03, 08S 40111-01, 08S 40106-01, 2009S 96102-7, 2009S 96501-5); resistance to herbicides -imazethapyr (ILL8112, ILL10865, GCP25, GCP54, GCP85, GCP95) and metribuzin (GCP95, GCP23 and GCP124); resistance to parasitic weed broomrape (Orobanche spp.) (ILL7686, ILL468, ILL590, ILL9951, ILL10657, ILL8114, ILL7990, ILL6015, ILL7946, ILL960090, ILL88527, ILL7726, ILL8107, ILL8111, ILL7982, GCP 15, GCP 35, ILL6991, ILL7934, ILL8068, AKM196, ILL8089), heat tolerance (ILL 221, ILL4902, ILL 8026, ILL4258, FLIP2009-55L, andILL2507). Pigeonpea: Candidate gene(s) for A4 derived cytoplasmic male sterility were identified. Four-way multi-parent advanced generation inter-crosses (MAGIC) were completed during 2014. Stable obcordate leaf shape male sterile lines were identified and used to develop heterotic hybrid combinations. Seven waterlogging tolerant genotypes/hybrids were identified (ICP 5028, ICPH 2431, ICPL 87119, ICPH 2740, ICPL 149, ICPL 20241, andMAL 15). In Tanzania, among 102 (42 medium duration and 60 long duration) genotypes evaluated for yield and drought tolerance, eight genotypes were found promising. In Malawi and Mozambique, a total of 95 (35 medium and 60 long duration) genotypes were evaluated for yield and disease resistance, 18 genotypes were found promising. A total of 250 breeding and germplasm lines were evaluated for Phytophthora blight and eight lines (ICPLs 87, 85063, 11264, 11227, 11273, 99048, 99044, 20136) exhibited resistant reaction (<10% incidence).The Grain Legumes website has featured seven 'lead point' articles achieved at http://grainlegumes.cgiar.org/lead-point/. In addition to these the regular 'Grain Legumes FEED' newsletter has been circulated among our stakeholders. A total number of 63 news articles, blogs and announcements were updated on the Grain Legumes website in 2014. (Complete list with the links can be accessed from http://1drv.ms/1DGpIej or the main index at http://1drv.ms/1Eyu0bo).Chickpea: Chickpea reference set (300 accessions) was re-sequenced at 5X to 13X coverage using whole genome re-sequencing (WGRS); a comprehensive genetic map comprising of 1,013 marker loci and spanning a distance of 723.64 cM was developed from ICC 4958 × ICC 1882 RILs and the \"QTL-hotspot\" earlier identified for drought tolerance traits was saturated with 49 SNP markers (Mol Genet Genomics, DOI 10.1007/s00438-014-0932-3), Four SSR markers (TA37, TA34, H4F03 and NCPRG48) associated with leaf miner resistance in chickpea. Lentil: lentil specific 57 EST-SSR markers have been developed (P-6 report). Lentil genome sequence is expected soon with Canada and US as partners (http://knowpulse2.usask.ca/portal/project/Lentilgenome-sequencing-%28LenGen%29%3A-establishing-a-comprehensive-platform-for-molecularbreeding). Pigeonpea: Promoter region of NAD7 candidate gene for A4 cytoplasmic male sterility was isolated and cloned in pCR8/GW/TOPO TA entry vector. F2 mapping population segregating for fertility restoration were developed. To understand the molecular basis of heterosis, bisulfite sequencing libraries of two hybrids and their parental lines was generated. For construction of heterotic pools a total of 104 pigeonpea hybrid parental lines were re-sequenced (3X to 5X sequencing data generated per line). Re-sequencing data analysis of 20 parental lines (18 cultivated lines and 2 wild species accessions) resulted in identification of 4,686,422 SNPs and 779,254 InDels.Annex 4 records progress by Output Target, and this is summarised diagrammatically below for Output Targets that were expected to be achieved by year 5 of the original program. Each horizontal bar represents an Output Target, those missing were expected to be delivered more than 5 years after the start of Grain Legumes. The bar 'ahead of schedule' would be maximal if this was completely achieved already, while the bar 'behind schedule' would be minimal if no progress had been made whatsoever. Note that in this version there are many of these, but that is because the progress is not recorded in Annex 4.Progress towards achievement of the outcomes corresponding to our IDOs is described in the individual PL Reports, but these can be summarised in several broad categories:1) The release and adoption of improved varieties and technologies. All PLs (except 5) have participated in the release of new varieties, 42 in all, including one pigeonpea hybrid, 13 common bean, 8 chickpea, 4 faba bean 3 lentil 10 groundnut and 3 soybean varieties. In PL1 adoption studies have been undertaken and it has been shown that farmers in Tanzania and Zambia grow an improved variety in one season and local varieties in another season or may grow improved varieties in mixture with local varieties, presumably for risk management. PL2 A bean variety released in Nicaragua was subsequently demonstrated to have a degree of heat tolerance. Heat tolerant varieties of faba bean which can tolerate as high as 35 o C temperature at flowering turned out to be a boon to small holder farmers in Sudan, resulting in 50200 ha area under faba bean with total production elevated to 122,000 tons in the last decade. Around 25000 families are benefited from the usage of those cultivars with an average income of 4000 US$. In PL3 technology promotion for promoting groundnut rosette management and aflatoxin technologies and population and water management have been implemented in Tanzania. In Malawi for PL3 we tracked adoption rates from 2012 to 2014 for groundnuts and found that area under the crop had increased by 12.5 %; with groundnuts contributing about of 6% to agricultural GDP in 2014. This is a remarkable contribution for a crop with a cost benefit ratio 4.6 compared to maize, tobacco and soybean. This is well above the threshold of 1 required to benefits of any enterprise. PL6 Over 161,882 metric tons (MT) of quality seed (breeder, foundation, certified and truthfully labelled seeds) of improved chickpea cultivars was produced in South Asia (125,499 MT in India;113 MT in Bangladesh) and ESA (34,335 MT in Ethiopia;1935 MT in Tanzania and Kenya). For lentil, 26 VBSEs established producing 18.9 MT foundation and TL seeds of improved varieties in Nepal, 16.7 MT of certified and TL seeds in Bangladesh and 970 MT in India. Adoption study of improved chickpea cultivars in Dharwad and Gulbarga districts of Karnataka, India revealed 65% and 1% of the total cropped area under JG 11 and BGD 103, respectively. In Andhra Pradesh state, adoption of improved varieties (JG 11,JAKI 9218 and JG 130) has reached ~98%. Adoption study in Sub-Saharan Africa indicated 57269, 18887 and 20683 ha area under improved varieties of chickpea, lentil and faba bean in Ethiopia and 50050 and 16800 ha under faba bean and chickpea in Sudan. PL7 Over 382 MT tonnes of quality seeds of chickpea improved varieties, 73.7 MT of faba bean and 19.2 MT of lentil produced for distribution among farmers in Ethiopia. Adoption of faba bean varieties (Misr3, Giz843) in Egypt has resulted in 25% increase in area and 30% in production. PL8 In 2014 a large area of hybrid pigeonpea was cultivated in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Odisha, Gujarat, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh. The NARS partners, Department of Agriculture, private seed companies, NGOs and progressive farmers played a key role in this mission. The state governments of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Maharashtra distributed hybrid seed on subsidy to farmers to encourage hybrid cultivation. This has led to increase in productivity to 2.5 t/ha compared to 1.5 t/ha by varieties and 1 t/ha by local types in an area of 100,000 ha.Farmer participatory selection together with technology demonstrations either as cultivation practices (eg PL5) or on-farm variety evaluations for groundnuts as well as production technology evaluations (PL3) are widespread approaches within Grain Legumes. In PL1 Farmer Participatory Selection (FPVS) was conducted in the 7 countries involved in TL II in PL6. PL6: FPVS were conducted on improved chickpea varieties in India, Bangladesh, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Kenya in addition to 1992 on-farm demonstrations on chickpea and 5169 on lentil. 26 village based seed hubs were established in India, Bangladesh and Nepal for lentil seed production. PL8 3,200 on farm demonstrations were conducted in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, and Madhya Pradesh states of India to demonstrate the performance of hybrids over local and improved varieties and create awareness on hybrid cultivation among small and marginal rainfed farmers. In association with an EU-IFAD project several IPM sites in Romani province of Morocco are used for demonstrating management options for diseases.We have highlighted two major impacts in section A above. 1.1 Gender inequality targets defined In 2013 we established the Gender Strategy for Grain Legumes 2 , while in 2014 Grain Legumes engaged Esther Njuguna-Mungai as gender specialist, who engaged in discussions with the Product Line coordinators to establish 'priority gender research' in the CRP. After a series of meetings, the gender specialist documented a proposed 'Gender Implementation Framework' 3 for the CRP, which was presented to and adopted by the RMC in November 2014. The main focus of the research in the CRP is proposed to be 'gender gap in grain legumes production'. Activities identified to support this focus include: (i) Generation of evidence of the gender gap (ii)Identification of indicators for tracking and monitoring the gender gap (iii)Capacity building in support of the gender gap activities Since this proposal was adopted in November, further activities will be reported next year.Institutional architecture for integration of gender research in the CRP In 2014, the CRP Grain Legumes appointed a gender specialist who joined service in the month of April. The gender research component in the CRP has an allocated gender budget. The Gender specialist has joined the CGIAR Gender Network and is representing the CRP in network wide activities. The CRP grain legumes is participating on a global study on Gender Norms and Agency in Agriculture and Natural resources management by doing case studies in Tanzania, Uganda and Ethiopia.Gender research in the CRP The CRP is starting a process of identifying focal points for gender research in each of the product lines and forming a CRP Level network with them for capacity building activities and implementation of gender research in each product line. Consolidated reports of gender activities are available at http://1drv.ms/1J9iuD0. An example of gender related findings from activities initiated under 1.1(i) above, from PL6, are where the study on the evidence of a gender gap in lentil and chickpea value chain in Ethiopia has found significant involvement of women in all aspects of farming activities in addition to their reproductive (domestic) chores. The study found that extension service is male dominated. Agricultural development would be more successful when extension agents pay attention to gender issues, so training of extension workers in gender issues and communication skills with women is important. Women's access to extension services was less than men. Therefore, gender responsive training (changing approach of training, timing of training and center of training) is important to meet the needs and preferences of men and women for sustainable increase in production of the crops and improve livelihood. For diffusion of information, social network is an option like Lemlem Chefe kebele 4 extension is given monthly through Idir 5 , particularly important who have less access to formal extension service. In some areas team work (One to Five) approach is established and it can be used as a means of technology and information dissemination. These mechanisms that enable women to join groups include allowing women in MHHs and FHHs, non-land owners to be group members; time arrangement to accommodate women's workloads; ensuring that all women have equal opportunities to say their concerns in group meetings. Women have limited bargaining power on lentil and chickpea marketing, hence there is a need for smart gender-sensitive ways of linking women farmers to markets through market information, linking with major commercial actors, organizing women marketing groups, and training in marketing. FHHs and MHHs had different access and control over resources and face different problem and will require different types of agricultural technology, extension and development interventions. Women's empowerment is also important (women specific organization, like women cooperation) for the sustainable development in the study areas which contribute to realize poverty reduction goals, millennium development targets and sustainable development in Ethiopia. (FAO, 2011) argue that achieving gender equality and empowering women in agriculture is not only the right thing to do. It is also critical for agricultural development and food security. The results of the analysis indicate that both men's and women's are knowledgeable about crop production and management, however most women do better than that of males in lentil and chickpea production using indigenous knowledge. Level of skill and knowledge and understanding of women on technology is limited due to their low level of education. There is a need to include practical and field trainings, equip women's knowledge particularly women in MHHs through extension service on crop production and management The major risks to the program derive from its financial instability. For 2014 the project was 28.5% supported from W1+W2 funding and this has declined to 26.5% in 2015. W2 funding has remained constant and supportive of the program, but W1 funding has declined considerably. In the extension phase it is 25% of what was anticipated in the proposal document.The CRP has had many logistical, organisational, governance, and research issues to deal with, but the ability of the Research Management Committee to coordinate the program has been seriously undermined by the loss of flexibility because of the increased reliance on W3 and bilateral projects that are constrained by the agreements between the funder and the lead institution. This leads irrevocably to a fragmentation of the program and loss of opportunity for synergistic interactions. It seems almost inevitable that this will result in the break-up of the research on grain legumes within the CGIAR in the second phase of CRPs which would institutionalise this fragmentation, reverting to the pre-reform structures. These indicated that the planning for the POWB missed some important intentions and that the communication channels between the centres and the Research Management Committee need to be strengthened.The reports: L101 L106, L111,L121, L131 and L211 are presented in Annex 3. • Chickpea breeding lines (e.g. ICCV 03205, ICCV 03112, ICCV 04111 and ICCV 08102) suitable to mechanical harvesting and yield levels similar to or higher than the check cultivars developed.• A chickpea breeding line ICCV 96836 with suitability to machine harvesting and resistance to ascochyta blight identified.• Twenty-two faba bean genotypes suitable to machine harvesting and tolerance to herbicide metribuzin identified.• Several chickpea breeding lines (e.g. ICCV 03104, ICCV 03402, ICCV 95138, ICCV 97115, and ICCV 10) tolerant to herbicide imezeathapyr identified.• Six chickpea breeding lines tolerant to herbicides pendimethalin and aclconifen identified.• Thirty-two fababean genoypes tolerant to metribuzin identified.• Seven lentil genotypes tolerant to herbicide imazethapyr and 4 to metribuzin identified. Glossary: Technologies to be counted here are agriculture-related and NRM-related technologies and innovations including those that address climate change adaptation and mitigation. Relevant technologies include but are not limited to: • Mechanical and physical: New land preparation, harvesting, processing and product handling technologies, including biodegradable packaging • Biological: New germplasm (varieties, breeds, etc.) that could be higher-yielding or higher in nutritional content and/or more resilient to climate impacts; affordable food-based nutritional supplementation such as vitamin A-rich sweet potatoes or rice, or high-protein maize, or improved livestock breeds; soil management practices that increase biotic activity and soil organic matter levels; and livestock health services and products such as vaccines;• Chemical: Fertilizers, insecticides, and pesticides sustainably and environmentally applied, and soil amendments that increase fertilizer-use efficiencies;    The CRP has defined and collected baseline data on the main dimensions of gender inequality in the CRP's main target populations relevant to its expected outcomes ( IDOs)The collation of this information remains fragmentary and will be addressed further in the Extension Phase. For 2014 we have initiated the analysis of gender gaps together with the establishment of baselines and indicatiors. Our Gender Specialist has initiated relevant gender training and awareness building within the Research Management Committee.Sex-disaggregated social data collected and used to diagnose important gender-related constraints in at least one of the CRP's main target populations See the CRP GL Product Line Reports http://1drv.ms/1Eyu0bo And The CRP has defined and collected baseline data on the main dimensions of gender inequality in the CRP's main target populations relevant to its expected outcomes (IDOs) And CRP targets changes in levels of gender inequality to which the CRP is or plans to contribute, with related numbers of men and women beneficiaries in main target populations 2. Institutional architecture for integration of gender is in place -CRP scientists and managers with responsibility for gender in the CRP's outputs are appointed, have written TORS.This was been done for the RMC and PMU and Gender specialists in 2013 -Procedures defined to report use of available diagnostic or baseline knowledge on gender routinely for assessment of the gender equality implications of the CRP's flagship research products as per the Gender -CRP scientists and managers with responsibility for gender in the CRP's outputs are appointed, have written TORS and funds allocated to support their interaction. This has been done see the financial summary in sections A and I The CRP has revised its management structure for the extension phase this has brought in new people who contribute a greater diversity of experience, age from the previous committee. Four of the six new appointments were women -Procedures defined to report use of available -CRP scientists and managers with responsibility for gender in the CRP's outputs are appointed, have written TORS and funds allocated to support their interaction.The CRP gender specialist has initiated her programme of work (qv) and has been influential for example in shaping the form of gender work in the extension phase.-Procedures defined to report use of available diagnostic or baseline knowledge on gender routinely for assessment of the gender equality implications of the CRP's flagship research products as per the Gender Strategy This is not yet fully implemented throughout the CRP, but the PABRA framework (developed at the start of the current phase 5 -CRP M&E system has protocol for tracking progress on integration of gender in research Although the CRP M&E system is not fully functional, PABRA has an M&E official who systematically compiles gender disaggregated data, although responsibility for data collection is distributed among research staff. For example, data on seed distribution is collected based on gender of seed recipients. This practice is implemented widely with partners in seed dissemination, although it is less practical with private sector partners who sell seed commercially.-A CRP plan approved for capacity development in gender analysis This is part of the Gender Implementation Strategy.-The CRP uses feedback provided by its M&E system to improve its integration of gender into research The CRP M&E system is not fully functional Budget figures in all of the attached forms should be the annual confirmed budget (POWB) for the year. W1/2 total will be as the Financing Plan notified by the Consortium Office, and W3/Bilateral the forecast prepared internally. Actual events since the signing of the PIAs result in the budget per PIA no longer being a meaningful measure of performance.For reporting purposes, please delete from L121 and L131 Centres not relevant to your CRPNB W3 funding from CGIAR Centres represent an internal transactionIn section C1 the information below was summarised diagrammatically to illustrate progress at a glance. This is not a quantitative estimate, but is a subjective estimation. The basis of the estimate is as follows: If an activity is expected to deliver the output target N years after 2014, then it is expected to be about 1/N complete. A degree of completeness is assigned, and the ration of these is an estimate of how the OT is performing against expectation. Note that this is not always expected to be a linear progression. In this ratio the values below 1 are behind schedule and those ahead of schedule are greater than 1. The bars are then normalised in length so that fraction ahead and fraction behind schedule are equivalent. "}

main/part_2/0101362527.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"b43432acd6caada4fd43c94c768dbf56","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/bebb886d-6c03-4ac4-a78a-37412ce3ed05/retrieve","id":"1350291931"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"151466d4-401f-4f4d-966f-c6f5b618f084","content":"MEDA is the lead institution and the Alliance is the key implementing partner.Food and nutrition insecurity remain critical challenges in Senegal, aggravated by poor dietary diversity, yearly hunger seasons, and food safety challenges, especially concerning water, sanitation, and hygiene. Although the situation varies by region, the project's baseline study showed that 93% of the households assessed have poor food consumption as measured using Food Consumption Scores, indicating that these households receive inadequate nutrients and have low dietary diversity 1 .The overall goal of the Adaptation and Valorization of Entrepreneurship in Irrigated Agriculture (AVENIR) project is to improve the socio-economic well-being and resilience of farming households in the regions of Sedhiou and Tambacounda, Senegal. The project focuses on smallholder-irrigated systems through the promotion of climate-adapted irrigation and aims for 6,750 people-70% women and 30% youthto benefit from its nutrition interventions. Women of reproductive age, grandmothers, and youth will be targeted. The project further aims to conduct a minimum of 32 community engagement and learning sessions on nutrition by end of the project.Nutrition is mainstreamed in the AVENIR project activities based on the 'Do No Harm' principle 2 , to ensure the dietary quality of women, youth, and children in the project sites is improved. Nutrition-agricultural practices, particularly for women and young people. The project aims to improve access to inputs, climate-smart technologies, and efficient and affordable irrigation techniques, and to foster multi-stakeholder platforms for the sustainable and equitable management of water resources. The project further seeks to improve the availability, accessibility, affordability, acceptability, quality, and sufficiency of diverse nutritious and safe foods, to improve diets and contribute to better nutrition. It aims to promote sustainable food consumption patterns in a gender-equitable manner while considering environmental, socio-cultural, and economic sustainability. The project aims to directly benefit 10,000 farming households whose members consist of 70% women and 30% young people, and indirectly benefit up to 35,000 individuals. The project sensitive agricultural approaches will be used to deliver nutrition outcomes.The project implementers are required to apply the 'Do No Harm' principle in their day-to-day activities and interventions, to ensure no harm is caused by the implemented activities. The project implementers should ensure that the project does not cause unintended negative consequences on diets and nutrition.The understanding of the impact of an intervention, with the goal to limit or prevent unintended negative effects on the beneficiaries, community, environment, local economy, or livelihoods.The principle encourages the identification of potential harms, development of a mitigation plan, and setting in place a wellfunctioning monitoring system.Ensuring that the project does not have any Nutrition outputs and outcomes within the AVENIR project will be achieved through the co-identification of culturally appropriate, nutrition-led agricultural practices for women and youth. By engaging with women, youth leaders, and community health workers i.e., animators, the project will create awareness and build capacity among farming households on the production, processing, and consumption of diverse and nutrient-dense foods at the household and community level, using the Social Behavioral Change Communication (SBCC) approach. Multiple agriculture-to-nutrition pathways will be used to improve the diet quality and nutrition of the target beneficiaries (Figure 1).Agricultural farm produce acts as a source of diverse and nutritious food Farmers produce nutrient-dense commodities and consume them in their own households Production of nutrient-dense commodities by farmers creates an improved food environment for farming households and the communities Increased production and diversification can improve access to healthy diets by reducing the price of diverse foods on the market Nutrition awareness and women's empowerment are vital for this pathway to lead to positive nutrition outcomes.Refers to agriculture as a source of income for farming households Households produce commodities and sell them to earn income Additional income can result in improved household diet and health, through food expenditure such as the purchase of nutritious foods, as well as non-food expenditures, such as healthcare services and sanitation facilities Nutrition awareness and women's empowerment are vital for this pathway to lead to positive nutrition outcomes.Farmers produce an excess of nutrient-dense commodities that are made available in the markets for non-producing consumers Large amounts of these nutrient-dense commodities in the markets can lead to lower prices and increase the availability and affordability for consumers Nutrition awareness and women's empowerment are vital for this pathway to lead to positive nutrition outcomes.Refers to agriculture as a way to empower women through the following aspects:• Improved access to productive resources The Nutrition-Sensitive Value Chain (NSVC): An approach for mainstreaming nutrition in agricultural value chainsFollowing the agriculture-to-nutrition pathways, the AVENIR project will apply the Nutrition-Sensitive Value Chain (NSVC) approach to implement nutritionsensitive interventions in the project's targeted agricultural value chains. A NSVC is a food value chain that has been shaped to alleviate constraints in food supply and demand, with the main goal of improving the diets of target consumers 4 .Value chains influence both the supply and demand of food. From the supply side, interventions meant to contribute to nutrition or better diet quality must consider the way foods are produced, processed, distributed, and marketed throughout the chain.On the demand side, there is a need to understand the factors that influence consumer demand and consumption, and how this happens. The value chain approach, therefore, helps to consider the whole chain and design interventions at different stages along the chain (Figure 1).The NSVC approach focuses on three key strategies to improve nutrition/diets: systems, climate-adapted solutions, irrigation, climate-smart agriculture trainings, sustainable water management, and processing and strengthening linkages between value chain actors.Demand strategies: These are strategies aimed at increasing demand and consumption of nutritious commodities and products by consumers, thereby focusing on the downstream stages of the chain. Some of the demand-side interventions that the AVENIR project will focus on include nutrition awareness raising and behavior change communications, social campaigns through women groups, and the promotion of hygienic and nutritious food preparation, which will include cooking classes and recipe development.Pro-nutrition value strategies: These are strategies aimed at addressing the nutritional quality of commodities or products. Constraints relate to the actual nutritional value of individual products or value that arises from issues of food safety, or food loss and waste.The AVENIR project will focus on trainings to reduce food loss and waste, approaches to reduce food contamination during handling and preparation and to preserve nutritional value, processing, and good agricultural practices, e.g., avoiding excessive use of pesticides.Supply strategies: These are strategies aimed at increasing the supply of commodities and products, and they relate to value chain upgrading strategies, such as product and process-upgrading strategies. Some of the supply-side interventions that the AVENIR project will implement include product quality, efficiency and consistency of production "}

main/part_2/0113396756.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"565f27d7c6ffe23f971f10f8a7c93357","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/6cd5c7bc-2e5c-4398-bde2-b1b439da41ac/retrieve","id":"-1684178149"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"a056c966-99e9-4fc0-a99f-9b9a58c6fddf","content":"• The priority programmes aim at;• Bringing down the cost of living Bottom-up economic plan: Targets• Targets to:-Mobilise and influence allocation of capital in a way that generates most benefits to the economy -Create Employment focusing on agriculture and informal sectors,• Hence, the model directs resources to the two sectors -Promote income distribution, economic stability, adequate tax revenue,• Model focuses on investing the limited capital available where it will create the most jobs -at the bottom of the pyramid. • Commitment to invest Sh500b over the next five years in smallholder agriculture and the informal sector.• Economic Transformation transform Kenya's economy through the \"bottom-up economic plan\" empower MSMEs and farmers, as the engine for growth; as well job creation• Tax Revenue and Tax Administration broaden the tax base and ensure that everyone pays their equitable share of the tax burden• Servicing public debt and pending bills -Service debt, borrow cheaply and pay bills going forward.-Establish Hustler fund-Key sectors to receive enhanced fundingenhance food production to eliminate the food subsidy and establish a fuel stabilization fund• KIPPRA and IFPRI team have reviewed the Bottom-Up Economic Plan at subsectorlevels; (e.g., target increases of maize yields, reducing dependence on food imports, supporting export value chains of coffee, tea, avocado etc.; apparel industry, renewable energies, universal healthcare, road infrastructure, housing, education, healthcare etc.).• Based on expert opinions, the team has then estimated the expected sub-sector level growth rates for 89 sectors.• Based on these subs-sector-level estimates, the team has then used an economy-wide CGE model to estimate the impacts of the Bottom-Up Economic plan on social outcomes.• Use economywide model of Kenya• Cover all sectors, production and consumption in the economy• Estimates impacts of sectoral growth assumptions • Accelerated growth = More ambitious outlook based on assessment of \"Bottom-Up Growth Plan\"• Measures outcomes at multiple scales • Private and public consumption demand grows slower than GDP• Leads to falling consumer prices (CPI falls from 0.8% to 1.2% per year in 2022-2027)• Investment growth accelerates • Economy reorients towards exports and investment Headlines | Sector GDP Growth• Growth accelerates in all broad economic sectors• Additional 2-3.5%-points growth rates across sectors • Relatively larger accelerations in agriculture (\"bottom-up\")• Economy continues to undergo structural change • Productivity (TFP) growth is the most important source of additional growth• TFP contributes to 12.4%-points of additional GDP growth in 2022-2027 (16.4%)• Labor force growth is the third important source of accelerated growth  Headlines | Sources of Investment• Three sources finance the investment, and they all grow rapidly• Investment growth = 8.1%• Private savings = 7.8%• Foreign inflows = 7.3%• Public savings = 44.3%• Public sources grow most rapidly but the share in total investment is small (3.3%) • Additional 700,000 jobs created by 2027 (4.3 mil. vs. 5.0 mil.Increases from 2022 under the two scenarios)• Rising incomes reduce poverty• 2.8 million fewer poor people by 2027 (2.7 mil. Vs. 5.3 mil.Fewer poor people than in 2022 under the two scenarios)• Growth benefits poorest of the poor (-0.55%-point vs. -0.85% point falls in poverty gap from 2022 under the two scenarios)• Food security also improves• 1.5 million fewer undernourished people (1.4mil. vs. 2/9 mil.Few hunger people than in 2022 under the two scenarios)• Diet deprivation declines (i.e., gap between household-level consumption and healthy reference diet, based on six major food groups, falls by 0.90% vs. 1.68% from 2022 under the two scenarios)• Bottom-Up Plan is consistent with its goals www.cgiar.org Food systems development will raise real incomes of households -producers and consumers  Promote a more diverse food production base that reduces reliance on food imports  Invest in food safety 6. Provide better opportunities for women to make food systems more productive  Harness women's contributions to realize the full potential of the Kenyan food system  Policies must address low rates of women's land ownership, minimal participation in decision-making and food governance, challenges in obtaining resources to produce food, and weaker networks than menPriority actions… Support the veterinary laboratory system by providing technical support for disease surveillance, diagnosis, and quality control  Promote equitable access to services (for example, vaccines), especially in value chains where women play a large role, such as indigenous chicken value chains  Establish a \"One Health\" approach to control zoonotic diseases and cross-county and transboundary infectious diseases  The private sector can also aid in the last-mile delivery of efficient and timely veterinary services  Private and public sector initiatives should coordinate with Kenya Wildlife Services to control diseases at the livestock-wildlife interface 8. Allocate appropriate levels of domestic funding  Only 2 percent of the national budget dedicated to agricultural sector  This expenditure remains below public agricultural expenditures in other sub-Saharan African countries and far below the Malabo commitment of 10 percent  Shortfalls in expenditure have stalled 216 projects in the government's agriculture, water, and environment sector -more than any other sector  An estimated 83 percent of agriculture-related projects are externally funded, which can jeopardize sovereignty in designing food policy 9. Build policy coherence by aligning policies across the food system  Kenya has attempted to build policy coherence by using mechanisms like the Agriculture Transformation Agency (ATO), Joint Agricultural Sector Steering Committee, the Council of Governors, and the Agriculture and Rural Development Partners Group  But a mechanism that would allow coordination of all food system actors is missing. A good starting point would be development of an overall framework for food systems transformation with a clear vision; shared objectives, roles, and commitments; and a strong monitoring and evaluation system for regular progress reviews and assessments of resultsPriority actions...  Asante sana!Bottom-Up Economic Plan modelling resultsHeadlines | Growth-Poverty Drivers• Bottom-Up Plan emphasizes \"quick-wins\"• Agricultural production • SMEs in manufacturing and informal sector• Source of accelerated growth matters• Drives strong poverty and food security outcomes• Model can isolate sectoral contributions• Growth driven by agriculture is far more effective at reducing poverty (PGE = -0.8, i.e., 1% increase in GDP per capita driven by agric. productivity gains leads to a 0.8%-point decline in poverty headcount rate)• Emphasis on \"bottom-up\" growth is consistent with targeted household outcomes "}

main/part_2/0120665126.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"f3b83c0be5965643e63b82d18dbd5e5f","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://www.iwmi.cgiar.org/iwmi-tata/PDFs/iwmi-tata_water_policy_research_highlight-issue_03_2017.pdf","id":"-1618931703"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"1c27893b-7ea3-478f-ad16-03b5eae5dc64","content":"Some recent studies in India and elsewhere have suggested a posi ve correla on between open defeca on and child stun ng. Improving children's health is one of the primary mo va ons behind India's Swachh Bharat Mission under which the government is trying to eliminate open defeca on by inves ng heavily in the construc on of toilets. Through analysis of secondary data, this Highlight shows that female literacy has a more significant correla on with child stun ng than open defeca on does and calls for appropriate policy focus on educa ng women, especially on health, nutri on and hygiene.Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Swachh Bharat nd Abhiyan (Clean India Mission) (SBM) on 2 October, 2014. The mission's ac vi es include building toilets in private, community and public spaces, as well as solid and liquid waste management. Furthermore, the campaign tries to achieve a change in hygiene prac ces through informa on, educa on, communica on (IEC) ac vi es and public awareness programs (GoI 2014). Besides cleaning the streets and door-to-door trash collec on, one of the major goals of SBM is to end open defeca on (OD) in India by 2019. According to Census 2011, 49.8 per cent of the total households defecate in the open, majority of which live in rural areas. Human excrement acts as a host for various pathogens and can cause several diseases including cholera, typhoid, hepa s and polio (WHO 2001). Several reports have shown a posi ve associa on between open defeca on and poor health of children. In this Highlight, stun ng among children under the age of five is used as an indicator of their overall health.A 2008 paper by Jean Humphrey argues that lack of access to toilets, bad hygiene prac ces and unclean drinking water lead to child stun ng. Stun ng by defini on is low height visà-vis age (WHO 2017). WHO published a growth reference curve to measure children's growth which is used as a standard to define stun ng. Humphrey concludes that an illness called environmental enteropathy is the reason for stun ng. In an unsafe and unhygienic environment, children ingest large quan es of faecal bacteria, leading to intes nal infec ons. Even with enough food, the body cannot digest it well. Further, a rise in calorie intake has a small effect on growth in children. As interven on strategies, safe disposal of stool, proper hand washing and improvement in safe drinking water as well as infant diet are recommended (Humphrey 2008). Figh ng repe ve diseases which result in excessive energy expenditure and worm or parasite infec ons that reduce ability to digest food leading to malnutri on are other possible explana ons of stun ng (Hammer and Spears 2016).Based on this groundwork, the Research Ins tute for Compassionate Economics (r.i.c.e.) analysed the correla on between open defec on and child stun ng in India in 112 districts using data from WHO's HUNGaMA report (Naandi Founda on 2011). Their analysis covered 100 poorly performing districts with high stun ng and open defeca on rates and 12 well performing ones with low stun ng and OD rates. The difference in OD-intensity can explain 35 to 55 per cent of the gap in stun ng. Their findings also suggest 2 that districts with more OD have more stun ng (R = 34.8 per cent) and districts with higher rates of female literacy 2 tend to have less OD (R = 48.5 per cent) (Spears et al. 2013).To take this inves ga on one step further, we use data from 640 Indian districts. Besides open defeca on, our analysis includes parameters on female literacy, drinking water quality, nutri on and maternal health. Shi ing the focus from the current policy of building toilets to improve children's health, we introduce a different approach to reduce stun ng: investment in female literacy and awareness.For the analysis, publicly accessible data sets on selected parameters were used. Data on open defeca on, drinking water sources and literacy was a part of Census 2011. These parameters were collected from April to September 2010. The census covered 640 districts with 5,767 tehsils, 7,933 towns and over 6 lakh villages (GoI 2011). Percentage of children stunted below the age of five as well as data on women's health, literacy and diet of children was sourced from the Na onal Family Household Survey 2015-16 (NFHS-4 2016). This data was collected in different me frames for different states in 2015 and 2016. Census 2011 provided data on the number of households prac cing open defeca on; this number was used to calculate percentage of total households following this prac ce. The NFHS-4 data is already given in percentage.A regression analysis was performed using the so ware RStudio. For analysis of every single parameter, a simple equa on was used:where y denotes the percentage of children under the age of five being stunted; x denotes different parameters; a is the standard coefficient of each parameter; and c is a constant.For every equa on, the coefficient of determina on (R ) was recorded. For mul ple parameter regression, the equa on above was extended with the number of parameter (x , x , …) where y denotes percentage of children under the age of five being stunted; x , x , … denote different parameters; a, b, … are 1 2 standard coefficients of each parameter; and z is a constant.Table 1 shows the single parameter analysis of different variables studied in associa on with stunted growth. Besides open defeca on (OD) and improvement of sanitary facili es, educa on of women and their health appear to have a high correla on with growth of children.For ease of comparison, the two most relevant parameters have been listed separately in Table 2 along with a simple regression between OD and female literacy. The analysis on percentage of households that prac ce OD and number of children under five years being stunted suggests that a 1 per cent reduc on in OD will reduce child stun ng by 0.2 per cent.On the other hand, a 1 per cent improvement in female literacy can reduce child stun ng by 0.5 per cent and having 1 per cent less underweight women can reduce stun ng by 0.7 per cent. Table 2 also suggests that improving female literacy by 1 per cent will reduce OD incidence by 1.4 per cent.  Table 6 categorizes districts with a stun ng rate above the average (> 36 per cent) as high stun ng and the rest as low stun ng districts; districts falling in the last quar le as low OD and districts falling in the first quar le as high OD, sor ng data in descending order of OD incidence rates and the same defini on applies for female literacy. Of the 320 districts considered, the stun ng pa ern in 271 can be explained with OD, whereas 287 of the former by female literacy level. Thus, while OD is a relevant parameter while looking at child stun ng, female literacy appears to have an even higher relevance.Figure 1 visualizes the results of Table 6, with the same defini on of high and low rates and every dot symbolizing a district. The red dots categorize the districts of high and low OD overlapping with above or below average (36 per cent) of stunted children, whereas the same defini on for female literacy applies for the blue dots. Of the 320 districts considered, 85 per cent of stun ng pa ern can be explained with OD, whereas 90 per cent of the same can be explained by female literacy rates. Hence, female literacy performs be er in explaining child stun ng than OD incidence.Incidence of open defeca on is one explana on for stun ng.In households with no open defeca on, children grow taller, as they do in villages with higher latrine use compared to children growing in an environment with high open defeca on in private and community space. Even when the household itself has a toilet, any other person in the village defeca ng in the open may harm the overall welfare of the community by exposing them to pathogens and diseases. However, scien sts have not been able to sta s cally establish any causal rela onship between open defeca on and child stun ng (Spears et al. 2013). The bacteria in human faeces causes intes nal infec ons, which leads to diarrhoea and is one of the leading arguments explaining the rela onship between stunted child growth and open defeca on (Coffey and Spears 2017). Our mul ple parameter analyses (Table 3), however, shows that diarrhoea incidence is not significantly correlated with child stun ng.Our analysis suggests that female literacy is a more relevant influencing parameter compared to open defeca on when looking at child stun ng rates. Reason for low literacy level amongst women are many: early marriage, poverty, unwillingness of the parents to educate girl child or no support in con nuing study a er marriage, lack of enabling school facili es like latrines or female teachers (Velkoff 1998).A study in West Bengal iden fied literacy as a determinant of nutri onal awareness amongst mothers (Gupta et al. 2017).The Lancet, a Bri sh Medical journal, published in 2008 a series of papers which addressed maternal and child malnutri on highligh ng that breas eeding promo on has a large effect on survival but not on stun ng of children. Data analysis seconds the results of this claim, as results show a 2 low significance of breas eeding on stun ng (R = 8.9 per cent). In general interven ons such as maternal nutri on or feeding strategies reduce stun ng at 36 months by 36 per cent. The series also suggested that for long term improvements, underlying factors of under-nutri on such as poverty, educa on and lack of women's empowerment have to be taken into account (Bhu a et al. 2008), also seconded by the findings of this paper.The results of sta s cal analysis in Table 2   Ghosh et al. (2013) surveyed 256 mothers in the rural community of Darjeeling district and pointed out that 75.8 per cent of the literate women had health-care seeking behaviour, while only 24.2 per cent illiterate mothers showed the same behaviour regarding their children's health. A study in two resource-poor Indian popula ons with 1773 motherchild pairs emphasized the associa on of female health literacy and child stun ng rate. Children of mothers with high maternal health literacy were found to be only half likely to be stunted than children of mothers with poor health literacy (Johri et al., 2016). Our analysis also shows that improving female literacy will have a significant impact on elimina ng open defeca on. Water Aid (2016) evaluated Kerala as one of the best performing states in sanita on coverage. Kerala has a high female literacy rate and one of the leading reasons for huge success of sanita on implementa on was high par cipa on of educated women in the process. Banerjee et al. (2016) through analysis of the NFHS-3 data showed that educated women and households where women at least a ended preschool are more likely to use a toilet. Further, the quality of sanita on facili es improves steadily with women's educa on. Female literacy accounts for 24.3 per cent of the varia on in the distribu on of toilet facili es (Wei et al. 2014).The Swachh Bharat Mission focuses on building toilets while its Informa on, Educa on and Communica on ac vi es aim to bring about behavioural change in health and hygiene prac ces to trigger greater demand for sanitary facili es (GoI 2014). Female literacy is not part of the campaign. As the regression results show, improving the literacy level of women impacts reduc on of open defeca on posi vely. Policy makers should take these findings as new mo va on to bring the exis ng Saakshar Bharat Mission on a new level and strongly focus on educa on of women and improving their literacy.Our analysis of data from 640 districts shows a high and significant nega ve correla on between female literacy and incidence of stun ng among children. The analysis also shows a significant role of female literacy in reducing open defeca on. We argue that the efforts of Swachh Bharat Mission and related programs towards building toilets will be rendered fu le unless sufficient a en on is also paid to female literacy. Appearing as an important success parameter for open defeca on reduc on as well as children health programs, policy makers must focus on an integrated approach which includes increasing awareness of women and educa ng them as a part of such programs. Such a focus on educa ng women, especially on health, nutri on and hygiene, is very likely to assure reduc on in incidence of OD and child stun ng in India."}

main/part_2/0121527961.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"4fcf6ec21a092557510e381498763060","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://dataverse.harvard.edu/api/access/datafile/:persistentId/?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/RRXCR3/J3U3NS","id":"-1530472996"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"7d37728d-86e7-4095-a8ac-3e61a375838d","content":"In June 2015, the client provided 576 rice DNA samples from 11 BC1F5 subpopulations that share same recurrent parent (RP) but that have different donor parents (DPs). The goal of the project was to use Data2Bio's tunable Genotyping by Sequencing (tGBS®) technology to SNP-type the 576 samples and define chromosomal introgressions.The analysis identified a relatively high amount of heterozygosity observed in the RP and the DP of sub-population 11 (i.e., DP19) (slide 27). In an effort to correct this problem the client provided 12 biological replicates each of RP and DP19 which Data2Bio analyzed via tGBS. As in the previous project, Data2Bio used the rice reference genome downloaded from Phytozome website for this redux project (slides 2 and 4). The workflow of our tGBS analysis with a reference genome is shown in slide 3 of the slide deck provided along with this report. Data2Bio sequenced the 24 replacement samples using two (2) runs on an Ion Proton Instrument, generating ~178.3M raw reads (slide 5), which after processing resulted in ~206.0M reads (upper table of slide 6). After trimming low quality bases, ~192.8M reads remained.Subsequently, the trimmed reads from each sample were aligned to the rice reference genome, which consisted of 12 chromosomes plus two other \"bins\" with a total length of ~374.5Mb (slide 4). Approximately 80.9% and 66.9% of the trimmed reads could be aligned non-uniquely and uniquely, respectively (lower table of slide 6).SNP calling was conducted for the 24 replacement samples using only the uniquely aligned reads. Ultimately, a set of 24,995 ALL SNPs, each of which exhibited less than 80% missing data (slide 8) was used to create a phylogenetic tree (slide 11). The 5 samples did not cluster well with others in this tree were removed from subsequent analyses. SNP calling was repeated using the remaining 19 samples, identifying 36,254 ALL SNPs (slide 12). However, 2 additional samples were removed due to high heterozygosity (slide 16). That means, of the 24 replacement samples, 7 samples were removed in total, the remaining 9 RP samples and 8 DP19 samples were combined as \"RP_Combined\" and \"DP19_Combined\" samples in the downstream analysis (slide 17).tGBS analysis was re-conducted on the 2 replacement rice samples and the other 574 tGBS samples sequenced previously. After interrogating 2.7M bases with at least 5 tGBS reads per base per sample in at least 50% of the samples (slide 22), a set of 794,297 polymorphic sites was identified (slide 23). Data2Bio filtered the polymorphic sites to obtain a subset of ALL SNPs that have a missing data cut-off filter of 80% in each sample. Next, the ALL SNP dataset was further filtered to identify SNPs that have a missing data cut-off filter 50%, i.e., LMD50 (the set of SNPs that were each genotyped in at least 50% of individuals). A summary of LMD50 SNPs numbers identified in each sub-population is provided in slide 26. Slides 31-129 present more characteristics of the ALL SNP and LMD50 SNP sets obtained from each sub-population, as well as providing graphical summaries of chromosomal introgressions in each sample.Having access to materials and data available locally is useful in case you ask us to conduct follow-up or troubleshooting experiments or answer questions regarding your project. Hence, unless other arrangements have been made Data2Bio will typically store Materials and Results for up to 12 weeks after delivery of the Report. If you would like your materials destroyed or your results purged sooner, please send your request via email to [email protected]. Note that we are not able to offer long-term storage of materials or data and that after we deliver project data and the analysis report Data2Bio shall have no responsibility for maintaining Materials or Results.At IRRI's request Data2Bio conducted tunable Genotyping by Sequencing (tGBS) on the 24 RP and DP19 replacement samples using two (2) Ion Proton runs, generating a total of ~178.3M raw reads (slide 5), which after processing resulted in ~206.0M reads (slide 6). The number of reads can increase at this step because individual reads can be split into two reads. A summary histogram and a Bar-plot as well as a table of minimum, maximum, average and median numbers of raw reads per sample are provided in slide 5.Each sequenced read was scanned for low quality regions and bases with PHRED quality of <15 out of 40 (≤3% error rate) were trimmed. After trimming low quality bases, about 192.8M reads remained, i.e., 6.4% of processed raw reads were dropped and 86.0% of base pairs remained after trimming (upper table of slide 6).Subsequently, the trimmed reads from each sample were aligned to the reference genome using GSNAP (WU and NACU 2010). A summary of total, average, median numbers of reads that aligned (uniquely and non-uniquely) are provided in lower table of slide 6. Approximately 80.9% and 66.9% of the trimmed reads could be aligned non-uniquely and uniquely, respectively. Subsequently, a phylogenetic tree based on the 24,995 LMD50 SNPs data is presented in slide 11. It seems that in this tree, 5 samples (DP19-X21-3, DP19-X21-4, DP19-X21-2, DP19-X21-1 (from DP genotype) and RP-WTR_1-9 (from RP genotype)) could not be clustered well with other samples, which were removed from subsequent analyses.After removing these 5 problematic samples, Data2Bio conducted tGBS genotyping again to re-generate ALL SNPs set among the left 19 samples, identifying a subset of 36,254 ALL SNPs (slide 12). The number of regenerated ALL SNPs' genotypes and its corresponding proportion per sample are presented in slide 13, while the distributions of various characteristics are presented in slide 14. Then a phylogenetic tree was reconstructed with the resulted 36,254 SNPs. As expected the 19 samples were clustered to 2 clades in the tree, RP clade and DP19 clade (slide 15).A histogram of heterozygosity rate per samples (N=19) and a scatter plot of reads against heterozygous rate per sample are shown in slide 16. Among the 19 samples there are 2 additional samples (\"RP_WTR_1_10\" and Data2Bio, LLC 2079 Roy J. Carver Co-Laboratory Ames, Iowa 50011-3650 [email protected] \"RP_WTR_1_8\") with a high heterozygous rate ≥5%, which were also removed from the subsequent analyses. That means, of the 24 replacement samples, 7 samples were removed in total, resulted in 9 RP samples and 8 DP19 samples remaining, which were combined as \"RP_Combined\" and \"DP_Combined\" in downstream analysis respectively.tGBS analysis was re-conducted on the 576 rice DNA samples (2 replacement samples and the previous 574 samples provided in June 2015). Note that previous RP and DP19 were discarded and replaced with the combined \"RP_Combined\" and \"DP19_Combined\" replacement samples.In total, those 576 IRRI samples were sequenced using ten (10) Ion Proton runs, generating a total of ~943.4M raw reads (slide 20). A summary histogram and a Bar-plot as well as a table of minimum, maximum, average and median numbers of raw reads per sample are provided in slide 20.After trimming low quality bases, about 881.6M reads remained, i.e., 6.6% of processed raw reads were dropped and 87.8% of base pairs remained after trimming (upper panel of slide 21). Then the trimmed reads from each sample were aligned to the reference genome using GSNAP (WU and NACU 2010). Approximately 80.9% and 65.7% of the trimmed reads could be aligned non-uniquely and uniquely, respectively (lower panel of slide 21).Using the reads from the 576 samples that uniquely align to the reference genome Data2Bio identified 794,297 polymorphic sites (slide 23) after interrogating 2,679,180 bases that have ≥5 reads in at least 50% of the samples (slide 22). After filtering, two subsets of these SNP sites were identified as ALL SNPs and LMD50 SNPs respectively. The criteria for filtering ALL SNPs and LMD50 SNPs are shown in slide 24. For convenient for comparing, the individual numbers of each sub-population and the corresponding LMD50 SNP numbers identified previously and regenerated are presented in slide 25 and slide 26 respectively. It is clear that the The ratios of LMD50 SNPs per sub-population that are homozygous for the \"Major allele\", homozygous for the \"Minor allele\" and heterozygous in the Recurrent Parent and Donor Parent respectively are shown in slide 28. Comparing to previous result (slide 27), the amount of heterozygosity observed in the Recurrent Parent decreased substantially and the unexpected high heterozygosity rate in the Donor Parent of sub-population 11 disappeared. However, it should be note that in sub-population 6, both the recurrent parent and the donor parent DP8 have a high rate of major alleles, a problem that also existing in the prior analysis.The heterozygosity rate of samples based on LMD50 SNPs was plotted against the heterozygosity rate of samples based on ALL SNPs again (slide 30). Obviously, the average heterozygosity rate decreased in both the ALL SNPs set and the LMD50 SNPs set when comparing to the previous result (slide 29).Sub-population 1 consisted of 122 samples (120 individuals and the 2 parents). Using the unique alignments of each read from the 122 samples relative to the public reference genome, Data2Bio identified 10,432 ALL SNPs. According to the ratio showing in slide 28, the major allele is presumed to have been derived from the recurrent parent, while the minor allele is presumed to have been derived from the donor parent. This indirect approach for allele assignment was used for two reasons. First, parental genotypes are not available for some SNP sites. Second, the recurrent parent is not a fully inbred line. Hence, the genotypes of the recurrent parent samples included in this tGBS analysis probably do not fully match the genotypes of the recurrent parent plants used during backcrossing.Distributions of various characteristics for the ALL SNP dataset, including quantity of missing data, minor allele frequency, heterozygosity and genotype number are summarized in slide 31. The numbers of ALL SNPs per sample that are homozygous for the major allele, homozygous for the minor allele, heterozygous and missing are shown in the top panel of slide 32. To allow for comparisons among samples unbiased by varying levels of missing data among samples, the bottom panel of slide 32 shows the proportions of the SNPs per sample that are heterozygous for the major allele, homozygous for the minor allele, or heterozygous among the non-missing data. The average missing data rate per SNP site across samples is provided in left panel of slide 33. The right panel presents the minimum, maximum, average and median numbers of reads per SNP site per sample. Note that only samples with data were considered.Distributions of missing data rate and heterozygosity of these samples are shown in slide 34. None of the samples was removed from subsequent analyses due to high missing rate of data or excessive amounts of heterozygosity.Subsequently, Data2Bio filtered the set of sub-population DP_1 ALL SNPs to identify a subset of SNPs that have less than 50% missing data across the 122 samples (see slide 24 for other criteria of LMD50 SNPs filtering). The resulting LMD50 (low missing data, each of which was genotyped in at least 50% of the samples) SNP set contains 4,669 SNPs. Various characteristics of the LMD50 SNPs dataset, including quantity of missing data, minor allele frequency, heterozygosity and genotype number are summarized in slide 35.In slide 36 the numbers of LMD50 SNPs per sample that are homozygous for the major allele, homozygous for the minor allele, heterozygous and missing are shown in the top panel. The bottom panel of slide 36 shows the proportions of the SNPs per sample that are homozygous for the major allele, homozygous for the minor allele, or heterozygous among the non-missing data. As previous, it is interesting from a biological point of view that there is more heterozygosity in some of the BC1F5 lines than would be expected by chance. This might be a consequence of indirect selection for heterozygosity during inbreeding. The average missing data rate per LMD50 SNP site across Data2Bio, LLC 2079 Roy J. Carver Co-Laboratory Ames, Iowa 50011-3650 [email protected] samples is provided in the left panel in slide 37. Sequencing data support 72.9% of all possible SNP calls (No. samples x No. SNPs). The right panel presents the minimum, maximum, average and median numbers of reads per SNP per sample. Each SNP call is supported by an average of 17 tGBS sequence reads per sample, ensuring the accuracy of these non-imputed SNP calls.In slide 38, the genotypes of the LMD50 SNPs for each sample in the DP_1 sub-population are displayed graphically. SNPs were plotted on the basis of their physical ordering concatenated chromosomes, providing a clear visualization of genotypic patterns. In this display the spacing between SNPs in uniform. It allows one to observe that SNPs that are heterozygous or homozygous for the minor allele cluster in defined chromosomal regions, which are presumed to have been introgressed from the donor parent. It is notable that the introgression patterns do not appear to random, again providing suggestive evidence of selection during backcrossing and/or inbreeding. Some samples exhibit such similar introgression patterns that they appear to be duplicates.Slide 39 provides another means graphically visualize chromosomal introgressions on a per sample basis. In this case sample (wtr_21) of Population DP_1 contains a large introgression on chromosome 4. Similar plots are provided on the accompanying hard drive for all the samples in each sub-population.The same types of filtering to create ALL SNP and LMD50 SNP datasets were used on the other 10 sub-populations. The results are shown in slides 40-129.Provided data tables include genotyping calls for each SNP for each of the 576 samples and the numbers of reads supporting each genotype call and the numbers of reads that disagree with that call. Note that every data point in the delivered tales is supported by actual data-we did not conduct any imputation, thereby entirely avoiding imputation-induced errors in SNP calling. Data2Bio has also provided the tGBS DNA sequencing reads after the removal of proprietary sequences added during library preparation, and before and after trimming low quality bases.The numbers of reads obtained for each sample and genotyping calls are provided in tables provided along with this report. Listed below are descriptions of provided files in folder tables:• IRRI.Rice.Donor_*.all.snps.genotype.txt: This much larger table contains all the SNPs identified by Data2Bio in the population and includes all the SNPs reported in the low missing data tables as well as many SNPs, which were genotyped in only a subset of the client's samples.• IRRI.Rice.Donor_*.LMD50.snps.genotype.txt: This file contains markers for which data are available for at least 50% of the lines. This data set is a subset of ALL SNPs.• IRRI.Rice.Donor_*.all.AlleleCounts: Read counts per allele of each sample for each of the filtered ALL SNP sites within a population.• IRRI.Rice.Donor_*.LMD50.AlleleCounts: Read counts per allele of each sample for each of the filtered LMD50 SNP sites within a population.• IRRI.Rice.Donor_*.Context.Sequences.201bp.txt: The context sequences of these filtered SNPs.• IRRI.Rice.Donor_*.snps.vcf：Detailed information of each filtered SNP, including variation types, allele frequency, genotypes, read depth and etc. The definitions of each abbreviation are presented in the beginning of each file.• genotype_matrix_major_vs_minor: This folder contains files showing the SNP genotypes of each donor parent across individuals, in which the \"Ref vs. Alt\" alleles were transferred to \"major vs. minor\" alleles.We have also provided DNA sequence reads, after trimming off proprietary sequences that are added during tGBS library preparation for each of the 576 samples.• raw: Sequencing reads generated by Data2Bio after the removal of proprietary sequences.• trimmed: Sequencing reads remaining after the removal of both proprietary sequences and sequences with low quality scores • figures: all figures presented in the slide deck.Data2Bio, LLC 2079 Roy J. Carver Co-Laboratory Ames, Iowa 50011-3650 [email protected] to alignment, the nucleotides of each raw read were scanned for low quality bases. Bases with PHRED quality value <15 (out of 40) (EWING and GREEN 1998;EWING et al. 1998), i.e., error rates of ≤3%, were removed by our trimming pipeline. Each read was examined in two phases. In the first phase reads were scanned starting at each end and nucleotides with quality values lower than the threshold were removed. The remaining nucleotides were then scanned using overlapping windows of 10 bp and sequences beyond the last window with average quality value less than the specified threshold were truncated. The trimming parameters were referred to the trimming software, Lucy (CHOU et al. 1998;LI and CHOU 2004).Trimmed reads were aligned to the public reference genome using GSNAP (WU and NACU 2010) and confidently mapped reads to the best location in the genome were filtered allowing ≤2 mismatches every 36 bp and less than 5 bases for every 75 bp as tails and used for subsequent analyses.The coordinates of confident and single (unique) alignments to the reference genome that passed our filtering criteria were used for SNP discovery. Polymorphisms at each potential SNP site were carefully examined and putative homozygous and heterozygous SNPs were identified in each sample separately using the following criteria:• Homozygous SNP calling o The most common allele must be supported by at least 80% of all the aligned reads covering that position. o At least 5 unique reads must support the most common allele. o Polymorphisms in the first and last 3 bp of each read were ignored. Any site that was deemed to be polymorphic (homozygous or heterozygous) as compared to the reference genome sequence in at least one sample was included in the set of polymorphic sites.A SNP site was called as homozygous in a given sample if at least 3 reads supported the major common allele at that site and at least 90% of all aligned reads covering that site shared the same nucleotide at that site.A SNP was called as heterozygous in a given diploid sample if at least 1 read supported each of at least two different alleles and each of the two allele types separately comprised more than 20% of the reads aligning to that site. And when the sum of the reads supporting those two alleles at least equal to 5 and comprised at least 90% of all reads covering the site."}

main/part_2/0124048949.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"8092bba8e714e7c6dfc62b7982655e9d","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/ad28513d-a3a2-4e23-a443-1e5a740b1f71/retrieve","id":"1011144078"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"21b2c6a5-e9cf-4c86-a602-73f515f0fe5a","content":"The average individual loan size is BDT40,000The total loan size for 50,000 farmers is BDT 2 billion ²BDT4.29-5.72 million (Revenue impacted)Total watermelon production in Bangladesh is 2,26,991Tons.30% to 40% reduction in sales mean that the quantity impacted is 68,097 Tons and 90,796 Tons respectively, which also means that revenue at risk is BDT 4.29 billion to BDT 5.72 billion, taking average watermelon price of BDT 63,000 per ton. Offsetting 1% of revenue at risk is worth  Mobile app and decision support system that provides forecast-based customized watermelon stocking requirement information for wholesalers and retailers.The anticipated climate service value estimations are prepared using available data and reasonable assumptions. The study has omitted some of the value chain actors and potential climate services due to unavailability of data or information on potential weather related damages or limited value porposition of creating the service.T.S Amjath-Babu, Dipok K. Choudhury, Timothy J. Krupnik, (2023). Confronting the climate crisis: Opportunity profile for climate services along the watermelon value chain in Bangladesh, Securing the Food Systems of Asian Mega-Deltas (AMD) for Climate and Livelihood Resilience and Transforming Agrifood System in South Asia (TAFSSA) initiatives, International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Dhaka, Bangladesh.We would like to thank all funders who support this research through their contributions to the CGIAR Trust Fund: www.cgiar.org/funders.To learn more about this Initiative, please visit: https://www.cgiar.org/initiative/asian-mega-deltas/ © 2023 The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center ('CIMMYT'). Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-NC 4.0).Articles appearing in this publication may be freely quoted and reproduced provided the source is acknowledged. No use of this publication may be made for resale or other commercial purposes.This publication has been prepared under the AMD and TAFSSA Initiatives and is peer reviewed by Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI). Any opinions stated herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policies or opinions of AMD and TAFSSA, CGIAR, or partners.All images remain the sole property of their source and may not be used for any purpose without written permission of the source.The Initiative on Asian Mega-Deltas (AMD) aims to create resilient, inclusive and productive deltas, which maintain socio-ecological integrity, adapt to climatic and other stressors, and support human prosperity and wellbeing, by removing systemic barriers to the scaling of transformative technologies and practices at community, national and regional levels.The Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia (TAFSSA) is a One CGIAR regional integrated initiative to support actions that improve equitable access to sustainable healthy diets, improve farmers' livelihoods and resilience, and conserve land, air, and water resources in South Asia."}

main/part_2/0127519692.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"bc23926090804f0ad15af4367c3c5d7c","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/d53f42c6-63e8-4533-bbec-9df982f34a42/retrieve","id":"-725769753"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"3df87069-9866-4d4e-8ef9-b0198fc87d41","content":"The meeting venue was Hotel Yak & Yeti, Senate Room. An agenda of the meeting and list of participants are annexed.Day 1 Part 1: Setting the stage 9:00 -9:15 Introduction/expectationsThe meeting started with a brief overview of the agenda provided by Michael Victor. Participants introduced themselves and were asked to express their expectations for the meeting. Participants wanted to understand the basics of WLE, i.e. whose lives we are going to help, understand what activities are on-going in the region, and how current activities contribute to WLE and vice-versa. Arif Anwar gave an example how IWMI's Pakistan office already cooperates bilaterally with IFPRI on an incidental basis, which does not necessarily require a WLE framework. This also raises the question how to coordinate and differentiate between bilateral activities and WLE at the regional level, and how to coordinate and allocate resources. Suhas Wani noted that ICRISAT 's activities in the region, for example, are all Windows 3 and bilaterally funded. ICRISAT is working with 9 Centers in Karnataka.How can such activities be synergized?For some participants this was the first interaction with WLE. Bhuwon Sthapit observed that Bioversity's ground level work in South Asia matches very well with WLE principles. He therefore expected to get a better understanding on how to contribute to these principles and the WLE portfolio, and how to work as a team. Also, different CRPs are working at the national level, and the same partners are approached by different actors. This can lead to confusion and duplication of efforts, hence there is a need to prioritize issues and what we want to focus on -Where we can realistically work, what we are trying to do, and what are the milestones? Where do people fit in? (livelihoods / gender). A list of 4-5 things could help the prioritization. There was also some expectation that different aspects of variability (social / biophysical) that have not been considered before would be highlighted.In terms of process we need to learn from design process in other regions. Vladimir Smakthin noted that the actual pre-meeting for the Indo-Gangetic and forthcoming Nile pre-meeting were conceived to help the larger design meetings, but that there are already too many meetings. These pre-meetings might not be necessary for all regions if a better format and structure could be worked out in the current meeting, which would be a good contribution.9:15 -9:45Introduction and update of WLE and the regional focal program design & roll out strategy Nicoline de Haan explained the structure and functioning of WLE. She emphasized that whatever is discussed at the basin level comes down to community level needs. The pre-meetings are meant for clarification amongst partners on how to work on the ground, and talk with partners before the larger design meetings. It is meant to be an ongoing, iterative process. 9:45 -10:15 Presentation on activity clusters that are relevant to the Indus/Ganges Region Martin van Brakel gave an overview of existing activity clusters within WLE that might be of particular relevance to an emerging Indo-Gangetic regional focus. This generated some discussion and SRP leaders provided additional clarification on the focus of particular clusters. Sanmugam Prathapar explained for example that the activity cluster on combating irrigation induced salinity does specifically focus on freshwater areas and not on tidal seawater intrusion in coastal areas. It was observed that non-conventional irrigation is currently missing within the irrigation portfolio. One question raised again was who are we targeting and how to define the type of irrigation systems to be addressed. It was also observed that improving productivity is a cross-cutting objective between rainfed and irrigation, which emphasizes the need for some integration across these SRPs. Two economic models are used at the basin scale. The World Bank designed Indus basin model, which was revised and updated in 2008, is used for modeling climate change scenarios and the CGE, used to model trade-offs between hydropower and irrigation (water, food, energy nexus) which is used by the Pakistan Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA). Its system of allocating water to regions is however pretty constraining in terms of water use optimization. Some discussion ensued on the possibilities of using proprietary models and whether or not there is need for more modeling, i.e. how much modeling is enough? IFPRI Pakistan analyzes also governance issues such as the ongoing irrigation reform, using netmap, and plays a role in the coordination of Donor priorities in the country.IFPRI and IWMI work together on linkages between surface water & groundwater. Arif Anwar referred to the work on a special issue in Water International, entirely focused on Pakistan water issues, and the use of experimental economic games to help farmers make rational decisions on agricultural water use. The possibility of working together with Policies, Institutions & Markets (CRP2) was discussed given that most of IWMI's work in the region is in the policy arena.Suhas Wani explained that ICRISAT's work in the region is focused on watershed management at community level, generally smaller than 5000 ha. All aspects of watershed management are explained in terms of biophysical, social and institutional factors. ICRISAT in its approach does not make the distinction between rainfed and irrigated agriculture. Rainwater is i.e used for irrigation and groundwater recharge. ICRISAT uses constraints analysis in which the central question is why watershed investments did not produce the expected benefits. Analysis of the Indian Governments watershed programs shows that only 32% of these programs resulted in benefits, and ICRISAT's recommendations have led to the implementation of new policy guidelines in 2008. ICRISAT's R4D approach has helped to get buy-in / funding from the Government of India. It is running a large program with the Karnataka government and 9 CG Centers collaborating. The objective is to have 5 million ha. of increased production in 4 years, through inclusive market oriented development benefiting small and marginal farmers and improved backward linkages for supply of inputs. These experiences can be brought into the IGP. The work that ICRISAT currently does in the region is on rice fallow management. ICRISAT is developing new science tools for groundwater and run-off modeling for on-site and off-site impacts. It was also noted that there is potential for linkages between work by CCAFS, WLE & CRP1.1 in the region.Craig Meisner represented the CPWF Ganges Basin Development Challenge and CRP1.3, Aquatic Agricultural Systems. These programs both focus on coastal zone water management in southern Bangladesh, where production, salinity and poverty low are major problems. Considerable impact has already been achieved in the area, which has attracted Donor interest. Close to USD 1billion investment is foreseen in the coming 1 to 3 years. The \"magic\" to this success is in teams and bringing people together to work on a particular challenge, building on the CPWF work.Water management within the polders in southern Bangladesh is based on division of the polder in smaller hydrological units through the use of rural roads as hydrological boundaries. Local social funds are used to create even smaller boundaries, at the community level. Key in the saline area is drawing out saline water from Ghers in July.Luna Bharati explained that Nepal is characterized by large temporal and spatial variations in availability of water. Only 15% of the water is used. The work of the IWMI Nepal office focuses on two regions; in the highlands it focuses on development, in the lowlands / plains (Terai) the focus is on improving efficiency. Key priorities for improved watershed management are better planning and technologies (storage). There is a need for bridging the policy -implementation gap and supporting farming under climate uncertainty and reducing vulnerability to political instability, as well as managing water resources variability and risks from extreme events.Tushaar Shah explained that IWMI's work in India has a socio-economic emphasis, with focus on institutional issues, particularly related to groundwater and the complexity around irrigation wells, through the IWMI -TATA cooperation. The main thrust of interest is in research for policy related to water and energy uses in irrigation. Power subsidies in western India amount to USD 6 -7 billion per year. Groundwater is overdeveloped and there is no solution to that given the political conundrum.Intelligent rationing has provided some solution to the issue, as for example the rewiring in Gujarat. Big subsidies are given for solar power, but potential problems with this approach have not been given consideration. This calls for changing the focus to improving management.Bhuwon Sthapit provided an overview of Bioversity's work in the region, which focuses on integrating traditional crop genetic diversity into technology, through community based management and local institutions (community seed banks). Variability = diversity -farming diversity (agrobiodiversity). In the hills, seed supply is well networked and as a result vulnerability is low, whereas in the Terai seed supply is less networked, resulting in higher vulnerability.Sanmugam Prathapar presented the outcomes of the workshop titled \"Moving from Water Problems to Water Solutions: Research Needs Assessment for the Eastern Gangetic Plains\" which was organized jointly by WLE and its lead institution IWMI, CCAFS and ACIAR, held earlier this year May 7-8, in New Delhi, India. In that workshop seven concept notes for future projects were developed. Three of these were combined into one proposal to ACIAR. The discussion on entry points and areas of integration revolved around the three focal WLE criteria: 1) efficient use; 2) restore productive capacity; 3) reduce risk & uncertainty. Participants were asked to discuss:• What are elements from current partner activities to focus on?• What are key development challenges / opportunities in Indus / Ganges to focus on -what can we change? (8 -10 years)• What do we see as WLE added value 1 Efficient use:• IFPRI's analysis at household / farm level.• WLE Activity Cluster 4.4 can provide data to point to efficiency or measure efficiency.• Land size, energy and microfinance are issues to consider for increased efficiency. During this discussion some critical questions were asked. Suhas Wani questioned whether we are not getting back into our own silos, e.g. what about rainwater use efficiency and providing sustainable water resources in the region? How to operationalize solutions on the ground? There was some discussion on whether or not a focus on groundwater is really justified. Bhuwon Shtapit noted that biodiversity is not addressed in the list of grand challenges.Participants agreed on the following issues and gaps in the 'grand challenges' that should shape the regional focus 1. Shocks are wider than climate -they include economic and political shocks 2. There should be attention to non-conventional irrigation , such as new technologies for smallholders in the hills 3. A basin focus on energy, benefit sharing, and cross-boundary aspects a. Water allocation b. Institutions 4. There is a need to add in energy 5. Water reuse & recycling and wider water management issues -providing sustainable water resources in a given area; efficient use of water (rainfed / groundwater) 6. There is 'nothing' on ecosystems (shrinking biodiversity / non-irrigated areas) 7. Storage and water management Ganges 1) Outcomes of AWM workshop 2) What are gaps a. Topics b. Partners 3) How to move forward 1) There was agreement that the concept notes that were outputs of Water Management Workshop for the Eastern Gangetic Plains, were good starting points but needed to be complemented with a wider focus on watershed management and ESS to make them more attractive to Donors. Bioversity expressed interest in joining CN1: role of institutions in AWM, led by K Palanisami. It was suggested to combine this concept note with CN2, Gender and labor migration in the EGP, and CN4, Water-energy nexus in the EGP, and to include a mountain watershed too. It was also suggested to combine CN3, Water resources assessment and information systems for the EGP, with CN6, 'Ganges Water Machine'.2) The gaps were perceived to be in ESS and rainfed areas. In India 60% of agriculture is still rainfed, areas which are hotspots of poverty. Transforming rainfed agriculture in the plains has high potential. The conjunctive management of groundwater and rainwater is of high relevance but does not show up in the concept notes. Increasing biodiversity, e.g through integrated trees, crop, livestock systems, is one way of better managing rainfed areas. It was recommended to include particularly the following topics; a. Agrobiodiversity b. Watershed management c. Non-conventional irrigation in hills 3) Agreement was reached on a basin-scale approach with action sites along a 'transect' from upland, lowland, to coastal. Such an approach will allow addressing everything from upstream -downstream interactions to ESS to AWM.The significant decision made on the basis of this discussion was that a \"follow-up\" Ganges workshop will not be held. Instead there was agreement on the following actions:Actions: 1) Upland meeting to be convened by Luna, Suhas, Bhuwon, Tushaar, Amir Khan, near end of the year 2) Lowland; WLE with AAS could initiate a new phase in the coastal zone. Craig Meisner to take this forward at CPWF Ganges meeting (Nov 14) 3) Follow-up on concept notes (Prathapar lead) 4) Concept note of Ganges focal strategy to illustrate the overall approach (Martin lead) 5) Send out call for Expressions of Interest on coordination of focal regionsFor the Indus it was decided that the scope will be initially focused on the western Indus. Short overview of the WLE Focal Region approach WLE works in six focal regions where more than 1 billion of the world's poor live and where persistent problems of poverty persist, aggravated by environmental degradation and low productivity. WLE is developing a regional focal program to address key issues, opportunities and challenges identified in these regions.WLE regional focal programs work according to the following principles:• Addressing one or more key global problems, contextualizing these at the regional level with the commitment to move science results to desired outcomes and impacts.• Focus on integration around a paradigm shift that envisages the recognition that agricultural production systems are \"a wholly owned subsidiary of the ecosystems and natural capital\" they are dependent upon.• Working at multiple scales (farm, landscape, basin, region) regional focal programs integrate the work of at least 3 Strategic Research Portfolios (SRPs)• Building on the work of partners, implementation by partners and share ownership with partners• Long-term commitment to partnerships and working with and through local research partners and boundary partners (those entities whom WLE seeks to influence) for greatest possible impact• Addressing gender specific issues within the regions to enhance the ability of men and women to create vibrant communities, through increased access and control over resources.The overall objectives of the focal region programs are:• Ensure the relevance of WLE research within the regional context, giving active recognition to the role of region-based actors in informing and identifying development priorities;• Link research outputs and outcomes to relevant development processes in regions and so establish integrated Theories of Change (ToC) at the regional or landscape scale;• Define the contribution of WLE to broader regional development trajectories and outcomes;• Define targets where change is expected to come about, who can assist in this process and how;• Establish a dynamic environment where a wide range of partners are involved in the proposed research for development from the outset, respecting the fluid nature of regionbased networks, decision making process and power relationshipsThe overall purpose of this meeting is to discuss how to best design and implement the Focal Region process. As a first step in initiating the WLE regional focal program in the Indus Ganges a planning meeting is being organized to bring together contributing partners of the WLE consortium, particularly their regional representations.The specific objectives of the planning meeting are:• Introduce WLE, regional focal programs and the roll out process• Equip participants with sufficient understanding of WLE and the focal region process to be able to promote the initiative with partners in the region.• Identify initial scope of regional program (where we are thinking of working, issues and opportunities to tackle, how to ensure integration, who are strategic partners to engage)We will also discuss the stakeholder workshop planned tentatively for 23 & 24 October this year, during which we will aim to reach agreement and foster common understanding between WLE and partners / next users about the major development challenges that WLE is best placed to address in the Indus and Ganges, and impact pathways that WLE will seek to follow, linking research to envisaged outcomes.The specific outputs of the planning meeting are:• Draft strategy and action plan for workshop and beyond (focus of workshop, who will do what, partners to include, how to strategically engage different partners, etc.)• Workshop agenda• List of invitees"}

main/part_2/0137888810.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"8007c25877548e4a2daceb8b965ac5a0","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/c82a9708-90a8-4bee-a5f9-59469c5efb2d/retrieve","id":"-1627082450"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"abe927de-8340-4b7a-bfc4-10d1ce4c0973","content":"Agricultural commodity prices started to rise in mid-2020 partly due to supply chain bottlenecks associated with the outbreak of Covid-19. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022 caused an additional spike in commodity prices, particularly those of wheat and maize. This brief estimates the impact of these price increases on poverty in Kenya. It is part of a series of six such briefs that estimate the poverty impact of higher world prices for staple grains. The other briefsKenya is potentially very vulnerable to sharp increases in the prices of key staple grains such as maize and wheat, both because these are important in diets and because Kenya depends on imports of these products. A first step in understanding the impacts of changes in the prices of these products is to examine developments in their prices on world markets. After a long period of relatively stable prices on world markets, the prices of key food staples began to rise from around the beginning of 2020. This period of price increases, spanning the COVID-19 pandemic and then the price shocks following Russia's invasion of Ukraine raised serious concerns about the welfare of poor people in countries such as Kenya. Figure 1 shows the movements in the prices of four key grain staples-maize, rice, sorghum and wheat-from the beginning of 2020.Sources: FAO GIEWS data accessed 3 May 2023. Wheat: US SRW wheat, Gulf Ports; Maize: US #2 Yellow, Gulf; Sorghum: US Export, Gulf; Rice: Thai 5% broken, Bangkok.Figure 1 shows that the world prices of maize, sorghum and wheat began to rise at different points during the COVID-19 pandemic. By February 2022, the wheat price was up 36 percent from its level at the beginning of the pandemic while maize and sorghum prices had risen by 71 and 87 percent. These prices jumped immediately following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with wheat up roughly 80 percent, maize up 100 percent and sorghum up 110 percent over January 2000 levels. Rice prices, by contrast, had not moved far from their initial level.The surge in the prices of wheat and maize following the invasion of Ukraine reflected concerns that the supply of these grains to world markets from Ukraine and Russia-which together accounted for 25 percent of wheat exports and 15 percent of maize exports-would be sharply restricted. As it became clear that these exports would be much less restricted than originally anticipated, prices of these grains declined from their immediate post-invasion peaks. For the marketing year following the invasion (July 2022 to June 2023), total wheat exports from Russia and Ukraine increased by around 15 percent, with Russia's exports rising by roughly one third and Ukraine's declining by 8 percent 1 .While the higher world prices of recent years created incentives to increase supply and to reduce demand in many markets, these price increases were not passed through into many markets. This, in turn, forced world prices to go higher than otherwise to balance global supply and demand. For wheat, price insulation appears to have roughly doubled the increases in world prices during the COVID pandemic and between February and May 2022 (Martin and Minot 2022). When assessing the impacts of world prices on the welfare of poor people, it is vitally important to consider the extent of price insulation. Clearly, when world prices rise and domestic prices are insulated against some or all of the price increase, any adverse impacts on vulnerable people are mitigated. But, against that, the collective impact of price insulation is to magnify the increase in world prices, increasing the impact of the original shock to world prices.A key influence on the importance of any staple food for poverty is its share in total calorie consumption, particularly given that the diets of the poor contain a larger share of starchy staples than those of better-off individuals. Foods that contribute only a trivial share of calorie consumption are unlikely to have a major impact on the welfare of poor people, even if their prices change dramatically. This share is shown in Table 1 for each of the key staples whose price rose sharply during the COVID and Ukraine crises. This Table reveals that the calorie share for maize is much higher than for wheat or sorghum in Kenya.As shown by Deaton (1989) the importance of a staple food in the diet is not the only factor that determines the impact of a price change in a country where subsistence production is important. Rather, what matters is the difference between the share of the good in total income and its share in total expenditures-the so-called Net Benefit Ratio (NBR) for the food. Table 1 shows that the average share of household income from maize is much smaller than the share of expenditure for each staple food. The NBR as a percentage of initial income is larger in absolute value for maize (at 3.4 percent) than it is for wheat (2.5 percent) and for Sorghum (0.1 percent). These results show that average household real incomes are likely to fall by 0.34 percent for a 10 percent increase in the price of maize, by 0.25 and 0.01 percent for the same rise in the prices of wheat or sorghum. What matters for household incomes in Kenya is not changes in world prices, but rather changes in domestic prices. Table 2 presents the changes in world and in domestic prices relative to January 2020 prices. Because inflation rates in Kenya were around 6 percent over much of this period, increases in nominal prices would tend to overstate the impact of price increases on the real economic welfare of Kenyan people. For this reason, the domestic price changes are presented in real as well as nominal terms, where real prices are adjusted for inflation using the Kenyan consumer price index.Table 2 shows dramatic differences between the three prices reported for each commodity. For example, the 30 percent increase in world wheat prices prior to the Ukraine invasion is associated with only a one percent increase in real domestic prices. The further 46 percentage point increase in world wheat prices to May 2022 has no apparent impact on domestic real prices, which rose only by six percentage points. The sharp decline in world wheat prices to July 2022 translated into a price decline of only one percentage point. The real domestic price for maize decreased by 14 percent during the COVID pandemic, in sharp contrast with the 61 percent increase in world prices during this period. The sharp rise in world prices following the Ukraine invasion was associated with a similarly sharp increase in domestic prices, while the decline in world prices to July 2022 was associated with a further increase in real domestic maize prices, leaving domestic real prices substantially higher than in January 2020. Finally, the real price of sorghum changed in line with world prices, although by smaller percentage changes throughout. We don't consider price changes after July 2022 since, as shown in Figure 1, the world prices for maize, sorghum and wheat remained in the same broad range well into 2023. Source: All prices from FAO-GIEWS except IMF data for US Sorghum at Gulf used for its world priceThe differences between movements in domestic and world prices are particularly striking. For maize, the government does not determine domestic prices, although it can influence them by announcing prices at which it will buy maize (USDA 2023). Most maize imports are sourced from regional partners, and especially Tanzania, which are subject to zero duties, but the nominal rate of protection (NRP) for maize has consistently been positive, averaging 21 percent over 2011 to 2020 (AgIncentives 2023). A quick comparison of prices in Kampala and those in Eldoret, Kenya over the period January 2020 to January 2023 using GIEWS data finds an average price about $40 per tonne higher in Eldoret, with a correlation of 0.87. This suggests that the prices in these interior markets are strongly linked except for a margin that is likely related to transport costs, with both potentially somewhat isolated from movements in world prices.For wheat, Kenya was heavily dependent on imports over the period of interest-importing around 90 percent of total consumption. Surprisingly, protection to wheat appears to have been -17 percent in 2019, before the COVID era increases in world prices (AgIncentives 2023), despite a reported 10 percent tariff on wheat imports (USDA 2022). The sharp increases in world prices must have caused the protection rate to become more strongly negative in 2021 and 2022 as local prices declined relative to world prices.Figure 2 compares poverty rates at baseline prices with those for the three key time periods considered in the analysis. The analysis uses the changes in domestic real prices of maize, sorghum and wheat over the periods considered in Table 2, combined with detailed information on income and expenditure patterns of each household in a nationally representative survey of Kenya. We are very conscious that the inflation rate of around six percent prevailing in Kenya over this period2 will have generated some winners, such as those benefiting from higher commodity prices, and some losers, such as those dependent on fixed nominal wages or prices but measuring the extent of those impacts is both beyond the scope of our analysis and very challenging. By focusing on the real price impacts, we capture the welfare impacts of changes in the prices of grains relative to the prices of other goods.Clearly, poverty rates are much higher and increase much more in percentage point terms in rural areas than in urban areas, with rural poverty rising from 41.2 percent in the pre-pandemic baseline to 42.5 percent in July 2022. Because the poverty rate is lower in urban areas, the share of people vulnerable to falling into poverty is smaller than in rural areas. Almost all the estimated rise in poverty is due to increases in the real price of maize, which both had the largest price increases and the greatest leverage on the poverty rate because of its relatively large adverse Net Benefit Ratio.Source: Authors' calculations based on changes in real prices of maize, wheat, and sorghum and household income and expenditure patterns.One key question about the results in Figure 2 is the extent to which the insulation of Kenya's domestic markets from the increases in world prices helped to reduce the impact on poverty. Another is whether the use of real price changes, rather than nominal price changes, would greatly affect the estimated poverty impacts. To address these questions, Figure 3  The figure shows that the increases in poverty would have been dramatically different under the scenario of full price transmission relative to the assumption based on observed changes in domestic real prices. Had cereal prices risen in line with world price changes, poverty would have risen by over three percentage points at the peak of the Ukraine crisis in May of 2022 and over two percentage points after prices fell from that peak. Most of the increases in poverty are due to the rise in maize prices, with sorghum and wheat price rises playing a much smaller role. Even with the much more modest increases in domestic prices actually experienced, the rise in poverty of one percentage point is cause for concern.The benefit to many vulnerable Kenyan households facing smaller increases in real food prices is clearly substantial in this case. But this should not automatically lead to endorsement of price insulation as a policy for developing countries more generally. Based on results by Martin and Minot (2022), around half the increase in world wheat prices following the Ukraine invasion came from countries insulating their markets against increases in world prices. While attractive to countries individually, it is collectively much less effective in reducing poverty impacts because it raises the world prices that are the source of concern to countries using this type of policy. Only those countries that insulate to a greater than average extent can expect to face smaller price increases than they would if all countries refrained from price insulation (Anderson, Martin and Ivanic 2017).The final bars in the chart show that the increases in poverty would have been larger had the nominal price increases-rather than real price increases-been used as the basis for the calculations. The impact on the results was greater in the final period when prices of other goods have risen the most. In this case, the poverty increase based on the increase in nominal grain prices is 1.8 percentage points as against 1.0 percent when the real price changes are used.Notes: The first bar in each set is based on changes in real domestic prices; the second on the assumption that domestic prices moved in line with world prices and the third on use of nominal, as distinct from real, price changes.The analysis presented in this brief highlights some important points. The first is that world prices of key staple foods such as maize, wheat and sorghum can be extremely volatile, with sharp but often short-lived increases in prices having particularly dramatic impacts. With household survey data that are now widely available, it is possible to assess the short-run impacts of price changes on household incomes, and hence on poverty rates using simple, robust techniques.In Kenya, as in many other developing countries, net purchases of staple grains by households tend to exceed net sales, sometimes by a substantial margin. This, and the importance of these foods as sources of calories contribute to a situation in which the short-run impact of higher prices on poverty can be substantial. However, it may be quite misleading to assume that domestic prices will move in line with world prices. In Kenya, real domestic maize prices declined by around 14 percent during the COVID pandemic, while world prices rose by over 60 percent. They then increased both during the world price spike following the invasion of Ukraine and the May-June 2022 period when world prices fell precipitously. Wheat prices rose much less than world prices during the Covid pandemic and the surge in prices. The price of sorghum rose substantially, although by less than the increase in world prices.Kenya's insulation from the increases in world prices of recent years appears to have substantially reduced the large (over three percentage points) increase in poverty rates that would have occurred with full price transmission at the peak of the Ukraine crisis. It should be remembered, however, that a large part of the increase in world prices resulted from the widespread practice of price insulation worldwide.This study is part of a series of case studies that IFPRI is undertaking to assess the impact of higher commodity prices on income and poverty in developing countries. The analysis presented is an initial impact assessment designed to estimate the impact of higher food prices on poverty in selected countries. The initial set of case studies covers Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali. The analysis may be extended to cover other countries in the future."}

main/part_2/0157693551.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"017b011d50c6f2d0ece21693cda1474b","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://council.science/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/SDGs-interactions-framework.pdf","id":"-1677093755"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"aed64bee-c49f-4627-a9ae-0399c99d6708","content":"Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by world leaders in September 2015 at a historic United Nations Summit and underpinned by 17 Sustainable Development Goals (sdgs) and their associated 169 targets, began on 1 January 2016. The sdgs are expected to guide governments as they work to address some of the most pressing challenges facing humanity.The sdgs were developed following the United Nations Con f e rence on Sustainable Development in 2012 ('Rio+20') and build on the Millennium Development Goals (mdgs) adopted in September 2000 as part of the un Millennium Declaration. The sdgs provide a more holistic and integrated approach to development than the mdgs, thus continuing the legacy of the Brundtland Commission (un, 1987) and the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (un, 1992). They are designed to be universal and therefore apply to all countries -poor, rich and middle-income alike -and to all segments of society. Although each focuses on a different topic area, the sdgs are meant to be integrated, indivisible and collectively support a development agenda balancing the econ o mic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainability. (see blue text below)While not legally binding, the sdgs do provide a globally endorsed normative framework for development. Governments and other stakeholders are expected to establish national and regional plans for their implementation. The 2030 Agenda is nei t her a blueprint for specific action nor for navigating the complexities and trade-offs that will undoubtedly emerge during implementation.The Sustainable Development Goals (sdgs) promote human dignity and prosperity while safeguarding the Earth's vital biophysical processes and ecosystem services. They recognise that ending poverty and inequality must go hand-in-hand with strategies that support sustainable economic growth, peace and justice; address fundamental social needs, including education, health, social protection, and job opportunities; and do all this while also tackling climate change and enhancing environmental protection. Detailed information on the 17 sdgs and their associated 169 targets is available at https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/?menu=1300.Although governments have stressed the integrated, indivisible and interlinked nature of the sdgs (un, 2015), important interactions and interdependencies are generally not explicit in the description of the goals or their associated targets. In 2015, the International Council for Science (icsu) identified some inte r act ions across sdgs at the goal and target-level (icsu and issc, 2015). This report goes further, by exploring the important interlinkages within and between these goals and associated targets to support a more strategic and integrated implementation. Specifically, the report presents a framework for characterising the range of positive and negative interactions between the various sdgs, building on the work of Nilsson et al. (2016), and tests this app roach by applying it to an initial set of four sdgs: sdg 2, sdg 3, sdg 7 and sdg 14. This selection presents a mixture of key sdgs aimed at human well-being, ecosystem services and natural resources, but does not imply any prioritisation.While the scientific community has emphasised the need for a systems approach to sustainable development (e.g. gea, 2012;pbl, 2012;sei, 2012;Stafford Smith et al., 2012), policymakers now face the challenge of implementing the sdgs simultaneously with the aim of achieving progress across the economic, social and environmental dimensions worldwide.This work provides a starting point to addressing this challenge. It has been led by icsu with the support of several internationally renowned scientific institutes, including the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (iass), the Kiel based Future Ocean cluster, the International Food Policy Research Institute (ifpri), the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (ird), the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (iiasa), Monash University, the New Zealand Centre for Sustainable Cities, and the Stockholm Environment Institute (sei). It is based on the premise that a science-informed analysis of interactions across sdg domains, and how these interactions might play out in different contexts, can support more coherent and effective decision-making, and better facilitate follow-up and monitoring of progress. Such an analysis will also make it possible to better highlight inequalities concerning progress made, which will in turn make it easier to identify corrective measures as well as help to avoid unintended side-effects.The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is often referred to as an integrated agenda and its advocates frequently describe it as an 'indivisible whole'. What does this mean in practice? First, in contrast to the conception of the Rio 'pillars' of economic development, social development and environmental protection, the three dimensions of sustainable development are described in the introductory sections of the 2030 Agenda as intertwined, cutting across the entire Agenda. These interactions also featured strongly in the deliberations of the Open Working Group that developed the sdgs. In fact, while most of the 17 sdgs have a clear starting point in one of the three pillars, most actually embed all three dimensions within their targets. For example, sdg 2 \"End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture\" contains targets with social (e.g. malnutrition and vulnerability), economic (e.g. agricultural productivity and agricultural trade) and environmental dimensions (e.g. genetic diversity and climate resilience). Second, there are significant interactions between sdgs. Continuing with the example of sdg 2, a commonly discussed set of interactions lies in the nexus between food, water and energy (Weitz et al., 2014) as reflected in the linkages between sdg 2, sdg 6 and sdg 7. For instance, water is required in the energy sector for cooling in thermal power plants and for generating hydro-electricity; energy is required for residential and industrial water usage, and for pumping water for irrigation; and water is needed for all food and bioenergy production. Third, because of the strength of these linkages, achieving targets under these goals can lead to trade-offs between competing interests: for example, food production may compete with bioenergy production for the same land or water. Finally, the sdg2 targets interact with a much broader set of targets and goals, such as those preventing childhood death (target 3.2), reducing food waste (target 12.3), encouraging sustainable business practices (target 12.6), conserving marine areas (target 14.5) and ensuring rights to control over land and natural resources (target 1.4).Articulating and understanding the many interlinkages helps to explain why the 2030 Agenda must indeed be treated as an 'indivisible whole'. However, in that phrase there is a hidden presumption that the interactions between goals and targets arefor the most part -mutually supporting: in order to make progress in one area, progress must also be made in others. Yet, both the research community and policymakers have already highlighted that there can be conflicts and trade-offs between goals (pbl, 2012;irp, 2015;LeBlanc, 2015).Given budgetary, political and resource constraints, as well as specific needs and policy agendas, countries are likely to prioritise certain goals, targets and indicators over others. As a result of the positive and negative interactions between goals and targets, this prioritisation could lead to negative developments for 'nonprioritised' goals and targets. An example is the po ten tial prioritisation of sdg 2, whose progress might well lead to adverse impacts for several of the sdg 15 targets (on ter res trial ecosystems), for example by converting rainforest to agriculture. Even if countries continue under business-as-usual conditions for agricultural production, terrestrial ecosystems could deteriorate below current levels within a short timeframe. Moreover, due to globalisation and increasing trade of goods and services, many policies and other interventions have implications that are trans boundary in nature, such that pursuing objectives in one region can impact on other countries or regions' pursuit of their objectives. For example, there could be increased deforestation in some countries as a result of enforced logging bans in other, often neighbouring, countries, or there could be changes in national trading policies that impact on the availability of goods and services in other countries. Similarly, pursuing a policy for biofuels in one region can drive up prices of food crops else -where and thus foster hunger for the poorest -yet, sustain able development of biofuels could also encourage investment and market developments that im prove overall food security (Osseweijer et al., 2015;Kline et al., 2016).In the policy arena, most discussions about coherence and interlinkages in the 2030 Agenda have focused on either simply establishing that there is a link, or discussing the existence of trade-offs and synergies between topic areas (representing whether an interaction is broadly beneficial or adverse) and the need to map them and identify ways to alleviate or remove trade-offs or their costs, as well as maximise synergies (e.g. pbl, 2012; irp, 2015).However, interactions between sdgs currently have a weak conceptual and scientific underpinning, and there is a clear need for approaches and tools that can support analysis of the na ture and strengths of these interactions, and the extent to which they constrain or enable policy and action. Indeed, there is a need to develop guidance and tools that can help policymakers, investors and other actors to identify and manage the benefits and risks of achieving the various goals and targets. In particular, it is important to deploy a more nuanced view of interactions, and to move the discourse beyond the simple notion of trade-offs and synergies. Attempts have been made in recent years. For example, Weitz et al. (2014) and Coopman et al. (2016) applied an approach for interlinkages with three categories -supporting, enabling and relying (with sub-categories). International agencies have also published increasingly advanced approaches to identifying and evaluating interactions (e.g. unesco, 2016; un, 2016).Thinking carefully about sdg interactions and more specifically about the range of different types of interaction is im portant because they may have very different implications in terms of implementation action. The nature and dynamics of the interactions need to be better understood before policy can be formulated, including the setting of context-specific (such as nat io nal or local) targets and indicators. Such analyses should be conducted with a view to providing a useable knowledge base for both policy-level decision support and the design of implementation strategies.In short, there is a lack of information on this topic and more research is needed. For this reason, icsu (2016) and Nilsson et al. (2016) have developed a tool, or framework, whereby interactions between sdgs and targets are classified on a seven-point ordinal scale, indicating the nature of the interaction with other targets, and the extent to which the relationship is positive or negative (see graphic p. 24). This framework has been applied throughout the individual chapters of the current report. One objective directly creates conditions that lead to the achievement of another objective.Increasing economic benefits from sustainable marine resources use (14.7) reinforces the creation of decent jobs and small enterprise in e.g. tourism (8.5 and 8.9)The framework identifies categories of causal and functional re lations underlying progress or achievement of goals and targets.The scale ranges from -3 to +3, from instances where progress on one target acts to cancel progress on another to where progress on one goal is inextricably linked to progress on another.Complementing the scale are a number of key dimensions (time, geography, governance, technology, directionality) that de scribe the interactions and define the context in which they occur. Most interaction scores depend on these dimensionsand putting in place the right policies and technologies might shift the score to a more positive one.To be more specific, positive interactions are assigned scores of either +1 ('enabling'), +2 ('reinforcing'), or +3 ('indivisible'), while interactions characterised by trade-offs are scored with -1 ('constraining'), -2 ('counteracting'), and -3 ('cancelling'). Thus, the magnitude of the score, in whichever direction, provides an indication of how influential a given sdg or target is on another. For instance, a value of +1 corresponds to an 'enabling' relationship, wherein the achievement of one objective (such as providing electricity access in rural homes, sdg 7) creates con di tions for furthering another (such as child and adult edu cation, sdg 4). Meanwhile a higher score of +3 corresponds to an 'indivi sible' relationship, wherein one objective is inextricably linked to the achievement of another. For example, ending all forms of discrimination against women and girls (target 5.1) is absolu tely necessary for ensuring women's full and effective partici pation in society (target 5.5). As an example of a negative inter action, the relationship between on the one hand boosting a country's economic growth (target 8.1) and on the other reducing waste generation (target 12.5) might be assigned a score of -2 ('counteracting'), since the former potentially clashes with the latter (unless mechanisms are put in place to prevent this, such as circular economy strategies that include effective waste prevention or substantially increasing recycling rates). Fin al ly, for sdgs and targets exhibiting no significant posi tive or negative interactions, a score of 0 ('consistent') is assigned. Because interactions can manifest at the broad goal level, the more detailed target-level and even at the level of individual development actions, the framework has been designed to be applicable across multiple geographic scales (local to global), and for determining the impacts of planned actions as well as for evaluating the wider implications of actions that have already taken place.Not all linkages between sdgs and targets will fall neatly into one of the seven points on the scale, but the scale does provide a sufficiently wide range to classify most relationships.Choosing the level at which to apply the scale (goal, target or action) depends on the purpose of the assessment. In some cases, having reached a target, the issue is then whether this will directly affect another policy area or target under the same goal or under another goal. The focus then shifts to the physical interaction -how one set of conditions in society or the environment affects our ability to attain another set of objectives. In other cases, the issue could be how policy instruments, actions or investments put in place to pursue one sdg target would affect the ability to pursue another policy area. The latter reflects standard impact assess ment procedure, and can be used to mitigate negative interactions already in the project or policy formulation stage.In practice, it will usually be a combination of examining ins tru ments and targets that is required to identify an effec tive strategy. For example, the introduction of a fuel tax to promote energy efficiency (target 7.3) will have certain distributional (sdg 10) consequences, such that lower income or rural populations are disproportionately affected by the tax, although improved energy efficiency in itself may not have such consequences. It should be possible both to simulate implementation strategies with integrated assessment models that test the relation ship and monitor empirically the nature of interactions during implemen t ation in reality. Over time, with the support of the scientific community, those in charge of monitoring the sdgs should be able to develop an ever improving dataset for systematically monitoring progress.It should be noted that the position of a given interaction on the seven-point scale is rarely absolute. The position and nature of the interaction depend on the context within which the interaction occurs. It should also be clear that a good development action is one where all negative interactions are avoided or at least minimised, while at the same time maximising significant positive interactions; but this by no means suggests that policymakers should avoid attempting progress in those targets and goals that are associated with significant negative interactions -it merely suggests that in these cases policymakers should tread more car efully when designing policies and strategies.A number of dimensions can be used to contextualise the assessment of specific synergies and trade-offs, providing deeper insights into elements and areas that the sdg-and target-level interactions depend on. These include directionality, placespecific context dependencies, governance, technology and timeframe. Each is now discussed in turn, with examples given to aid the explanation. In case-study analysis, it is important to discuss these contextual considerations at the same time as the assigned score. Understanding what interactions depend on, or whether they are intrinsic, is key to mitigating negative interactions and maximising positive ones. In other words, changes in these dimensions can often enable a shift from a negative to a more positive interaction, or vice versa. Also, an analysis of a given interaction should, if possible, include an assessment of the uncertainty given the current state of knowledge.Interaction between two sdgs or targets can be unidirectional, bidirectional, circular or multiple. A unidirectional relationship means that objective A affects B, but B does not affect A. For example, electricity access (target 7.1) is needed for powering clinics and hospitals for the delivery of essential health care services (target 3.8), but health care services in clinics and hospitals are not needed for providing electricity access. On the other hand, a bidirectional relationship means that A affects B, and B affects A. For example, providing more access to transport today (target 11.2) is likely to lead to higher greenhouse gas emissions (target 13.2), thus exacerbating climate change, while measures taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions can constrain transport access. In the case of bidirectionality, interactions can also be symmetrical (where the impact is similar in type and strength) or, more commonly, asymmetrical, where A affects B more, or in different ways, compared to how B affects A. In a circular relationship A affects B, which affects C, which in turn affects A. In a multiple relationship A affects B, C, D etc.A comprehensive approach that takes into account directionality can be pursued whereby sdg targets are presented in a matrix and juxtaposed, and all potential interactions are analysed and scored, including A to B and B to A.Some relationships are generic across borders while others are highly location-specific; and the scale of the analysis can have a significant effect on results. For example, the issue of trade-off between bioenergy (target 7.2) and food (sdg 2), which has gained significant attention in policy debates (see for example, Rosegrant et al., 2008) does not appear prominently in northern European countries such as Sweden or Finland (Ericsson et al., 2004). On the contrary, farmers and forest owners can both benefit from the diversification of markets, because it makes their supply chains less vulnerable as a whole. As a result, farmers may invest more and both food systems production and energy systems are stronger (Kline et al., 2016).However, such geography-dependent relationships can have significant spill-over effects, due to international trade. Hence, even if bioenergy in the Nordic countries is not considered to affect their food security, a change in their food export patterns in response to increased national bioenergy production would still impact food security globally, through changes in trade and international prices of agricultural commodities. This dependency is not limited to natural conditions, but can include level of development, configuration of political and economic interests, social and cultural attitudes, and many other aspects.Thus, what constitutes a positive interaction and a negative interaction can differ from one context to another and from one scale to the next. Hence scientific evidence in one area that does not hold for a different scale or target area may appear highly contradictory at first glance. But using the sdgs as a know l edge management grid could help to clarify what evidence refers to what context, and how knowledge can be generalised.In some cases, the negative nature of a relationship can be the result of poor governance. For example, industrialisation (target 9.2) has sometimes been associated with infringement of rights (target 1.4), where commercial actors have taken over lands used by local communities without consultation or compensation and with the exclusion of those communities from work opportunities. However, this negative interaction is not necessarily intrinsic to the industrial activity itself, but rather derives from inadequate governance. Negative impacts on local communities are more likely to occur, or tend to be stronger, when institutions and rights are weak.In some cases, while a strong trade-off may exist, there may be technologies that, when deployed, will significantly mitigate this trade-off, or even remove it. One example is growth in mobility (namely personal motorised transport) which, at present, conflicts with climate change mitigation efforts. In the future, however, the transition towards zero -emission cars fuelled by renewable electricity could largely remove this trade-off. However personal vehicle impact on land-use change will remain.Some interactions develop in real time, while others show significant time lags. For example, increases in fertiliser use will boost agricultural productivity that season (target 2.4), thereby increasing food availability and contributing to food security over the short term. Similarly, harvesting remaining fish stocks can have important food security (target 2.1), nutrition (target 2.2) and poverty alleviation (target 1.1) benefits in the short term, possibly to 2030. However, these practices might well have longerterm adverse impacts on several sdgs, ranging from sdg 14 on the sustainable use of oceans to sdg 2, sdg 15 and sdg 1, among others. Moreover, some interactions may be restricted in time to the actual period of intervention (i.e. when the intervention ceases, the interaction stops), while others are irreversible or take a very long time to dissipate (i.e. until the affected systems recover). Irreversible impacts are well known in land and ocean eco sys tems, such as species extinction, collapsed fisheries or eutrophication (e.g. in the Baltic Sea, Lindegren, 2009;helcom, 2010).By systematically assessing the interactions and relationships between sdgs and targets, this report aims to support horizontal cohe rence across sectors. Coherence can be defined as \"an attribute of policy that systematically reduces conflicts and promotes synergies between and within different policy areas to achieve the outcomes associated with jointly agreed policy objectives\" (Nilsson et al., 2012:396). However, it is also important to keep in mind the other dimensions of policy coherence (oecd, 2016, see graphic). These additional dimensions, that become visible during implementation, concern alignment between and across countries, across levels of government, across governance mechanisms, and across the implementation continuum.An important type of coherence relationship exists across transnational jurisdictions. This ties in directly to the policy coherence for development agenda (oecd, 2016) -observing to what extent the pursuit of objectives in one country has international repercussions or affects the abilities of another to pursue its sovereign objectives.In addition, coherence relationships need to be observed across multiple levels of government. Here, in the context of the 2030 Agenda, there may be a mismatch between the goals and targets established at the global level, and the agenda as interpreted at national level and acted upon at the local level. Coherence can also be examined across governance interventions. For example, policymakers and planners put in place different legal frameworks, investment frameworks, capacity development mechanisms and policy instruments that may or may not pull in the same direction. In fact, it is often the case that while new policies and goals can be easily introduced, institutional capacities for implementation are not aligned with the new policy designs, because the former are commonly more difficult to develop (oecd, 2016;Gupta and Nilsson, 2017).Finally, coherence relationships should be considered along the implementation continuum: from policy objective, through instruments and measures agreed, to implementation on the ground. The latter often deviates substantially from the original policy intentions, as actors make their interpretations and institutional barriers and drivers influence their response to the policy (Pressman and Wildavsky, 1973;Nilsson et al., 2012). Subsequent chapters apply the framework as presented here to key interactions for sdg 2, sdg 3, sdg 7 and sdg 14. This selection presents a mixture of key sdgs aimed at human well-being, ecosystem services and natural resources, but does not imply any prioritisation.The chapters follow a similar structure. Each starts by presenting an overview of interactions between a single sdg (the 'entry goal' focus of the chapter) and the other 16 sdgs, staying at goal level. Taking into account all the underlying targets of the entry goal, a set of key interactions is then identified between the entry goal targets and those of numerous other sdgs, principally interactions within the range of the highest magnitude or stron gest impacts based on available scientific literature and ex pert knowledge. Using the typology and seven-point scale described earlier, the chapter then provides an assessment of the selected target-level interactions and the context in which they typically occur. Illustrative examples from different world regions show how these linkages manifest in practice. Policy options are identified for how to maximise positive interactions and minimise negative interactions between now and 2030, and beyond. Each chapter concludes with a list of key knowledge gaps related to the interactions studied.The scoring approach described here offers a means by which multidimensional, complex and wide-ranging scientific evidence can be 'translated' and summarised in the form of an interpretive framework. The end product is such that evi dence gathered from scientific research can be fed into deliberations between policymakers for different topic areas in an accessible, understandable and directly comparable form.The report does not aim to present a fully comprehensive analysis of all possible interactions for a given sdg and its underlying targets. Rather, the aim is to illustrate, by focusing on a subset of the key interactions, how the scoring framework can be applied in practice. Going forward, a comprehensive analysis of this type could, and should, be carried out on all sdgs. It is hoped that this report inspires the development and synthesis of empirical research on interactions across all the sdgs in different parts of the world, and among different scientific and policy communities."}

main/part_2/0161537658.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"e4225e3dd00e7358feaa6ee84ff7d9d7","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/c84e6286-9009-4015-812e-e578c9bafbaf/retrieve","id":"1898984932"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"3f60ce65-19f1-4a0e-9f10-7b752da4ed11","content":"r e g i o n a l h i g h l i g h t s 2 2012 Regional Highlightshigh population pressure on land, (iv) the proximity to large local and regional markets and processing centers, and (v) the presence of ongoing complementary projects dealing with specific aspects of this strategy.Already in 2000 we envisioned a decentralized IITA that would be able to better and more efficiently to do research in the countries that we work in. The Western Africa Hub was the I t is with great pleasure that I present to you IITA's 2012 Regional Highlights. This report, which complements the institute's corporate annual report, showcases research-for-development activities in each of the institute's four regional hubs: Central Africa, Eastern Africa, Southern Africa, and Western Africa.We work in countries that represent all the agroecological zones across sub-Saharan Africa (Figure 1). As stated in the IITA Refreshed strategy 2012-2020, our research agenda will be implemented within four impact zones, representing major agroecological zones and farming systems. These impact zones are based on: (i) the large population depending on these systems for food and nutritional security and income, (ii) an understanding of farm baseline conditions and opportunities based on past research, (iii) the need for intensification due to Each Hub is administered by a regional director: Dr Bernard Vanlauwe for Central Africa, Dr Victor Manyong for Eastern Africa, Dr David Chikoye for Southern Africa, and Dr Robert Asiedu for Western Africa. The Hubs oversee the operations of our research work and projects in their respective regions (Figure 2). The Regional Hubs represent important strategic assets to remain engaged in local and regional contexts, establishing partnerships and mobilizing resources, implementing research programs, and managing risks -in short, they define IITA as an institution.I would like to invite you -partners, investors, and stakeholders -to read this regional highlights report, as well as the accompanying corporate annual report, to see the breadth and depth of our research for development work and impact in the past year. These reports are also in testament to your continued support of our mission and vision of a hunger-and poverty-free Africa. "}

main/part_2/0163380715.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"5ad8964622949a74f97e4323b4484e4f","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/b015bb57-409f-4e74-9ce0-ef1ffe5d64ce/retrieve","id":"-1944205417"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"84b1bc04-44c5-4272-9ba1-a5e6571dc5c0","content":"Under an agreement, the Centre for Advanced Water Research (CAWR), one of the GRIPP partners, provides technical support on the online publication platform (https://journals.qucosa.de/gripp) for the GRIPP Case Profile Series, offers editorial support to editors and prospective authors, and registers the series with Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).Front cover photograph shows the collective monitoring of groundwater levels under the Andhra Pradesh Farmer-Managed Groundwater Systems (APFAMGS) project in India (photo: Jacob Burke, formerly Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [FAO]).The GRIPP Case Profile Series provides concise documentation and insight on groundwater solution initiatives from around the world to practitioners, decision makers and the general public. Each case profile report covers a contemporary intervention (innovation, technology or policy) or a series of applied groundwater management-related approaches aimed at enhancing groundwater sustainability from an environmental and socioeconomic perspective at local, national or international level. Integrated analysis of the approach, background, drivers, stakeholders, implementation, experiences and outcomes are discussed with a view to illustrating best practices, factors that could lead to success or failure, and wider applicability.Participatory Management and Sustainable Use of Groundwater A Review of the Andhra Pradesh Farmer-Managed Groundwater Systems Project in IndiaEste Perfil de caso del GRIPP evalúa si la participación proactiva de las comunidades rurales en la gestión de las aguas subterráneas contribuye positivamente al uso sostenible del recurso. La evaluación utiliza como estudio de caso el proyecto de larga duración (2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013) sobre Sistemas de aguas subterráneas gestionadas por campesinos de Andhra Pradesh (APFAMGS) en la India. La evaluación, aplicada en siete distritos, se basa en la revisión crítica y síntesis de la bibliografía existente y en visitas adicionales sobre el terreno realizadas cinco años después de la finalización del proyecto. El APFAMGS tenía como objetivo concienciar y producir cambios de comportamiento para lograr un uso sostenible de las aguas subterráneas, principalmente para el riego. El enfoque se centró en la transferencia de conocimientos y el fortalecimiento de capacidades para establecer procesos participativos susceptibles de favorecer medidas de gestión informales, así como en las tecnologías de apoyo al seguimiento hidrológico participativo y a la evaluación de las necesidades de agua para los cultivos. Además, fue fundamental sensibilizar acerca de las opciones de gestión de la demanda y abastecimiento de agua. El análisis indica que el APFAMGS ha contribuido a colmar las lagunas de conocimiento e información sobre los recursos hídricos subterráneos entre las comunidades agrícolas locales. Se ha observado cierto grado de reducción a largo plazo del bombeo de aguas subterráneas, pero no está claro si esto es atribuible al proyecto, y los efectos en la reducción del descenso del nivel de las aguas subterráneas pueden ser limitados y localizados. El enfoque del APFAMGS para la gestión participativa de las aguas subterráneas presentó limitaciones en lo que se refiere a los aspectos de equidad, con implicaciones para la sostenibilidad institucional del enfoque. El estudio proporciona orientación para promover a mayor escala instituciones más inclusivas y basadas en la gestión participativa de las aguas subterráneas. The disconnect between natural ecosystems and human systems represents a major bottleneck for sustainable management of natural resources (Sayers et al. 2016). This is particularly apparent in arid and semiarid environments that are heavily dependent on groundwater resources for livelihoods based on irrigated agriculture. Despite being a common-pool resource, groundwater development is primarily in the hands of private individuals (i.e., people acting only through self-interest and not representing any group, company or organization), because groundwater rights are linked to land rights in India (Saleth 1996). As a result of this and the high capital investment needed, groundwater development is undertaken by landowning, wealthier households aiming to profit from irrigated agriculture. The adverse impacts of groundwater overexploitation are, however, often disproportionately borne by small and marginal farmers, because they cannot afford to drill deeper as groundwater levels drop (Reddy 2005). This is particularly the case in areas occupied by hard rock aquifers, where drilling costs are higher. The failure of groundwater wells, one of the reasons for farmer suicides in India, is, in part, an outcome of these externalities, especially in drought-prone areas (Deshpande 2002;Reddy and Galab 2006).Until recently, no concrete efforts were made in India to bring groundwater under an appropriate system of management.The national model groundwater bill of 1970 1 largely serves as a guideline for documenting and notifying the status of groundwater development, while any regulatory and enforcement mechanisms are under the authority of individual state governments. Still, at the state level, groundwater has not been included in the more important water management initiatives, such as water users' associations (WUAs). 2 However, with rapidly increasing groundwater use and mounting signs of widespread depletion, state policy interventions have attempted to better manage the resource. Related policy advances vary across different states and union territories depending on the status of groundwater development and the socioeconomic and policy context. 3 Various formal approaches and methods, including demand management 4 and supply management, 5 have been implemented to restore groundwater levels. Despite the greater focus on groundwater, the impact of those efforts has been limited primarily due to the lack of enforcement, and where successful, the scalability depends highly on the socioeconomic conditions and political environment (Shah 2014).The failure of formal regulatory approaches has led India to experiment with informal, participatory groundwater management (PGM) initiatives 6 over recent decades (Shah 2014). Various participatory or community-based groundwater management interventions have been tried in different parts of India (Box 1). While some of these initiatives are funded by state governments, others are funded by bilateral funding agencies and local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).Although most of these are small-scale initiatives (Verma et al. 2012;Reddy et al. 2014;Shah 2014;Sravanthi et al. 2015), some state governments in India are taking a keen interest in supporting and scaling up these initiatives, but not through formal institutions. 71 The model groundwater bill was subsequently revised in 1972, 1996, 2005, 2011and 2017(GoI 2020a).2 Participatory irrigation (via WUAs) has become a widespread strategy in Asia, Africa and Latin America to facilitate decentralization of the role of governments and enhancing the role of primary stakeholders in irrigation management. This, in principle, reduces public expenditure on irrigation, improves productivity, and helps to maintain irrigation systems. In India, a number of states (e.g., Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Odisha) initiated WUAs during the late 1990s and early 2000s. For instance, Andhra Pradesh has created 10,790 WUAs covering the entire command area (including canal and tank systems, but not groundwater irrigation systems) of the state at a cost of INR 5,000 crore (USD 710 million) with support from the World Bank (Reddy and Reddy 2005). 3 States such as Telangana continue to pursue supply side management (development of surface irrigation and recharging of groundwater), while some states, such as Andhra Pradesh, are supporting participatory groundwater management (PGM) initiatives. 4 Formal institutions for demand management include market-based approaches (e.g., private property rights, which respond to market instruments, pricing of water and energy, etc.), technology-based approaches (e.g., subsidies for micro-irrigation and other water-saving technologies), and nonmarket-based (direct and indirect) command-and-control regulations. Important regulations include institutional credit restrictions, minimum separation distance between wells, and registration of/licenses for well development and drilling companies. 5 Formal institutions for supply management include managed aquifer recharge (MAR) interventions, such as check dams, farm ponds, percolation tanks, etc. These are not referred to as formal institutions. They are mostly technical approaches, but adhering to the Indian strategy for MAR (CGWB 2020). 6 Informal groundwater management institutions are those that evolve at the local level through community initiatives and often promoted (supported) by NGOs. The scale of these institutions is typically limited to a few villages. Informal regulations include restrictions on the area under water-intensive crops (paddy, sugarcane, etc.), construction of new bore wells, etc. The APFAMGS project encouraged farmers to collect local data that can be used to make collective decisions on groundwater management.Other ongoing participatory approaches have been undertaken by, for example, the following:• Foundation for Ecological Security (FES), an NGO in Anand, India, focuses on the micro-watershed scale for water balance analysis and planning groundwater use along with communities in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh.• Advanced Center for Water Resources Development and Management (ACWADAM), a civil society organization in Maharashtra, India, and Samaj Pragati Sahayog (SPS), a grassroots initiative in Madhya Pradesh, India, are working on knowledge-based, typology-driven aquifer management strategies similar to those of Pani Panchayats.• Barefoot College in Tiloniya, Rajasthan, focusing on social work and research, is making use of a water budgeting tool known as Jal Chitra.• Centre for World Solidarity (CWS), a voluntary organization founded as a Public Trust in Andhra Pradesh, focuses on the water-energy-food nexus in optimizing resource use and resilience for farmer communities (Mohan 2012).These participatory initiatives have collectively led to national-level policy changes and programs. In particular, a rebalancing from supply-side to demand-side management with a distinct focus on sustainability, multi-disciplinarity and multidimensionality in water sector institutions, such as the Central Water Commission (CWC) and Central Ground Water Board (CGWB).Source: GoI 2011.Participatory Management and Sustainable Use of Groundwater A Review of the Andhra Pradesh Farmer-Managed Groundwater Systems Project in IndiaThe Andhra Pradesh Farmer-Managed Groundwater Systems (APFAMGS) project 8 is the largest-ever and longest-running community-led participatory groundwater management initiative in India. APFAMGS was implemented between 2003 and 2013 and covered 650 habitations including 6,500 households in seven drought-prone districts (Anantapur, Chittoor, Cuddapah [today referred to as Kadapa], Kurnool, Mahbubnagar, Nalgonda and Prakasam) in the erstwhile state of Andhra Pradesh (Figure 1). 9 Due to its apparent success, principles and practices followed by the project are being integrated into new government programs in India (GoI 2011). A detailed examination of the impacts of the long-term APFAMGS initiative would help inform the discussion on the broader potential of the PGM approach to achieve sustainable use of groundwater.  The broad objective of this study is to establish whether PGM, as implemented through APFAMGS, has helped to promote sustainable use and management of groundwater through community empowerment in the form of knowledge sharing, awareness raising and capacity building. The specific objectives of the study are as follows:1. Examine the APFAMGS approach to PGM and evolution of interventions over the entire project duration (2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013).2. Review the performance and efficiency of APFAMGS interventions, during implementation and up to 5 years after project closure, in stabilizing resource availability, building resilience among communities, and distributional (equity-related) impacts at the household level.3. Establish linkages with other existing or potential groundwater management and institutional approaches in India and derive insights for the development of appropriate (sustainable and equitable) resource management policies and strategies going forward.This study builds on earlier assessments of APFAMGS during the implementation phase or immediately following implementation. While the earlier studies could capture the potential impacts more clearly, they could not address the sustainability of the interventions. This study looks at whether the prolonged interventions associated with APFAMGS have helped to usher in sustainable groundwater management practices, which would in turn reduce the pressure on groundwater resources in the area and enhance the sustained socioeconomic benefits to the communities. This outcome could be expected through behavioral and institutional changes that persisted even after the project. The assessment focuses on both biophysical and socioeconomic aspects using a mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches.The hydrogeological impacts were assessed using secondary data collected at the district level. Firsthand information and observations were collected from project villages in two hydrological units (HUs). 10 These HUs were purposively selected as they are situated in the most drought-prone districts of Andhra Pradesh, i.e., Anantapur and Kurnool (for details, see Reddy and Reddy 2020). Besides interacting with village communities in the project areas, engaging with communities of neighboring villages offered counterfactual information. Apart from project documents and evaluation reports, a number of studies have reviewed and assessed the achievements and impacts of APFAMGS over the years (APFAMGS 2006;  AFPRO 2007; FAO 2008, 2010; World Bank 2010; Reddy 2012; Verma et al. 2012; Das and Burke 2013; Reddy et al.  2014; Sravanthi et al. 2015). 11 In this case profile, the cumulative and long-term impacts of the project were captured through interviews conducted with the coordinating NGO Bharati Integrated Rural Development Society (BIRDS) and other implementing NGOs. Personal discussions were held with office bearers of APFAMGS and other programs. Also, key informant interviews were conducted with project implementing agencies. This type of firsthand information was gathered from the communities of five villages in two HUs (Upparavanka and Vajralavanka) situated in Peapally Mandal of Kurnool district and Gooty Mandal of Anantapur district. During the field visits, discussions were held with communities and individual farmers from APFAMGS and non-APFAMGS villages following a checklist of enquiries. The study assessed the long-term impacts of the APFAMGS approach and its sustainability in particular focusing on livelihood outcomes and climate vulnerability. Addressing the sustainability aspects over the long term (including after project closure) and the comparison between APFAMGS and non-APFAMGS communities are the value additions of this study. The APFAMGS 'pilot project' facilitated the long-term initiative Andhra Pradesh Drought Mitigation Project (APDMP) funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). IFAD provided a loan of USD 75.5 million with a matching contribution from the state government (total project cost of USD 151.9 million) to implement the project in the same five districts (Anantapur, Chittoor, Cuddapah, Kurnool and Prakasam) for a period of 7 years (IFAD 2016(IFAD , 2017)).Raising awareness and capacity building of communities dependent on groundwater were at the core of the APFAMGS project. Thus, groundwater users, or rather, selected trained volunteers, within each HU were equipped with the necessary equipment, skills and knowledge to support the management of groundwater resources in a sustainable manner. This was mainly done through monitoring and managing demand in light of the seasonally variable water availability. The approach provided the necessary means (equipment and knowledge to collect and analyze rainfall and groundwater data) to increase community understanding of groundwater resources. In the process of capacity building by the representative NGOs, the need to create awareness about water-use efficiency through the adoption of watersaving technologies and agricultural practices was also raised (Box 3).12 Besides PHM, the project provided 3,462 groundwater irrigation facilities to small and marginal well-owning farmers, bringing an additional area of 35,000 acres (approximately 14,150 hectares) under irrigation and covering about 14,000 small and marginal farming families. Farmers were trained to collect the hydrological data on a regular basis. The data were processed and stored for future use. In fact, the data are the property of the communities and may be purchased by researchers and institutions (Reddy et al. 2014). However, the quality of the data was found to be inadequate for the purposes of this study. Awareness building components included the following:• Facilitated discussions on the local groundwater situation in the HU and at the village level.• Demystifying the science of climate and hydrology through farmer water schools.• Introducing the concept of groundwater as a 'common good' and not simply private property.• Carrying out participatory groundwater monitoring and crop water budgeting exercises and sharing this information across the HU. • Providing information to farmers to encourage voluntary adoption of sustainable practices (reduce pumping, water-saving technologies, impacts of drilling new wells, crop diversification, best agrochemical management practices, etc.).Capacity building components included the following:• Farmer water schools adopted an informal and participatory approach to information sharing, group learning, and improving the skills and capacities of farmers. A total of 10,000 farmers attended the 300 farmer water schools and meetings which were organized every 15 days over a period of 5 years in all seven districts. Through these meetings, farmers were able to understand groundwater dynamics in their respective villages and the entire HU. Based on the new understanding, farmers voluntarily adopted appropriate modifications in their agricultural practices with the potential to lead to significant reductions in groundwater use. It must be noted that the farmer water schools were not continued in the latter phases of the project (i.e., after the first 5 years).• PHM is a 'learning by doing' exercise that helps to create 'groundwater literacy'. Farmers were trained at farmer water schools to measure groundwater levels, rainfall, pumping capacity of bore wells and the water requirements for different crops. Fortnightly, water level monitoring was carried out by farmer volunteers (both female and male farmers) in 2,026 observation wells (around one well per square kilometer). Daily rainfall data were collected by farmers from over 190 rain gauge stations (one station per 5 km 2 ). Well discharge measurements were carried out by farmers in over 700 observation wells to assess the pumping capacity of the wells, well performance, etc. To become a PHM volunteer, farmers had to undergo training (covering four modules) at the farmer water schools, and only the successful candidates were eligible to become volunteers (unpaid). These volunteers were then provided with the necessary measurement tools, such as electrical water level indicator, stopwatch, calibrated bucket, etc. Hydrological monitoring records were maintained and exhibited for public viewing on display boards at strategic locations within the village. Additionally, seasonal groundwater quality monitoring (analyzing 16 parameters related to drinking water quality) was carried out in public drinking water wells and the results were displayed in public places in the village. In fact, these data are cleaned and digitized for future use and made available to others on a commercial basis. 12• Crop water budgeting is a technical exercise where farmers collectively make their crop plans each season based on water availability (groundwater for cropping and irrigation in both dry and wet seasons). The project did not advocate changes to the crops being cultivated and did not want to limit the crop choices available to farmers in a particular HU. Instead, the emphasis was on improving water-use efficiency. It was assumed that farmers have sufficient knowledge of crop management practices and markets to be able to make relevant decisions.• Groundwater management committees (GMCs) and hydrological unit networks (HUNs) were established at the village and HU levels, respectively. These institutions met regularly to discuss various aspects of groundwater and were able to advise farmers on changes to crop pattern and other practices.• Water-saving technologies, such as micro-irrigation, were promoted by linking with the government subsidy programs. State and central governments provide a subsidy on sprinkler and drip irrigation (75% to 90%). Despite the high subsidy, only large farmers could afford and avail the subsidy due to high capital costs of the irrigation systems. This in turn resulted in inequity in access to and adoption of the technology.• No formal or informal regulation mechanisms were put in place. No separate project-derived subsidies to promote the adoption of demand management approaches or groundwater use regulations (e.g., restrictions on the area under water-intensive crops, construction of new bore wells, etc.) through official or social controls were implemented.Participatory Management and Sustainable Use of Groundwater A Review of the Andhra Pradesh Farmer-Managed Groundwater Systems Project in IndiaThe APFAMGS districts are predominantly underlain by variably weathered granitic basement rocks with groundwater found predominantly under unconfined conditions (Garduño et al. 2009). The extent and productivity of the groundwater resources of these crystalline rocks are determined by inherent factors that include weathering depth, clay content and degree of fracturing. In favorable geomorphological settings, weathering and fracturing processes allow continuous relatively productive aquifers typically up to 25 meters thick in topographic lows. In less favorable settings, aquifers are thin and patchy and not very productive. Annual average rainfall ranges from 600 to 1,000 mm and is concentrated almost entirely within the monsoon season from around June to October. Rainfall amount, its intensity (Asoka et al. 2018), topography, soil infiltrability, and any catchment management and 'rainwater harvesting' 13 initiatives are key factors in the replenishment of groundwater resources.In order to gain a degree of clarity on the linkages between groundwater resources and APFAMGS interventions, the most extensive groundwater monitoring data provided by CGWB were used. These data were from the five of the seven APFAMGS districts (Anantapur, Chittoor, Cuddapah, Kurnool and Prakasam), which were situated within the recently redefined state of Andhra Pradesh. The dataset covers an 18-year period between 1999-2000 and 2016-2017. Given that APFAMGS interventions were limited to areas outside of major surface water irrigation commands, only data from noncommand (i.e., groundwater-irrigated) areas 14 are presented.The aggregate groundwater situation across the APFAMGS districts has not improved. In fact, groundwater levels have deteriorated overall, with an average decline of about 0.2 m per year in the pre-monsoon 3-year moving average assessment (Figure 2). Moving average values for rainfall reveal a decreasing trend up to around 2004, followed by a brief increasing trend up to around 2007 and, finally, a longer decreasing trend up to 2017. Over these periods, both pre-and post-monsoon groundwater levels show similar sequential decreasing, increasing and decreasing trends. The consistent correlation between the filtered annual rainfall and filtered groundwater levels suggests that climate and rainfall-derived recharge have an important control on groundwater storage. This indicates that the impact of changes in groundwater recharge or pumping due to APFAMGS interventions has not had an overriding effect on the expected natural larger-scale rainfall-recharge pattern.The number of wells in Andhra Pradesh (before the Reorganization Act, 2014) increased from 0.8 million (0.7 million dug wells and 0.1 million bore wells) in 1971 to about 2.2 million (1.0 million dug wells and 1.2 million bore wells) 15 by 2007 (GoI n.d.;GoI 1995;GoAP 2002GoAP , 2006aGoAP , 2006bGoAP , 2008aGoAP , 2008b)). The area under groundwater irrigation increased from 0.8 million hectares (Mha) to about 2.8 Mha over the same period  (predominantly in rain-fed areas and not involving the replacement of surface irrigation). The area irrigated per well was almost constant, but water was drawn from greater depths as wells were deepened in response to falling groundwater levels (Reddy et al. 2016). The average density of actively operating wells in the state increased from five wells per square kilometer to 10 wells per square kilometer over the period from 1984 to 2007. 16 However, in hard rock areas, characteristic of the APFAMGS districts, the figure was over 20 wells per square kilometer, and in some pockets, it was as high as 100 wells per square kilometer, indicating the high reliance on groundwater in the APFAMGS areas. Reddy et al. (2016) showed that average groundwater levels declined rapidly in these highly developed local areas.13 Rainwater harvesting and catchment management techniques strive to capture rainfall and maximize its retention in the subsurface (soil and groundwater) for ecosystem and human benefits, especially for agriculture (rain-fed or irrigated) (Sikka et al. 2018).14 Non-command areas account for about 25% of the net sown area at the aggregate level. Within the non-command areas, coverage of APFAMGS interventions account for less than 10% of the area. 15 The number of wells for both years include functional and nonfunctional wells.   ;GoI 1995;GoAP 2002GoAP , 2006aGoAP , 2006bGoAP , 2008aGoAP , 2008b;;GoAP and GoI 2011a, 2011b, 2012a, 2012b). For the later years, data are compiled from the Office of the Director, Department of Ground Water, Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, India. (ii) Rainfall data: GoAP (2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015) and GoAP (2016GoAP ( -2018)). 2 0 0 0 2 0 0 1 2 0 0 2 2 0 0 3 2 0 0 4 2 0 0 5 2 0 0 6 2 0 0 7 2 0 0 8 2 0 0 9 2 0 1 0 2 0 1 1 2 0 1 2 2 0 1 3 2 0 1 4 2 0 1 5 2 0 1 6 2 0 1 7 2 0 0 0 2 0 0 1 2 0 0 2 2 0 0 3 2 0 0 4 2 0 0 5 2 0 0 6 2 0 0 7 2 0 0 8 2 0 0 9 2 0 1 0 2 0 1 1 2 0 1 2 2 0 1 3 2 0 1 4 2 0 1 5 2 0 1 6 2 0 1 7Annual rainfall (mm) Over the period from 1985 to 2016, rates of groundwater pumping for irrigation in the five districts, analyzed and as an aggregate across shallow and deep wells, increased dramatically, with the largest increases evident over the period between 1993 and 2002 (Figure 3). Since about 2002, the quantities of groundwater pumped have stabilized and, if at all, decreased in subsequent years. This decrease is potentially due to the decreasing trend in rainfall since 2008, which includes recent droughts in 2014-2015 and 2016-2017 that have reduced well yields as a result of poor groundwater recharge. Despite the extended drought conditions, the number and depth of wells have continued to increase. Data source : GoI n.d.;GoI 1995;GoAP 2002GoAP , 2006aGoAP , 2006bGoAP , 2008aGoAP , 2008b;;GoAP and GoI 2011a, 2011b, 2012a, 2012b). For the later years, data are compiled from the Office of the Director, Department of Groundwater, Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, India.The available HU-level assessments in the APFAMGS areas do not provide a clear indication of an improvement in the groundwater situation. An independent study covering the period 2005-2008 identified that groundwater pumping had decreased only in 24 of the 63 HUs (Garduño et al. 2009). Another study examining the period from 2006 to 2011 noted a 20% or more decrease in groundwater pumping at 17 of the 63 HUs (Das and Burke 2013). The decrease in groundwater pumping was attributed to above-average rainfall over the period considered and not due to APFAMGS interventions. A groundwater balance analysis for the same period (2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011) showed that 56 of the 63 HUs remained in a so-called 'nonsafe' state of groundwater development, indicating that abstraction exceeds 70% of recharge (as per CGWB protocols). Thus, evidence of the hydrological impact of APFAMGS interventions suggests that the project had insignificant influence within the respective HUs. Finally, a farm-level study conducted across five villages in Nalgonda district in 2014 showed no significant difference in groundwater use between APFAMGs and non-APFAMGS areas (Sravanthi et al. 2015).  1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008  Groundwater availability has a direct bearing on the areas under kharif paddy cultivation (July to November) and rabi cropping (December to March). Crop water budgeting helped farmers understand the constraints to water availability and the effects of highly water-intensive paddy cultivation. Farmers' experiences showed that they incur crop and hence income losses when they do not follow the collective advice, i.e., reduce the area under water-intensive crops due to seasonal water shortages. Having knowledge of the constraints to groundwater availability faced by farmers prior to the cropping season in the project areas prompted the GMCs and HUNs to develop crop plans that addressed issues related to water use. This was directly attributable to APFAMGS interventions. Interestingly, the shift away from paddy to the cultivation of less water-intensive crops did not trigger the expansion of the area under irrigation. As mentioned earlier, the increase in the number of wells was due to decreasing groundwater levels rather than changes in cropping patterns.Farmers have started to diversify cropping by shifting from paddy to alternative crops, i.e., pulses, oil seeds, fruits, vegetables, flowers, etc. This is in response to water stress and to also make the best use of available soil moisture (Garduño et al. 2009). 17 Market conditions for some of the crops (e.g., fruits, vegetables) have helped improve household income. A comparative assessment highlighted that APFAMGS villages were more resilient to climate-related risks than neighboring non-APFAMGS villages. For instance, investments in new wells and well deepening in the non-APFAMGS villages only occurred in the latter years of the project. Similarly, adoption of micro-irrigation is higher in APFAMGS villages (Reddy and Reddy 2020). Thus, evolving farmer practices could be attributed largely to APFAMGS interventions.New government programs or initiatives are prioritizing APFAMGS villages due to the communities' higher capacities and awareness coupled with stronger community institutions, such as GMCs, guaranteeing better outcomes and more efficient use of resources. The concentration of follow-up programs in the APFAMGS villages after 2013 has helped to enhance the impacts of the project. After project closure, the state of Andhra Pradesh continued to include APFAMGS approaches under different projects (Box 2), which also covered most of the APFAMGS villages. These new initiatives are scheduled to continue until 2025 (IFAD 2017). The more recent projects strive to promote sustainable groundwater use and management following the principles and practices of APFAMGS and could, therefore, be considered as follow-up projects. Besides continuing the earlier initiatives, these projects have helped to increase awareness among the communities and improve other practices, such as multiple/mixed cropping, critical irrigation, 18 mulching, and the use of chemical fertilizers, manure (vermicompost) and other natural inputs. Crop diversification has been spreading fast throughout the region in recent years due to increased water stress and favorable market prices for nontraditional horticultural and other crops, coupled with unfavorable market prices for traditional crops, such as groundnut. These crop diversification practices have helped farmers to stabilize or increase their yields and incomes and are likely to be sustained given the continued water stress and market conditions. In essence, farmers under APFAMGS have been capacitated in maximizing the agricultural output (crop yields and incomes) per unit of groundwater available on their farms, while not reducing overall use of the resource.There is a firm basis for concluding that behavioral change among the communities in using and managing groundwater is a result of the project interventions and other contextual circumstances. Realization of the concept of sustainable groundwater use came earlier and to a higher degree in the APFAMGS villages than in other villages. Without the continuation of APFAMGS interventions after project closure and the favorable market conditions, these behavioral changes would likely not have taken place. The recent developments fostered through follow-up interventions (Box 2) have helped farmers to be aware and use the knowledge gained systematically. In some of these villages, farmers continue to make crop plans informally by applying the knowledge they gained from APFAMGS, even without collecting additional data. While these communities have the advantage of continued external support, no formal institutional arrangements are pursued, e.g., integrating GMCs with WUAs, giving WUA status to GMCs, or linking GMCs to the state groundwater department. The more recent APDMP being implemented by the Government of Andhra Pradesh, through the line departments, has identified PGM as a best practice. However, there is a need to link the existingParticipatory Management and Sustainable Use of Groundwater A Review of the Andhra Pradesh Farmer-Managed Groundwater Systems Project in India informal community institutions to a formal structure with provision for funding, in order to protect the institutional network at the village level (social capital) and the groundwater support systems (natural capital) created in the region. At the same time, the new projects, while scaling out the initiatives, need to include all the APFAMGS villages in the program with an adapted set of interventions. The interventions could be in the form of updating the technical information from the field and keeping the communities informed, and creating motivation for adopting PGM.The 'do it yourself' approach with enhanced scientific knowledge has improved the awareness of well owners. This has increased resource-use efficiency but has not translated into sustainable groundwater use at any level -household, village or district -over the time frame assessed. This could be due to the absence of formal or informal regulations and collective initiatives, such as increased investments in managed aquifer recharge structures or sharing of water. This has resulted in perpetuating inequity, especially during drought years when groundwater levels tend to be deeper (Reddy et al. 2014).Marginal and small farmers are the first to be impacted by groundwater depletion as they have shallower bore wells compared to large farmers, and this affects their water availability for both domestic use and farming. Due to the lack of access to water, poor farmers are the first to quit farming in search of alternative income-generating activities (Reddy et al. 2020). In the absence of any tangible improvement in the groundwater situation, and since the project only focuses on farmers owning wells, APFAMGS interventions have failed to achieve equitable outcomes for all farmers.More sustainable and equitable outcomes would require long-term support and formal linkages with relevant line agencies, such as the state groundwater department. Informal peer pressure from fellow farmers, convinced about the gains from sustainable groundwater management practices, did not work in the post-project period in the absence of any social or economic regulations. Moreover, since the APFAMGS approach does not include all farmers, the information-based awareness failed to reach the majority of farmers. This was because less than 50% of farmers in the region own a well, and was also due to the absence of water markets or water sharing arrangements (Reddy et al. 2016). This has an adverse impact on the sustainability of the approach, as the limited membership hinders the collective ownership and commitment to the common good, i.e., groundwater. Also, in the absence of any tangible benefits to farmers who do not own a well, they lack the incentive to support broader activities, such as rainwater harvesting.Some of the initiatives in Andhra Pradesh after APFAMGS project closure have integrated the knowledge-based approach with social regulation. These interventions include the Social Regulations in Water Management (SRWM) by the Centre for World Solidarity (CWS), and the Andhra Pradesh Drought Adaptation Initiative (APDAI) by the Watershed Support Services and Activities Network (WASSAN) (Reddy et al. 2014). Though awareness building and data generation by the village communities were important components, the process was not adequate as evident from the issues of quality of data and its organization. The most important aspect of these two new initiatives (SRWM and APDAI) was to bring consensus among the communities to share water between well owners and non-well owners to protect their crops, especially during periods of highest water stress. Social regulations were put in place and included restrictions on the construction of new wells, and provision of protective irrigation to the plots of well owners and non-well owners through the irrigation backup 19 they receive in the event of failure of the groundwater well. Further, water losses during distribution were reduced by using sealed pipeline supply rather than open channels, and water-use efficiency was increased through the promotion of micro-irrigation at subsidized prices. Similar PGM approaches were implemented by two NGOs in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh -Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) and Jana Jagriti (JJ) -where awareness, regulation and incentives are combined. A recent study assessing the FES/JJ approach identified that groundwater management improves with increasing community awareness (knowledge about cropping patterns and the linkages to groundwater use) and social capital (where participants consider group gains) (Meinzen-Dick et al. 2016).In all three initiatives (SRWM, APDAI and FES/JJ), social regulations had a clear effect in stopping the construction of new bore wells and helped a larger number of households, especially the marginal and small farmers, to benefit from sharing water with well owners (Reddy et al. 2014). This has led to increases in the cropped area under protective irrigation, thus minimizing crop losses. This also resulted in equity in the distribution of water and overall welfare improvement that could enhance drought resilience. The success of these initiatives is mainly due to the commitment and effort of NGO partners in the absence of any contribution from the farmers towards irrigation infrastructure (pipelines, micro-irrigation, etc.).Communities are often lured by the incentives (subsidies for micro-irrigation and pipelines) rather than their ownership of the interventions and commitment to sustainable groundwater management. (f)This assessment clearly highlights that the PGM approach of APFAMGS has neither resulted in an improvement in the groundwater situation nor promoted sustainable groundwater management practices in the majority of HUs at the district level. The weight of evidence indicates that the APFAMGS approach has a positive influence on behavioral changes due to increased knowledge of groundwater among farmers that may bring about more efficient use of the resource and better and more secure crop production. This may have reduced overall pumping in project areas and slowed groundwater level declines, but the effect appears at best limited or localized. However, the approach falls short on goals of equity due to limitations associated with inclusiveness, incentives and social regulations. Recent experience from Andhra Pradesh with more integrated approaches indicates that knowledge creation together with regulations/incentives are required to make PGM effective in addressing increasing food demand and climate-related vulnerabilities in more equitable ways. Further, the role of women in the process needs further strengthening, as they play a significant role in farming, especially in the context of climate-induced crop pattern changes. In this regard, ensuring women's participation in village-level GMCs would help address gender-sensitive aspects of groundwater management. While incentives require a top-down approach (government providing necessary capital support, subsidies, agricultural pricing, etc.), social regulatory mechanisms should evolve from within the community. The experience so far indicates that the design of the approach needs to consider local needs in order to make it effective and suitable for scaling out. PGM is being scaled up at the national level in seven states under a new program Atal Bhujal Yojana with a focus on institutional strengthening and capacity building. This program has an estimated budget of USD 860 million with a matching contribution of USD 430 million from the World Bank over a period of 5 years (2020-2021 to 2024-2025) (GoI 2020b).This study raises the larger question of 'how participatory are participatory initiatives?' This needs to be understood in the changing socioeconomic and climatic context and community perceptions, i.e., participation is no longer viewed as a solidary activity by communities. Unless there are substantial economic gains to be made, proactive participation is difficult to materialize (Mansuri and Rao 2013). More importantly, factors related to political economy, which may include elite capture, regulatory capture, political discrimination or favoritism, etc., come to the fore as these initiatives expand. Social regulation is a difficult proposition in nonuniform communities, where politics and the common good may disconnect (Reddy et al. 2014). At the same time, it is also difficult to encourage farmers with larger landholdings, who are also politically more influential, to give up their higher degree of control on groundwater due to the awareness created.Externally induced participation is unlikely to be sustainable in the absence of sustained tangible benefits and policy-backed incentive and regulatory mechanisms. While improving communities' awareness and knowledge about groundwater is a necessary precondition, it is not sufficient to make communities engage over the long term. Policy and legal support systems are required to ensure enhanced benefits and equity in their distribution. These include addressing the policy distortions in resource pricing (water and energy), output prices that favor water-intensive crops 20 and clearly defined property rights in order to make groundwater serve as a common-pool resource. When adopting and improving PGM-based initiatives such as APFAMGS on a wider scale, state governments need to consider the following aspects:• Initiatives towards increasing the community's awareness and knowledge about groundwater by adopting scientific approaches with location-specific attributes is a precondition for improving the efficient use of the resource. However, it may not improve the groundwater situation over the long term, especially with continuing climate change.• Integrating top-down incentive structures and bottom-up social regulatory mechanisms together with awareness building is likely to be effective in the short to medium term. These include price incentives for less water-intensive rain-fed crops, price stabilization (lowering price risk) for horticultural crops, pricing of water and energy by treating them as economic goods, and regulating groundwater pumping through community-based approaches, etc.• Pricing policies still favor water-intensive crops, such as paddy, sugarcane and wheat. 21 These policies, complemented by free or subsidized power and water pricing policies, act firmly against the policy objective of sustainable groundwater management. • 20 Rice is still a preferred crop due to better market conditions. Only water scarcity can deter farmers from growing rice. 21 Though 14 crops are listed in the minimum support price policy, effective implementation is enforced only for paddy, sugarcane and wheat (Reddy and Chiranjeevi 2016).Participatory Management and Sustainable Use of Groundwater A Review of the Andhra Pradesh Farmer-Managed Groundwater Systems Project in India• Linking community-based institutions (e.g., GMCs) and existing administrative institutions (e.g., groundwater/ irrigation departments) with funds, functions and functionaries that could help sustain PGM initiatives. In this case, state government departments can take the lead in promoting and supporting the community actions at the local level.• In the long run, ensuring equity in access to groundwater among farmers will require policy changes that recognize groundwater as a common resource. This calls for changing the property rights regimes and moving towards delinking land and groundwater rights. "}

main/part_2/0166521252.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"d7b3ce83a9fc1129c349f09101269086","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/97ab61a5-98cd-4b14-a897-8275f94c5c8c/retrieve","id":"794487330"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"47099dab-a9ca-4b50-a2e3-59981edc12ab","content":"21 May 2024 DISCLAIMER All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise, for commercial purposes without prior permission of UNOPS. Otherwise, material in this publication may be used, shared, copied, reproduced, printed and/or stored, provided that appropriate acknowledgement is given of UNOPS as the source. In all cases the material may not be altered or otherwise modified without the express permission of UNOPS.Prepared Under: The Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT), supported by Austria, Canada, Germany, Italy, the Children's Investment Fund Foundation and the ClimateWorks Foundation.The ICAT project is managed by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS).Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT) funded a project to enhance the GHG inventory for Kenya's crop sub-sector. This project assessed the current policy and legal frameworks using an excel template and key indicators adopted from the ICAT agricultural policies toolbox. The validation of the indicators and population of the template was done in a workshop organized by the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT, including members from the Climate Smart Agriculture-Multi-stakeholder Platform (CSA-MSP).The analysis revealed several critical gaps in policies supporting GHG inventories and reporting. There is a mismatch between activity data and emissions targets, with most targets focusing on activity data rather than actual emission reductions. Policies often lack specific baselines for the crop sub-sector, making it difficult to attribute GHG emissions to specific mitigation actions. Additionally, there are inadequate mechanisms for deploying the necessary resources for implementation, data collection, and analysis. Insufficient guidance on data sharing between national and county levels leads to discrepancies in meeting national GHG inventory requirements. National policy timelines frequently do not align with international reporting cycles, reducing the effectiveness of GHG inventories. Furthermore, shifting political interests and priorities between national and county governments disrupt policy execution. Lastly, financial constraints hinder the implementation and maintenance of comprehensive monitoring systems, as detailed funding mechanisms for tracking actions and collecting necessary data are missing.To address these gaps, this report recommends incentivizing mitigation through various policy instruments, establishing a central GHG emissions tracking system, designing mechanisms for coherence in targets and baselines, setting up mitigation action indicators aligned with GHG reduction targets, and developing a policy direction for the GHG inventory process in the crop subsector. These recommendations aim to enhance GHG reporting accuracy and support effective decisionmaking in Kenya's crop sector.Agriculture accounts for one-third of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, arising from crop and livestock activities, land-use changes, and related processes. Addressing climate change in agriculture necessitates solutions that yield economic benefits, improve livelihoods, and protect the environment.The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) requires all Parties to report their GHG emissions and actions to the Conference of the Parties (COP) through national inventories. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines ensure these inventories are comparable, accurate, and reflective of actual emission changes. Decision 18/CMA.1 established the modalities and principles for the enhanced transparency framework, categorizing reporting methods into tiers based on complexity. For agriculture and land-use sectors, higher-tier methods, which use national data and models, are more accurate but require better understanding and resources.Kenya is committed to a low-carbon, climate-resilient development pathway. In its second National Communication (SNC), the country developed a GHG inventory for various sectors, with agriculture being the largest emitter at 41%, with methane (CH 4 ) and nitrous oxide (N 2 O) being 58% and 42% of the total agricultural emissions (see Figure 1). Emissions in the SNC were based on a Tier 1 approach for the crop sub-sector which relies on activity data from agricultural production statistics and global emission factors. Despite the progress made in preparing the inventory, the country struggles to make effective policy decisions for the crop sector or track the impact of mitigation action and transition to higher tiers in accounting for the emissions for crops. Additionally, there is no framework for the continuous collection of accurate and reliable data, nor common protocols and tools for documenting and reporting this data, making it challenging to calculate GHG emissions for crops accurately.A comprehensive policy package integrating climate change and other government policies is necessary to inform and improve policy design and implementation for mitigation in the agricultural sector. These policies should not only set goals for mitigation actions but also provide mechanisms for tracking progress and gathering the relevant data for GHG accounting and reporting. The Agriculture is a key sector for Kenya's economy. However, it has a high dependency on rainfall putting the sector at a high risk largely due to its sensitivity to climate change related impacts. This extreme susceptibility to the changing climatic effects increases the vulnerability of farming systems, thus weakening coping strategies and resilience, and imposes a great risk to the future of most Kenyans. Nonetheless, agriculture is itself a major source of GHG emissions. According to the National Inventory report (NIR) 2015, 41% % of Kenya's total emissions were produced by the agriculture sector, predominantly CH 4 from ruminant livestock, e.g. cattle and sheep, and N 2 O from animal excreta and nitrogenous fertilizers. Other emissions included; methane (CH 4 ) and nitrous oxide (N 2 O) from biomass burning, carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) from lime application, direct and indirect N 2 O from managed soils and indirect N 2 O from manure management as well as CH 4 emissions from rice cultivation (see Figure 1). In the NIR, tier 1 reporting was used for the agricultural sector and indicated that the trend in emissions in the Agriculture Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) sector increased by 50 percent between 1995 to 2015. Without mitigation, emissions from agriculture will continue to rise, increasing the sector's share of total emissions. To address agricultural development and the challenges posed by climate change, the Government of Kenya has put in place policies and legal frameworks that aim at enhancing agricultural productivity and building climate-resilient agricultural systems in a low carbon development pathway. Currently, emissions for the crop sub-sector in Kenya are based on the Tier 1 approach which relies on activity data from agricultural production statistics and global emission factors. The policies and legal frameworks however, need to support transitioning of the GHG inventory in agriculture to tier 2 reporting with field based activity data and nationally defined emission factors. This will provide for more accurate and reliable accounting of emissions and sinks, for mitigation actions. Currently the dairy sub-sector is the only sector with an existing tier 2 in the inventory for the agricultural sector.The sources of emissions in the crops sub-sector include the application of inorganic fertilizers, tillage, use of on-farm machinery, on-farm manure management, and removal of crop residues which enhances decomposition. These practices contribute to the N 2 0 and CO 2 emissions in the atmosphere. In addition, irrigated rice systems contribute to CH 4 emissions as deforestation through conversion of forests to agricultural land also releases stored carbon thereby reducing carbon sinks.Policies designed to reduce emissions in crop production need to include action plans to improve 1) nitrogen fertilizer efficiency-use 2) precision application of nitrogen fertilizers or controlledrelease of fertilizers to minimize N 2 O emissions 3) conservation tillage practices to reduce soil disturbance during planting 4) management of residues, including planting of cover crops to improve soil health and sequester carbon. 5) Crop Variety Selection (shift to crop varieties or locally adapted species that emit fewer GHGs and considering crop rotations to enhance soil health and reduce emissions) 6) water management to optimize irrigation practices to reduce methane emissions from waterlogged soils (especially in rice production) 7) tree planting on farms (agroforestry), among others.The UNFCCC obliges all Parties to report information on their GHG emissions to the Conference of the Parties (COP), and on the steps taken to implement the Convention through national communications (NCs). For most agriculture and land-use and land use change and Forestry emissions and removals:• Tier 1 is based on the use of activity data (e.g. agricultural production statistics) and global emission factors. • Tier 2 follows the same approach but applies nationally defined emission factors.• Tier 3 involves the use of models and higher order inventory data tailored to national circumstances.The inventory coordinator and thematic working team members need to understand the GHG categories in the sector, the methodologies, data needs, and other requirements for developing GHG estimates for the sector for the tier 1 and higher tiers.  ). This emphasises the use of practices and technologies that increase productivity and resilience while minimising GHG emissions.Although GHG inventories have been taking place every 2 years, there is lack of comprehensive activity data to support estimates of complete GHGs emissions from the crops sector. This is because there lacks a framework for continuous collection of accurate and reliable activity data necessary for the GHG inventory, resulting in incomplete and inaccurate accounting of emissions from the crop sub sector with emissions from key cropping activities not being accounted for. Consequently, this limits the country's ability to make good policy decisions for the crop subsector or to track the impacts of mitigation actions implemented in different activities aimed at reducing GHGs emissions. This includes those highlighted in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).Additionally there is a lack of common protocols and tools for documenting and reporting activity data and calculating GHGs emissions for crops both at the county and the national level.To respond to the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement requirements, governments are increasingly focused on implementing policies, legal frameworks and actions that achieve GHG mitigation. Reducing emissions across all sectors and gases requires a portfolio of policies and legal frameworks tailored to fit specific national circumstances. A comprehensive policy package, integrating climate change and other government policies, is necessary to inform and improve policy design and implementation, goal setting and tracking of progress and gathering information for reporting. Demonstrating effective policies can also help in understanding the capacity needed to implement climate action as well as attract climate financing. For mitigation actions to be more visible in the agriculture sector, there is a need to account for more specific GHG sources and sinks by transitioning to tier 2 reporting.ICAT developed a guide for assessing the GHGs impacts of agricultural policies to help countries with the assessment of the impact of policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector. This aims at helping users to identify the key mitigation actions where GHGs impacts need to be monitored, define indicators and data to establish the baseline scenarios for tracking the mitigation options, and define the needed time frames.The main objective of the ICAT-funded crops subsector GHG inventory project in Kenya is to support the process of developing a transparent, accurate, complete, and consistent data management and documentation system for activity data for key emission sources in the crop sub sector. One of the specific project objectives is to assess the extent to which the existing national climate change and agriculture sector policies support the GHG accounting and inventory preparation process. The main focus of this objective is to identify the key mitigation actions for the crop sub-sector included in these policies and access if issues related to the data needed to track these actions in a transparent manner are clearly outlined in the polices. To address this objective, the ICAT methodology and toolbox 3 was applied to assess the policies and identify the key mitigation actions where GHGs impacts need to be monitored, define the key indicators and data needed to establish the baseline scenarios for tracking the mitigation options, and define the needed time frames. In this case the assessment helps gauge if implementation of policy will support the GHG inventory, resource management as well as the social, political, economic, and administrative requirements.3 The policy analysis focused on policies and legal frameworks both at the national and county level with relevance to agricultural development, environment, and climate change. For the county level, the analysis include policies for only five pilot counties (i.e., Murang'a, Taita Taveta, Makueni, Baringo and Nyamira). The analysis focused on exploring the policies recommending actions that contribute to reducing emissions or provide sinks for GHGs in crop production systems, establish GHG emission baselines and mitigation targets, inventory processes, design/guide institutional implementation, and data and information management roles and mandates .Based on this a total of 27 national policies were analysed, grouped into (Figure 2 Counties have also developed policies to guide them in implementation of their priority actions and in allocation of resources (Figure 3). Just like in the national level government, the county policies were also grouped into those related to development in agriculture, climate change and environmental conservation respectively:1 The intended goals and objectives that the policy seeks to achieve.Refers to targeted measures and/actions aimed at promoting improvements or addressing issues related to the crop subsector. They aim at achieving specific objectives and outcomes in the agricultural sector (e.g., crop diversification, pest management, climate-smart agricultural practices).The reference emissions to be used in quantifying the impacts of the policy on greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions once implemented.The target amount of emissions to be reduced or removals to be enhanced as a result of the policy, both annually and cumulatively over the life of the policy (or by stated date); and/or the target level of key indicators (such as hectares of land to conserve)The current condition, position, or state of implementation of a particular policy (i.e., adopted, planned, or implemented).The entity responsible for overseeing, implementing, and maintaining the policy.The specific point in time when a policy officially comes into effect and its provisions start being applied. The date marks the beginning of the policy's operational phase.The specific plans, approaches and actions designed to put a policy into practice.These are procedures designed to systematically track the progress of policy implementation, report on outcomes, and verify whether the intended objectives are being achieved.Metrics that indicate the state or level of a policy's performance.Policy link to global reporting The connection between a specific policy and broader international reporting frameworks or agreements.Key Indicators included in this policy analysis study Policy landscapes: Agriculture being one of the key sectors in Kenya, has had a number of policies developed that are aimed at guiding the sector towards ensuring food, nutrition and economic growth. These polices have been developed in the period between 2001 to 2023. In addition, policies have been put in place to guide the mainstreaming of climate change into the country's development functions including in the agriculture sector. Environment related policies seek to address the issues of natural resources and land management upon which agriculture depends and is likely to degrade. The findings of the analysis are as tabulated in annex 1 and summarized below.The analysis established that a majority (23 national and 10 counties policies out of 27 and 19, respectively) of the policies were found to be development and deployment instruments. This means that they are aimed at spurring agricultural development at the national and county level. Four national policies, i.e., the Climate Change Act (CCA), the Green Fiscal Incentives Policy (GFIP), the Farm Forestry Rules and the Food Safety Policy were grouped as regulations and standards. Three counties had also developed climate change acts which were also grouped as regulatory instruments. These regulatory instruments provide legal direction in addressing climate change, environmental protection, and food safety challenges both at national and county levels.The national Agricultural Marketing Strategy (AMS) 2023-2032) and The Agricultural Farm Inputs Subsidy Policy 2022-2032 for Murang'a county were grouped as trade and subsidies instruments. The AMS guides in maintaining modern market infrastructure for efficient marketing of agricultural produce, facilitating compliance to produce and products standards while, the Murang'a farm inputs policy aims at improving the delivery of subsidised farm inputs.The NDC is categorised as an information instrument and is a critical component of the country's climate mitigation strategy. It communicates how the country intends to contribute to implementation of the Paris agreement by committing to abate GHG emissions by 32% by 2030 relative to the BAU scenario of 143 MtCO 2 eq. The total Emission Reduction Potential is 86 MtCO 2 e by 2030, with the agricultural expected to contribute to a reduction of 9.7 MtCO 2 e. Only one relevant research policy was analysed, i.e., the National Agricultural Research policy, was analysed while no county was found to have a research policy.The objectives of most of the policies are broad, focusing on national and sector development but they also address aspects of climate change adaptation, mitigation, and risk management. Policies addressing climate change have clear objectives on adaptation and mitigation and facilitate uptake of technologies that support low carbon, and climate resilient development and improved efficiency and reduced emissions intensity. They propose development of mechanisms that minimize greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production systems, protecting and conserving biodiversity, reducing tillage to help minimize soil disturbance, promotion and management of agro-forestry, among many other interventions. To further build resilience, increase farm productivity and reduce emissions, the policy objectives aim at ensuring 10% of farmland is under the right tree species and varieties, soil conservation on cropland, and protection of wetlands and riparian areas. Whereas most of the policies recommend actions to be undertaken to respond to climate change and reduce GHG emissions, the Kenya Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) Monitoring and Evaluation Framework has an objective that supports reporting climate action in the agriculture sector through development of guidelines, capacity building on data collection and reporting tools, as well as enhancing institutional arrangements through the climate change units. On climate finance, the Green Fiscal Incentives Policy provides financial interventions for transitioning to a desired low-carbon climateresilient green development pathway through a range of investments and regulatory fiscal mechanisms including taxes, subsidies and expenditure programs. Of the county policies, only Makueni's county Fiscal policy commits the county to allocate finance to increase agricultural productivity through adoption of appropriate and modern technologies; reduction of post-harvest losses and enhancing agro-processing while mainstreaming climate change and social inclusivity. The other counties do not have specific fiscal policies.Mitigation adaptation: Twelve of the national policies and four of the county policies were found to address both mitigation and adaptation; one national policy addressed mitigation alone, while two national policies and one county policy addressed adaptation alone (See Annex 1). Policies with mitigation objectives mainly targeted supporting the adoption of emission reduction technologies. Some of the highlighted technologies included agroforestry, minimum tillage, manure management, efficient rice production technologies and increasing the area under rain fed rice production, and integrated soil nutrient management. The climate change related county policies only state intentions to address climate change through both adaptation and mitigation but did not give specific strategies for addressing mitigation.Crop specific mitigation level or activity targets indicators: Eight (8) national policies were found to have agriculture mitigation targets but did not all provide crops-specific targets (See Annex 1). None of the county policies had activity indicators for mitigation or GHG emissions reduction. The updated NDC (2020) sets a total emission reduction potential of 9.7 MtCO2e by 2030 for the agricultural sector, while the KCSAS targets reducing sectoral emissions to 30 MtCO 2 e relative to the businessas-usual trajectory projection of 37 MtCO 2 e in 2026. The NCCAP II targeted to reduce agricultural GHG emissions by 2.61 MtCO 2 e by 2022 through agroforestry, minimum tillage systems, manure management, putting 50% of 30,000 hectares of rice production into efficient production technologies and increasing the area under rain-fed rice production from 400 hectares to 600 hectares by 2022. While there is a national adaptation communication report providing achievements regarding adaptation, there is no report for mitigation and no GHG inventory has been done to establish the level of achievement. The NCCAP III projects 3% emissions reduction to be in the agricultural sector by putting 2,500,000 ha under integrated soil nutrient management, planting farm trees on 200,000 ha, and increasing farm area under various conservation agriculture practices from 53,200 ha to 100,000 ha. The Farm Forest Rules, the Agriculture Policy and GESIP target to put 10% of any agricultural land under trees. How much GHG emissions these specific management activities will remove or abate from the crops systems is however not given by any of the policies. County policies too do not provide activities or targets for targets for mitigation and GHG emissions reduction and national policies do not assign any targets to the counties but give national figures.Greenhouse Gas Emissions Baselines: Seven national policies provide quantitative baseline figures, but the figures are drawn from the first national communication (FNC) 4 with no specific baselines figure based on progressive GHG inventories for agriculture or crops sub-sector. County policies have not addressed GHG emissions and the national policies do not have any county baselines.Identification of clear roles and institutional mandates on GHG inventories: The policies that identified clear roles and spelt out the roles for implementation of each specific policy include ministries, departments and agencies at both national and county level, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), private sector, research and academic institutions, community-based organizations (CBOs), media, and multi-disciplinary teams of crop and environment experts. However, the policies do not provide clear roles and institutional mandates as regards the GHG inventory process.Monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) procedures: A good number of the policies (11 national and 10 county) provide for monitoring and evaluation (M&E) as well as MRV procedures by assigning the relevant ministries, departments and agencies the role to develop and operationalise M&E institutions and functions. The NCCAP III specifically assigns the Climate Change Directorate (CCD) with support from NEMA, KFS, KNBS and State Departments the role of establishing a functional system for Kenya's GHG inventory and an MRV system for tracking mitigation for NDC reporting by 30th June 2027. For the agriculture sector, KCSAIF recommends the development of an MRV, the CSAM&F and the CSA reporting tool to provide the M&E mechanism for the sector.Implementing strategy/ mechanisms: These have been posted on government online platforms for easy access by implementers and other interested parties. Most of them have provided in their structure, strategies like sensitization, capacity building and training of stakeholders, development of legal incentives, implementation plans, budget provisions, M&E systems as well as assigning of responsibilities among other strategies. The only challenge is that there are no spelt -out consequences for failure to implement and hence the strategies remain in the documents without commitment for implementation. It was also noted that in their content, most of the policies did not make specific reference to the target mitigation or GHG inventory except for the Climate Change Act (amended) 2023, which proposes to set regulations and incentives for carbon credits. Counties that have uploaded their climate change policies (Makueni, Taita Taveta and Nyamira) have outlined some strategies to implement climate actions although they were not specific to mitigation and GHG emissions reduction. Most policies at both national and county level are related to development and deployment which provide for necessary actions along the whole agricultural value chain from production to consumption/ disposal. The overarching national and county climate change acts provide the general legal framework required for deployment of resources, institutional arrangements in implementation and reporting climate action. Since Kenya has prioritized adaptation with mitigation as a co-benefit, specific regulations guiding mitigation and GHG emissions have not been of major focus. However, with increased national interest in carbon markets, the national Climate Change Act (amended in 2023) has provided for development of regulations and incentives for carbon trading including in the agriculture sector. To enhance support on GHG reporting the national need to provide guidance in reducing emissions as well as proving means for tracking and reporting progress. From this analysis, the current policies have strengths, gaps and various opportunities for supporting GHG emissions reductions in the crops -sub-sector. To enhance reporting on GHG emissions in the crops sub-sector through the use of tier 2 reporting, there will be a need for guidance to collect data on the interventions proposed in the policies that include area under paddy rice, conservation tillage practices, fertilizer use, irrigation and mechanization among other practices. Agricultural machinery, among others, provides for collection of data for GHG reporting at tier 2.Kenya's policies and legal frameworks align with international and regional commitments, such as the UNFCCC, the mitigation actions for the crop sub-sector, it does not specify how these actions will be funded or how the necessary data for tracking the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) tracking will be collected. In addition, the framework for the tools needed for transparent reporting and tracking of GHGs emissions as well as the capacity building procedures at both county and national level are not well considered in the existing policies and frameworks. This gap in financial planning hinders the effective monitoring and reporting of GHG emissions.a. Incentivise climate action and GHG inventory: Policy instruments on taxes and charges, trading programmes, voluntary agreements/actions, subsidies and incentives relating to mitigation may be necessary to incentives GHG inventory.b. Tracking of policy achievements and meeting of GHG commitments: To ensure institutions take responsibility, there is need for a central tracking system to ensure that there is a monitoring and evaluation and communication system that ensures that implementation of each policy is tracked and communicated, and implementers are held accountable.c. Transparency: To enhance transparency coherence, targets and indicators in policies need to be informed by clearly established baselines. There is a need to establish baselines for specific key emissions sources and sinks in the crops sub-sector so that decisions on improvements are informed by progressive and past inventory reports. Although there is evidence of ambition to implement climate actions by the number of policies, there are no targets for specific interventions within the crops sub-sector rather, targets are given in the form ofwhat the whole of the crop sub sector is intended to achieve. There is a need for specific mitigation targets for the specific intervention areas to enable stakeholders to know the expected emission reduction/abetment emanating from their interventions. e. Roles and mandates -Although a number of the policies provide clear mandates, roles and data flows for general implementation of the policy, there is a need for policy direction on GHG inventory processes in the crops-sub-sector at both levels of government, including to provide and assign personnel for specific roles to ensure seamless and continuous data collection, as well as modelling and validation for GHG reporting which integrates other existing data management processes for efficient resources management to ensure improved inventories and reporting, especially when transitioning to tier 2 reporting.Annex 1: Policies and indicators used in the analysis "}

main/part_2/0171829926.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"2fb87e1baeb7fc3d2cbf569ea9d68171","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/dcf2ceaa-bde9-4aed-9d71-cdd851418599/retrieve","id":"-351237322"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"7d75d3fe-22dd-4268-b945-357fd86b5fb5","content":"African cassava mosaic virus (Geminiviridae: Begomovirus) East African cassava mosaic virus (Geminiviridae: Begomovirus) South African cassava mosaic virus (Geminiviridae: Begomovirus) Cassava brown streak virus (Potyviridae: Ipomovirus) Cassava Ivorian bacilliform virus* (unassigned) Cassava Kumi viruses* Cassava 'Q' virus* Cassava common mosaic virus* (Potexvirus) South/Central America Cassava common mosaic virus (Potexvirus) Cassava virus X (Potexvirus)* Cassava vein mosaic virus (Caulimoviridae) Cassava Colombian symptomless virus (Potexvirus)* Cassava American latent virus (Comoviridae: Nepovirus)* Cassava frogskin 'virus' Asia/Pacific Cassava common mosaic virus* (Potexvirus) Indian cassava mosaic virus (Geminiviridae: Begomovirus) Cassava green mottle virus* (Comoviridae: Nepovirus)Officially recognized viruses are given in italics, together with family and genus in parentheses.Viruses that are unimportant or for which little information is available are asterisked and not considered in detail in the accompanying text. (Source: Thresh et al., 1994b;Thresh et al., 1998c.) Table 12.1. The viruses of cassava.Crops that are propagated vegetatively are particularly prone to damage by viruses as infection tends to build up in successive cycles of propagation. Cassava is no exception to this generalization and at least 16 different viruses have been isolated from the crop. Moreover, other as yet undescribed viruses are likely to occur and may even be prevalent in some areas. This is because cassava has received far less attention from virologists than it merits as one of the world's most important and widely grown food crops.A full list of the viruses that have been isolated from cassava is presented in Table 12.1 and key references appear in the bibliography. The viruses asterisked in the table have been detected somewhat fortuitously in studies undertaken for other reasons. There is only limited information on the properties, distribution, effects and importance of these viruses. They require further attention, but meanwhile they should be considered in operating quarantine controls on the movement of vegetative propagules between different cassava-growing areas. These viruses are not considered further here and the main emphasis is on those known to cause diseases of economic importance.A feature of cassava viruses is that they are of diverse taxonomic groups (Table 12.1). Another is that their known distribution is largely or entirely restricted to only one of the continents in which cassava is grown, or to an even more localized geographic area. For this reason the viruses and virus diseases of Africa, South/Central America and the Indian subcontinent are considered separately.Cassava originated in the Neotropics and was not introduced to other regions until relatively recently. This may explain why only one of the viruses of cassava occuring in South and Central America has been found elsewhere. Moreover, several of the Neotropical viruses of cassava do not cause symptoms and have no obvious deleterious effects, which may reflect a long period of co-evolution between the host and its pathogens. Three virus diseases justify detailed attention here. Three other viruses are listed in Table 12.1 and are considered briefly, but they do not ©CAB International 2002. Cassava: Biology, Production and Utilization (eds R.J. Hillocks, J.M. Thresh and A.C. Bellotti) cause symptoms, appear to be unimportant and are not discussed further.Cassava common mosaic disease (CsCMD) was first reported in southern Brazil (Silberschmid, 1938;Costa, 1940). The disease has since been recorded in other South American countries and there is one report from Africa (Aiton et al., 1988) and another from Asia (Chen et al., 1981). CsCMD has no known vector and spread in the field is attributed to mechanical transmission. The disease is generally of only minor importance, although there are some areas where it is prevalent and control efforts are needed.Leaves of cassava plants affected by CsCMD develop mosaic and chlorotic symptoms (Plate 1a). On some of the affected leaves there are dark and light green patches that are delimited by veins. Symptoms are most severe during relatively cool periods and cassava grown in the semitropical areas of South America is most affected by the disease. In these relatively cool conditions, the affected plants are sometimes stunted and yield losses can be up to 60% (Costa and Kitajima, 1972b).CsCMD has been reported from many South American countries, but was not recorded in a survey of cassava-growing areas of Colombia (Nolt et al., 1992). The disease is most prevalent in southern Brazil and Paraguay. In these regions the disease is important and phytosanitary control measures are recommended to reduce losses. More than 1000 cassava accessions in the EMBRAPA/CNPMF (Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuaria/Centro Nacional de Pesquisa en Mandioca y Fruticultura) collection at Cruz das Almas in Bahia, northeast Brazil, have been tested for the causal virus and the incidence was < 1%.CsCMD is caused by Cassava common mosaic virus (CsCMV) which can infect species belonging to several families of dicotyledonous plants (Silva et al., 1963;Kitajima et al., 1965). The virus was ascribed originally to the potexvirus group that is now referred to as the genus Potexvirus.The CsCMV virion is a semi-flexuous rod that is c. 15 × 495 nm (Kitajima et al., 1965) and contains RNA (Silva et al., 1963). Nuclear inclusions typical of the potexviruses can be found in cassava and the herbaceous host Nicotiana benthamiana. CsCMV is known to systemically infect cassava, Euphorbia spp., Cnidoscolus aconitifolius (chaya), N. benthamiana and species of several other dicotyledonous families (Costa and Kitajima, 1972a).The viral particles of CsCMV contain a single coat protein having a relative molecular weight of 26,000 daltons (Nolt et al., 1991). The CsCMV genome is single-stranded RNA and the complete sequence is known (Calvert et al., 1996). The organizational structure, proteins and their predicted weights are similar to those of other potexviruses.There are no known vectors of CsCMV and the primary source of inoculum is infected planting material. The virus is systemic in cassava and almost all stem cuttings are infected when obtained from an infected plant. CsCMV is very stable and can be spread by mechanical transmission on machetes and other implements used to prepare cuttings. Although this mode of transmission is inefficient, it is the only known means of plant-to-plant spread.Eliminating (roguing) plants that express CsCMV symptoms provides adequate control. The symptoms are usually obvious on the first leaves produced by infected stem cuttings. This is the best time to identify and remove diseased plants. If the plants are not rogued early they should be marked and the stems burned later after harvesting the tuberous roots. Only healthy plants should be selected as a source of vegetative propagules. To minimize the risk of mechanical transmission, cutting tools should be disinfected at regular intervals (Lozano and Nolt, 1989). With care in selecting planting material, CsCMD can be eradicated or reduced to a level of minor economic significance.The first report of cassava vein mosaic disease (CVMD) was in 1940 (Costa, 1940). The areas where this disease is most prevalent are remote and the conditions are semiarid. The region is inhabited mostly by poor rural communities and the lack of economic resources has contributed to the incomplete knowledge about this disease. Probably because the symptoms are sporadic and generally less apparent at the end of the cassava growth cycle, this disease has received inadequate attention, especially considering the large area now known to be affected.The leaf symptoms of CVMD occur in flushes. After an infected stem cutting sprouts, the first four to six leaves express vein chlorosis that appears as a chevron pattern or coalesces to form ringspots (Plate 1b). Leaf deformation and epinasty are common severe symptoms. Plants then appear to 'grow out' of the infection and produce several symptomless leaves. These are followed by another series of leaves with symptoms. The expression of symptoms is influenced by the climatic conditions prevailing. Symptoms are more pronounced in the semiarid areas as compared to those expressed by the same variety grown in the wetter coastal regions of northeast Brazil. Except for the period just after sprouting, CVMD does not seem to affect plant vigour. The affected leaves senesce and fall prematurely from the plants which reduces leaf area. As infected cassava matures, it is often difficult to see any leaves with mosaic symptoms.CVMD is very common in the semiarid zone of northeastern Brazil, although there are also reports from other regions of the country. The disease is common in the Brazilian States of Ceará, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Piaui and Bahia (Calvert et al., 1995) and the distribution extends into some of the neighbouring states.CVMD is caused by Cassava vein mosaic virus (CVMV). This has isometric particles, c. 50 nm in diameter (Kitajima and Costa, 1966) and the genome consists of ds-DNA, c. 8200 bases long. Initially CVMV was regarded as a tentative member of the caulimovirus group. This attribution was based on the ds-DNA genome and the particle structure (Lin and Kitajima, 1980). The complete sequence of CVMV has been determined and the genomic organization differs from that of caulimoviruses and badnaviruses (Calvert et al., 1995). The virus will probably be classified as a unique genus of the plant pararetroviruses.Little is known about the epidemiology or control of CVMV. The only known host is cassava and the primary mode of dissemination is in infected propagules. It is not uncommon to find a farmer's variety that is totally infected. Spread occurs within fields which suggests that there is a vector, but none has yet been identified. There have been few studies on virus spread, but CVMV-infected cassava is common throughout a large area of the northeastern semiarid region of Brazil. Consequently, a vector of the virus is suspected. Until more is known about the rate of spread, the effectiveness of using 'clean' (virus-free) planting material will not be known. The virus can be latent in plants, especially during the cool, rainy seasons of the coastal regions of Brazil. 'Roguing' of planting material may be an effective control practice if diseased plants are identified and removed soon after sprouting. Most infected cassava plants appear to tolerate CVMV and produce stems of normal appearance that make good planting material. Little is known about disease loss. In the few studies that have been done, the yields of diseased plants were slightly less than from uninfected controls, but the differences were not significant statistically (Santos et al., 1995). Although the full economic importance of CVMD is not well quantified, it appears that it could cause losses, especially if a drought occurs during the beginning of the growth cycle.Cassava frogskin disease (CFSD) is a viruslike disease that affects cassava and was first reported from southern Colombia (Pineda et al., 1983). A similar disorder in northern Colombia was called Caribbean mosaic disease because of the mosaic leaf symptoms expressed by the cassava landrace 'Secundina'. In the Amazon regions of Brazil and Colombia, CFSD is called jacare (cayman), because of the distinctive ridges on the affected roots. Tests under uniform conditions have shown that these three disorders are manifestations of the same disease and cause the same symptoms in standard indicator varieties of cassava.The origin of CFSD is most probably the Amazon region of Colombia, Peru or Brazil. The disease can be found in cassava grown in very isolated indigenous Amazonian Indian communities. They regard it as a physiological disorder rather than a disease and associate it with particular varieties. The native name for one variety collected from the Amazonian region of Colombia is jacare. Because of the geographic isolation, or the belief that the root symptoms are caused by a physiological disorder, this disease was not 'discovered' in the lowland tropics. In 1971, an apparently new disease that caused severe losses occurred in the mid-altitude Andean mountains of southern Colombia. The disorder was then recognized by scientists and named cassava frogskin disease (Hernández et al., 1975).The distribution of frogskin disease is continuing to expand. By the 1980s, it was prevalent throughout most cassava growing regions of Colombia. It has also spread to Venezuela and Costa Rica. Recently, CFSD was reported in Panama and it was established that the affected plants were grown from stem cuttings imported from Costa Rica. In Brazil, the movement of vegetative material of cassava is disseminating the disease from the Amazon region into the more semiarid areas of northeast of Brazil. CFSD also occurs in the Amazon region of Peru.The expression of CFSD symptoms is influenced by temperature and host genotype. A few cassava genotypes develop mosaic symptoms on the leaves and these clones can be severely stunted. In most other genotypes, the leaves of infected plants are symptomless and appear normal. The stems of these plants may be slightly enlarged, especially near the ground. The thickening of the affected stems is associated with a lack of starch accumulation in the roots. Because of their apparent vigour, these stems are selected preferentially by farmers as they seem to provide very desirable planting material. The root symptoms range from very mild to very severe. The severity of the symptoms depends on the age of the roots and climatic factors. Hot dry conditions tend to inhibit symptom development, whereas cooler temperatures enhance symptoms. In the lowland tropics, years with above average rainfall tend to be cooler than usual and the symptoms are more severe. In hot dry years, CFSD-infected plants have few if any symptoms. The characteristic root symptoms of surface ridges develop when the root periderm and corky layers enlarge to form raised, lipshaped fissures (Plate 1c). Severely affected roots do not accumulate starch and often show zones of constrictions. Root symptoms are most severe in plants raised from CFSD-affected stem cuttings. Newly infected plants usually have mild or no symptoms unless infected at an early stage of growth.The causal agent of FSD has not been proven definitively, although isometric virus-like particles 70-80 nm in diameter can be found in thin sections of the leaves, petioles, stems and roots of affected plants, whatever the source. Viroplasmlike bodies are also found in leaves of infected plants.At least nine species of ds-RNA are associated consistently with infected plants (Cuervo, 1989). The symptoms of hyperplasia in the root cortex are similar to the tumours caused by other plant reoviruses. The particle morphology, ds-RNA pattern and root symptoms are consistent with the causal agent being a reovirus.CFSD is readily transmitted through grafts. To detect the disease and certify the status of a plant with regard to CFSD, a stem cutting of the plant to be tested is grafted to a plant of the indicator variety Secundina (CIAT accession M Col 2063;Calvert, 1994). The test plant is used as the rootstock and the buds of the rootstock stem should be removed to increase the likelihood of successful grafts. Plants should be grown in an area where temperatures are normally below 30°C to ensure optimum symptom expression. After 3 or 4 weeks, plants are checked, and any mosaic symptoms on the leaves of the scion indicate that the plant is affected by CFSD. The disease can be eliminated from infected plants by thermotherapy and meristem culture in vitro (Maffla et al., 1984).Several studies indicate that the whitefly Bemisia tuberculata is the vector of CFSD (Angel et al., 1990;Velasquez, 1991), although the efficiency of transmission seems to be low. In the field, the disease spreads very slowly, but progressively. In one trial to assess the rate of spread, the incidence of infected plants eventually exceeded 10%, but only after three crop cycles. The amount of spread increased as the incidence of infected plants increased.The initial dissemination of CFSD is through the use of infected stem cuttings and spread within plantings is attributed to B. tuberculata. Most cassava varieties infected with CFSD express no leaf or stem symptoms and when harvesting the crop, farmers usually remove the stems before harvesting the roots. Since the stems of the diseased plants are often thicker than those of healthy ones diseased plants are often selected to provide propagules.CFSD can be controlled by rigorous selection. Roots should be inspected for symptoms at harvest and only cuttings from apparently healthy plants that bear normal roots should be selected. This is usually adequate to maintain the disease at low levels that cause little economic loss. When the incidence of CFSD has become substantial, it is advisable to collect propagation material from a less affected source. In areas where cassava is harvested mechanically and it is not possible to inspect the roots, the use of stem cuttings from plants that are inspected and certified as being free of CFSD is very effective in controlling the disease.Cassava virus X (CsVX) and Cassava Colombian symptomless virus (CCSpV) are other potexviruses that infect cassava (Lennon et al., 1986b). They have only been detected in Colombia, but little effort has been made to determine if they occur elsewhere. CsVX was not detected in tests on over 1000 entries in the cassava germplasm collection of CNPMF/EMBRAPA (Cruz das Almas, Bahia, Brazil). There is only one report of Cassava American latent virus and little is known of its distribution (Fargette et al., 1991). Since these three viruses do not cause symptoms it is difficult to determine their distribution or to evaluate their importance. The FAO/IPGRI guidelines for the safe movement of cassava germplasm (Frison and Feliu, 1991) provide additional information on these viruses.Nine viruses have been isolated from cassava in Africa (Table 12.1), but of these only Cassava common mosaic virus (CCMV) has been detected elsewhere. This is consistent with the view that the viruses of cassava in Africa are mainly indigenous ones that infect the crop as a consequence of spread from other hosts some time after cassava was introduced from the Neotropics in the 16th and 18th centuries.CCMV has been detected only once in Africa (Aiton et al., 1988), in material assumed to have been introduced from South America, where the virus is prevalent (see previous section). There is only very incomplete information on the occurrence and effects of four of the other viruses reported in Africa and only those causing cassava mosaic and cassava brown streak diseases are considered in detail here.The symptoms of what is now known as cassava mosaic disease (CMD) were first reported more than 100 years ago in what is now Tanzania (Warburg, 1894). The disease was later identified in many other countries of sub-Saharan Africa during the early decades of the 20th century. It was particularly prevalent in Gold Coast (now Ghana), Nigeria, Cameroon, Madagascar and several of the former French Colonial territories of West and Central Africa. This led to studies on the means of spread and control. It also became apparent that some varieties of cassava were less affected by CMD than others and resistance breeding programmes began in the 1930s or 1940s in Madagascar, Tanzania and elsewhere.In recent decades there have been major projects on the aetiology, epidemiology and control of CMD in Nigeria, Kenya, Ivory Coast and most recently in Uganda. The project in Uganda followed the onset of a particularly damaging epidemic in the late 1980s that is now affecting parts of Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda and threatens other countries of the region (Otim-Nape et al., 2000). The epidemic is the latest and most fully documented of those to have affected cassava in Africa at different times and places during the 20th century. This explains why CMD has featured so prominently and for so long in the literature on cassava in Africa. Indeed, CMD has received more attention than any other disease of an African food crop (Thresh, 1991).CMD causes characteristic leaf symptoms that can usually be recognized without difficulty. The symptoms are very variable in type and severity and are of two main types that are sometimes distinguished as 'green mosaic' and 'yellow mosaic'. Leaves affected by 'green mosaic' have contrasting sectors of normal green and light green tissue. These symptoms are apparent only when the plants are examined closely and are not usually associated with an obvious decrease in leaf area, leaf number or plant size, or yield.Leaves affected by 'yellow mosaic' are much more obvious, as they have contrasting areas of normal green and yellow tissue. Moreover, the chlorotic areas may expand less than other parts of the leaf lamina which can lead to distortion of the leaflets (Plate 1d) and rupturing of the tissues. Severe chlorosis is often associated with premature leaf abscission, a characteristic S-shaped curvature of the petiole and an obvious decrease in growth and yield.There are big differences between cassava varieties in the type, extent and severity of the symptoms caused by CMD and resistant varieties express much less severe symptoms than susceptible ones, especially during the late stage of crop growth when resistant varieties may become symptomless and are then said to recover. Symptom expression is also influenced by environmental factors and leaves produced during hot weather tend to be affected less than those produced at other times. Moreover, virulent strains cause more severe symptoms than avirulent ones and have greater effects on growth and yield.There is no evidence of any consistent differences between the symptoms caused by the different cassava mosaic geminiviruses (CMGs), each of which can occur as virulent or less virulent strains. However, dual infection with two different CMGs causes more severe symptoms than either virus alone, as reported in studies in Uganda and Cameroon (Harrison et al., 1997;Fondong et al., 2000).The main difficulties that arise in recording the symptoms of CMD occur when the plants being examined have been affected by pests or nutrient deficiency. The cassava green mite (Mononychellus tanajoa) and zinc deficiency cause particular problems. However, the damage they cause is usually similar on the different leaflets of each affected leaf, whereas CMD has less consistent effects and the two halves of a leaflet on either side of the midrib are often affected differently. This is an important distinguishing feature of CMD that should be stressed in training staff and farmers in disease recognition. However, severely damaged plants cannot be examined effectively for virus symptoms and whenever possible inspection for CMD should be made at times when the plants are growing vigorously and unaffected by drought, pests or nutrient deficiency.In recording experiments and in screening for resistance to CMD, much use has been made of simple numerical scoring systems based on the extent and severity of the symptoms expressed. Scales of 0-4 or 1-5 have been widely used to quantify differences due to variety, season and virus strains and to assess the relationship between symptom severity and yield loss.CMD occurs in all the cassava-growing areas of Africa and on the adjacent islands including Cape Verde, Zanzibar, Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar. There are big differences between countries in the date of the first reports (Fauquet and Fargette, 1990), which is in part related to the status of cassava in the different parts of Africa and to the amount of attention given to the crop by plant pathologists.In many African countries there is general agreement that CMD is the most important disease of cassava (Geddes, 1990), although in some areas it is regarded as less important than cassava bacterial blight (see chapter 13). Until recently there were few data to support these assumptions. The situation changed in the 1990s when the incidence and severity of CMD were assessed in representative plantings in 13 important cassava-growing countries of Africa (Table 12.2). Surveys of this type are expensive and time-consuming and inevitably the number of plantings assessed has been small in relation to the total amount of cassava being grown. Nevertheless, surveys were undertaken in Uganda following the onset of the recent pandemic and in several other countries as part of more comprehensive assessments of pest and disease problems. The results summarized in Table 12.2 indicate the prevalence of CMD and the sometimes big differences that occur between and within particular countries.From the results obtained, three contrasting situations have been distinguished and referred to as epidemic, endemic and benign (Thresh et al., 1997). In the epidemic situation CMD is being spread very rapidly by the whitefly vector (Bemisia tabaci) and the symptoms are prevalent and severe. Farmers experience such serious losses that food security is threatened and it may be necessary to switch to sweet potato or other alternative food crops. Control measures are essential if production is to be restored and there is an urgent need for CMD-resistant varieties of cassava, as developed and supplied through official programmes or selected by farmers from those already available. The epidemic situation, as encountered in the 1990s in much of Uganda, has now spread to adjacent areas of western Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda and it seems inevitable that it will soon spread to Burundi and other parts of the region (Otim-Nape et al., 2000) and beyond. Similarly unstable epidemic situations were encountered previously in the 1930s in Madagascar (Cours et al., 1997) and more recently in the Cape Verde Islands and Akwa Ibom State of Nigeria (Anon., 1993).In endemic areas there is a high incidence of CMD, but the symptoms are not usually very severe. The overall situation is stable and changes little from one year to the next. There is much use of infected cuttings as planting material and yields are undoubtedly impaired. Nevertheless, the losses have seldom been quantified and they are largely ignored by farmers or considered acceptable. Control measures are not regarded as essential, although they would undoubtedly bring substantial benefits. This is the situation in much of Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria and the lowland areas of Cameroon and may extend into the Democratic Republic of Congo and other areas of Central Africa.In benign areas the incidence of CMD is generally low and seldom exceeds 20%. Infection is due mainly to the use of infected planting material and there is little or no evidence of spread by whiteflies. Symptoms are usually inconspicuous and not associated with obvious deleterious effects on growth or root yield. Losses are not substantial and control measures are not considered necessary and would bring little benefit. This was formerly the situation in much of Uganda and western Kenya and is encountered currently in large areas of Tanzania and Mozambique and in the mid-altitude agroecologies of Burundi, Malawi, South Africa and parts of Zambia.There is an urgent need for information on the incidence and severity of CMD in other important cassava-growing areas of sub-Saharan Africa, including Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola and Democratic Republic of Congo. It will then be possible to identify the areas that should receive priority in any attempts at intervention. Meanwhile, it should be appreciated that the situation can change dramatically and on a time-scale of only a few years. This is apparent from early experience in Madagascar and elsewhere (Cours et al., 1997) and more recently in Uganda. There the situation changed rapidly from benign to epidemic and it is now changing to endemic as the original equilibrium between host and pathogen is being restored (Otim-Nape et al., 2000).For many years CMD was assumed to be caused by a virus because the disease was transmissible by grafts and by the whitefly now known as B. tabaci, and yet no visible pathogen was detected. The situation changed in the 1970s when a virus was transmitted mechanically from CMDaffected cassava to the herbaceous test plant Nicotiana clevelandii. The status of the virus isolated was at first unclear because it could not be isolated from all the CMD-affected plants tested. Hence, the virus was initially referred to as cassava latent virus and this name continues to appear occasionally in the literature. However, the name became inappropriate when an additional test plant (N. benthamiana) was introduced and used to isolate and differentiate between virus isolates that all caused typical symptoms of CMD when transmitted back to cassava (Bock and Woods, 1983). The different isolates were initially referred to as strains of African cassava mosaic virus (ACMV) and three groups or 'clusters' of strains were distinguished. These were later regarded as separate viruses (Hong et al., 1993) and they are now ascribed to the genus Begomovirus; family Geminiviridae. ACMV and East African cassava mosaic virus (EACMV) have not been found outside Africa, whereas Indian cassava mosaic virus (ICMV) seems restricted to the Indian subcontinent. A fourth virus of this type (South African cassava mosaic virus) has been distinguished recently in South Africa (Berrie et al., 1998) and hybrid recombinant viruses have been distinguished in Uganda and Cameroon that have some of the genome properties of both ACMV and EACMV (Deng et al., 1997;Zhou et al., 1997).The biological significance of the great diversity in biochemical properties of the different cassava mosaic geminiviruses has not been determined and requires investigation. Nevertheless, there is already evidence that dual infection with the hybrid recombinant virus and ACMV or with EACMV and ACMV is more damaging than any of these viruses occurring alone (Harrison et al., 1997;Fondong et al., 2000). The occurrence of different viruses or virus combinations in different regions could also complicate and may even undermine the effectiveness of resistance breeding programmes and quarantine controls on the movement of material between different parts of Africa. Until these issues are resolved it is important to avoid moving infected cassava between different countries or regions and especially from areas seriously affected by CMD. It is particularly important to avoid the transfer of cassava mosaic geminiviruses from Africa to the Indian subcontinent or vice versa, or from these regions to the Neotropics.There is an extensive literature on the effects of CMD on the growth and yield of cassava. Data have been collected at different times and places on a wide range of cultivars using two main approaches (Thresh et al., 1994a). Firstly, comparisons have been made in formal experiments established with cuttings collected from healthy and CMD-affected plants. Secondly, naturally infected and healthy plants have been identified and assessed within larger plantings at experimental stations or in farmers' fields. Some of the main findings are:• Varieties differ greatly in their response to infection. Some are severely stunted and produce little or no yield of foliage, stem cuttings or tuberous roots, whereas others are relatively unaffected and sustain little damage.• There is a general relationship between symptom severity and the decrease in growth and tuberous root yield caused by CMD.• Plants grown from infected cuttings are more severely affected than those of the same variety infected at an early stage of growth by whiteflies; plants infected late sustain little or no damage.• Competition and compensation effects can occur within crop stands and both healthy and diseased plants grow better alongside diseased neighbours than alongside healthy ones. Consequently, differences between the growth and yield of healthy and diseased plants are less when comparisons are made between healthy and diseased plants each having neighbours of similar health status than between plants each having neighbours of dissimilar health status.• Some virus strains or strain combinations cause more severe symptoms and decrease growth and yield much more than others.• CMD influences the performance and sustainability of varieties by influencing the number, viability and growth of the stem cuttings available for propagation.The results of yield comparisons have been used to estimate the overall losses caused by CMD in whole localities, regions or countries. However, definitive estimates are only possible if detailed information is also available on the incidence and severity of the disease in different areas and on the prevalence, type, productivity and sensitivity to infection of the main varieties being grown. Such details are seldom available and the published estimates of yield loss provide only an indication of the magnitude of the damage sustained.Watts Padwick (1956) used information from regional plant pathologists to estimate the losses caused by CMD in the former British Colonial territories of Africa. Fargette et al. (1988) later estimated the annual losses in Ivory Coast to be 500,000 t of roots compared to actual production at the time of 800,000 t. They assumed that all the plants being grown were affected and sustained losses in tuberous root yield of 38%, as recorded in their experiments on one of the main Ivorian varieties being grown. On similar assumptions losses in Africa were estimated to be 30 million t compared with actual production at the time of 51 million t (FAO, 1985).These assumptions were inappropriate because the incidence of CMD is now known to be moderate or low in some important cassavagrowing areas of Africa (Table 12.2). Moreover, some widely grown varieties are much less severely affected than the variety assessed in Ivory Coast. These considerations led Thresh et al. (1997) to estimate total losses in Africa as 12-23 million t. This estimate was based on the assumption of an overall CMD incidence of 50-60% and a loss of 30-40% in the yield of diseased plants.Others have estimated the losses in particular areas, as in Uganda at the height of the recent pandemic (Otim-Nape et al., 2000). It was assumed that each year an area equivalent to four whole districts was rendered totally unproductive. This was equivalent to a loss of 60,000 ha, which could have been expected to produce 600,000 t of roots worth US$60 million at a conservative valuation of US$100 t −1 . Similarly, the losses due to the epidemic in western Kenya were estimated to exceed US$10 million in 1998 alone (Legg, 1999). The losses in Kenya have since become much greater as additional areas have been severely affected.The putative virus assumed to cause CMD in Africa was one of the first pathogens to be transmitted experimentally by whiteflies, and studies began in the 1920s when it became evident that the virus was spreading naturally and that whiteflies were the only sap-feeding insects on cassava likely to be vectors. The first transmissions were reported from Congo using adults of a species referred to as Bemisia mosaicivecta (Ghesquière, 1932), which was later stated to be a misprint for B. mosaicivectura (Storey and Nichols, 1938). The species was also referred to as Bemisia gossypiperda Misra & Lamba var. mosaicivectura (Mayné and Ghesquière, 1934).The same or a closely related species referred to as Bemisia nigeriensis Corbett was used in successful transmission experiments in Nigeria (Golding, 1936) and Tanzania (Storey and Nichols, 1938), where infection was achieved by transferring infective whiteflies to the youngest leaves and shoots, but not to older ones.Later experiments on the mode of transmission were carried out in Nigeria (Chant, 1958), Ivory Coast (Dubern, 1979(Dubern, , 1994) ) and Kenya (Seif, 1981) using what seems to have been the whitefly species used earlier, but referred to as B. tabaci Gennadius, as in all subsequent studies. Based on current knowledge it is likely that the transmission studies in coastal East Africa (Storey and Nichols, 1938;Seif, 1981) were with EACMV and those in Congo and West Africa with ACMV (Ghesquière, 1932;Golding, 1936;Chant, 1958;Dubern, 1979Dubern, , 1994)). There have been no published reports of vector transmission studies with the recently distinguished Ugandan variant (UgV). The East and West African isolates are transmitted in a persistent manner and the minimum (and optimum) acquisition access, inoculation access and latent periods for successful transmission are 3 h (5 h), 10 min and 3-4 h (6 h), respectively. The virus is retained by adults for at least 9 days. It persists during moulting, but it is not transmitted transovarially (Dubern, 1979(Dubern, , 1994)). Nymphs can transmit, but they are not of epidemiological importance because of their immobility. Up to 1.7% of the adult whiteflies were shown to be infective when collected in heavily infected cassava fields in Ivory Coast and transferred to young test seedlings of cassava (Fargette et al., 1990).The whitefly-borne viruses that cause CMD have not been reported in the Neotropics and they are assumed to have spread to cassava from indigenous African plant species. Several indigenous hosts have been identified, including Jatropha spp., but it is uncertain whether they are the original host(s) from which spread occurred. They certainly seem to be of little or no current importance as initial sources from which virus is spread to cassava. All the spread that occurs can be attributed to viruliferous whiteflies moving between or within cassava plantings, having acquired virus from cassava plants grown from infected cuttings or infected by whiteflies at a later stage of growth. This is consistent with the findings of epidemiological studies in Ivory Coast, Kenya and Uganda that spread into and within experimental plantings is related to the number of adult whiteflies recorded and also to the incidence of CMD in the area, as indicated by surveys of farmers' fields in the district or locality (Legg et al., 1997;Otim-Nape et al., 1998a), or from assessments of the health status of the propagules being used (Legg and Ogwal, 1998). New plantings are soon colonized by immigrant whiteflies moving from older stands of cassava in the area. The immigrants then reproduce to reach peak populations within a few months of planting before dispersing to other, younger, cassava (Fishpool and Burban, 1994).The distribution of immigrant whiteflies and of plants newly affected by CMD is influenced by the direction of the prevailing wind and by the effects of wind turbulence around and within stands. The incidence of whiteflies and CMD tend to be greatest at the crop margins, especially along the windward and leeward edges and environmental gradients have been observed where whitefly populations and virus incidence decrease with increasing distance from the field boundaries (Fargette et al., 1985;Colvin et al., 1998). Incidence is also increased by breaks or discontinuities in the crop canopy which facilitate the alighting and establishment of viruliferous vectors (Fargette et al., 1985).There are obvious benefits to be gained by decreasing the losses caused by CMD and this can be achieved by a reduction in the incidence and/or severity of the disease. Various approaches to control are possible, as discussed in detail elsewhere (Thresh and Otim-Nape, 1994). However, the main attention has been given to the use of resistant varieties (Fargette et al., 1996;Thresh et al., 1998a) and phytosanitation, involving the use of CMD-free planting material and the removal (roguing) of any additional diseased plants that occur (Thresh et al., 1998b).Farmers occasionally use insecticides in attempts to restrict the spread of CMD by controlling the whitefly vector. However, the use of insecticides on cassava or other tropical root crops has received little attention from researchers in Africa and this approach is unlikely to be effective. It is also inappropriate because of the costs involved and the risks to farmers, consumers and the environment.CROPPING PRACTICES. There are opportunities of adjusting cropping practices to decrease the losses caused by CMD. This can be done by adopting planting dates that avoid exposing young vulnerable plants to infection at times when there are likely to be the largest populations of viruliferous whiteflies (Adipala et al., 1998). There are also advantages in planting away from and upwind of existing sources of infection and also in large compact blocks to minimize edge effects (Thresh and Otim-Nape, 1994). Other possibilities are to adopt close spacings or intercrops, or to interplant susceptible with resistant varieties. The benefits to be gained by adopting such practices have been established in experiments, but little or no attempt has been made to demonstrate the feasibility of these approaches. Moreover, they may be difficult for farmers to adopt within their existing cropping systems. This emphasizes the need for additional studies before attempts are made to change current farming practices.RESISTANT VARIETIES. A feature of cassava in Africa is that many varieties are grown and there is great diversity for many different traits including susceptibility and response to CMD. Consequently, farmers who experience disease problems can usually respond by abandoning the most vulnerable varieties and adopting those that are somewhat resistant or tolerant and grow satisfactorily, even when infected. The ability of farmers to adjust to CMD in this way has long been recognized, but in the 1930s and 1940s attempts were made to breed varieties with greater levels of resistance by intercrossing cassava varieties with Manihot glaziovii and other species of Manihot (Jennings, 1994). Interspecies hybrids were backcrossed to cassava and led to the highly resistant varieties that have been developed and used in Madagascar and East Africa. Seeds of this type were also sent from East Africa to Nigeria, where selections that had been made there in the 1960s were used in the early 1970s as parents in the initial cassava improvement programme at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan. This programme has been very influential and IITA clones and seeds have been widely distributed or used in National Breeding Programmes in many African countries and also by the IITA Regional Centre in Uganda (Mahungo et al., 1994). Some of the varieties produced in this way are so highly resistant to CMD that they sustain little or no damage, even under epidemic conditions. They are not readily infected and when infected usually develop inconspicuous symptoms that become even less conspicuous as growth proceeds and infected plants may eventually become symptomless. Moreover, virus is not fully systemic in highly resistant varieties and a substantial proportion of the cuttings collected from infected plants are free of virus and grow into healthy plants. This 'self-cleansing', 'reversion' phenomenon is important in restricting the progressive build-up of disease that would otherwise occur during successive cycles of vegetative propagation (Fargette et al., 1994;Thresh et al., 1998a).Although highly resistant varieties of this type are available they are seldom widely grown and in many countries farmers continue to grow local varieties that have little or no resistance to CMD. This explains why the disease is so prevalent in many areas and why such serious losses have occurred during the current pandemic in East Africa. The reasons for this unsatisfactory situation and the factors influencing farmers' choices of variety are complex and not fully understood (Nweke et al., 1994). In some areas little or no attempt has been made to introduce resistant varieties or to promote their use. This can be because of a lack of resources or incentive, or because CMD is not regarded as such a damaging disease that the use of resistant varieties is essential. Moreover, the resistant varieties may not be entirely satisfactory in other respects and do not always meet the exacting requirements of growers and consumers. Recent experience in Uganda is that any such defects may be overlooked or regarded as unimportant in epidemic conditions when CMD is causing serious losses and undermines food security, but not when production has been restored. Such factors as the taste, palatability and other quality characteristics of cassava varieties then become paramount (Otim-Nape et al., 2000).Undoubtedly, a greater use of CMD-resistant varieties would bring substantial benefits by decreasing the losses caused by the disease and facilitate control by other means. However, such benefits will be difficult to achieve until a full range of resistant varieties is available that meet all the requirements of producers and consumers. Until then CMD will continue to cause problems. It seems inevitable that susceptible varieties will be retained in at least some areas and that CMD will continue to cause substantial, albeit generally acceptable, losses. This emphasizes the need for management procedures that will improve the health status of susceptible varieties and enable them to be grown successfully and more productively.PHYTOSANITATION. The use of virus-free propagules is a basic approach to the control of many virus diseases and can bring obvious advantages (Thresh and Otim-Nape, 1994;Thresh et al., 1998b). Crop establishment and initial growth are improved and there is a reduction in the number of primary sources of infection from which subsequent virus spread can occur. The yield benefits are particularly great with cassava because plants grown from infected cuttings sustain the greatest damage and much of the spread of CMD occurs during the early stages of crop growth. Moreover, whiteflies reproduce more rapidly on CMD-infected than on healthy plants and so infected plants contribute a disproportionately large proportion of the total vector population within a crop stand (Colvin et al., 1999).Clearly, there are powerful arguments for using CMD-free planting material and this approach has been advocated repeatedly. However, it has not been widely adopted, even in official cassava improvement programmes. The reasons for this are many and complex. In some areas CMD is so prevalent that it is regarded as a normal feature of cassava, CMD-free stocks are not available and farmers simply propagate from whatever plants are available and deemed suitable to provide cuttings. Even where CMD is less prevalent and there is an opportunity to select cuttings from uninfected plants, farmers seldom do so. They may be unaware of the benefits to be gained and of the basic features of CMD and its dissemination in infected cuttings and subsequent spread by whiteflies. Moreover, even if farmers are made aware it may be difficult or even impossible for them to distinguish uninfected plants at the time cuttings are required because the plants are leafless following drought or pest attack.These difficulties are not easily overcome and there are obvious problems in contacting and changing the practices of the millions of cassava growers in Africa, many of whom are not readily accessible and poorly educated. Nevertheless, this was done widely in Uganda during the recent pandemic (Otim-Nape et al., 2000). The effects of CMD were then so severe that farmers were very receptive to any measures that would alleviate the problem and emergency funds became available from donors for mass training programmes for farmers, extensionists and opinion leaders. Selection was shown to be feasible and was adopted widely by farmers in some of the worst affected areas who were anxious to improve the health status of their plantings as a means of restoring production. The problem in Uganda now is to ensure that farmers will continue to select 'clean' planting material as the CMD situation returns to normal.There is also a need to achieve similar results elsewhere in areas where there is no serious CMD problem and so less incentive to adopt basic control measures, or to provide special funding for training farmers. Until this is done it seems inevitable that CMD will remain prevalent in many areas and yields will be impaired because of the widespread use of infected propagules.Cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) has been recognized since early studies in the 1930s, in what is now Tanzania. It was then established that the symptoms of the disease were distinct from those of CMD and that CBSD was more important than mosaic in some coastal areas of Tanzania (Storey, 1936). There has since been research on the aetiology, transmission and other features of CBSD in Tanzania, Kenya and elsewhere in eastern and southern Africa and at laboratories in the UK. However, research has been sporadic and the aetiology of the disease has been established only recently. Many uncertainties remain, especially relating to the effects of CBSD on crop yield and the natural means of spread.The symptoms of CBSD are unusual in that they can affect a wide range of organs including leaves, stems, tuberous roots and fruits. Moreover, the symptoms are very variable in type and severity and some varieties are affected much less than others and frequently express symptoms only during the early stages of growth.The name 'brown streak' was given to CBSD because of the brown elongate necrotic lesions that develop on the young green stem tissue of affected plants. This name is not altogether appropriate because only some varieties of cassava are so affected and the symptoms may be confused with the superficial circular necrotic spots of unknown cause that develop on the stems of some varieties (Nichols, 1950). Unlike the symptoms of CBSD the affected tissue does not extend into the cortex and the condition is not graft-transmissible.The stem symptoms of CBSD are very variable in extent and severity and may be restricted to only one or a few shoots of each affected plant. In contrast, highly sensitive varieties develop very conspicuous stem symptoms on many branches, the leaves become necrotic and absciss and the shoots die back. The most severely affected plants eventually die but others recover, especially during periods of high temperature.The leaf symptoms of CBSD are also variable and they are quite distinct from those of CMD in type and in affecting only the mature leaves. The most easily recognizable leaf symptoms occur as a characteristic 'feathery' chlorosis closely orientated along the secondary and tertiary veins and affecting many of the leaves or leaflets (Plate 2a). The symptoms are recognized less readily if they are relatively inconspicuous and restricted to only parts of some leaflets on affected plants. Other leaf symptoms occur as yellow blotches that are not closely associated with the leaf veins (Plate 2b). These symptoms affect different proportions of the leaf and they may or may not be conspicuous. They are particularly difficult to recognize when they develop only in the oldest leaves as they begin to discolour and senesce naturally. Such leaves soon absciss and the plants may then appear to be unaffected, especially at hot times of year when younger leaves develop inconspicuous symptoms or grow normally.CBSD causes necrosis of the tuberous roots (Plate 2c) which also develop characteristic constrictions (Plate 2d). However, some varieties do not express root necrosis or do so only at a late stage of crop growth. These varieties are damaged much less severely than those that develop extensive symptoms at an early stage.In early studies on CBSD it was established that the disease occurred in coastal areas of Kenya and Tanzania and it was assumed to be present in adjacent areas of coastal Mozambique (Nichols, 1950). The disease was also reported at the time in Uganda and Malawi, especially at lower altitudes in southern Malawi towards the Mozambique border. However, there appear to have been no detailed surveys of the incidence or severity of CBSD and the overall prevalence and importance of the disease was unclear.Information on the current incidence of CBSD has been obtained in recent surveys in Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique and coastal Kenya. The disease was found in only one planting in Uganda (G.W. Otim-Nape and J.M. Thresh, unpublished observation) and in 62 (19%) of the 325 plantings examined in Tanzania, although the overall incidence in the country as a whole was only 6% (Legg and Raya, 1998). The incidence was much higher in the lowland coastal areas of Kenya and Tanzania and on Oguja Island of Zanzibar, as confirmed in additional detailed surveys (Thresh and Mbwana, 1998;Hillocks et al., 1999; J.M. Thresh and T. Munga, unpublished).Surveys conducted in 1999 confirmed the occurrence of CBSD in Nampula and Zambezia provinces of Mozambique, which are the two most important cassava-growing areas of the country. The overall incidence based on assessments of leaf and stem symptoms was 49% in Zambezia and 28% in Nampula, but the incidence was much higher in some districts, varieties and plantings, especially in lowland coastal areas (R. Hillocks and J.M. Thresh, unpublished). Moreover, the leaf symptoms were sometimes inconspicuous and not readily distinguished, which suggested that the results underestimate the true incidence of infection.Symptoms also tended to be inconspicuous in reconnaissance surveys carried out in Malawi during the early 1990s (J.M. Thresh and A. Sweetmore, unpublished). CBSD was then present in many areas and was most prevalent at mid-altitudes along the northwestern shore of Lake Malawi. These areas had been used to supply planting material to many other parts of Malawi, following the severe effects of the 1990-1991 drought and thus contributed to the widespread occurrence of CBSD. There may also have been movement of planting material across the border into Zimbabwe and Zambia, where CBSD is known to occur. The disease has not been reported in South Africa or Angola, or in any of the countries of West and Central Africa.From the outset CBSD was assumed to be caused by a virus because it was graft-transmissible and no visible pathogen was detected. The first evidence of a virus was obtained by sap inoculation from cassava to herbaceous hosts and back to cassava (Lister, 1959) and also by electron microscopy (Kitajima and Costa, 1964). Virus isolates in herbaceous hosts were later shown to have elongate particles 650-690 nm long (Lennon et al., 1986a). They resembled those of viruses now ascribed to the genus Carlavirus, but no serological relationship was demonstrated at the time with any definitive virus of this type.There was later evidence that two different elongate viruses occur in CBSD-affected plants (Lennon et al., 1986a;Brunt, 1990) and isolates in herbaceous hosts were shown to induce 'pin-wheel' inclusions of the type produced by viruses now attributed to the family Potyviridae. This is consistent with the recent conclusion that CBSD is caused by a virus of the genus Ipomovirus, which is one of the four genera comprising the Potyviridae (Monger et al., 2001).There is only limited information on the effects of CBSD on growth and yield. In studies on a local Kenyan variety the main effect was on the quality of the roots produced and not on root weight or number (Bock, 1994). However, yields of marketable roots were decreased in a more recent study with other varieties in Tanzania (R. Hillocks and M.D. Raya, unpublished). Apart from any such loss of yield, necrosis decreases the value of the roots produced which become unusable and unsaleable if the damage is extensive. This may necessitate farmers having to harvest prematurely before much deterioration of the roots has occurred, but this incurs a yield penalty. Additional studies are required with a wide range of varieties harvested after different periods to establish the full significance of these effects.There is little information on the epidemiology and control of CBSD and there are many uncertainties which impede the development of effective management strategies. One of the problems has been the lack of assured virus-free stocks of planting material for epidemiology experiments and for use by farmers. Another has been the failure to identify the natural means of spread between plants. These issues are now being addressed in projects in Tanzania and Mozambique. Moreover, in these countries and also in Kenya and Malawi breeding lines are being assessed for resistance to CBSD, as in earlier studies in Tanzania between 1937 and 1957 (Jennings, 1957).From experience in several countries it is apparent that much use is being made of CBSDinfected planting material which is an effective means of perpetuating and disseminating the disease. However, there is evidence of natural spread between plants as clones introduced from West Africa or other areas that are free from CBSD have become infected when grown at sites in Mozambique, Malawi, Kenya and Tanzania where infection is rife. Plants raised from seed introduced from West Africa have also become infected at these sites.There is little evidence on temporal or spatial patterns of spread, but this is known to have been slow in an experiment at a site in coastal Kenya (Bock, 1994) and rapid in recent trials at sites in coastal Tanzania (M. Raya, K. Mtunda and R.J. Hillocks, unpublished information) and Mozambique (R. Macia and J.M. Thresh, unpublished information). This emphasizes the need for additional studies to determine the circumstances under which spread occurs and the scope for utilizing the benefits of virus-free planting material to replace the contaminated stocks now being used widely. Virus-free stocks can be produced by rigorous selection (Mtunda et al., 1999) and in future this may be facilitated by using the sensitive methods of virus-detection now being developed. It is also possible to use meristem-tip and/or heat therapy to eliminate CBSV from clones that seem to be totally infected (Kaiser and Teemba, 1979).Natural spread of CBSD between plants is attributed to an arthropod vector or vectors as yet unidentified. However, only few transmission experiments have been done, mainly involving the aphid Myzus persicae and the whitefly species B. tabaci and Bemisia afer (= Bemisia hancockii). The two whitefly species have been considered because they are two of the few sap-feeding insects to have had a long association with cassava in Africa. Moreover, CBSV is now attributed to the same genus of the Potyviridae as Sweet potato mild mottle virus which is transmitted by B. tabaci. It is also notable that B. afer seems to be particularly common in coastal areas of eastern and southern Africa where CBSD is most prevalent. This emphasizes the need for additional studies with B. afer and also of insect species that visit but do not colonize and breed on cassava. At least some of the spread may be from hosts other than cassava, as CBSV has been detected only in eastern and southern Africa and it is assumed to have indigenous hosts from which it spread to cassava after the crop was introduced. The identification of a vector will help to explain the current limited geographic distribution of CBSD, which occurs mainly in the lowland coastal areas of eastern and southern Africa. Such knowledge would facilitate the development of specific control measures. Meanwhile, the emphasis has been on the use of varieties that do not develop severe root necrosis, or do so only at a late stage of crop growth. This attitude of 'living with' the disease is similar to that adopted in many areas to cassava mosaic disease and provides a means of avoiding serious losses. However, any yield penalty incurred through the widespread use of tolerant varieties has not been quantified and could be substantial. This suggests that there could be benefits in developing and exploiting virus-resistant varieties and effective methods of phytosanitation.Cassava is grown in many countries of South-East Asia and the Pacific and these areas account for an estimated 27% of total world production. Cassava mosaic disease (CMD) is the only virus disease known to be important in the region and it seems to be restricted to India and Sri Lanka. An early report of CMD in Indonesia (Muller, 1931) has not been confirmed and the symptoms were later attributed to a mineral deficiency (Bolhuis, 1949). Cassava green mottle virus has been detected in cassava originating from the Pacific region (Table 12.1; Lennon et al., 1987), but its prevalence and importance is not known and it is not considered further here.CMD was not reported in India until 1966 (Alagianagalingam and Ramakrishnan, 1966), although it is known to have been present earlier (Abraham, 1956) and it has since been recorded in Sri Lanka (Austin, 1986). The disease has received much less attention in Asia than in Africa. Nevertheless, it is clear that many of the research findings from Africa as summarized in an earlier section (pp. 242-249) also apply to India and Sri Lanka.There is little current information on the incidence of CMD in India and the only available data were obtained during a reconnaissance survey in 1988 (Mathew, 1989). Twenty fields were assessed in each of 18 districts, including 11 districts of Kerala State. The overall incidence of CMD was higher in the two main cassava-growing states of Kerala (23%) and Tamil Nadu (30%) than in Andhra Pradesh (< 1%) and Karnataka (5%), which are outside the main cassava-growing areas. However, the number of fields examined was limited, especially when considered in relation to the large area of cassava being grown (Table 12.2).There is a need for additional more comprehensive surveys, especially as CMD seems to have become more prevalent in recent years. This was evident on a 1996 tour of the main cassavagrowing areas of Kerala and around Salem in Tamil Nadu. Many of the fields visited in the lowland areas were almost totally affected and in some localities the symptoms were unusually severe and associated with poor yields. The incidence was much less in the upland areas and in a lowland planting established with cuttings obtained from the hills (M. Thankappen and J.M. Thresh, unpublished observations).The symptoms of mosaic disease on cassava in India are similar to those reported in Africa and the name cassava mosaic disease (CMD) has been adopted in some publications and Indian cassava mosaic disease (ICMD) in others. Malathi and Sreenivasan (1983) first isolated a geminivirus from CMD-affected plants in India, as in the earlier studies in Africa. Four Indian isolates were included in serological tests with isolates from coastal and western Kenya using polyclonal antisera prepared against African and Indian isolates (Malathi et al., 1985(Malathi et al., , 1987)). Three of the Indian isolates reacted positively with African antisera but they were distinguishable serologically from African isolates and so were regarded as being of a separate strain of ACMV. In subsequent tests using a panel of monoclonal antibodies, Indian and Sri Lankan isolates were distinguished from those from East and West Africa and later referred to as Indian cassava mosaic virus as described previously (p. 245).There have been fewer yield loss studies on CMD in India than in Africa and no estimates have been made of overall losses in the subcontinent. Reductions in weight of tuberous roots of 84% were reported in the first experiments with a susceptible local variety (Narasimhan andArjunan, 1974, 1976), but losses were only 19-26% in the hybrids tested and in the widely grown M4 from Malaysia (Thankappan and Chacko, 1976). In other experiments losses were 42% in the popular variety Kalikalan, ranged from 17 to 36% in nine selected hybrids and were 17% in M4 which was at the time considered to be tolerant of infection (Malathi et al., 1985). Losses were even less in a later trial with M4 (7-10%) and four hybrid varieties (9-21%) and there was a positive relationship between yield loss and symptom severity scores (Nair and Malathi, 1987). These results and the low incidence of CMD in many areas suggest that the disease causes less severe losses in India than in Africa. Nevertheless, it is likely to have substantial effects in areas of India where CMD-sensitive varieties are grown and severe symptoms are prevalent.Transmission by the whitefly B. tabaci CMD spreads naturally in India and following earlier experience in Africa (pp. 246-247), the main attention has been on B. tabaci in the search for an insect vector. Successful transmissions have been reported using whiteflies transferred from infected to healthy cassava, from infected cassava to herbaceous hosts and between herbaceous hosts. High rates of transmission were achieved in some experiments, as between cassava (19%) and from cassava to Nicotiana tabacum cv. Jayasri (100%), N. rosulata (67%) and 11 other Nicotiana spp. (20-25%) using 50 whiteflies per test plant (Mathew and Muniyappa, 1993). However, such high rates of transmission seem to be exceptional and not readily reproducible. Much lower rates of transmission were reported in other studies (e.g. Nair, 1975), some of which were completely unsuccessful (Malathi et al., 1985;Palaniswami et al., 1996). Another inconsistency is that transmissions from cassava to cucumber were achieved in some trials (Menon and Raychaudhuri, 1970), but not in others (Mathew and Muniyappa, 1993). The reasons for this and the apparent difficulty experienced in transmitting Indian isolates by whiteflies compared with those in Africa, have not been determined. One possibility is that the whiteflies on cassava in India are less well adapted to their host than those in at least some parts of Africa where a cassava biotype of B. tabaci has been distinguished (Burban et al., 1992). It certainly seems particularly difficult to transmit Indian isolates to cassava and similar difficulties have been recorded with other isolates in studies in glasshouses in temperate conditions (B.D. Harrison and P.J. Markham, personal communication). Despite these difficulties there is no reason to doubt that B. tabaci is the vector of ICMV and studies on epidemiology, control and whitefly population dynamics have proceeded on this assumption (e.g. Mahto and Sinha, 1978).The area of cassava grown in India is considerably less than in Africa. Nevertheless, the crop is grown in diverse environments including the lowland humid forest areas of coastal Kerala, the upland foothills of the Western Ghats and the irrigated areas of Tamil Nadu where there is a prolonged dry season. Epidemiological studies have used virus-free stocks of selected planting material, or clones derived from meristem-tip cultures. Several cultivars were included in experiments done in three successive seasons at a site near Trivandrum, Kerala State (Nair, 1985). The final incidence of CMD did not exceed 1.3% in plots containing initial disease foci and was even less in plots without sources. There was also little or no spread in a later study where monthly plantings were made at a site near Bangalore in Karnataka State which is outside the main cassava-growing area (Mathew, 1989).In a further trial at a site near Trivandrum, six cultivars were established in plots which contained initial sources of inoculum and CMD was also prevalent in the surrounding plantings. There was substantial spread to the susceptible cv. Kalikalan (50%), but not to the five more resistant cultivars (1-10%) (Nair, 1988). In a later more comprehensive study, there was more spread to plots which contained initial sources of inoculum (overall incidence 5.7%) than to those without (2.8%). However, the source effect was not consistent at each of the four sites or in the five cultivars and was largely due to the big difference in incidence in cv. Kalikalan at the site where most spread occurred (Nair and Thankappan, 1990).It is not appropriate to make broad generalizations on the basis of these few experiments, but they suggest that there is considerable scope for exploiting the benefits of virus-free planting material, especially of resistant varieties and in areas of low infection pressure. Moreover, the results indicate that the high incidence of CMD in Tamil Nadu is due to the use of infected cuttings and not to rapid spread by whiteflies. Further studies are required to substantiate these conclusions and to establish whether they are of wide general validity. Additional evidence is also required on the importance of spread from sources within plantings and on the suggestion that this occurs more frequently in India than in Africa, where experience in Ivory Coast, Kenya and Uganda has shown that much of the spread is by infective whiteflies moving between rather than within plantings (Bock, 1983;Fargette et al., 1990;Otim-Nape, 1993).Cassava in India is grown under very different conditions from those in Africa. The relatively high productivity of cassava achieved in India is associated with the limited use of intercropping and with generally good husbandry practices. These include effective weed control, the establishment of uniform stands, the routine application of fertilizers and in some areas the use of irrigation. Moreover, the Indian crop is unaffected by either the cassava green mite or the cassava mealybug which have had such damaging effects in many parts of Africa (see Chapter 11).In these favourable circumstances Indian farmers might be expected to give considerable attention to the health status of the planting material used and to other means of controlling CMD so as to further enhance yields and optimize production. However, their attitude towards the disease seems to be similar to that in many parts of Africa in that it is largely ignored. Little attempt is made to select cuttings from healthy plants, or to remove diseased plants from within partially infected stands. Moreover, considerable use is made of susceptible varieties even though resistant ones are available. This attitude can be explained in part by the high yields obtained, even from stands in which CMD is prevalent. Nevertheless, the disease is so widespread and has such detrimental effects on yield in some areas that productivity is affected and would be increased substantially by adopting effective control measures.As in Africa, the main possible approaches to control are through phytosanitation and resistant varieties. Some attention has also been given in India to the use of insecticides to control the whitefly vector in attempts to reduce the spread of CMD. However, the results have been unsatisfactory and the routine use of insecticides is inappropriate on health and environmental grounds and not recommended (Malathi et al., 1985).Virus-free stocks have been obtained by rigorous selection and through the use of meristem-tip therapy. They have been used in experiments and shown to remain largely free of CMD in areas where there is limited spread by whiteflies. Substantial increases in yield have been achieved in this way (Nair, 1990;Nair and Thankappen, 1990), but only limited attempts have been made to encourage the widespread adoption of such material.From the foregoing account it is clear that the viruses and virus diseases of cassava have received considerable attention, especially those occurring in Africa. Nevertheless, the available information is very incomplete and many uncertainties remain. For example, the status, distribution and effects of several of the viruses listed in Table 12.1 have not been determined and further research may show them to be more widespread and damaging than present evidence suggests. There is also uncertainty concerning the epidemiology and mode of spread of cassava brown streak, cassava frogskin and other diseases and an urgent need to confirm the role of the whitefly or other vectors involved.These deficiencies can be remedied by an allocation of expertise and resources commensurate with the importance of cassava as the basic staple food crop of large and populous areas of the tropics. However, a problem is likely to be encountered in achieving this because increasingly donors and grant agencies are allocating funds in response to the perceived needs of farmers, who may be totally unaware that virus problems exist. This is evident from recent experience with cassava brown streak disease in Mozambique and Tanzania and with frogskin disease in South America. In these areas farmers have created or exacerbated the problem by making extensive use of virus-infected cuttings as planting material and losses due to disease are regarded as inevitable and a normal feature of cassava in the localities affected.These and other experiences elsewhere indicate the difficulty of achieving sustained improvements in the overall health status of cassava by adopting virus-free cuttings and by deploying resistant varieties and other research findings. It is necessary to change the attitudes and practices of millions of farmers, many of whom are remote, poorly educated and lack resources and access to extension personnel and technical advice. There is a tendency to ignore or underestimate the importance of virus diseases unless the losses sustained are so great that rural livelihoods and food security are undermined. Relief or emergency measures are then necessary and farmers also respond by exploiting the genetic diversity available and switching to less vulnerable varieties. Once production has been restored virus diseases again receive relatively little attention even though they impair productivity and the yield penalty may be substantial.Clearly, these difficulties will not be overcome quickly or easily and losses due to viruses are likely to continue in the foreseeable future. Indeed, they may even increase if damaging viruses, strains or strain combinations reach new areas by natural spread or through the movement of infected propagules. This emphasizes the importance of stringent quarantine controls on the movement of cassava material to maintain the present limited distribution of cassava viruses. Several of these are restricted to particular continents or regions and are likely to cause considerable damage if they are spread elsewhere. The need to prevent New World viruses reaching Africa or Asia, and Old World viruses being introduced to the Americas has long been apparent and appropriate quarantine measures have been devised and enforced (Frison and Feliu, 1991). These measures should be revised now that additional viruses of cassava have been characterized and new methods of virus detection have been developed. There is also a need to consider the implications of recent findings on the diversity and variability of cassava mosaic geminiviruses and the occurrence of particularly damaging strains or strain combinations.Experience with cassava mosaic disease in Africa over many years and more recently with frogskin disease in South America is that the situation is labile and can change rapidly. This is also apparent from recent experience with the whitefly B. tabaci which seems to be adapting to cassava in different countries of South America where previously cassava was not infested. Moreover, the damaging 'B' biotype of B. tabaci has spread recently to parts of northern and southern Africa and could lead to increased problems. These developments emphasize the importance of continued research on the viruses and virus vectors of cassava to monitor and combat new problems as they arise and to deal more effectively with those already known."}

main/part_2/0182543852.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"1af231c4a5f39f7711faa9320837be18","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/d03cf1ce-1ea1-4834-8dce-8806b5ee3bb8/retrieve","id":"1340257125"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"5a3eb5f9-f050-4d1a-b7fb-e4c0ce909a13","content":"Where food safety is on the agenda, policy responses are often inappropriate so there is a need to provide evidence to challenge existing narratives, eg about formal=safe, informal=unsafe. ( Box The policy environment  The predominance of traditional or informal milk and dairy product market agents in Assam highlight the importance of these agents as the key link between local milk producers and consumers. There is growing concern about milk hygiene and quality as demand for milk rises in the state. Consumers (particularly those in urban areas) have expressed concern about the quality of local fresh milk that are supplied by milk traders. Hypotheses: Training in milk handling will have precipitated changes in milk handling practices that are then rewarded by consumers with either higher prices or more quantity sold. Increased prices or higher volume of sales are hypothesized to have been engendered by the consumer recognition of improved milk quality and safety from better trained milk traders.Food safety-associated outcomes  Improved milk handling practices by milk vendors and producers. Increased incidence of reported satisfaction with milk quality (e.g., longer shelf life/lower spoilage rate, absence of odor) Higher levels of water in milk samples tested indicative of adulteration; absence of other adulterants, e.g., chemical. Microbial quality observed to vary widely, i.e., in aerobic as well as coliform count of the milk samples in different dilutions. Some samples showed microbial load in normal range while many others showed higher microbial load, suggesting contamination during milking or post milking caused by poor handling and/or dirty utensils and surrounding. Training has positive economic benefit to milk traders (higher average margins relative to all traders in exposed site, and traders in control site). Milk traders with training generate average profit margins of 0.62 rupees/liter of milk sold in control site and 1.25 rupees/liter of milk sold in exposed site; incentives to training. Relative shares of producer and trader prices in milk retail prices, on average, also suggest that the market for traditional dairy is efficient in sites that were covered by the study. Value added estimates from traditional dairy value chain are 6.62 rupees/liter in control site, and 5.64 rupees/liter in exposed site => economic incentives from traditional dairy  At about 0.8 million rupees value added generated per day in traditional dairy value chain, annual estimate of economic impact in Kamrup is at least US$ 5.6 million => potential for pro-poor developmentCase study: Vietnam pork  Changing nature of food demand in Vietnam is driven by increasing affluence and urbanization. Dietary patterns shifting from predominantly starchbased to increasing proportion of animal-sourced food. Consumers becoming more discriminating, increasingly demanding quality and safety attributes, emergence of product and price differentiation, and WTP for such attributes. Restructuring of food retail sector in response to food demand changes, and anticipation of likely dominance of modern agri-food sector and contraction of traditional food retail sector. Modern retail outlets are increasingly being used by more affluent, busy, mobile urban consumers.Case study: Vietnam pork  Traditional market outlets still account for 80% of sales even in urban cities in Vietnam; also strong links with market intermediaries supplied by smallholders. Traditional tastes and preferences remain important considerations in purchase decisions, e.g., preference for 'warm' meat by Vietnamese consumers; this is true for pork that accounts for at least four-fifths of meat consumed by Vietnamese consumers. Quality (freshness) and affordability (lower prices) are perceived to be main attractions of traditional market outlets. Perception that informal is unsafe and frequent target of blame for foodborne illness and food scares.Enabling environment and demand for risk assessment  "}

main/part_2/0186793875.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"08ca6f3078510b068773f64403953266","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://dataverse.harvard.edu/api/access/datafile/:persistentId/?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/24357/JQPLDR","id":"612413216"},"keywords":["Carbohydrate metabolism","chlorophyll concentration","rice","salt stress","salt tolerance"],"sieverID":"8412dacf-45df-423d-820b-5f7cbbe5235c","content":"The study aims to investigate the physiological mechanisms associated with salt tolerance of different rice genotypes; with emphasis on carbohydrate metabolism and chlorophyll concentration. Studies were conducted in a greenhouse and fields at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) during the dry season (November 2008 to March 2009) and the wet season (April 2009 to October 2010). Salt stress increased chlorophyll concentration in leaves of a tolerant (IR651) and a moderately tolerant (IR64) rice genotypes, but significantly decreased chlorophyll a/b ratio. Chlorophyll a concentration and chlorophyll a/b ratio were higher in the leaves of IR651 than in the leaves of IR64 under salt stress, and this is probably one of the reasons for the higher tolerance of IR651 compared with IR64. Differences between genotypes in dry weight and leaf area were not significant under control condition; however, higher soluble sugars and starch concentrations in plant tissues were observed under control conditions than under salt stress. Conversion of soluble sugars into starch seems to be partially inhibited by salt stress as suggested by the higher concentrations of soluble sugars compared with starch under salt stress. Apparently, the salt tolerant genotype maintained higher soluble sugars, higher chlorophyll a and chlorophyll a/b ratio under salt stress, and these traits could have partially contributed to its salt tolerance.Large amount of soluble sodium ions accumulates in soil and water because of the combined effects of natural and human factors; and this seriously affects plant growth and yield (Sahin et al., 2002). Salt stress is becoming one of the key factors that restrict agricultural productivity, especially in irrigated areas and in rainfed coastal areas (Neue, 1991;Castillo et al., 2000). Because of the *Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]. increasing need for enhancing productivity of salt affected areas, more interest is being devoted in recent years on studies of the adaptive physiological and metabolic processes associated with salt tolerance of crop plants (Ismail et al., 2007). Numerous physiological responses of plants to salt stress were observed before, including cellular and whole plant responses (Chen and Filippis, 2001). The seedling stage is one of the most sensitive stages to salt stress in rice, and studies on salt tolerance during this stage could probably provide insights for enhancing tolerance throughout the plant life cycle  (Munns and Tester, 2008). Moreover, the relation between sodium concentration in plant tissue and growth and yield were observed to be negative, and with greater effects on shoot growth than on root growth (Eschie et al., 2002). Percentage survival of transplanted seedlings correlated positively with the dry weight of seedling at transplanting, as well as with biomass accumulation during stress (Maiale et al., 2004).Carbohydrates produced by photosynthetic tissues is either transported to other organs as soluble sugars, or accumulated in leaves as soluble sugars and starch during the different growth stages. Under most abiotic stresses, the ability of plants to recover from stress normally increase with increasing concentrations of photosynthetic assimilates in plant tissues during or after stress (Bagheri and Sadeghipour, 2009;Naureen and Naqvi, 2010). Soluble carbohydrates and starch, which accumulates under normal conditions before the stress commonly constitute the main resources for plants to supply energy during stress condition, as well as during recovery (Khelil et al., 2007). Therefore, higher concentrations of carbohydrates in plant tissue is one of the important adaptive mechanisms as observed under submergence (Chaturvedi et al., 1996;Dkhil and Denden, 2010). Reduction in plant biomass is sometimes observed under severe salt stress, and this is possibly because of the decrease in carbohydrate accumulation caused by reduction in carbon assimilation (Moradi and Ismail, 2007;Pattanagul and Thitisaksakul, 2008).Potassium uptake is usually inhibited under salt stress, because of its molecular similarity to sodium ions, causing competition during active uptake. This could affect the rate of conversion of soluble sugars into starch when the uptake of K + and its concentration in plant tissues is reduced, as K + is needed for the catalytic activities of starch biosynthesis enzymes (Chartzoulakis et al., 2006;Dkhil and Denden, 2010). Previous reports attributed the decrease of starch content in shoot tissues to the decrease in the amount of K + absorbed under salt stress (Cakmak et al., 1994;Jenci and Natarajan, 2009). Another reason for reduction in starch concentration in plant tissue is the direct effects of decreased CO 2 assimilation caused by reduction in stomatal conductance and content of chlorophyll in plant tissues under salt stress (Moradi and Ismail, 2007). The effects of salinity on chlorophyll synthesis and integrity seems to vary with the level of salt stress, as few reports suggested an accelerated rate of biosynthesis and higher concentrations during vegetative growth (Asch et al., 2000;Santo, 2004), however, significant differences between genotypes were sometimes observed regarding the effects of salt stress on chlorophyll concentration in leaves (Rout et al., 1997;Datta et al., 2009).Apparently, previous studies considered changes in carbohydrate metabolism as important physiological responses for adaptation to abiotic stress in plants, and various metabolic changes were documented (Asch et al., 2000;Santo, 2004;Pattanagul and Thitisaksakul, 2008;Naureen and Naqvi, 2010). However, detailed studies on genetic differences in these traits are still scanty. Here we evaluated the variation in carbohydrate concentration in rice genotypes known to contrast in their tolerance of salt stress, to further investigate whether these changes are associated with tolerance. We compared changes in nonstructural carbohydrate (NSC) and chlorophyll concentrations in one salt tolerant (IR651) and one moderately tolerant (IR64) rice genotypes grown under normal and saline (EC 9.8 dS/m) conditions. The data associated the ability to accumulate higher concentrations of starch in plant tissues and chlorophyll a in leaves to tolerance of salt stress.Two rice genotypes were used in this study, IR65192-4B-10-3 (IR651 hereafter), a salt tolerant genotype, and IR64, a widely grown variety with moderate tolerance of salt stress (Moradi et al., 2003). The experiment was conducted in a greenhouse and a field at the international Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Philippines, during the dry (November 2008 to March 2009) and wet (April 2009 to October 2010) seasons. The soil used was taken from the experimental farm of IRRI, a heavy clay soil developed from volcanic ash. The basic physical and chemical characteristics of this soil are summarized in Table 1.Pre-germinated seeds of the two genotypes were sown in the greenhouse in seeding trays filled with field soil (Table 1). Two rice genotypes, the tolerant IR651 and the moderately tolerant IR64 were sown in a greenhouse in seeding trays of 1 x 0.5 m, filled with 6 kg of sieved field soil fertilized with 0.40 g N, 0.25 g P and 0.25 g K. Two seeds were sown per hole with a total of 240 holes per entry using pre-germinated seeds. After 30 days, seedlings were transplanted in the field either under control or in saline soil with an average electrical conductivity (EC) of about 9.8 dS m -1 , with 2 seedlings per hill in a 9 m 2 plots. A factorial RCBD was used with three replications. The trial was conducted two times once during the dry season and the second during the wet season on IRRI experimental farm in the Philippines.Leaf area, dry weight per seedling and concentrations of starch, soluble sugars and total non-structural carbohydrates (NSC) in plant tissues were determined using whole seedlings at transplanting. Percentage survival was determined after 6, 10 and 15 days following transplanting. The modified standard evaluation system (SES) of IRRI (Moradi and Ismail, 2007) was used for evaluating salinity tolerance of the two genotypes at 20 days after transplanting. Whole plants were then sampled after 20 and 30 days following transplanting, and used for measuring the concentrations of starch, soluble sugars, and chlorophyll in plant tissues. Correlations between different growth attributes (dry weight, leaf area, root/shoot ratio and carbohydrate content) determined at transplanting and percentage survival determined 15 days after transplanting were calculated.Carbohydrate concentrations in plant tissues were determined at transplanting and at intervals after treatment. A modified colorimetric method was used for analysis of starch and soluble sugar concentrations (Thakur and Sharma, 2005;Dkhil and Denden, 2010). For starch concentration, plant tissues were homogenized in an ice-cold mortar and pestle in a volume of 16 ml 80% (v/v) ethanol. The homogenates were centrifuged at 3000×g, for 10 min at 4°C, and then perchloric acid (HClO4, 6 ml, 30%, v/v) was added to dissolve starch from the pellet. The slurry was left at room temperature for 6 h, and starch was detected with I2-KI reagent prepared by diluting 0.1 ml stock solution (0.06 g I2 and 0.60 g KI in 10 ml deionized water) with 0.05 M HCl just prior to the assay. Samples of 0.5 ml starch solution were mixed with 0.5 ml I2-KI reagent, 1 ml 30% (v/v) perchloric acid and vortexed, then left standing at room temperature. The absorbance of the samples at 620 nm wavelength was then determined using a spectrophotometer, and the concentration determined using a standard carve. For soluble sugars, plant tissues were suspended in test tubes with 3 ml of 80% ethanol, the extract was evaporated to dryness and the residue was dissolved in 20 ml distilled water. Total soluble sugars were determined by the phenol-sulfuric acid method, using glucose as standard. The total NSC was determined as the sum of starch and soluble sugar concentrations.The modified standard evaluation system (SES) of IRRI was used for evaluation of the visual symptoms of salt damage during seedling stage. A scoring system of 1 to 9 was used, with 1 indicates normal growth with no symptoms of injury; 3 indicates near normal growth with leaf tips or few leaves whitish and rolled; 5 indicates intermediate tolerance with growth severely retarded, most leaves rolled and few are elongating; 7 indicates susceptibility with complete cessation of growth, most leaves dry, some plants dying; and 9 indicates high susceptibility with most plants dead or dying (Zhang et al., 2010).Green leaf area measurements were made each morning of the sampling dates. Plants were randomly chosen and gently uprooted. All leaves were detached and the senescing portions removed. A total of 4 plants were harvested per replicate and total green leaf area measured using a LiCor-3100 leaf area meter (LiCor, Lincoln, Zhang et al. 21 Nebraska, USA). Shoot and root growth were assessed on the same 4 plants from each replicate. Roots and shoots were gently separately and rinsed for few times with distilled water and then with NanoPure quality water for three additional times to remove adhering salt. Dry weights (mg) were determined with a top loading balance after drying the samples to a constant weight in an oven set at 70°C.About 20 mg of freeze-dried plant material were heated at 80°C for 10 min in 10 mL aqueous ethanol (80% v/v) in extraction vials, then cooled to room temperature and the volume adjusted to 10 mL with 80% v/v ethanol. After extraction, the leaf sections looks white, grayish or light brown, and sink to the bottom of the extraction vial allowing the extract to be decanted into a glass cuvette without filtration or centrifugation. Absorption readings were determined using a spectrophotometer, with the optical density determined at 649, 652 and 665 nm (Santo, 2004). Chlorophyll concentration in mg/ml was then calculated using the following formula:Chlorophyll (mg/g) = C (mg/ml) × V (ml) / fresh weight (g), with C = absorption reading and V = solution volume.Data analyses were carried out using SAS software 8.0 (SAS institute, 2001). Differences between means with P ≤ 0.05, P ≤ 0.01 and P ≤ 0.001 were considered significant based on LSD values. Correlations of seedling survival with other parameters were calculated using Microsoft Excel 2003 software. The data was presented as averages across the dry and wet seasons as the responses of the genotypes were similar across both seasons.Effect of salinity on both genotypes was apparent from the higher SES values after 20 days of exposure to salt stress (Table 2). The SES score of IR651 was significantly lower than that of IR64, confirming the higher tolerance of this genotype. Salinity also caused considerable reduction in survival across the two genotypes, where it decreased by about 35, 44 and 53% points after 6, 10 and 15 days, respectively, following transplanting in saline soil. However, the survival of the tolerant genotype IR651 was significantly higher than the moderately tolerant variety IR64 at all sampling dates.No significant differences were observed between the   two genotypes in leaf area and root and shoot dry weights at transplanting, however, the root:shoot ratio of IR651 was significantly higher than that of IR64 (Table 3).Seedling survival determined 15 days after transplanting in saline soil correlated significantly with shoot and root dry weights as well as with dry weights of leaves and stems and with leaf area (Table 4). However, the correlation with root:shoot ratio was insignificant, suggesting that variation in this trait during early seedling growth might not affect survival after transplanting in saline soils.Starch concentrations in stems, leaves and roots of the tolerant genotype IR651 at transplanting were higher, respectively, by about 22, 8 and 14%, than the moderately tolerant genotype IR64. However, the differences are significant only for stem starch concentrations. Conversely, soluble sugar concentrations were lower in the stems (12%), leaves (10%) and roots (11%) of IR651, though the differences are not statistically significant (Table 5).Starch concentration in stems and leaves of seedlings measured at transplanting correlated positively with survival at 15 days of transplanting in saline soils. However, correlation of survival with soluble sugar concentrations was negative (Table 6). This suggests that maintaining conditions in the nursery that maximize the conversion of soluble sugars into starch in the shoot before transplanting could contribute to survival of seedlings when transplanted in saline soils. Correlations of both soluble sugars and starch in roots with seedling survival were not significant.   After 20 days of transplanting, starch and total carbohydrate concentrations in the shoot were considerably lower under saline condition than under control condition (Table 7), but with no significant differences in total soluble sugar concentration, suggesting effects of salt stress on conversion of soluble sugars into starch. This becomes clearer after 30 days of salt stress where soluble sugars accumulated to significantly higher concentrations in shoots compared to that under control conditions. Differences between genotypes were greater 20 DAT, where the tolerant genotype accumulated higher soluble sugars, but lower amount of starch, and after prolonged stress of 30 days, the tolerant genotype still maintained higher soluble sugars than IR64. However, total NSC concentration was statistically similar in both genotypes under both saline and control conditions. This suggests that the higher tolerance of IR651 is probably not associated with its ability to accumulate starch or NSC in its shoots under stress. Trend in carbohydrate accumulation in roots seem to be similar to that in shoots, where soluble sugars, starch and total NSC were significantly less under salt stress. But this effect seem to revert as the seedlings age, where both soluble sugars and total carbohydrates became higher under salt stress, possibly suggesting inhibition of growth through effects other than photosynthesis and carbohydrate translocation to roots. IR651 maintained higher soluble sugar concentration in roots both at 20 and 30 days following transplanting in saline soils (Table 7). For both shoot and root NSC concentrations, interactions between genotypes and salinity were not significant.After 20 days of transplanting, the ratios of starch to total carbohydrate in plant tissues was significantly higher under control (normal) than under saline conditions (Figure 1a), and the difference was even higher at 30 DAT (Figure 1b), which suggests that starch formation is probably hindered under salt stress. The ratios of soluble sugars to total carbohydrates showed reverse trends, they are significantly higher under saline than under control conditions (Figure 1c and d). This also suggests that conversion of soluble sugars into starch is probably limited under saline conditions. The tolerant genotype IR651 maintained substantially lower ratio of starch to total carbohydrates in its tissues (Figure 1a and b), but conversely higher ratio of soluble sugars to total carbohydrates (Figure 1c and d). The higher proportion of soluble sugars in the tissue of the tolerant genotype could probably be advantageous for direct use during growth and maintenance under salt stress conditions.After 20 and 30 days of transplanting in saline soil, chlorophyll a concentrations in leaves of IR651 were 12.9 and 23.6% higher than in IR64, while chlorophyll b concentrations were 34.4 and 34.8% lower than in IR64 at 20 and 30 DAT, respectively (Table 8).However, no significant differences were observed in total chlorophyll (a+b) concentration of the two genotypes.  After 20 days of transplanting, the concentrations of chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b and chlorophyll a+b in plant tissues under salt stress were greater than under control conditions, by about 17, 94 and 32%, respectively, and similar trends were observed at 30 DAT, though the differences were not significant. The data showed that the chlorophyll concentration in leaves increased under salt stress, with the tolerant genotype maintaining higher concentration of Chlorophyll a, but lower concentration of chlorophyll b. Consequently, chlorophyll a/b ratio decreased substantially under salt stress, both at 20 and 30 DAT, and the tolerant genotype IR651 maintained significantly higher chlorophyll a/b ratio than the moderately tolerant genotype IR64 (Figure 2) at both sampling dates.Variation in chlorophyll concentration and growth as affected by salinity and genotype Significant differences were observed between the tolerant IR651and the moderately tolerant IR64 in their responses to salt stress (Table 2). Genetic variation in salinity tolerance in rice as well as in other crop species has been frequently documented in the past (Moradi et al., 2003;Eschie et al., 2002;Moud and Maghsoudi, 2008). Seedling survival measured 15 days after exposure to salt stress correlated positively with different growth attributes at transplanting, including root and shoot biomass, and leaf area and dry weight, suggesting a direct effect of seedling biomass at transplanting on survival of salt stress when seedlings are transplanted in saline soils. This has been observed in previous studies (Maiale et al., 2004;Sunnart et al., 2010), and older rice seedlings are mostly recommended when transplanting in saline soils. Eschie et al. (2002) and Ozturk et al. (2004) observed a negative association of sodium concentration in culture solution with plant growth rate and root-shoot ratio. No significant differences in shoot and root dry weights and leaf area were observed between the tolerant IR651 and the moderately tolerant genotype IR64 (Table 3), but the root-shoot ratio of IR651 was significantly greater than that of IR64. However, the insignificant correlation between root-shoot ratio and survival percentage under salt stress (Table 4) suggested that the higher root: shoot ratio of the tolerant genotype is probably not involved in salt tolerance in rice. Concentrations of chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b and total chlorophyll were higher under salt stress than under control condition, which agreed with previous observations (Asch et al., 2000;Santo, 2004). However, chlorophyll a/b ratio was significantly lower (Figure 2), suggesting greater effects of salt stress in reducing chlorophyll a than chlorophyll b. Considering that chlorophyll a is the main photosynthetic pigment (Daiz et al., 2002;Santo, 2004), this reduction in ratio could probably be one of the main reasons for reduced photosynthesis under salt stress as reported in rice before (Moradi and Ismail, 2007). Significant differences in chlorophyll concentrations under salt stress were also observed between genotypes, with the tolerant genotype having higher chlorophyll a, but lower chlorophyll b, resulting in substantially higher chlorophyll a/b ratio than the moderately tolerant genotype (Table 8; Figure 2). Ability of the tolerant genotype to maintain higher concentration of chlorophyll a is probably one of the important mechanisms contributing to salinity tolerance in this genotype, which could consequently result in higher photosynthetic capacity and carbohydrate formation (Moradi and Ismail, 2007;Rout et al., 1997;Datta et al., 2009).Higher non-structural carbohydrate concentration in plant tissue under abiotic stresses was known to have positive effects on plant survival of stress and recovery afterwards (Bagheri and Sadeghipour, 2009;Naureen and Naqvi, 2010). These carbohydrates could provide important resources for energy supply under abiotic stresses when carbon assimilation is reduced, (Khelil et al., 2007), and is considered an important adaptation strategies under unfavorable growth conditions as the case with complete submergence in rice (Das et al., 2005;Dkhil and Denden, 2010). In this study, we observed that starch concentration was significantly higher in the tissue of the tolerant genotype at transplanting (Table 5); and there was a significant positive correlation between survival percentage under salt stress and starch concentration in stems and leaves at transplanting. However, seedling survival under salt stress correlated negatively with soluble sugar concentration at transplanting (Table 6). This suggests that accumulation of starch in plant tissue before transplanting could improve seedling survival when transplanted in saline soil, and this can be enhanced both through breeding as well as proper management of seedlings in the nursery before transplanting.Under salt stress, consumption of metabolic energy increased while the amount of carbohydrate accumulation decreased because of reduced photosynthetic capacity; which will then cause slower growth and biomass accumulation (Pattanagul and Thitisaksakul, 2008). Besides its direct effects on carbon assimilation, salt stress could also hinder other important metabolic processes. For example, the activity of several starch biosynthesis enzymes can be affected by the concentration of potassium in plant tissues, and salinity was known to cause considerable reduction in the uptake of potassium and its concentration in plant tissue (Chartzoulakis et al., 2006;Ismail et al., 2007;Moradi and Ismail, 2007;Dkhil and Denden, 2010). The reduction in starch concentration in plant tissue observed in this study could be due, in part, to the decrease in K + absorption under salt stress (Cakmak et al., 1994;Jenci and Natarajan, 2009). Contrary to starch concentration, soluble sugar concentration was higher in the tolerant genotype (Table 7); and the ratio of soluble sugars to total carbohydrate was higher than in the moderately tolerant genotype under salt stress (Figure 1). This can probably be due to lesser effects of salt stress on carbon assimilation and soluble sugar formation than on conversion of soluble sugars to starch.This effect could be mediated by the lower K + and the unfavorable ratio of Na + to K + in plant tissue under salt stress (Ismail et al., 2007;Zhang et al., 2010), with the consequent effects on the activity of the enzymes involved in the translocation and conversion of soluble sugars into starch. Maintaining greater ability to convert soluble sugars into starch before and during salt stress could potentially play an important role in rice tolerance of salinity. Further studies are needed to substantiate this relation using a wider range of contrasting rice genotypes, and also to investigate the extent of genetic variation to be explored in gene discovery as well as in breeding.Salinity causes substantial decrease in seedling survival and considerable reduction in growth of surviving plants as indicated by the higher SES scores. Greater root and shoot biomass, leaf area and starch concentration in plant tissue at transplanting correlated positively with seedling survival after transplanting in saline soils. Salinity causes substantial reduction in total nonstructural carbohydrate concentrations in plant tissue, basically through greater effects on reducing starch formation, and this is possibly mediated through mechanisms associated with conversion of soluble sugars into starch caused by the unfavorable sodium: potassium ratio and homeostasis. The salt tolerant genotype IR651 had higher soluble sugars and lower starch concentration during exposure to salt stress, suggesting that the tolerance of this genotype is probably mediated through mechanisms other than maintenance of higher starch/total carbohydrate ratio under salt stress. Tolerance of salt stress is related to the ability to maintain higher concentration of chlorophyll a and greater chlorophyll a/b ratio in plant tissues under salt stress. Further studies using a large and more diverse set of rice genotypes are needed to evaluate the potential use of these traits in breeding salt tolerant rice varieties."}

main/part_2/0198673489.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"ca1f46bdf30c131a0d63a7e0ec94d0ce","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/a77c0ef2-2b31-420f-b0ed-7efcb6fd6525/retrieve","id":"-177778172"},"keywords":["Surinan:e n.a. n.a. 1","125.3 1","104.2 1","102.7 1","046.2 n.a. n.a. 2","900 2","642"],"sieverID":"98727852-475b-4c06-947d-83360eefc0ad","content":"agricultural sector and the rest of the economy (in a macro context) and within the agricultural sector during the past two decades. The analysis of the set of policies applied should contribute t o the understanding of the role that the food and fiber sector have played in the development of the country, how that role has evolved, and more importantly how it is likely to evolve in a near future. Once we reach an understanding of this participation, we will focus on the role of cassava and its products and their potential demand in the near future . Potential demand will be determined by focusing on the consumption of carbohydrates by humans, for which cassava plays a basic role, and on the market for meats where cassava can be incorporated as a source of energy in feed rations.The Colombian economy has experienced stable and r apid growth since the mid-1950s. This growth has had as its platform, the performance of the agricultural sector which contributes nearly a quarter of the gross domestic product (GDP) (Table 1), clase to two-thirds of export earnings (mainly from coffee) and one-third of total employment in the economy. Agriculture's share in GDP is twice as high in Colombia as it is for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region. Overall, Colombia's per capita GDP for 1985 was US$1,243 (15 among 25 LAC countries, Table 2) .Real GDP grew atan annual rate of 4. 2% from 1964 to 1967, 6 . 4% from 1967 to 1974, and at 5 . 3% from 1975 to 1980, only to slow down in to 1. 9% from 1981 to 1985. This growth was accompanied by rates of growth of 2.8% , 4.7%, 4.1% and 1.4% for the agricultural sector, respectively. Population growth was around 2.1% per year in the period 1965-85, and has since decreased to about 1.5% per year . Urban population accounts for 70 % of the total. International reserves were US$3 billion at the end of 1986. For this same year, exports are calculated to reach US$4.5 billion and imports around US$4 billion.In broad terms, Colombia has striven for food self-sufficiency. Out of 12 items that supply about two-thirds of the protein and calorie requirements of the population, almost all were produced internally (Garcia, 1983). The country went from an import substituting policy to an export promotion policy in 1967 (Decreto 444) . A continuous devaluation policy (crawling peg) was adopted, improving the terms of trade by reducing the overvaluation of the Colombian peso . Total exports grew at an annual rate of 4 . 6% in the period 1970-75, 12 . 0% in 1976-80, and decreased by -5.4% in 1981-83 while agricultural exports grew at 2.0%, 13.8% and 2 . 8% in those years .  Colombia also has one of the lowest per capita public external debts of Latín America (US$485, Table 3) as of 1986, although debt service is clase to one fourth of foreign exchange earnings. The exchange rate policy of the past two decades was fundamental to the low foreign debt contracted by the country. The fixed rates constituted as an incentive to obtain external financing.Industrial protection has also been a policy objective. This has been at the expense of agriculture. Garcia showed that 90% of an import tariff is transferred as a tax to primary exports . The price of importable inputs (fertilizer, machinery, etc.) increases and producers of other import-competing and exportable goods are penalized (Valdes, 1986). In the presence of import restrictions, the price of imports is driven up with the consequent drop in demand (i . e., the feed industry would have grown faster in the absence of these policies). Nontradeables, such as cassava, are at a disadvantage with imports, such as wheat and sorghum, in the competition for resources.Starting in 1978 the country witnessed a decrease in its rate of growth; a phenomenon observed in most Latin American countries . The sharp increase in 1980 of the international interest rates and the world recession that brought reductions in the prices of primary exports merged in Colombia with another adverse element: the coffee boom of the late seventies.''In the late 1970's, a coffee boom set in motion a rapid growth in the money supply and inflation, despite the stabilization efforts of the Colombian authorities. The deceleration in the depreciation in the crawling peg exchange rate led to an appreciation of the real ｾ ｸ ｣ ｨ ｡ ｮ ｧ ･ ＠ rate, which reduced incentives to produce noncoffee agricultural tradeables . This deceleration ••• contributed to inflation. Although some attempt was made to increase agricultural incentives • . • these policies were directed only at import-competing cereals and ignored a vast agricultural sector\" (Valdes, 1986).Real GDP grew at an annual rate of 2.4% in 1978-85, agricultural GDP grew at 1.8%, while population increased by 1.9% (total) and 3.3% (urban). The level of international reserves dropped from over US$5 billion in 1980 to US$2 billion in 1985. The current account deficits that started in 1981 were no longer compensated by credits. The fiscal deficit as a percent of GDP went from 2.0% in 1980 to 4.2% in 19 84. Inflation continued at around 20.0% as the fiscal deficit was financed with monetary expansion. The real rate of exchange (based on 1975=100) went to 70 in 198070 in and to 80 in 198470 in (SAC, 1985)). The policy of mild liberalization pursued from 1972-82 came to an end in 1982 when the tariff levels were increased and the number of agriculture and f ood categories with most items being restricted went from four to seventeen (out of a total of twenty-one). Nominal rates of protection for cereals increased significantly, presumably due to tighter import restrictions (Thobany, 1984).Compensatory policies to domestic agricultural production, as subsidized credit, became quite expensive as those resources came from open market operations at substantially higher costs (Montes, 1983).Other price inputs (wages, fertilizer, etc.) increased faster than output prices (Table 4). Apparently, agricultura! nonwage value added has been declining and rural wages have increased even in real terms, to become the highest in South America by January 1985 (at US$4.00 per day plus a mark-up of about 40% for social benefits). At the same time migration was high and unemployment grew t o over 14.5%.After a devaluation of 50% in 1985, the country achieved balance in the current account and the perspectives for higher revenues from primary exports (coffee, coal, and oil) appeared quite good; economic recovery has begun already. Population growth is expected to remain at 1.5% per year, while real GDP should annually increase at 3.0%. Beginning in 1986 about 70 % of the import positions were transferred to the free import list, including farm inputs.In summary, the macroeconomic and trade policies of Colombia led to an appreciation of the real exchange rate that switched consumption to tradeables (grains and cereals) and away from nontradeables such as cassava. Agricultura! production is locked in a high cost scheme that does not make it competitive at world prices. Compensatory policies adopted to stimulate agricultura! production were mostly directed at importables (grains, barley, and wheat) whilé ignoring a vast agricultura! sector; besides, these policies have lost effectiveness in recent years. Investment in the sector has been reduced. Lower unit costs are needed to increase production at profitable levels . The easing of import restraints (particularly for inputs) as well as the improvement in terms of trade are seen as a favorable developments, but yield improvements are needed in the mid-term.Presently, about 55 % of the gross agricultura! output comes from crop activities and 45% from livestock (Table 5). Tha latter increased its share from 37% in 1970 due mainly to the strong dynamism of poultry and pork production. The agroindustrial sectors are growing more rapidly than primary agriculture (Machado, 1986). The ratio of value added in agroprocessing to value added in crops and livestock increased from 54 % in 1970 to 70% in 1983.I n the period 1953-67, when significant distortions existed between domestic and international prices, per capita GDP grew at 1.2% and per capita food production decreased by -0.4%. The rate of migration was 5.3%. In addition to this, the threat of agrarian reform and land pressures meant that the number of units operated by renters and sharecroppers fell from 282 ,347 in 1960to 166,539 in 1970(BID, ESP in LA, 1986, p. 124). \\ihen prices approached those in the international market (in 1967-78), per capita GDP grew at 2 . 3% and per capita food production increased at 0.7%. Rural migration increased ata rate of 3 . 5% between 1967 and 1978. The ratio of urban to rural wages had been falling steadily since the 1950s until 1970 when it recovered rapidly. \"Distortions in relative connnodity prices induced by connnercial and exchange rate policies caused changes in factor prices that contributed to the massive outflow •.. This was an opportunity to become more land intensive •.• \" (Garcia, p. 57) . The ｳ ｬ ｯ ｾ ､ ｯ ｷ ｮ ＠ of the economy in 19 78 , was linked to t h e world recession and the after shock of the coffee bonanza. In per capita terms, GDP increased at 0.7% and agricultura! GDP decreased by -0. 4% per year in 1978-85. Area harvested decreased ｦ ｲ ｯ ｾ ＠ 4.3 million hectares in 1978 to 3.8 million hectares in 1984 (Table 6). Terms of trade for agriculture, as measured by the ratio of sectoral deflactors for value added, were much lower in 1983 than in 1970, but they increased until 1977 and thereafter decreased (Table 7).An analysis of the growth rate for the 17 major crops in 1970-84 revealed that 0.9% came from cultivated area while 2.5% came from higher yields and changes in crop composition. In that lapse, the annual growth in area cultivated for tree crops reached 1.8%, by 0. 9% for cane crops (sugar and panela), and by 1.2% for grains (mostly sorghum).Between 1977 and 1983, the wholesale price index for food increased annually by 4.8% more rapidly than the farm gate price index (Table 8). This suggests that reducing the costs of marketing is a key target in improving food supplies, since they tend to grow much faster than production costs.After 1978, use of fertilizer has also decreased (Balcazar en Machado, SAC September'85), real prices of inputs increased, the overvaluation of the Colombian peso became more marked, and rural instability remained high, meaning that Colombian agriculture is now less competitive. Illegal, parallel, and black markets continued to be important with the subsequent impact on resource cost and allocation particularly on wages and land. Contraband from Venezuela and Ecuador (after sharp devaluations in both countries) is at its highest affecting agricultura! supply, but stimulating demand. FENALCO estimates that contraband of agricultura! products and inputs (wheat and corn flour, poultry meat, eggs, sorghum and feed, urea, machinery , vegetable oils, etc.) amounted to over US $1 billion in 1986. Food imports amount to about US $400 million or 7.5% of total imports (USDA Attache Report).The slowdown of agriculture is the result of a number of factors that affect agricultura! production. At first glance, there has been a protection policy for most agricultura! products in Colombia . The interna! price of most products has been higher than the international price; nominal protection indexes are positive (Garcia). However, to be able to conclude that there was effective protection, one has to consider the overvaluation of the Colombian peso. If the nominal protection is higher than the overv aluation, products are protected. In this sense, only products such as powdered milk, oils and fats, and wheat would be true importables, since they have been effectively protected even after making the adjustment f or the overvaluation. Rice, coffee, and cotton, for example, hav e been discriminated agains t in this sense for the past two decades (Garcia) .These hav e been designed as alternative or compensatory policies. The targets hav e been commerci al products, as we will now examine.  Price and commercialization policies. Four types of direct government intervention prevail in Colombia: l. Output price supports. 2. Price fixing in output and input markets. 3. Agricultura! export subsidies and taxes. 4. Agricultura! trade restrictions including import tariffs and import/export licensing.INA, created in 1944 and later restructured under IDEMA, has been the organization responsible for administering policies for support and warranty prices, stocks, imports and exports, and for conducting studies and extending credit (Silva, in Machado, 1986). Support prices have been implemented for commercial products (rice, cotton, wheat, sorghum, corn, soybeans, sesame, and barley) and for beans--the only traditional crop included in the list. These support prices have served mainly as a price floor although IDEMA's participation in direct purchases has been modest, except for wheat with purchases of 38% of production in 1970-82, sorghum 14.5% in 1982, and sorne rice. Generally, support prices have been similar to market prices, and have grown in real terms over the past 5 years; sorghum and corn had real price increases of about 12 % in 1979-82.In order to restrain price increases to urban consumers, IDEMA has occasionally imported food selling it at controlled prices (wheat flour, beans, milk, oils and fats, rice, and sugar) (Rivas et al., in press). In addition to support prices, negotiated prices have been set between the government and the prívate sector for products such as coffee, sugar, and milk, and mínimum prices established for cocoa, and sisal as well as for fertilizers and pesticides.Closely related to this is the program to build wholesale markets (Centrales de Abastos). There are three already in operation in Bogota, Medellin, and Cali and four more being built in Barranquilla, Bucaramanga, Pereira, and Cucuta. These facilities will improve marketing, especially of perishables such as cassava, where losses can be of considerable magnitude.The main instruments of intervention in agricultura! foreign trade have been tariffs, taxes, subsidies, and quantitative restrictions on imports and exports. Rice export permits have been granted only if domestic surpluses are anticipated. Taxes apply mostly to coffee exports. Protection to importables is reflected in the nominal protection rates measured by a comparison of the domestic and international prices (Table 9) . Credit policies. The three main policy tools used are forced financing (Law S), low and controlled interest rates, and directed credit allocations. Tuo major institutions responsible for administering agricultura! credit are the FFAP and Caja Agraria. Mo st of the credit supplied by FFAP is directed to commercial agriculture (90% of the funds rediscounted by FFAP have had that destination) (Martinez,in: Rivas et al.,p. 23) . Of Colombia's 1.2 million farmers, 75% are classified as small farmers. Eighty percent of Caja Agraria credit goes to about 440,000 small farmers (one-half of the target group). The compensatory power of credit has lost a great deal of its impact. Although agricultura! credit grew at a rate of 2.2% in real terms in 1970-1984 (Table 10) (Table 10), its share in total credit went f rom 31% to 15% and its participation in the GDP went frorn 27.9% to 20.8% during that period. Interest rates charged by FFAP and Caja Agraria were subsidized and negative in real terms until 1982. Wi th change in the financia! market, rates went up significantly (Table 11).More importantly, in real terms, agricultura! credit decreased in 1980-83. Furthermore, while 52% of the sectoral credit in 1970 carne from primary money dispursements, only 6.5% did so in 1981 (Montes, 1983) which explains the reduction in subsidy as part of the monetary policy agreed upon by international financing institutions. Caja Agraria had a crisis in 1984 when its real disbursements were 15. 3% lower than the previous year. This is especially significant for small farmers--important clients of the Caja Agraria.In terms of the t ype of commodities being financed, FFAP has concentrated its lending on a few commercial crops--irrigated rice, sorghum, soybeans, and cotton. For these crops, FFAP provides more than 90% of the total credit it supplies. On the other hand, Caja Agraria has financed a wide spectrum of commodities that are characteristic of small-farming systems (Table 12). Producer associations and banks provide most of the credit for coffee and rice.The crop receiving most credit to value of production in 1974-83 was sorghum, with a ratio 0.43, followed by sesame (an export with 0.33), rice (0.33), cotton (0.38), wheat (0.19) and corn (0.19) . For cassava and yams the ratio was only 0.06.The three imports in that list (sorghum, corn, and wheat) are among the crops that have been most strongly protected; the ranking according to the Nominal Protection Coefficient (NPC) is barley, corn, sorghum, wheat, and soybeans (Table 9). The NPC has to be adjusted by the overvaluation of the currency, input taxes, and credit subsidies . Janssen calculated that at 30% overvaluation for sorghum the protection was no longer effective.Government expenditures in agriculture have been quite profitable (60% rate of return in 1950-80) and have had a significant contribution to output growth (30% in that period according to Elias, 1985)  \\-lithin agriculture, it seems that research and extension have had a strong bias in favor of commercial agriculture, supporting the emphasis of the overall agricultural policies enforced.The modernization of agriculture made it more dependent on imported inputs, whose trade had been restricted. Agricultural credit was reduced in total credit from 31 % in 1970 to 17% in 1981, input costs (labor, machinery, fertilizer, seed, etc.) grew faster than output prices (cost-price squeeze), public investment in research went from 0.46% in 1972 to 0.20% in 1982, and public expenditures in agriculture went from 25 % in 1970 to 7.6% in 1981 (Prieto et al., 1986). However, government expenditures in agriculture are quite in line with those of other Latin American countries: in 1980 and per hectare of cropland, expenditures amounted to US$195 while per worker employed in agriculture they were US$377. (Elias, 1985).From the viewpoint of Colombian producers, output prices are too low and yet they are not competitiv e in the world market (with the ex ception of coffee, bananas, anda few minor export crops). The opinion is that the resulting biases from the other policies have been so strong that agriculture (mainly coffee) has had to pay more than half of the industrialization costs (Valdes, 1986) with a loss of competitiveness that made necessary the implementation of compensatory policies. These policies were directed to tradeables (imports such as sorghum, corn, wheat, and soybeans) and exports such as rice (i.e., to commercial agriculture). While in the end, there was no effective protection for these crops, nontradeables (such as cassava) were left even in a worse relative condition, for they had to support the effects of protectionism through higher input prices and worse terms of trade for agriculture with no compensatory policies to stimulate their production. The incentives and subsidies have been such that they have created a flow from the small to the large farmer, from nontradeables (traditional) to tradeables (commercial) and from agriculture to the other sectors. This partially explains the lack of dynamism that exists in food production (reflected in higher food imports) because the traditional sector supplies more than half of the energy and protein needs of the population (Table 13). For example, cassava, beans, plantains, potatoes, beef, and milk are mostly produced by this type of growers.Status Quo of Cassava in Colombia: Supply and DistributionThe root is produced mostly by small farmers often from a complex production system. Intercropping with corn, yams, beans and/or cowpeas is frequent among small producers. On the Atlantic Coast, the largest  producing region in the country, 35% of total incomes received from agricultura! activities are generated by cassava . Within the small-farm system, 40% of all cultivated land is estimated to be in a cassava-cropping system. \"Most often it is cultivated with maize and yam (40% of the time) or with maize alone (25% of the time). At present cassava monoculture is the second best alternative, which is practiced only if intercropping is not possible because of credit shortages\" (Janssen, 1985). Production in the east ern region also follows a similar pattern.Relatively large commercial plantations (over 20 ha) are more frequently found in the coffee region (Caicedonia, Pereira, Palestina), where land and labor are expensive. Intensive technologies are applied and y ields are much higher (around 20 tons/ha) . The variety \"Chiroza\" is the one preferred in the coffee region.There is a wide geographic divergence of consumption according to the different regions of the country, but cassava is a major staple throughout the country . This is a reflection of cassava's ample adaptation to the heterogeneous geography of Colombia. The crop is found in the coffee-growing region up to 2000 meters above sea level , in the lowlands of the coast, in the acid savannas of Meta, and in the humid tropical forests of the Pacific region. This versatility is a great asset of the crop.Production figures closely relate to consumption figures. By 1985, the major cassava producer was the Atlantic region, with 35.3% of the total, followed by the eastern r egion (29.4%) and the central region (24.4%) (Table 14). The same pattern is shown in regional per capita consumption figures (Table 15) . Time series data published by the Ministerio de Agricultura y Ganadería (MAG) has unexplainable abrupt breaks, especially from 1969 to 1970. The data are unreliable due to the various difficulties involved in collecting cassava production figures (many small dispersed producers, variable production cycle with different planting alternatives, multiple end uses, etc . ) (Lynam and Pachico, 1982) .Data from MAG shows a decrease in cassava production at an annual rate of -1.3% for 1970-85. Consequently, per capita consumption for the period dropped at an annual rate of -3.3%. Yields do not show any significant trend (about 9 t/ha). The lower output can be explained by reductions in area planted. The reduction in supply has been accompanied by a steady demand, as reflected by real consumer price increases of 1.7% per year (Table 17) .Fresh cassava consumption. Cassava is an important food staple in Colombia, particularly to consumers in the northern part of the count ry (Atlantic Coast and eastern region), those in the rural sector, and in the poorest segments of the population. This is not to say that the root is not consumed by upper income groups . Actually, the highest per capita consumption is found among the rich of the rural sector in the Atlantic region (82 kg per capita in 1981, see Tables 16 and 18) . Within that particular group, cassava accounts for 3.0% of food expenditures and for 9.9% of the calorie intake. At lower income levels, although physical consumption is lower, a larger proportion of incomes is spent on cassava and contributes to caloric intake in a more significant way. Again in the rural Atlantic region, the lowest income groups spend about 7.0% of their total food expenditures on cassava and the root represents about 15 % of their energy intake (Table 19).The root is consumed mostly in its fresh form, and 62.2% of it is producer-consumed. Cassava consumption by producers on the Atlantic Coast is 170 kg per capita per y ear (Janssen, 1986). This shows the cassava's role as both a staple food andan income generator for small producers. The percentage of the crop that is actually consumed by the farmer decreases with income level. At the lowest quintile, 68.2% of consumption takes place at the farm level. Average per capita consumption, according to the DANE/DRI 1981 survey, is 25.5 kg at the national level, 41.1 kg at the rural level, and 17. 2 kg at the urban level.In the Atlantic rural zone, at the lowest income levels, cassava is the second highest source of calories ( 15 %) after rice (25%) but ahead of plantains (12%), sugar (11%), and vegetable oils (10%) . In the rural eastern zone and again at low income levels, cassava comes third as an energy source after potatoes and corn. Consumption of cassava in Bogota is not high in per capita terms (7.2 kg), but in any case it represents a sizable yearly amount (about 50,000 tons). Cassava consumed in Bogotá comes from Meta, Cundinamarca, and the central coffee region (northern Valle, Risaralda, and Caldas) .The abrupt and varied geography of the country, although allowing for the production of different, regionally adapted varieties, constitutes an obstacle to commercialization. The high perishability and high water-contents of the root as well as the cost of marketing a product produced on a relatively small-scale constitute important cost markups (Lynam and Pachico, 1982). Sharply segregated markets exist with ample price differentials. This is reflected by the inability of cassava grown on the Coast (the region with the lowest price) to enter the Bogota market (with the highest consumer price) although profit margins would adequately cover transportation costs. There is a sizable risk involved in entering the market. As a result, established intermediaries (producer and retailer) have good bargaining power .Both time series and cross sectional, household-budget data were analyzed in an effort to determine the main parameters influencing cassava consumption in Colombia.Cross sectional data. The advantage of using these data lies in the possibility of exploring consumption patterns at a microeconomic level: by regions, by income lev els, by type of household, etc. An important issue at hand was to establish both the price and income responsiveness of cassava consumption at varying income lev els. Data from the household expenditure survey of 1981 conducted by DANE/DRI reveals that cassava consumption is quite responsiv e to income changes, especially at the lower quintiles, where it is elastic (1.47 and 1.23, see Table 20). More important, it is not only responsive to income changes but it is also quite responsive to changes in retail prices (Table 20). The average price elasticity for the country was calculated to be -0.88. The value of this parameter is similar to that calculated by Janssen on the Atlantic Coast (Janssen, 1986). Average income elasticity in Colombia is 0.20. Time series data. Most analysis of this type of data have concluded that cassava is an inferior commodity, i.e., that income elasticity for consumption is negative. This result is obtained by regressing per capita consumption (which usually decreases over time) against continuously rising per capita incomes. The result clearly contrasts with measurements arising from cross sectional data. Why should the two measurements be so different ?Our hypothesis is that a primary element causing the decrease in per capita cassava consumption is urbanization. This element goes beyond price increases. It has important repercussions on market structure (decreases competitiveness) and therefore on volumes traded. Consequently, a model of demand for cassava with independent variables for prices (cassava price, wheat, rice), per capita real incomes, and number of people in the urban zones of the country was estimated.The results show that cassava is quite responsive to its own price changes (elasticity of 0.43), to prices of other competing goods (rice has an elasticity of substitution of 0.09), to per capita real income (elasticity of 2.51) and to the proximity for urbanization (with an elasticity of -1.55, see Table 21). In other words, the major force behind the decrease in cassava consumption in 1970-85, was urbanization (through higher prices and restricted market access) and to a lesser ex tent the lower price of rice. Income growth, on the other hand, was a positive force in making the reduction less marked.Other uses. Presently, there are about 40 small, drying plants of cassava that are being used in animal feed rations. These are located on the northern coast and in 1986 produced about 5000 tons.The profitability of the plants, together with the advantageous position that the associations offer to members and neighbors in terms of employment, reduction of marketing risks, and earnings make them an attractive proposition, mainly to small farmers in those areas where there are marked dry seasons (4 months or more) . The major advantage lies in the concept of market integration, where members are able to capture margins at several places within the marketing chain.\"In terms of other uses there is a large-scale starch plant on the north coast, which in 1970 manufactured a little over 1000 tons and two zones of small-scale, sour-starch producers in Cauca and Antioquia departments, producing an estimated 4600 tons, most of which went into the baking industry\" (Lynam and Pachico, 1982). Converted f rom fresh cassava, starch production represents about 15,000 tons in Cauca (almost all of the production of that department). For the country , t he amount is probably around 40 ,000 tons (2 . 3% of total production) .\"The 1970 census estimated onfarm feeding at 504,000 t ons (Ministerio de ａ ｧ ｲ ｩ ｣ ｵ ｬ ｴ ｵ ｲ ｡ ｾ ＠ 1979) •• ..• This represents about 8% of energy requirements of the small-farm swine produc tion outside the Andean zone . This is considered a reasonable figure given t he results of the survey\" (Lynam and Pachico, 1982).Cassava has the potential of play ing a fundamental role in supplying food requirements t o the popula tion of Colombia in t he near f uture. It can contribute directly t o alleviate the energy deficits of the population and, indirectly, to the protein deficits by entering in the least-cost f eed rations as a complement to other energy sources t hat are currently deficient in production (mos tly sorghum and corn) . ｬ ｾ ･ ＠ will briefly examine the carbohydrate and meat markets, in order to establísh the potential future demand for cassava.Carbohydrate foods . Cassava, a long with rice, corn, wheat, potatoes , and plantains represent a major comp onent of Colombian die t s (Table 13) . They accounted for 45% of the total calorie intake in 1981 . In 198 1, food expenditures represented about one-half of total consumption expenditures and the six products mentioned here represent ed about 25 . 6% of total food expenditures (Table 22) .In 1960-84, rice had the highest rate of per capita consumption increase (at 4 .1% per year) closely foll owed by potatoes (3 . 6%) (Table 17) . The widespread adoption of improved varieties , now growing in a l mos t a ll of the area, became quite significant after 1967 , when ICA and CIAT introduced t he variety IR8 and other dwarf varieties developed f or use in irrigated tropical a r eas . Today rice is the second largest recipient of subsidized agricultural c redit in Co l ombia.Pot a t o producti on began t o show a mar ked increase in 1972. Adop tion of new technologies , more accessibility to s ub s idized credit, increased u s e of fertilizer, and increased stability a t the farm level played important roles in s timulating higher y ields a nd production. In 1977 , 61 % of potato output carne f rom l abor-intens ive production (7 2% of the a rea) while the r emaining 39% carne from mechanized production (Sanint, 1983) .Plantains have s hown sorne r eduction i n y ields, due to t he presence of new diseases (sigat oka) . About 33% of t he area planted in plantain is monoculture and t he r es t is intercropped, mos t ly as a shadow t o traditional coffee planta tions .｜ ｾ ･ ｡ ｴ ＠ y ields exhibited mode r ate ｧ ｲ ｯ ｷ ｴ ｨ ｾ ＠ but production decr eased annually by 5 . 6% in 1960-84 , despite the pro t ection f r om t he import substituting policy . Per capita con sump tion of wheat increased at a rate of 1. 6% per year in 1960-84 spurred by growing import volumes.  Corn for human consumption also showed decreases equal to the annual growth of the population. The use of corn for feed has increased moderately (Table 23) . Corn production is dualistic; about half of the area planted to corn is found in subsistence units, usually associated with other crops (cassava, yams, beans, etc.). Corn yields have remained virtually unchanged in 1960-84 although in 1974-84 they showed an increase of 1.2% per year while area planted had decreased annually by 1% in 1960-84.Corn is another protected crop that has been unable to respond to the stimulus applied in the form of subsidized credit, research, and extension. Corn has one of the highest ratios of credit to value of production among all crops (0.19). However, imports have been frequently needed to meet domestic needs throughout the past 10 years .Rea l retail prices reflect the impressive gains in rice yields over the past twenty five years. Prices fell at an annual rate of -3. 47. from 1960 to 84 . Wheat flour prices also fell considerably, reflecting IDEMA's policy of supplying this product at low prices to the urban consumer by means of imports.Cassava prices increased at 1.7% and even more relevant was a drastic increase in its relative price with respect to wheat and rice. The cross price elasticity of cassava consumption with respect to the price of rice reflects the negative impact on consumption of this root resulting from the lower rice prices.Meat consumption. Beef is the most prevalent meat in Colombian diets with annual consumption at 27 kg per capita, followed by poultry at 5.5 kg, and pork at 5.0 kg. The most dynamic of the three is the poultry industry; its most rapid growth occurred in 1970-78 with a 16 % rate of increase. The recession affected this industry in 1979-85. Per capita poultry consumption was 1 . 33 kg in 1970. Per capita egg consumption went from 51 . 3 eggs in 1970 to 129 . 2 in 1984.Beef supply has grown at rates similar to population rates and therefore no significant trend in its per capita consumption has been observed. Per capita consumption of pork grew annually by 1.4% between 1960 and 1984.The dynamism of poultry production stems from the rapid adoption of new technologies that have made possible drastic price cuts over the past 15 years . The ratio of feed to meat went from 3.3 in the sixties to 2.1 in the eighties (Rivas et al., in press) . An important element was the availability of subsidized credit which grew annually by 13.6% from 1974 to 1983 . Another key element was the joint development of the feed and oil agroindustries, even in the face of the difficulties found in sorghum and soycake supplies (Machado, 1986).Yet, because feed represents between 60 % and 70% of the total costs in the poultry and egg industry, and feed is heavily dependent upon grain and oilseed production (commercial agriculture), which have been protected or have at least received more compensation than other crops, the industry has benefited from the prevailing policies. That is, the poultry industry is linked to both agroindustry and commercial agriculture, where the policy incentives have been located and will continue as such in the future.In 1965-67 beef accounted for 82% of meat consumption, pork for 12%, and poultry for 6%, while in 1982-84 beef's share was reduced to 72%, and pork and poultry went up to 14% each, revealing an i mportant contribution of poultry to meat consumption which could be linked to cheaper relative prices.The feed agroindustry is dominated by three companies that control 60% of the market. Seventy-five percent of feed goes to poultry, and the other 25% goes to pork, dairy, and other industries (Machado, 1986).Relations between the oil and cake producers, feed manufacturers and sorghum producers have been difficult, due to government intervention resulting from import license approvals and support prices for grains. Feed availability is a bottleneck to expanding the poultry industry. Policy has not favored use of sorghum, as was explained earlier. This is a crop whose production has not shown important yield advances and whose importation has been restrained . Local sorghum cultivation has expanded mainly in area planted with insignif icant reductions in unit costs. Since it makes up for almost two-thirds of feed input requirements, it is imperative to reduce this cost by means of yield increases and/or a cheaper substitute. Dry cassava has a good potential to be a cheap substitute (Gomez et al., 1982) .The slow-down of Colombian food production, along with the fact that agriculture is locked in a high-cost scheme and that target crops selected to actívate agricultura! production have not responded adequately to the compensatory efforts implemented, indicate that the actual food deficits are likely to worsen into the near future unless important changes are incorporated in the food and fiber system. Basic assumptions. Using the model estimated from time series data, we can project cassava consumption needs into the future. From the basic model: Per Capita Consumption = Function (Prices, Income, Urbanization).One can assume changes in the independent variables, and calculate the new levels implicit in the dependent variable. For Colombia we have assumed a rather conservative scenario in which per capita real income grows at an annual rate of 1.0% from 1985 to 2000, population grows annually by 1.5%, and the real prices of cassava and poultry decrease at -1.0% per year while other retail prices remain constant in real terms.Fresh cassava. Prospects for carbohydrate production are not bright should the trends observed so far in the eighties continue. Only potato output has shown sorne growth in these years. Rice productivity and supply have been stagnant for the past 6 years and its real price has increased. Wheat imports have been growing rapidly while wheat production remains stagnant. This trend implies an improvement in demand for cassava in the mid-term range.If we assume that current marketing and production practices will prevail, cassava production will not be able to meet the expected increases in demand, and further increases in cassava's real retail price would result. However, there is reason to believe that the new storage technology for fresh cassava will have a favorable impact on both demand and quantities traded, especially in the urban markets .Important price fluctuations at the farm leve! can be observed throughout the country: Col $8 to Col $10/kg on the Atlantic Coast, Col $12 to Col $15/kg in Santander (eastern region), Col $18 to Col $25/kg in the coffee region (chiroza variety). These differences are magnified at the consumer leve!: Col $20/kg in Barranquilla (Atlantic region), Col $25/kg in Bucaramanga (Santander, eastern region), and Col $100/kg in Bogota.In addition wholesale prices of agricultura! goods have been growing faster than producer prices in Colombia. It is quite clear that technology expressly directed at lowering marketing costs, such as the storage of fresh cassava in plastic bags, can bring important benefits to both producers and consumers nationwide.It has been calculated that cassava from the Atlantic region can be sold in Bogota at about Col $40/kg with this technology. Corabastos (the central wholesale market in Bogota) presently buys at Col $60 to Col $70/kg, i.e., 50% higher than what would be possible with the adoption of the new proposed storage technology. A reduction of this magnitude in the price of cassava implies a 44% increase in per capita consumption (elasticity times price decrease or, -0.\"88 x-50%). For the case of Bogota, an increase of volumes traded of 29% and a reduction in waste of about 15% (from 30% today to 15 % expected) are calculated.The most relevant point here is that consumers will pay less while producers will receive more (Janssen and Wheatley, 1985) by means of a significant reduction in waste and marketing costs, as well as the emergence of stronger markets. These results will be the result of a breaking of geographic barriers to entry due to lower perishability and therefore, of an increasing access from more distant production points. Finally, combined demand and supply effects are achieved, resulting in motivation for adoption of better production and marketing technologies.Therefore, the assumption of a reduction in the retail price of cassava rests initially on the implementation of the new storage technology. In this case the reduction rate in price could be much higher than the one proposed for this exercise. An additional assumption for projections is that with this technology, commercialization losses of cassava will be reduced from an estimated present leve! of 25% to 15% in the fresh market. If there is a parallel development in the drying industry, losses will be reduced to 5% since the remaining 10% which is not suitable for the fresh market due to quality problems (small size or broken), and that is currently left in the field could be utilized by this industry. Therefore, the final effect on additional production requirements will be 20% less due to better crop usage.Taking the initial level of per capita consumption implied by MAG (44.5 kg), per capita consumption by the year 2000 will be 41 . 5 kg resulting from the negative impact that urbanization has on cassava consumption. Total consumption will go from 1683 tons to 1731 tons. Additional land of 7.153 thousand hectares will be required and 171 7 new jobs will be generated each year (Table 24). Dry cassava. The major requirements for the development of this type of industry are present now. It is likely that if some compensatory measures are directed to this activity (similar to the ones applied to grains, for example), the industry will flourish quickly. We have established that dried cassava is:Profitable at the farm level under the present price and cost structure of the country. If the policy bias were to be ameliorated, conditions would be even more favorable.Profitable at the feed plant level: dry cassava enters in the least-cost feed formulations at around 90% of the price of sorghum (the main substitute).It is attractive to the end user, since feed quality remains virtually unchanged.To estimate feed needs by the year 2000, both poultry and pork production are projected, using time series data . For poultry, it is further assumed that the same ratio of meat to egg production will be maintained into the future. There will also be a 10% share for other u ses (mainly dairy). This is reasonable in view of past trends. Demand estimates for poultry consumption indicate that it is quite responsive to price and income changes (elasticities of -0.46 and 0.88 , respectively, see Table 25) . Also, the decreasing price of poultry has had a negative impact on beef consumption (cross price elasticity of 0.66).Considering the same assumption on poultry price and income and population rates of growth in 19 84-2000 , per capita poultry consumption will rise from 5.0 to 6.9 kg and pork consumption will increase from 5.3 to 5.9 kg. These are the two main users of feed .I n terms of feed requirements, total requirements will go from 1579 tons in 1984 to 2786 tons in 2000 , mostly due to poultry feed increases. Sorghum and yellow corn requirements will be 1811 tons . Sorghum production will keep a strong annual growth of 4.0% per year. Even so, imports will increase from 42,000 tons in 1984 to 633,000 tons in 2000 . With a 10% use of dry cassava (279 ,000 tons) in feed formulations, sorghum imports would be decreased to 354,000 tens--a savings o f US$28 million. --------------------------------- An additional 523,000 tons of fresh cassava will be required which would require about 52,338 ha (at 10 tons/ha) and 16,043 new jobs would be generated. Crop losses will be substantially reduced also. Given the previous assumption that there will be a reduction of 10% in fresh cassava marketed and another 10% of the root that is presently unacceptable for fresh consumption and would serve as input for drying, we have an annual reduction in crop losses of US$57 million.In summary, if both markets were to be combined (fresh and dry), annual requirements of cassava would be 595,000 t, 59,490 ha would be cultivated, and 17,760 additional workers would be employed.Colombia is heavily dependent upon the agricultura! sector as the major source of growth, employment, and foreign exchange. Sustained growth was possible in the sixties and more so in the seventies, until 1978 when the country was affected by the regional recession. From 1978, there has been a reduction in the area harvested of 500,000 ha. International reserves went from US$5 billion in 1978 to US$2 billion in 1984 and increased to US$3 billion in 1986. Agricultural GDP decreased in per capita terms in 1978-85.Unemployment has worsened, malnutrition is increasing, and food production has not responded adequately to the growing needs. Import restraints contributed to keep food import at stable levels.The country is locked into a high cost structure resulting from the predominance of coffee and the adverse effects of the illegal crops in the sector. Overvaluation of the Colombian peso was drastically reduced in 1985 when a SO% rate of continuous devaluation was implemented, but most crops are still not competitive by international standards.Compensatory policies have been in effect to reduce the adverse effects of macroeconomic and trade policies on the sector. They have taken the form of price and credit policies. Commercial agriculture has been the target; importables such as grains, oilseeds, wheat, and milk and exportables such as rice and sesame. Rice, however, has had trade restrictions that amount to negative protection. These policies have ignored a vast agricultura! sector, which has been discriminated against by other sectors of the economy and by the chosen products within the sector. Special emphasis has to be placed on nontradeables, such as cassava which has been unable to compete for resources with other more-favored crops.Cassava consumption has been adversely affected by the rapid urbanization within the country. It means higher prices for the consumer as well as market access restrictions. During 1970 to 1984 cassava consumption decreased the most among the carbohydrate group. Yields are still low (9 t/ha is the national average). The crop is still fundamental for small producers, poor consumers, and those living in the rural areas. Producer-consumption represents a significant share (40.3% at national level).Income elasticity is quite high at low income levels (close to 1.5). Price response has also be important: elasticities of -0.88 from cross sectional data (long-term elasticity) and -0.43 from time series (shorter-term elasticity) were estimated. There has been substitution away from rice in the period analyzed (1970)(1971)(1972)(1973)(1974)(1975)(1976)(1977)(1978)(1979)(1980)(1981)(1982)(1983)(1984).In the meat sector, there has been strong growth of the poultry and egg industry at the expense of beef consumption. The relative price of chicken has decreased considerably with respect to prices of pork and beef. Income elasticity and price elasticities for poultry were found to be significant and important in determining the rapid growth of its consumption. This growth brought high demand pressures to the feed industry and therefore to commercial feed inputs such as sorghum (Table 26) and oilseed cakes. These crops have been unable to meet the challenge, constituting a bottleneck for a more rapid development of the industry, in the face of the import restraint policies enforced.There is a high and growing demand for fresh cassava but unless marketing constraints are reduced (by implementing the new storage technology developed by International Development Research Centre )( ｾ ＠ (IDRC)-CIAT) real retail prices will keep rising, marketing margins will remain high, and market access will be quite restricted. Consequently, there will be little or no incentive to adopt technologies more demanding of input usage. It is imperative to make improvements in the commercialization of cassava to meet the growing needs of the population.Dry cassava production (Table 27) is just starting on commercial scales and it is proving to be profitable for farmers involved as well as to feed manufacturers and end users. In terms of domestic resource cost, it is more effective than growing sorghum. Therefore, dry cassava has an important role to play in filling the gap left by sorghum production and in filling the needs of one of the most dynamic industries in the country, namely the feed industry . Given cassava's ability to grow on marginal lands, its intensive use of labor and its unexploited yield potential, cassava appears as a strong candidate to reduce the important calorie and protein deficits of the Colombian population, to generate employment and increase income levels among small farmers, and to save foreign ex change by substituting for imported foods.  "}

main/part_2/0207550013.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"41493e3c046307c2c80956424164d6d5","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/5f00462b-ba4c-4e1c-801b-8ff2a16058d4/retrieve","id":"-734036903"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"bc745e4a-36d2-4208-a059-5c6eaa2620cf","content":"This work was implemented as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), which is carried out with support from CGIAR Fund Donors and through bilateral funding agreements. For details please visit https://ccafs.cgiar.org/donors. The views expressed in this document cannot be taken to re ect the o cial opinions of these organisations.Adoption of cocoa (Theobroma cacao) production technologies recommended to cocoa farmers in Ghana has been low, leading to yield and production levels below potential. This has been partly due to a blanket recruitment of farmers for training on agronomic practices without considering their resource endowment or training needs. To investigate farmers' adoption strategies, a socio-economic survey was conducted across three (3) climate impacts zones in Ghana namely Cope, Adjust and Transform delineated by Bunn et al. (2015). The results of a cluster analysis of the survey gave some distinctive characteristics of three (3) clusters based on 15 socio-economic characteristics identi ed by farmers' as factors that di erentiated them. This cocoa segmentation brief is expected to help cocoa stakeholders especially, private sector companies to understand the challenges and needs of these farmer-groups and to e ectively target groups with some vulnerabilities for easy adoption of the CSA recommendations, which CCAFS is piloting. This work will also translate into a toolkit for cocoa farmer segmentation.This work tool pro les cocoa farmers into groups/clusters based on their socio-economic indicators/resource endowments and maps the recommendations of the CSA practices for farmer adoption.The study employed Focus Group discussions and semi-structured questionnaire (individual interviews) to collect qualitative and quantitative data respectively. A strati ed sampling technique was used in grouping farmers at each community into women and men (35 years and above) and youth (men and women) between 18 and 34 years to conduct the focus group discussions. This was to allow the women and youth groups to freely express themselves in the discussions. A cluster analysis was done using principal component analysis to identify socio-economic indicators that di erentiated farmers. Preliminary results show three (3) distinctive clusters in all the climatic impact zones. This was based on di erences in the following observed variables: Age of farmers, Education (Years), Market orientation (%), Household size, Family farm labor (N0.), Hire labor, Sell labor, Land hired in (ha), Land hired out (ha), Total land (ha), Land under cocoa (ha), Total annual income (USD), Cocoa income (USD), Total livestock (TLU) and Cocoa productivity (kg/ha) Based on the preliminary analysis of the above socio-economic indicators, we can conclude that, Cocoa farmers in cluster two (most e cient) are the best in terms of the characteristics they exhibit but in terms of the percentage of farmer that fall into this category, they represent only 17% which is the least amongst the three groups. Famers in this category has the highest in cocoa productivity (584kg/Ha) which translates into the highest income earned from cocoa. They are also the most educated (9.5 years of formal education) group and are engaged in other economic activities including the cultivation crops other than cocoa thus their total annual income is also the highest (4184 USD). They are also able to a ord the services of laborers to support them in their farming either permanently or on part time basis. The average age (32 years) of the farmers in this cluster is very encouraging and they have the lowest household size which means less dependency on their resources and more to re-invest into their cocoa farming. Apart from cocoa, they also produce and sell 78% of other farm produce (cocoyam, plantain, cassava, etc.) and consume the rest. the rest.Cluster three cocoa farmers (most resourced) are the second best and represented 17 % of our sample size. Famers in this category has the highest mean age (58 years) with the highest household size of 7 people which means a higher dependency on the household resources. In comparison to farmers in cluster 2 in terms of cocoa productivity and total income from cocoa , famers in this category recorded 302kg/ha ( below the National average of 450kg/Ha) and 1198 USD respectively. Even though they have the biggest land (9.4 Ha) and cocoa farms (3.7Ha), it does not correlate positively with productivity and income hence their inability to re-invest in their cocoa farms. This could be due to the low level of education (8 years) and their old age of cocoa farmers.Cocoa farmers in cluster one (least e cient) represented 68 % of the total sample. They recorded the least values in cocoa productivity, total cocoa income and total annual income with 248kg/Ha, 981 USD and 1700 USD respectively. This means farmers in this cluster produce cocoa below the national average and get almost 50% of their total annual income from other sources. Despite their low productivity, farmers in this cluster still hire in a lot more land than the other clusters with the hope of increasing cocoa productivity in the future. The low productivity could also be attributed to the fact that, they sell out labor (i.e. work on other people's farms for money) instead of working their own farms, amongst others. In e ect, cluster two farmers representing 17 % of cocoa farmers sampled for this work produce cocoa above the national average of 450kg/Ha whiles cluster three and cluster one collectively representing about 83 % produce below. These studies shows that, there is still a lot more work to be done to get farmers out of poverty by systematically guiding and/or training them on the use of Climate smart practices in addition to the Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) that is already being taught to farmers in the cocoa production process.It is recommended that farmer typologies aligned with CSC recommendations in the climate impact zones should be taken into consideration for e ective adoption. A farmer segmentation tool (FST App) is being developed and will be available on App Stores to enhance the adoption of CSC practices amongst di erent types of cocoa farmers."}

main/part_2/0215005432.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"7e8c7b774716a5d8b94545fe99f11a5f","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/73708a6f-4821-456a-bff6-00576e0638c3/retrieve","id":"1007247248"},"keywords":["Mowing","Precipitation","Graminoids","Forbs","Legacies"],"sieverID":"8c7a6615-c5ba-4508-a467-1bd2dcc5ba00","content":"Mowing for hay is an important land use in grasslands that is affected by precipitation variability, due to the water-limited nature of these ecosystems. Past land use and precipitation conditions can have legacy effects on ecosystem functions, potentially altering responses to both mowing and precipitation. Nonetheless, it is still unclear how natural variation in precipitation will affect plant responses to changes in mowing intensity. We conducted a seven-year field experiment with three mowing intensity treatments compared to the traditional mowing intensity (5 cm stubble height) as a control: increased mowing (2 cm stubble), decreased mowing (8 cm stubble) and ceased mowing. Decreased mowing increased both plant aboveground net primary productivity [ANPP] and forage yield across the whole community, driven by increases in graminoids, mainly owing to the positive response of plants to precipitation. Both mowing disturbance and precipitation variability had legacy effects on plant ANPP; however, these responses differed among the whole community, graminoid, and forb levels. Current-year community-wide ANPP [ANPP n ] was positively associated with current-year precipitation [PPT n ] in all mowing treatments, driven by positive precipitation responses of the dominant graminoids. For forbs, however, ANPP n was negatively associated with prior-year growing season precipitation [PPT n-1 ] across mowing treatments, potentially due to lagged competition with the dominant graminoids. Our results suggest that the response of the dominant graminoids is the primary factor determining the response of ANPP to mowing and precipitation variability in these grassland ecosystems, and highlight that decreasing mowing intensity may maximize both herder's income and grassland sustainability.Anthropogenic disturbances, such as grazing by domestic livestock or mowing for hay, play a critical role in the formation of grassland ecosystems (Maire et al. 2012), and have a prominent impact on biodiversity and ecosystem functions (Maskell et al. 2010). These disturbances may have positive or negative effects on ecosystem functions (e.g., above-ground net primary productivity, ANPP), largely depending on the disturbance intensity (e.g., mowing frequency or height) (Meuriot et al. 2018). Highly intensive disturbance can cause prominent degradation due to loss of sensitive species, removal of nutrients, and other mechanisms (Socher et al. 2012;Li et al. 2018). Conversely, low intensity disturbance or no disturbance may cause the accumulation of litter and the competitive exclusion of less competitive species by dominant species when disturbance is lacking or minimal (Grime 1998;Hautier et al. 2009). Beyond disturbance, grasslands are often water-limited, and chronic or episodic water shortages can limit their productivity (Wu et al. 2011;Hoover and Rogers 2016). As both extreme weather events and rainfall variability may increase due to global climate change (IPCC 2013;Huang et al. 2016;Williams et al. 2020), adverse effects on plant growth and development are expected (Xu et al. 2010). It is unclear how different disturbance intensities will affect the structure and function of grassland plant communities with increasing fluctuation in precipitation, and a better understanding is needed to appropriately manage grassland ecosystems.Past land use may have long-lasting effects on ecosystem function in subsequent years (i.e., legacies; Bürgi et al. 2017) via changes in the existing plant community and recruitment of new plants into those communities (Grime 1998;Hautier et al. 2009;Zhang et al. 2017;Song et al. 2020). Likewise, past climatic conditions may have similar effects on ecosystem function and the response of these functions to future climate change (e.g., precipitation variability) (Hawkes and Keitt 2015;Nguyen et al. 2018;Leizeaga et al. 2021). These climate legacies are typically mediated through direct and indirect effects on plant communities via the differential sensitivity of plant functional groups (i.e. grass and forb) (Broderick et al. 2022), changes in below-ground bud banks (Qian et al. 2022), and changes in soil biota (Meisner et al. 2018;Leizeaga et al. 2021;Hawkes et al. 2017Hawkes et al. , 2020)), although changes in resource availability can also be important, especially when it coincides with changes in the plant community (Han et al. 2014). Appropriate management of grasslands thus also requires understanding how previous-year disturbances or precipitation conditions will affect current-year ecosystem functions.Biomass harvesting (mowing for hay) is a widely-practiced disturbance (Han et al. 2012;Shao et al. 2012) and can have positive or negative effects on grassland ecosystem functions and services including forage yield. Plant species differ in their response to mowing due to differences in morphology and physiology, including plant height, belowground investment, as well as tillering and photosynthetic responses to defoliation (Wang et al. 2020). Compensatory growth is a positive growth response following defoliation (Belsky 1986;Yuan et al. 2015), through physiological and ecological mechanisms (Buhl et al. 2019). For example, plants may reallocate carbohydrates from belowground biomass or the remaining leaves to increase growth after mowing (Wang et al. 2020). The efficacy of these mechanisms, however, are largely driven by mowing intensity, timing, and frequency (Meuriot et al., 2018). Early and frequent mowing may destroy above-ground plant organs and reduce regenerative ability by reducing seed production and recruitment of new individuals, resulting in the loss of sensitive species (Gross et al. 2009;Socher et al. 2012Socher et al. , 2013)). In Inner Mongolia steppe, where this study occurred, mowing once per year at mid-August is traditional and may ensure seed set and plant recruitment, and thus reduce the negative impact on these grassland ecosystems. Further such mowing may increase light availability for subdominant plant species, helping maintain species richness and associated ecosystem functions (Hautier et al. 2009).Mowing annually may positively or negatively affect biomass production through multiple mechanisms. Mowing can increase plant ANPP by increasing species richness through increased light availability (Zhang et al. 2017). Conversely, mowing may decrease plant ANPP if mowing becomes too intense, due to the loss of intolerant species (Song et al. 2020). Ceasing mowing (or no mowing) also may increase plant ANPP by allowing the dominant species to flourish but may also reduce plant ANPP by decreasing species richness through litter accumulation and the exclusion of less competitive species (Beck et al. 2015). This suggests that mowing can increase or decrease plant ANPP by affecting either the dominant species or species richness. In livestock production systems, there is considerable pressure to maximize forage utilization to increase the income of the herders by using a greater proportion of available forage. Increasing mowing intensity has the potential to increase or decrease forage yield. Higher mowing intensity may increase forage yield by improving overall utilization of plant biomass if this increase in intensity does not negatively impact ANPP. Conversely, higher mowing intensity may increase utilization but decrease forage yield due to the reduction in plant biomass through depletion of plant reserves (Zhang and Romo 1994). Reducing mowing intensity may similarly increase or decrease forage yields, although the mechanisms are opposite. Reducing mowing would reduce forage yields assuming if ANPP remains the same or decreases but could increase yield if ANPP increases.Plant growth is highly climate-dependent and vulnerable to climate change (Herrero et al. 2013;Sloat et al. 2018) and even small climate changes can have a strong effect on spatiotemporal grassland functioning (Petrie et al. 2018). Mowing may alter the response of vegetation to changes in precipitation (Veron and Paruelo 2010); however, the joint effect is dependent on the intensity of those disturbances (Ma et al. 2020). The direction and intensity of the interactive effects between mowing disturbance and precipitation on plant ANPP are unknown. The legacy effects of these interactions may be largely dependent on plant community composition and the traits of those plants (Qian et al. 2022), such as whether they reproduce sexually via seed or asexually by belowground meristems (Ott et al. 2019). To test the responses of plant ANPP to mowing intensity and precipitation variability, we conducted a 7-year mowing experiment comparing traditional mowing with more intense mowing, less intense mowing, and no mowing in an Inner Mongolian steppe. This critical ecosystem covers 300 million hectares and accounts for approximately 10.5% of the total grassland area in China (Yang et al. 2020).Biomass harvest (or mowing for hay) is a traditional land use as it provides forage for livestock in winter when forage grasses are dormant, and may be more easily managed compared with grazing (Zhang et al. 2022). We tested how these different mowing intensities affected plant ANPP and forage yield and how plant ANPP responds to current and previous year precipitation variability at both the community and plant functional group level (e.g., graminoids and forbs).By comparing how these effects changed over time, we tested for legacy effects of mowing intensity and precipitation variability on plant ANPP.The long-term mowing experiment was located in a typical steppe in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China (116°14'E and 44°12'N, 1100 m a. s. l.). The site has a semi-arid continental monsoon climate. During the experiment period (from 2014 to 2020), mean annual temperature was 4.1 °C and annual precipitation was 300 mm ranged from 169 to 413 mm (Fig. S1). The soil at the study site is a typical calcic chestnut soil (Zhang et al. 2022). This typical steppe is dominated by three graminoid species, including Stipa grandis, Cleistogenes squarrosa and Leymus chinensis, and a forb species, e.g., Anemarrhena asphodeloides, which together account for approximately 91% of aboveground net primary productivity [ANPP: g m -2 ]. All species that were present in the study site from 2014 to 2020 are shown in Table S1. This area had been fenced in 1956 and managed by mowing annually at 5 cm stubble height for decades (Zhang et al. 2016). In 2014, vegetation cover was 26-30 % and average plant height was 16 cm before mowing at the beginning of our study (Zhang et al. 2022).In May 2014, we established a 7.5 hectares (300 m × 250 m) experimental site with relatively homogenous vegetation in a state-owned farm with a total area of 640 thousand acres. Four annual mowing treatments were applied, i.e., normal mowing intensity historically (control) involving mowing annually with 5 cm stubble, increased mowing intensity (IM) to 2 cm stubble, decreased mowing intensity (DM) to 8 cm stubble, and ceased mowing (CM) involving no mowing. Within the experimental area, nine replicates of each treatment were set up in a randomized complete block design. In total, our experiment included 36 plots (5 m × 3 m), which were separated by a 1.5 m buffer belt. For the IM, DM and control treatments, mowing was done in mid-August in every year after the grasses had gone to seed, while for CM there was no mowing.We assessed species composition, plant ANPP and forage yield in every plot during the 7year sampling period (2014)(2015)(2016)(2017)(2018)(2019)(2020). Field investigations and sampling were conducted in mid-August about 5 days before mowing. Plant community ANPP and forage yield was harvested by clipping a 1 m × 1 m quadrat. To avoid repeated clipping effects, each year we chose a new location for the quadrat in each plot. After counting species number and measuring height, we clipped all tissue just above the soil surface, separating it into two parts (forage yield and stubble), with stubble height varying according to the experimental design. For control, IM and DM treatments, we clipped all living tissues with 5 cm, 2 cm and 8 cm stubble for measuring forage yield and then clipped the stubble, which we summed with forage yield to estimate plant ANPP. For CM treatment, all living tissues were clipped just above the soil surface to measure plant ANPP due to the absence of forage yield. Samples were sorted by species and oven-dried at 65 °C for 48 h to estimate forage yield and plant ANPP. We classified the plants recorded in the all quadrats into two groups, graminoids and forbs, which accounted for 78.3 % and 21.7 % of total community ANPP, respectively (Table S1).Precipitation data included complete monthly precipitation during the experimental years (January 2014 to December 2020) from the local weather bureau (Xilinhot, Inner Mongolia, People's Republic of China). Annual precipitation (PPT annual ) was the total of monthly precipitation from January to December in each year, and growing season precipitation (PPT GS ) was the total of monthly precipitation from May to September in each year. PPT GS accounted for 79% of PPT annual , ranging from 70% to 85% among years (Fig. S1), and was a better predictor of plant ANPP for our study (not shown).To assess the effects of changed mowing intensity, year, and their interactions on plant ANPP and forage yield at both community and plant groups (i.e., graminoids and forbs) levels, we ran a repeated-measure mixed model ANOVA with treatment as the fixed effect and year as a repeated-measures factor (for plant ANPP, treatment had 4 levels, year 7 levels, and replicate 9 levels; whereas for forage yield, treatment only had 3 levels).To assess plant ANPP responses to changed mowing intensity and precipitation variability over time at both community and plant group (i.e., graminoids and forbs) levels, we estimated the mowing response of ANPP using the log response ratio (LRR). The mowing LRR was calculated as log(ANPP Mi / ANPP IV ), where ANPP Mi are the values of ANPP in each plot of each mowing treatment each year, and ANPP IV are the initial values of ANPP for that plot. In our study, the ANPP of initial year (in 2014) were set as the initial values. A positive LRR (LRR>0) indicates an increase in plant ANPP in a given year compared to the initial year when considering the effects of mowing history with 5 cm stubble, and a negative LRR (LRR<0) is opposite. We then tested for significant differences in LRR between the IM, DM and CM treatments and the LRR in the normal history mowing intensity (control treatment). If these differences were small and non-significant, we considered this is an indication that the traditional mowing regime had legacy effects on plant ANPP. Conversely, if the differences in LRR were significant compared with the traditional mowing regime, the effects of current mowing intensities on plant ANPP are more pronounced than traditional mowing regime (control), and we considered traditional mowing regime has weak or no legacy effects on plant ANPP. Similar patterns are the legacy effects of precipitation variability. Additionally, we tested the effects of changed mowing intensity, year, and their interactions on the LRR ANPP for the whole community, graminoids and forbs using repeated-measures mixed model ANOVAs with treatment as the fixed effect and year as a repeated-measures factor (4 treatments, 6 years, 9 replicates).We used a mixed model regression to test the legacyeffects of changed mowing intensity and precipitation variability on ANPP for the whole community, graminoids and forbs, using separate models. These included the LRR of current-year ANPP [LRR ANPP ] as the dependent variable, current-year growing season precipitation [PPT n ], prior-year growing season precipitation [PPT n-1 ], or the LRR of prior-year ANPP [LRR ANPP(n-1) ] as independent variables.Finally, we used a stepwise regression modelling to filter the main driving factors affecting the current-year ANPP, with LRR ANPP as the dependent variable, and PPT n , PPT n-1 , and LRR ANPP(n-1) as the independent variable. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS 19.0 (IBM Corp., Armonk NY) and all figures were made in SigmaPlot 12.0 (Systat Software Inc., San Jose, CA).ANPP of both the whole community and graminoids differed among mowing treatments (F=6.35, P<0.01, F=6.00, P<0.01, respectively), with decreased and ceased mowing having higher ANPP than either the control or increased mowing (Fig. 1a, b). For forbs, conversely, there were no significant differences in ANPP among all mowing treatments (F=0.12, P=0.95; Fig. 1c). There were significant differences in ANPP among years for the whole community, graminoids or forbs; however, there was only a significant interaction between mowing and year when considering the graminoids (Table S2). Treatment effects on forage production were similar. Decreased mowing had significantly positive effects on forage yield [g m -2 ] of the whole community and of graminoids (F=6.09, P=0.01, F=5.58, P=0.02, respectively; Fig. 2a, b), whereas there was no effect on forage yield of forbs (F=1.02, P=0.38; Fig. 2c). There were also significant differences in forage yield among years for the whole community, graminoids or forbs; however, there were no significant interactions between mowing and year when considering forage production (Table S3).There were no significant differences in the response ratio of ANPP [LRR ANPP ] between the IM, DM and CM treatments and the LRR ANPP in the control treatment across experimental years (2014-2020) nor were there significant cumulative effects of the mowing treatments on the LRR ANPP for the whole community, graminoids or forbs (P=0.19, P=0.59, P=0.15, respectively; Fig. 3). There were significant differences in LRR ANPP among years for the whole community, graminoids, and forbs (all P<0.01; Fig. 3), but there were no significant interactions between mowing treatment and year for the whole community, graminoids, or forbs (P=0.59, P=0.09, P=0.38, respectively; Fig. 3).The response ratio of plant ANPP [LRR ANPP ] was positively correlated to current-year growing season precipitation [PPT n : mm] both for the whole community and graminoids in all mowing treatments (for whole community, R 2 =0.25, P<0.01, R 2 =0.24, P<0.01, R 2 =0.34, P<0.01, R 2 =0.33, P<0.01 in the control, IM, DM and CM treatments, respectively; for graminoids, R 2 =0.31, P<0.01, R 2 =0.23, P<0.01, R 2 =0.40, P<0.01, R 2 =0.31, P<0.01; Fig. 4a, b), indicating that ANPP of both whole community and graminoids tended to increase with increasing precipitation of growing season, and precipitation can stimulate plant ANPP. There were no significant relationships between LRR ANPP and prior-year growing season precipitation [PPT n-1 : mm] for either the whole community or graminoids (all P>0.05; Fig. 4d, e). For forbs, however, there were no significant relationships between LRR ANPP and PPT n in any mowing treatment (R 2 =0.01, P=0.40, R 2 <0.01, P=0.76, R 2 =0.02, P=0.32, R 2 <0.01, P=0.63 in the control, IM, DM and CM, respectively; Fig. 4c), but LRR ANPP of forbs was negatively correlated with PPT n-1 in all mowing treatments (R 2 =0.19, P<0.01, R 2 =0.19, P<0.01, R 2 =0.14, P=0.01, R 2 =0.14, P=0.01 in the control, IM, DM and CM treatments, respectively; Fig. 4f), manifesting that forb ANPP was less affected by current-year precipitation and tended to be negatively driven by prior-year precipitation. LRR ANPP was correlated with the response ratio of prior-year ANPP [LRR ANPP(n-1) ] for the whole community in the IM and DM treatments (R 2 =0.14, P=0.01, R 2 =0.11, P=0.03, respectively; Fig. 4g), whereas LRR ANPP was correlated to the response ratio of prior-year ANPP [LRR ANPP(n-1) ] for graminoids in the IM and CM treatments (R 2 =0.13, P=0.02, R 2 =0.09, P=0.046, respectively; Fig. 4h). For forbs, however, the positive relationship between LRR ANPP and LRR ANPP(n-1) were only significant in the control treatment (R 2 =0.18, P<0.01; Fig. 4i).Finally, stepwise regression showed that LRR ANPP was mainly positively driven by PPT n both for whole community and graminoids in all mowing treatments (Table 1). For the whole community, there was also a significant negative effect of LRR ANPP(n-1) on LRR ANPP, but only in the control treatment (Table 1). For forbs, LRR ANPP was mainly negatively driven by PPT n-1 in all mowing treatments, with LRR ANPP(n-1) also having a positive effect, but only in the control treatment (Table 1).Our continuous seven-year mowing experiment demonstrated that decreased mowing intensity both increased plant ANPP and forage yield [g m -2 ], which was driven by increases in graminoids in this temperate grassland. These findings highlight the importance of graminoids in regulating the ecosystem functions and hay production of grassland plant communities. Both mowing disturbance and precipitation variability had legacy effects on plant ANPP; however, these responses differed among the whole community, graminoid, and forb levels. Our results suggest that decreasing mowing intensity may be an appropriate management strategy in Mongolian steppes to improve both ANPP and herder incomes, although ceasing mowing can also increase ANPP.Mowing has clear effects on the properties and processes of grassland ecosystems (Hsu et al. 2012;Maurer et al. 2020) and can also alter vegetation responses to precipitation (Veron and Paruelo 2010), which is the primary limiting resource in grasslands (Bai et al. 2004). Our sevenyear mowing experiment showed that both ceased mowing and decreased mowing intensity increased plant whole community and graminoid ANPP, mainly owing to the positive response of plants to precipitation. Both ceased and decreased mowing treatments had stronger positive responses to precipitation (as evidenced by more positive slopes) than in the control and increased mowing intensity treatments. This was especially apparent when comparing wetter and drier years (e.g., in 2015 and 2020). Compared with the initial year (in 2014, PPT GS : 204.8 mm, ANPP: 104.69 g m -2 ), community ANPP increased by 58.97% in 2015 (PPT GS : 322.3 mm, ANPP: 166.42 g m -2 ) and 130.73% in 2020 (PPT GS : 332.9 mm, ANPP: 241.55 g m -2 ) across all mowing treatments. Likewise, plant ANPP responded more strongly to decreased mowing in wet than dry years (e.g., in 2015 and 2020), likely due to increases in water or nutrient availability (Shen et al. 2016;Han et al. 2021). Compared with control, community ANPP increased in the decreased mowing treatment by 24.04% in 2015 and 35.82% in 2020 and by 35.72% and 36.93% in the ceased mowing treatment in 2015 and 2020, respectively. These increases in community ANPP were driven by graminoids, not forbs. We speculate that mowing once per year at mid-August when all seeds have been released may allow plant recruitment (Socher et al. 2013) and maintain grassland productivity, provided that mowing intensity remains low. Interestingly, only the dominant graminoid species (Stipa grandis), which accounted for approximately 60% of community ANPP (Table. S1), increased in the decreased and ceased mowing treatments (Fig. S2). This suggests that the response of the dominant species to mowing is the primary factor determining the response of ANPP to mowing in these grassland ecosystems.Compensatory growth following defoliation can maintain or increase ANPP (Belsky 1986;Yuan et al. 2015). Previous studies reported that moderate mowing (40% clipping) may cause overcompensation and positively affect plant ANPP (Wang et al. 2020). Mowing may increase lateral branching after removal of the apical meristem (Wan and Sosebee 2002) or increase tillering by stimulating photosynthesis in the remaining leaves or by redistributing carbohydrates among plant organs (Wang et al 2020). We found more leaves of S.grandis were retained in the decreased mowing treatment (8 cm stubble) compared with the control (5 cm stubble) or increased mowing intensity treatments (2 cm stubble). We speculate that the greater amount of remaining leaf area likely allowed S. grandis to continue photosynthesizing and to maximize regrowth and its response to available moisture while minimizing drains on belowground stores, especially in wet years (e.g., in 2015 and 2020). This increase in growth also explains the increase in whole-community and graminoid forage yield in the decreased mowing treatments, despite a reduction in the utilization rate (from 70% to 65%).Prolonged precipitation changes can have prominent legacy effects on ecosystem function (Hawkes and Keitt 2015;Nguyen et al. 2018;Leizeaga et al. 2021) that emerge slowly over time (Broderick et al. 2022), especially in water-limited ecosystems (e.g., grasslands) (Hoover et al. 2014;Luo et al. 2021;Zhang et al. 2021). Previous studies revealed that drought effects on grasslands may last for more than a year, altering the composition of plant communities through differences in plant water use and hydraulic responses among functional groups (Wu et al. 2018).Our results show that current-year ANPP of both the whole community and graminoids were positively driven by current-year precipitation [PPT n ], whereas forbs were negatively affected by prior-year PPT [PPT n-1 ]. Community ANPP was largely driven by graminoids due to their dominance within the community (78% of total biomass), consistent with the mass ratio hypothesis (Grime 1998). With their expansive fibrous root systems, grasses are well adapted to responding to pulsed belowground resources, as occurs with the intermittent rainfalls that are common in grassland ecosystems (Bennett and Cahill 2013). This increase in grass abundance could also explain the negative response of forbs to prior year precipitation, if increased reserves or increased litter biomass from in the previous year allowed grasses to suppress forb growth the following year (Dudney et al. 2017). Despite increases in ANPP in the decreased or ceased mowing treatments, there were no significant differences in ANPP in individual years at either the whole community-, graminoid-, or forb-level. This suggests that short term studies of altered mowing regimes may not be capable of identifying treatment effects and that longer term studies, such as ours, are required.Both ceased mowing and decreased mowing intensity increased graminoid, and thus community productivity; however, ceasing mowing would have negative economic effects on herders. Consequently, we suggest decreased disturbance to be the most appropriate management regime in this typical grassland to maximize both sustainability and herder income. Considering that large areas of semi-arid grassland in China are used for hay harvesting (11%-17%), this change may have significant ecological and economic impacts. Although we explored the joint effects of mowing intensity and precipitation variability, longer term effects may not have been captured given the modest duration (7-years) of our experiment, and future directional climate change could alter our conclusions.Table 1 Stepwise regression modelling of relationships between response ratio of current-year aboveground net primary productivity  "}

main/part_2/0226621195.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"0a9ec115d2a8daba0e76e90bee863a16","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/78d9b6d2-bc70-4bc0-bc43-115ea11b8dc2/retrieve","id":"452366170"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"f4604f3a-76ac-44b1-86f8-ce26b3bce4ea","content":"especies conservadas, así como el análisis del genoma y diversidad. A través de herramientas informáticas, es posible determinar el contenido genómico y como este cambia o responde a diversas condiciones ambientales. Por otro lado, con el apoyo de la modelación espacial y los sistemas de información geográfica se ha realizado la planeación y evaluación en las colectas, para determinar la distribución actual y potencial de las especies conservadas. Además, sirven para conocer las condiciones ambientales del suelo, clima y relieve, en las que dichas colectas se desarrollan.El continúo avance y desarrollo de tecnologías informáticas ha permitido realizar estudios cada vez más complejos. La ciencia de datos (data science), ha permitido el modelado y caracterización de los recursos genéticos. Así la bioinformática y los sistemas de información geográfica, son herramientas que contribuyen al conocimiento y conservación de la biodiversidad.Surgimiento de las técnicas de secuenciación masiva: del capilar al nanopore. La secuenciación del primer genoma (Haemophilus influenza 1.8 Mb) se realizó utilizando tecnología de secuenciación capilar desarrollada por Frederick Sanger en la decada de los 70 (Fleischmann et al., 1995). Al inicio del siglo XXI, se planteó el proyecto de secuenciar organismos eucariontes comenzando por la mosca de la fruta en el año 2000, el primer bosquejo del genoma humano en el 2001 y el ratón en el 2002 (Goodwin et al., 2016). Usando este tipo de tecnología capilar (de aquí en adelante secuenciación Sanger), producir un millón de bases de DNA costaba aproximadamente $1,500 USD, y se necesitaba de un día entero para la corrida del experimento (Escobar-Zepeda et al., 2015). Es por lo que el primer bosquejo (\"draft\") del genoma humano (3 billones de bases o 3 Gb), se calcula que tuvo un costo de billones de dólares y se necesitaron años de horas máquina para refinarlo. En 2005 apareció formalmente el primer equipo de secuenciación de nueva generación, o \"NGS\" por sus siglas en inglés next generation sequencing (Escobar-Zepeda et al., 2015).La secuenciación por síntesis de Roche 454, implementó una química de secuenciación basada en la detección y medición de luz emitida por una luciferasa al momento de que se hidroliza ATP, por la incorporación de un nucleótido en las hebras recién sintetizadas de DNA. El uso de ATP en la reacción confiere el nombre de pirosecuenciación a la técnica (Buermans y Den Dunnen 2014). Esta tecnología hizo posible obtener un genoma humano, con una cobertura 7.4x, en tan solo dos meses y con un costo 10 veces menor en comparación con la secuenciación Sanger (Escobar-Zepeda et al., 2015). Aunque esta tecnología revolucionó la forma de secuenciar, en el año 2016 la empresa Roche anunció la descontinuación de los equipos 454 (Buermans y Den Dunnen 2014).La segunda NGS en comercializarse fue utilizando la tecnología Illumina, esta difiere de 454 ya que adoptó la secuenciación por síntesis usando nucleótidos fluorescentes removibles usados en la polimerización del DNA (Buermans y Den Dunnen 2014). Actualmente, y con el precipitado avance en las nuevas tecnologías de secuenciación, se tienen plataformas con la capacidad de generar entre 120-1500 Gb por corrida y una media del tamaño de secuencia de 150 bp. En estos se encuentra además una gama compacta para laboratorios llamada MiSeq, la cual es pequeña en tamaño, y se pueden lograr de 0.3 Gb a 15 Gb de datos en un tiempo que puede ser de 4 horas (Buermans y Den Dunnen 2014).Además, se ha desarrollado una nueva forma de secuenciar DNA sin requerir un paso previo de amplificación por PCR. Este tipo de tecnología se denomina secuenciación a partir de molécula única (single-molecule sequencing). Este tipo de secuenciación implementa una polimerasa directamente embebida en una celda de vidrio o un poro dependiendo el modelo de las plataformas. Usando estas tecnologías se puede obtener hasta 100 Gb de información (aprox. 33 veces el genoma humano) a un costo aproximado de $ 1,000 dólares (Ameur et al., 2019). El uso de las NGS ha revolucionado el estudio de diversos organismos y su información genética (genomas y metagenomas), así como la respuesta de cambio en los genes a diversos estímulos (transcriptomas y metatranscriptomas).Mediante las NGS podemos responder algunas preguntas, como ¿que se encuentra en determinado ambiente? y ¿qué función biológica está realizando?, información básica en la ecología microbiana, etc. Podemos resolver estas cuestiones con dos enfoques diferentes: 1) secuenciación de genes marcadores (metabarcoding) o 2) secuenciación de todo el contenido genético (whole-genome sequencing WGS). La secuenciación de uno o varios genes blanco, comunes en los organismos de la comunidad son utilizados para la estrategia del metabarcoding. Para esto se utilizan iniciadores, dirigidos al gen de interés, generalmente se utiliza el gen 16S rRNA para bacterias y arqueas y la secuencias intergénicas del gen 18S rRNA (ITS) para hongos. Estos métodos son rápidos y rentables lo que permite obtener una visión global de los organismos presentes en una comunidad microbiana en poco tiempo y a bajo costo (Knight et al., 2018;Calle, 2019). El segundo enfoque, es un método que permite capturar todos los genomas presentes en cierta comunidad, para esto se secuencia el DNA total de la muestra y bioinformáticamente se separan los genomas de cada individuo presente en la comunidad (binning). Al poder analizar no sólo un marcador sino todos los genes presentes en los distintos organismos de la comunidad (bacterias, arqueas y hongos), se obtiene no sólo una visión taxonómica si no funcional de los miembros del ecosistema secuenciado (Knight et al., 2018;Calle, 2019).Una vez obtenidos los datos por NGS se realiza el análisis bioinformático y spon diversos protocolos los que se han desarrollado para conocer la composición taxonómica de los miembros de una comunidad microbiana. Sin embargo, todos siguen algunos lineamientos generales para el procesamiento y análisis de los datos. El primer paso para el análisis es la remoción de secuencias de baja calidad y artefactos de secuenciación (adaptadores). Una vez obtenidas secuencias de alta calidad, por lo regular se procede a la agrupación o clustering de secuencias y su asignación a unidades operacionales taxonómicas (OTUs) o variantes de secuencias ribosomales (ASVs) (Callahan et. al., 2017). Esto puede hacerse directamente de los datos obtenidos por el método de metabarcoding o bien extrayendo las secuencias de los genes ribosomales (u otro gene taxonómicamente informativo) de los datos producidos por WGS (Rausch et al., 2019). Finalmente, cada una de estas OTUs son asignadas a un nivel taxonómico determinado utilizando búsquedas en bases de datos por ejemplo Silva, RPD o GreenGenes y emparentándolas con su homólogo en dicha base (Balvočiūtė et al., 2017). Todo esto finaliza en la obtención de una matriz de relación OTU, taxonomía y muestra, comúnmente conocida como matriz de OTUs (Callahan et al., 2017). Programas informáticos como Mothur (Schloss et al., 2009) y Qiime 1 y 2 (Quantitative Insights Into Microbial Ecology) (Caporaso et al., 2010), y Phyloseq (McMurdie y Holmes, 2013) son softwares que siguen protocolos comunes para el análisis de datos. Estos protocolos consisten en (1) limpiar y filtrar las secuencias obtenidas, (2) asignar secuencias a OTUs o ASVs y (3) describir la diversidad ( y ), composición y diferencias o similitudes entre las comunidades. Con todo esto, las diferencias en la abundancia relativa de los miembros presentes en las comunidades microbianas pueden ser calculadas por medio de análisis multivariados de agrupación y minería de datos (ejemplo análisis de componentes principales o PERMANOVA). Estos análisis pueden ser después visualizados por graficas de ordenación tipo análisis de componentes principales (PCA) o NMDS (Rausch et al., 2019) (Figura1).Figura 1. Representaciones graficas de información obtenida de un análisis de diversidad (metabarcoding). A) Análisis de componentes principales (PCA), mostrando diversos grupos de comunidades microbianas presentes en diferentes ambientes del suelo. B) Histogramas de abundancia de phylum en cada compartimento (tomado y modificado de Edwars et al., 2015).Análisis taxonómico: ¿Que se encuentra en determinado ambiente, y qué función biológica está realizando? El hecho de obtener la secuencia del genoma completo (o cuasi completo) de la mayoría de organismo presentes en una muestra vía WGS permite conocer la taxonomía y posible nicho que ocupan los miembros de la comunidad. Los primeros pasos de la mayoría de los protocolos descritos para analizar datos tipo WSG son similares a los utilizados en el metabarcoding. Esto es el filtrado por calidad de secuencias y remoción de adaptadores. Programas como fastQC, software desarrollado para proporcionar una visión general de las secuencias obtenidas, ayuda a visualizar de manera gráfica la calidad y presencia de artefactos en las secuencias (Andrews, 2010). El filtrado por remoción de lecturas (secuencias tipo NGS) con baja calidad puede llevarse a cabo utilizando paqueterías bioinformáticas tipo trimmomatic (Bolger et al., 2014). Este tipo de software permite remover utilizado un corte en valor Phred de calidad además de la remoción de artefactos como quimeras y adaptadores presentes en las lecturas.Para poder recuperar la información genética de los organismos presentes en las muestras secuenciadas por WGS, es necesario ensamblar los genomas. El ensamble consiste en recuperar secuencias de mayor longitud, denominadas \"contigs\" en los cuales se podrá recuperar las regiones codificantes de los genes. Programas como SPAdes (Bankevich et al., 2012), IDBA (Peng et al., 2010) o MEGAHIT (Li et al., 2014), permiten la recuperación de ensambles genómicos. Todas estas herramientas trabajan bajo el mismo principio, el uso de gráficas de Brujin y fragmentación de lecturas en k-mer para la extensión de secuencias cortas (Bankevich et al., 2012). Con este tipo de estrategias es posible recuperar genomas casi completos o completos a partir de muestras metagenómicas.Al recuperar secuencias con una longitud mayor a 1,000 nucleótidos (tamaño promedio de un gen bacteriano) podemos empezar a predecir unidades codificantes (genes) presentes en el ambiente. Genes taxonómicamente informativos como secuencias ribosomales, genes mitocondriales o genes de copia única pueden ser utilizados para la asignación taxonómica de los individuos presentes en la comunidad (Wu et al., 2008;Darling et al., 2014). MetaPhlAn1 y 2 (Truong et al., 2015), Kraken (Wood and Salzberg, 2014), AMPHORA (Wu et al., 2008) y PhiloSift (Darling et al., 2014), son ejemplos de herramientas que proveen información y clasificación taxonómica a partir de búsqueda de genes de copia única en los genomas. Esta información puede ser representada en forma de árboles filogenéticos o matrices de comparación.Una vez obtenida la clasificación taxonómica de los miembros presentes en la comunidad, es posible separar cada uno de los genomas utilizando una técnica denominada binning. El binning consiste en clasificar y separar por similitud aquellas secuencias comunes pertenecientes al genoma de un organismo en particular. En donde un bin representara un genoma (Wu et al., 2016). Rasgos como cobertura de secuencias, porcentaje y frecuencia de k-meros, frecuencia de tetranucleótidos, así como motivos particulares en las secuencias (Kislyuk et al., 2009, Strous et al., 2012), son utilizados para agrupar aquellos contigs similares y separarlos en genomas individuales. Programas informáticos como MaxBin (Wu et al., 2016), MetaBat (Kang et al., 2015) y CONCOCT (Alneberg et al., 2014) emplean este tipo de estrategias para aislar genomas presentes en comunidades metagenómicas.Con los genomas individuales de cada uno de los organismos presentes en el ambiente podemos empezar a clasificar el contenido de genes presentes en ellos, proceso denominado anotación genómica. Programas como Prokka (Seemann, 2014), KOALA (Kanehisa et al., 2016), y el Prokaryotic Genome Annotation Pipeline del National Center for Biotechnology Information NCBI, (Tatusova et al., 2016) son capaces de predecir las secuencias codificantes y anotar los genes presentes en ellas a partir de búsquedas de homología con bases de datos (ejemplo Uniprot (Apweiler et al., 2004), Pfam (Bateman et al., 2002), KEGG (Kanehisa y Goto, 2000).Una vez ensamblados los contigs se puede utilizar MetaPhlAn2, que se encarga de la asignación taxonómica, utilizando regiones genómicas y marcadores moleculares de copia única (Truong et al., 2015), para esto también es posible utilizar Kraken, el cual asigna etiquetas taxonómicas a secuencias de DNA, mucho más rápido y eficiente que MetaPhlAn2 (Wood y Salzberg, 2014). Una vez realizada la clasificación taxonómica se pueden utilizar otras herramientas para predecir y anotar genes en vías metabólicas, prokka (Seemann, 2014) e InterProScan (Mitchell et al., 2019) son herramientas que se utiliza con estos fines (Figura 2).Figura 2. Flujo de trabajo que representa las diferencias de secuenciación y análisis bioinformático entre metabarcoding (amplicones) y WGS.Herramientas bioinformáticas para el estudio de la expresión diferencial de genes en los recursos genéticos. Toda la información de un organismo se encuentra contenida en el genoma, sin embargo, no toda se expresa al mismo tiempo. Por ejemplo, una planta sometida a estrés por sequía, expresará ciertos genes para contrarrestar los efectos del estrés, que no expresaría bajo condiciones normales. A la expresión de ciertos genes o transcritos (moléculas de RNA) en determinadas condiciones como estrés, enfermedades o tipos celulares se le conoce como transcriptoma. Se considera que el transcriptoma es dinámico debido a que este depende de las condiciones de crecimiento del organismo.Existen dos técnicas para el análisis de los transcritos, por un lado están los microarrays/microarreglos, que cuantifican un conjunto de secuencias predeterminadas o conocidas, y la secuenciación de RNA (RNA-Seq), que utiliza NGS para capturar todas las secuencias (Figura 3).Figura 3. Microarreglos y RNA-Seq se basan en el análisis de imágenes de diferentes maneras. En un chip de microarreglos, cada punto en un chip es una sonda de oligonucleótidos definida, y la intensidad de fluorescencia detecta la abundancia de una secuencia hibridada y específica. En la secuenciación de alto rendimiento, se secuencia un nucleótido a la vez, el color en cada ronda indica el nucleótido añadido.Existen diversas herramientas informáticas para el análisis de transcriptomas, este capítulo se centrará en el análisis de RNA-seq, debido a que es la técnica más novedosa y actualmente más usada, para la identificación de los niveles de expresión, es los diferentes recursos genéticos. El análisis de secuencias de RNA-seq, se puede dividir en cuatro etapas: control de calidad, alineación, cuantificación y expresión diferencial. Para el control de calidad, generalmente se usa FastQC (Andrews, 2010), el cual permite visualizar la calidad de las secuencias, este software hace un llamado de base por base y evalúa su calidad, asignándole un puntaje según la escala, permite ver el contenido de GC, y la cantidad de secuencias obtenidas. Posterior a la visualización de calidad de las secuencias se realiza una limpieza de datos, la cual consiste en quitar aquellas bases de mala calidad, secuencias sobrerrepresentadas, quimeras, y los adaptadores. Las herramientas más utilizadas para estos fines son Trimmomatic (Bolger et al., 2014), Trimgalore (Krueger, 2015) y FastX (FastX, 2015). Una vez limpias las secuencias se procede al alineamiento, elk cual consiste en empalmar las secuencias obtenidas por NGS contra un genoma de referencia o de novo. Dentro de los programas utilizados para el alineamiento se encuentran Burrow-Wheeler Aligner (BWA) (Li y Durbin 2009), Bowtie (Langmead et al., 2009), TopHat (Trapnell et al., 2009), y GSNAP (Wu y Nacu 2010), la elección de estos dependerá del genoma de referencia utilizado ya que TopHat y GSNAP aumenta la probabilidad de identificar nuevas transcripciones generadas por splicing alternativos (Yang y Kim, 2015).Una vez alineadas las secuencias al genoma de referencia, se realiza la cuantificación de secuencias alineadas por contig/gen, para esto es posible utilizar programas como RSEM (Li y Dewey, 2011), que proporciona estimaciones a nivel de genes e isoformas como salida primaria al calcular estimaciones de abundancia de máxima verosimilitud basadas en el algoritmo de Expectación-Maximización (EM) después de leer el mapeo. RSEM puede dar estas cuantificaciones normalizadas por millón (TPM), así como también admite la visualización de la alineación y la profundidad de lectura mediante un navegador genómico como el navegador genómico Santa Cruz (UCSC) de la Universidad de California. Cufflinks es el el programa informático más utilizado y estima la abundancia, mediante la abundancia de probabilidad máxima, basada en la cobertura de la transcripción. Las abundancias se informan por kilobase por millón de fragmentos mapeados (FPKM o RPKM). Finalmente, para el análisis de expresión diferencial, se han desarrollado varias paqueterías de software que incluyen EdgeR (Robinson et al. 2010), DESeq (Anders y Huber, 2010), que ocupan modelos binomiales negativos y NOIseq (Tarazona et al. 2015), que son no paramétricos. Los programas anteriores adoptan uno o más de los varios métodos de normalización disponibles (recuento total, cuartil superior, mediana, normalización DESeq, media recortada de valores M, normalización de cuantil y RPKM) para corregir los sesgos que pueden aparecer entre las muestras (profundidad de secuenciación) o dentro de la muestra (longitud del gen y contenido de GC) (Yang y Kim, 2015). Estos programas permiten encontrar aquellos genes involucrados, con alguna respuesta a cierta condición, estrés o ambiente al cual se encuentren sometidos, los diferentes recursos genéticos.Sistemas de información geográfica. Datos pasaporte, una primera etapa a los mapas de distribución.Actualmente se ha difundido en gran medida el uso de tecnologías como drones, principalmente para fotografía artística y técnica (Figura 4), servidores de mapas en teléfonos móviles para ubicar una dirección, incluso el cine 3D o la llamada realidad aumentada; todo lo mencionado es tecnología cuyos orígenes se remontan a los años 50's con el desarrollo de los hoy llamados Sistemas de Información Geográfica (SIG), impulsados con fines científicos y militares para el estudio del territorio de las naciones (Olaya, 2014).Figura 4. Vuelo de dron y georreferenciación de puntos de control con estación total para un estudio de hidrología.Los SIG son una herramienta informática que consiste en software capaz de almacenar, capturar, verificar, gestionar, analizar, transformar, mostrar y transferir datos especialmente referidos a la tierra (georreferenciados), con la finalidad de realizar diversos análisis de carácter territorial (SGM, 2019).Los SIG se conforman de cinco componentes (FAO, 2006): 1.Hardware: Equipo de cómputo. 2. Software: Programas que permiten el manejo y visualización de las bases de datos. 3. Datos: Conjunto de información con carácter espacial. 4. Personas: Especialistas y técnicos que diseñan, operan y mantienen el SIG. 5. Métodos: Modelos y prácticas realizadas en el análisis y mantenimiento de los datos.La función principal de un SIG es servir como una herramienta para la toma de decisiones, ya que permite mediante la visualización de mapas, responder a preguntas sobre la localización, condición, cambio histórico, modelación y simulación de un fenómeno (INEGI, 2014). Estos mapas se utilizan entre otras cosas para (ESRI, 2013): 1. Conocer y compartir información. 2. Compilar y mantener datos.3. Organizar y visualizar. 4. Mediante geoprocesos, generar nueva información.Debido a los avances en el desarrollo de tecnologías de la información y cómputo, la aplicación de los SIG es cada vez más diversa, por ejemplo, en ámbitos como el productivo, científico, cultural y de gobernanza (McCall, 2003;Siabato, 2018). Una de las áreas de interés en la actividad científica, es el uso de los SIG en la conservación de los recursos genéticos, generando mapas de distribución geográfica de las especies con fines de resguardo.Un mapa de distribución geográfica conocida, muestra los sitios o regiones donde se tiene registro de la presencia de una especie (Figura 5), planta o animal, y puede ser utilizado para la planeación de acciones de conservación in situ, así como para la distribución de los sitios de colecta en la conservación ex situ (Maxted et al., 2013). Realizar un mapa de distribución geográfica conocida, requiere que los registros tengan las coordenadas geográficas donde se determinó la presencia de la especie (avistamiento/colecta); es precisamente cuando los datos pasaporte tienen especial relevancia, ya que en ellos se registra un lote de información respecto al origen de las colectas de germoplasma, incluidas las coordenadas, localidad, municipio o referencias geográficas.En el CNRG, el proceso de ingreso de accesiones de germoplasma solicita que se incluyan los datos pasaporte de cada accesión; estos datos cuentan con una estructura con base en acuerdos internacionales, como el Tratado Internacional Sobre los Recursos Filogenéticos para la Alimentación y la Agricultura, ITPGRFA, por sus siglas en inglés, de la Organización Mundial para la Agricultura y la Alimentación (FAO) Biodiversidad Internacional (Alercia et al., 2015). El primer resultado de realizar un mapa de distribución geográfica conocida, consiste en agrupar y visualizar los sitios y regiones donde está presente una especie. Además, es posible conocer las características ambientales de estas regiones, bióticas, abióticas y antrópicas; como altitud, temperatura, precipitación, suelo, vegetación dominante, uso del suelo y topografía, entre muchas otras. En ecología, al conjunto de estas características ambientales que determinan las regiones dónde puede o no estar presente una especie se le denomina hábitat, y puede modelarse tanto para las condiciones actuales como para las históricas y futuras, por ejemplo, para condiciones de cambio climático (Figura 6). De este modo, al estudio de los factores que determinan el hábitat y el ambiente al cual un individuo, población o especie se ha adaptado, se le conoce como análisis ecogeográfico, y es importante dado que estas adaptaciones tienen su representación en la información genética de cada individuo. El análisis ecogeográfico requiere de la recopilación y síntesis de información geográfica, taxonómica y genética; sus resultados son de carácter predictivo, pueden utilizarse para formular y priorizar proyectos de recolección y conservación de especies (Castañeda et al., 2011).La caracterización ecogeográfica de una región o país se realiza mediante el compilado y análisis de información espacial edáfica, bioclimática, geofísica, biótica y antrópica, a través de un SIG; y se representa con mapas, que al combinarse reflejan los diferentes escenarios de adaptación ambiental. Además, con la cartografía y datos espaciales, se pueden realizar análisis de distribución potencial, riesgo e índices de biodiversidad (Figura 7).Figura 7. Riqueza de razas de maíz en México (número de razas que ocurren dentro de cada celda ó pixel). Fuente: (Perales y Golicher, 2014).Según Maxted et al., (2013), el uso de los SIG en el análisis ecogeográfico permite:1. Caracterización ambiental de los sitios de colecta. 2. Optimización de las colectas de germoplasma orientada a una mayor representatividad de la diversidad genética. 3. Interpretación de patrones geográficos, ecológicos y taxonómicos.4. Representatividad y sesgo ecogeográfico en colectas existentes (análisis de vacíos). 5. Determinación de sitios para establecer reservas genéticas. 6. Impacto del cambio climático en las poblaciones naturales.La caracterización ecogeográfica de los recursos genéticos, es una herramienta que permite determinar el rango adaptativo de las especies, y con ello determinar los factores ambientales más determinantes. El valor genético de estos rasgos puede utilizarse en el mejoramiento genético de especies de interés agrícola, forestal y pecuario. Por otra parte, en el caso de cultivos, la regeneración del germoplasma puede realizarse en los sitios más acordes a las condiciones ecogeográficas nativas, para garantizar un mayor éxito de la regeneración y reducir la erosión genética (Parra et al., 2012).Anteriormente se mencionó que derivado del análisis ecogeográfico y los mapas de distribución geográfica, la información permite determinar la calidad o sesgo de las colectas de germoplasma con base en la diversidad ecogeográfica no representada, a esta determinación se le conoce como análisis de vacíos, y puede aplicarse en la planeación de las jornadas de colecta para mejorar la representatividad ecogeográfica de la conservación ex situ (Parra et al., 2012), incluso para determinar zonas de interés por su diversidad en recursos genéticos. Ejemplo de ello, es el análisis de vacíos realizado por Contreras et al., (2019) para parientes silvestres de cultivos en México, donde de forma complementaria propuso áreas para el establecimiento de reservas genéticas (Figura 8).Figura 8. Sitios propuestos para el establecimiento de reservas genéticas de parientes silvestres de cultivos en México. Fuente: (adaptado de Contreras et al., 2019).Determinar los sitios de colecta con el objetivo de obtener rasgos adaptativos para realizar mejoramiento genético, es una herramienta de selección denominada caracterización predictiva, y ha generado metodologías y protocolos internacionales como el Focused Identification of Germoplasm Strategy (FIGS). La metodología FIGS consiste en la búsqueda de rasgos específicos, con base en la relación fenotipogenotipo, utilizando herramientas geográficas para determinar la presión del medio ambiente sobre los individuos; FIGS asume la probabilidad de que el germoplasma refleje las adaptaciones de las muestras colectadas (Bari et al., 2012). Esta herramienta se utiliza en la búsqueda de rasgos como la tolerancia a sequía, plagas y enfermedades (Maxted et al., 2013).Caso de estudio: Análisis de vacíos geográficos y ecológicos de conservación para plantas silvestres. Para abordar las necesidades persistentes de indicadores para la conservación de la biodiversidad y recursos genéticos, particularmente con respecto a la evaluación eficiente de la conservación de la diversidad genética, dentro y entre los taxones, se han desarrollado análisis de vacíos de conservación. Khoury et al. (2019b) ofreció una metodología de análisis de brechas aplicada a los sistemas de conservación ex situ e in situ para plantas silvestres. El método proporcionó una aproximación de la distribución de la diversidad genética de una especie de planta silvestre, utilizando el alcance de la variación ecogeográfica (es decir, geográfica y ecológica) en su rango nativo, predicho como un proxy, que se ha demostrado que es un sustituto efectivo (Hanson et al., 2017, Hoban et al., 2018), facilitando la planificación de la conservación a pesar de las brechas persistentes en los datos genéticos a nivel de población (Balmford et al., 2005, Hanson et al., 2017;Hoban et al., 2020). La variación ecogeográfica evidente a partir de un análisis de la ubicación de los sitios de recolección de muestras, salvaguardadas en repositorios de conservación (es decir, bancos de genes, semillas, y jardines botánicos) (ex situ), y en el rango de distribución de las especies dentro de áreas naturales protegidas (in situ), se midió contra la variación ecogeográfica encontrada dentro del rango nativo general predicho de la especie. El proceso identificó brechas geográficas y ecológicas en la protección actual, que pueden representar puntos focales para acciones futuras. Posteriormente, se priorizó los taxa para realizar más esfuerzos de conservación, y se combinaron los puntajes de múltiples taxones para proporcionar indicadores a diferentes escalas, locales, nacionales, regionales y globales (Khoury et al., 2019a). La metodología se basó en datos y herramientas de acceso abierto (Khoury et al., 2019a) y fue reportada en formatos de resumen fácilmente comprensibles, al tiempo que proporcionaron información específica por taxón útil para acciones de conservación. Además, cuando se aplica repetidamente a lo largo del tiempo, los resultados podrían usarse para visualizar el progreso hacia el objetivo de la conservación integral, incluida la determinación de cuándo se ha alcanzado ese objetivo. El análisis de vacíos de conservación se basó en métodos desarrollados durante la última década, primero para medir el estado de conservación de los taxones en repositorios y para ayudar a guiar los esfuerzos de recolección adicionales, destinados a construir colecciones ex situ más diversas (Ramirez-Villegas et al., 2010, Castañeda-Álvarez et al., 2016). Recientemente, el enfoque se adaptó para medir la representación dentro de las áreas naturales protegidas (Khoury et al., 2019b,c,d, Lebeda et al., 2019;Mezghani et al., 2019). Tales estudios se han llevado a cabo con mayor frecuencia en una variedad de especies dentro de un género, aunque también se han aplicado a nivel nacional (Norton et al., 2017;Khoury et al., 2020) y global para grupos específicos de plantas (Castañeda-Álvarez et al., 2016;Khoury et al., 2019b).En México, un resultado interesante de este análisis de vacíos para parientes silvestres, es el de Cucurbita argyrosperma C. Huber subsp. sororia (LH. Bailey) L. Merrick & D. M. Bates, el progenitor de C. argyrosperma C. Huber subsp. argyrosperma (calabaza pipiana), que fue domesticada en el sur de México unos 7000 años pb. (Antes del presente, Before Present) (Smith, 2006). Este taxón anual mesofítico se distribuye a lo largo de las costas tropicales del Pacífico y del Golfo de México, desde el estado de Sonora en México hasta el sur de Nicaragua, y ha sido reconocido como una fuente de resistencia a varios virus de importancia económica en el cultivo (Khoury et al., 2019d). Usando el método de análisis de vacíos, se descubrió que las 59 ocurrencias de germoplasma estaban relativamente bien distribuidas en el rango geográfico y ecológico de los taxones, aunque tal vez faltan representaciones en las partes más al norte y más al sur de su rango (Fig. 9A). La comparación de su distribución prevista con las áreas protegidas oficialmente reconocidas, encontró que las áreas principales de su distribución geográfica no están representadas en áreas protegidas, mientras que la mayoría de su variación ecológica está posiblemente representada (Figura 9). A la especie se le asignó un valor de acuerdo al grado de conservación, en un rango de 0 a 100, 46.8 y 31.8, para la conservación ex situ e in situ, respectivamente; interpretándose 100 como una conservación integral y 0 limitada (Khoury et al. 2019d).Figura 9. Análisis de vacíos de conservación para Cucurbita argyrosperma C. Huber subsp. sororia (L. H. Bailey) L. Merrick y D. M. Bates, que muestra la representación geográfica del pariente silvestre en la conservación ex situ (A) y en las áreas protegidas in situ (B). El verde representa el rango predicho del taxón basado en información de ocurrencia, datos climáticos y topográficos. El púrpura representa áreas consideradas como conservadas, con base en colecciones ex situ anteriores (A) y en áreas protegidas existentes (B). Datos y mapas derivado de Khoury et al., (2019d).Análisis de vacíos geográficos y ecológicos de conservación ex situ para plantas cultivadas El grado de representación de las variedades tradicionales de los agricultores (variedades locales) en la conservación ex situ es poco conocido, en parte debido a la falta de métodos que puedan identificar los determinantes antropogénicos y ambientales de sus distribuciones geográficas. Ramírez-Villegas et al., (2020) desarrollaron un nuevo marco de modelado espacial y de análisis de vacíos de conservación ex situ para variedades locales de cultivos, utilizando frijol (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) como estudio de caso.El modelado de cada una de las variedades locales incluyó cinco pasos principales: (1) determinar grupos relevantes de variedades locales utilizando literatura, de manera que, al probar modelos estadísticos de clasificación, fuera posible encontrar que existe una diferencia significativa entre ellos según las características ambientales y socioeconómicas de su distribución geográfica;(2) modelar la distribución geográfica potencial de estos grupos utilizando datos de presencia (local), contemplando predictores ambientales y socioeconómicos; (3) calcular puntajes de vacíos geográficos y ambientales para las colecciones actuales en bancos de germoplasma; (4) mapear los vacíos de conservación ex situ; y (5) compilar aportes de expertos (Ramírez-Villegas et al., 2020). La metodología, logró distinguir las distribuciones (Figura 10A) y las brechas de conservación para los dos principales grupos genéticos de frijol (andino y mesoamericano), y los resultados se alinearon bien con la opinión de expertos. Se encontró que ambos grupos genéticos estaban relativamente bien conservados en bancos de germoplasma, respecto a sus distribuciones geográficas previstas, con colecciones ex situ que representaban el 78.5% del grupo andino y el 98.2% del mesoamericano. Las prioridades de recolección de variedades locales mesoamericanas se concentran en varias zonas de México, Belice y Guatemala (Figura 10B)."}

main/part_2/0229492406.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"b3a7172db5007ceee433be84602f9f05","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://www.cifor.org/publications/pdf_files/FTA/FTA-Highlights-10.pdf","id":"-2001964502"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"12e92660-498f-4b72-a713-2b86aea21e81","content":"This publication is part of a series that highlights the main findings, results and achievements of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA), from 2011 to 2021 (see full list of chapters on the last page).FTA, the world's largest research for development partnership on forests, trees and agroforestry, started in 2011. FTA gathers partners that work across a range of projects and initiatives, organized around a set of operational priorities. Such research was funded by multiple sources: CGIAR funders through program-level funding, and funders of bilateral projects attached to the programme, undertaken by one or several of its partners. Overall this represented an effort of about 850 million USD over a decade.The ambition of this series is, on each topic, to show the actual contributions of FTA to research and development challenges and solutions over a decade. It features the work undertaken as part of the FTA program, by the strategic partners of FTA (CIFOR-ICRAF, The Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT, CATIE, CIRAD, Tropenbos and INBAR) and/or with other international and national partners. Such work is presented indifferently in the text as work \"from FTA\" and/ or from the particular partner/organization that led it. Most of the references cited are from the FTA program.This series was elaborated under the leadership of the FTA Director, overall guidance of an Editorial Committee constituted by the Management Team of FTA, support from the FTA Senior Technical Advisor, and oversight of the FTA Independent Steering Committee whose independent members acted as peer-reviewers of all the volumes in the series.The growth of the global and domestic trade in agricultural and forest (primarily timber) commodities over the past decade has driven an expansion of their production, a significant portion of which takes place in tropical lands. This is leading to a significant increase in environmental impacts that are linked to deforestation and forest fragmentation, biodiversity loss and rising carbon emissions. Negative social impacts are also increasing; they include threats to local food and nutrition security, and to the tenure rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Positive impacts include support for the livelihoods of the smallholder farmers who depend on commodity crops.FTA's research on value chains, finance and investments has focused on supporting transitions to more sustainable and inclusive supply chains and business models while helping to achieve broader objectives of low-emissions development and climate change mitigation and adaptation in production landscapes. The emphasis has been on addressing the challenges associated with deforestation and forest degradation and the conversion of biodiversityrich agricultural and forest landscapes, while meeting growing global demands for food, feed and fibre from sustainable sources. During the past decade, the emphasis of FTA analyses has shifted to embracing different types of suppliers -from small-to large-scale loggers and farmers -and to linking the impacts of global trade and investments to state-and marketdriven responses in order to address their socio-environmental impacts from the subnational to the global level. The latter topic led to FTA research on inclusive business models and responsible finance.Following the cascade of pledges and commitments in the context of the New York Declaration on Forests adopted in 2014 (NYDF 2021), FTA research has placed growing emphasis on examining the role of private-sector actors in achieving their commitments, and on identifying improved publicprivate arrangements to enhance the governance of supply chains, notably for palm oil, timber, cocoa and beef. This has encompassed approaches linked to the implementation of sustainability standards to reduce negative environmental impacts, and growing interest in analyzing jurisdictional approaches and gender in value chains as part of broader efforts to mainstream gender in research (Elias et al. 2021).The wood comes from the forests but also the UTB (government processing unit), sawmills and community forests and unknown sources. Yaoundé -Cameroon.Photo by Ollivier Girard/CIFORThe growth in the production of agricultural commodities such as soybean, palm oil, cocoa, coffee, rubber, beef and timber, stimulated by domestic and global trade, has put increasing pressure on forests across landscapes in the tropics and subtropics of Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia (Table 1). This has led to multiple environmental challenges linked to losses in forest cover and biodiversity and to rising carbon emissions (Ruckelshaus et al. 2020;Schmeller and Bridgewater 2016;IPCC 2020;Wardell et al. 2021). It has also presented social challenges, including threats to local food and nutrition security and tenure rights and to the livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples and local communities (see, for example, Lambin and Meyfroidt 2010;Reboredo 2013;Lee et al. 2014;Baker and Spracklen 2019).While there are diverse estimates of these effects, recent analysis shows that these commodities, including cattle and wood fibre, accounted for 26% of global loss in tree cover from 2001 to 2015 (Curtis et al. 2018); almost a half of that total was linked to cattle raising (Goldman et al. 2020;Weisse and Goldman 2021).Research on the impacts of trade and investment on forests and people, at the start of FTA Phase I in 2011, grew out of a research domain established by CIFOR in 2009. It initially focused on the informal domestic and international timber trade, the social and environmental impacts associated with the expansion of bioenergy feedstocks, the governance of palm oil, Chinese investments in agriculture, forestry and mining in sub-Saharan Africa and large-scale land acquisitions in Papua Province, Indonesia. A first theory of change was developed in 2013. 1 For more information about work on theory of change conducted within FTA, please see Highlight No. 17 in this series (Belcher et al. 2021). In 2015, the research programme was renamed Global governance, trade and investment, and later in 2016 was renamed again as Sustainable Global Value Chains and Investments. At that time the focus shifted to assessing two topics: i) investment strategies and business models; and ii) governance systems and institutional arrangements, known as Clusters of Activities (CoAs). The research adopted a more complex framework than the former simplified approach, which was related to drivers, impacts and responses. It focused on palm oil, beef and timber supply chains in the Amazon, Congo Basin, Mekong River Basin and Southeast Asia. Researchers engaged with multiple approaches to policy engagement, including global multistakeholder initiatives, private-sector platforms, national economic, planning and environmental agencies, and subnational governments.Several commodity round tables, company alliances, and partnerships between non-government organizations (NGOs) and corporations emerged to deal with these initiatives. The impacts were manifested beyond specific supply chains and production landscapes, and acquired global proportions. There are now multiple approaches to support sustainability initiatives and their implementation frameworks, which also relate to how supply chains are structured (Rajeev et al. 2017;Agrawal et al. 2018;German et al. 2020; 1 A theory of change provides a description and explanation of how and why an activity or a set of activities (such as a project or program) is expected to lead or contribute to a process of change.  Wardell et al. 2021). Efforts increasingly aim to de-link deforestation from supply chains (Climate Focus 2016). This has stimulated several global agribusiness companies to make political commitments to zero deforestation (Pirard et al. 2015a(Pirard et al. , 2015b;;Jopke and Schoneveld 2018). Some governments in consumer countries, notably the United States and in the European Union, have introduced regulations to restrict imports of timber and biofuels that do not comply with legal and sustainability standards, while some financial service providers are integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria in the US and EU. Many initiatives emerged in support of these processes. They include tools to make information on trade flows more transparent (e.g. TRASE and TRASE Finance); frameworks to guide companies to implement their commitments with integrity (AFI and CDP 2020); and guidance to companies to set ambitious targets for climate and nature such as the science-based targets initiative (https://sciencebasedtargets.org).During the period 2015 to 2020 a large number of companies made commitments to address commodity-driven deforestation, and to provide publicly available reports on progress. Furthermore, 95% of companies participating in groups such as the High Carbon Stock Approach, Tropical Forest Alliance 2020 and the Tropical Forest Trust adopted such commitments (Donofrio et al. 2017). However, setting and reporting on specific, measurable and time-bound commitments and policies to eliminate deforestation and other forms of ecosystem conversion associated with agricultural and forestry production systems have progressively become more complex. Commitments on palm oil,timber and pulp and paper continue to lead the way due to their well-established certification programs.A woman drying coffee beans in Tri Budi Syukur village, West Lampung regency, Lampung province, Indonesia.In response to these changes, a new theory of change was developed for FTA Phase 2 in 2017 for Flagship Program (FP) 3 (Sustainable value chains and investments). It included three clusters of activities (CoAs): governance of commodity supplies, inclusive business models in timber and tree-crop value chains, and responsible finance and investments. This approach reflected the growing complexity of global markets and the multiple public and private initiatives to promote sustainability, including zero-deforestation commitments. FTA research continued to pay particular attention to promoting the inclusion of smallholders and small and medium enterprises (SMEs), while exploring governance and financing arrangements with subnational jurisdictions and at the landscape scale. Gender was increasingly mainstreamed in FTA research on value chains and inclusive business models (Box 1).For more information about research work on gender conducted within FTA, see Highlight No.15 in this series (Elias et al. 2021).FTA gender researchers were commissioned by Fairtrade International in 2019 to analyze the gendered dimensions of participation in Fairtrade coffee value chains in Indonesia, Guatemala and Kenya, and the ways in which the benefits of certification were affecting gender dynamics within smallholder producer organizations (SPOs) and producer households. FTA Priority 16 (inclusive finance and business models) The three core thematic areas of research by Flagship Program 3 addressed the following overarching questions:1. What are the public, private or hybrid institutional arrangements that have the most potential for enhancing the adoption of sustainability practices and social inclusivity in the value chain?2. What conditions and support are needed to build business models involving smallholders and SMEs that are economically viable, socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable?3. What mechanisms could promote more widespread adoption of responsible finance among financial service providers that not only improve sustainability but also stimulate the conditions that support smallholders' access to finance for forest and agroforestry-based systems?Timber being transported on the road between the Nyon river and Yaoundé.Annually, billions of dollars flow into rural landscapes worldwide. They are invested with widely diverse objectives, and can create the risk of negative interactions between the initiatives that are being financed and the effects of those initiatives. For example, governments may pay for conservation initiatives while at the same time subsidizing agriculture for the export market that puts pressure on the forests the governments want to conserve in the same landscapes. Often this occurs unintentionally. Identifying such interactions within landscapes allows opportunities for synergies between investments to be defined. In addition, many investments in the landscape are made to serve the goals of the investors, which may create frictions with the goals of the inhabitants of the landscapes or leave a number of important goals for these inhabitants unaddressed. In other cases, intentions may be good and commitments may meet international standards, but the business models are not able to achieve inclusiveness and sustainability. For inclusive agribusinesses to truly deliver on their transformative potential, a reimagination of business values, practices and ecosystems is needed.FTA's research in this area proposes to inform businesses and service providers about business models that are more inclusive, gender-responsive, economically viable and environmentally sustainable and to support Ecological Social and Governance [criteria] integration in Financial Service Providers' products and services to increase the flows of investments in forest and tree-crop sectors. FTA's attention to inclusive agricultural and forestry investment arose when researchers began to take note of rising investor interest in the southern hemisphere's farmland and forestland. In assessing the implications of this trend, FTA gradually shifted its focus to more sustainable and inclusive land-use alternatives. Recognizing that large-scale monocultural plantations in most contexts are rarely socially or environmentally sustainable, FTA began to critically examine whether production systems that effectively integrate small-scale producers could be more in keeping with sustainable food system objectives.This culminated in a large body of work on contract farming, tenant farming and producer cooperatives, involving more than 200 case studies across ten commodities and eight tropical developing countries (Schoneveld et al. under review). 3 While partly validating past research that found that these models are generally welfare enhancing, the results of more recent research added much nuance to existing scholarly and development narratives on inclusive agribusiness (Schoneveld in press). For example, researchers observed that while improved access to production inputs and technical services helped close yield gaps and raise farmer incomes, at the same time it also facilitated large-scale extensification (Schoneveld et al. under review).Because improved access to technical services and inputs often enhanced income, smallholders -in the absence of alternative investment options and with more stable off-take markets -generally prioritized their budgets to reinvest the additional income in land accumulation (Schoneveld et al. under review). In many cases, this resulted in the conversion of natural ecosystems and/or land concentration and conflict. Moreover, the research also observed highly unequal distribution of costs and benefits. For example, family connections were instrumental in securing technical support from an inclusive business in one case and in obtaining cooperative membership in another (Schoneveld and Weng under review). Not only did few models include genuinely marginalized groups, a subsample of 12 case studies demonstrated that across the sample almost half of smallholder participants were unable to derive any meaningful gains from participation (Schoneveld et al. under review), meaning that no accumulation of livelihood assets (as a proxy for upwards mobility) occurred because of participation. This differed from case to case; smallholder capacity to accumulate was often affected by the type and quality of investor service offerings, most notably access to production inputs on credit. This study found that smallholders with fewer resources were least likely to benefit materially from participation. Many such smallholders fail to fully benefit from business service packages because of competing livelihood priorities (Schoneveld et al. under review), and are often unwilling and/or unable to reallocate household labour resources from subsistence to commercial cropping activities. This raises very real questions about the assumptions that underpin inclusion narratives and demonstrates that participation should by no means be considered an end in itself (as is generally done). FTA research based on enterprise-level and household-level interviews demonstrates the socioecological trade-offs and distributional inefficiencies of institutional innovations that aim to strengthen smallholder participation in agrifood chains (Schoneveld et al. under review).Research that critically explored recent inclusive business policies and financial innovations revealed that intergovernmental bodies, development investor and donors pay little heed to the effects of their inclusive business promotion activities on social differentiation and environmental degradation (Schoneveld in press). Further, a recent policy shift can be observed that discriminates against small and medium enterprises in favour of large agribusinesses with scalability potential (ibid.). When pressured to scale their reach, inclusive agribusinesses find that their ability to deliver on their social missions, manage preference heterogeneity and calibrate their service offerings to the needs of their beneficiaries is often heavily compromised. This calls for a drastic shift in how inclusive agribusiness development is framed and how promotional activities are targeted and conditioned by Palm oil production near Yangambi, DRC.Photo by Axel Fassio/CIFOR policymakers and development financiers. FTA findings demonstrate that for inclusive agribusinesses to deliver on their transformative potential, a reimagination of inclusive business values, practices and ecosystems is needed. Schoneveld (2020, in press) and Schoneveld and Weng (under review) show how the concept of inclusivity can be operationalized in a different way for policy and financing purposes. Specifically, the research findings call for greater emphasis on managing trade-offs and on integrating food systems, agroecology and non-discrimination principles in working definitions of inclusive business. For example, funding support could be linked to monitoring of a project's environmental performance (specifically for issues such as agricultural runoff and smallholder land expansion) and to social welfare (in terms of integrating more smaller farmers with fewer resources into the supplier base). In addition, inclusive agribusiness policy needs to place more emphasis on developing and harmonizing technical support structures and on brokering cross-sector partnerships and capacity development services. This FTA research also found that investor willingness and capacity to develop more adaptive and inclusive business models is undermined by poor relations with, and the lack of capacity of potential governmental and civil society partners (Schoneveld 2020, in press and Schoneveld and Weng under review).Parallel to the research on critical factors for successful transformation to adaptive and inclusive business models, FTA researchers looked at the role finance could play in supporting this transformation. Researchers reviewed the barriers to access for smallholder farmers and for small and medium agriforest businesses in general (Louman et al. 2020). Risk-adjusted rates of return, scale, and the nature of financial instruments were recognized as the main barriers to finance for smallholders, SMEs and communities. Although innovations have been implemented within the financial sector to increase the availability of finance for investments in sustainable land uses, in few cases do these innovations reduce risks while at the same time enhancing access to finance for the smallholders, SMEs and communities, and contributing to positive impacts.FTA research analyzed the main financial flows in a cocoa landscape in Ghana (Pamerneckyte et al. 2020) and an oil palm landscape in Indonesia (Rossanda et al. 2020). Both cases used the integrated methodology for Landscape Assessment of Financial Flows (Shames et al. 2019; see Box 2).Although financial flows and their impacts differed between the landscapes, in both places private-sector investments contributed more to income generation than to objectives that support the sustainability and resilience of the landscape. Public (government) investments were more balanced in their contributions to these objectives, but were insufficient to compensate for the negative effects of the investments by the private sector. In each landscape, participants identified private flows that had the potential for positive impacts on landscape objectives if the source of the flow were to implement environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria in their investment decisions. Based on these findings, local NGOs started approaching selected privatesector stakeholders to discuss the importance of such criteria, as well as options to reduce the barriers to applying these criteria.From ongoing in-depth case studies of financial flows that were deemed to be successful in combining economic viability with inclusiveness and good agricultural practices (Byakagaba et al. 2021; Impact Investment Exchange 2021; Lawrence and Louman 2021; Mawesti et al. 2021), FTA learned that implementing agencies (i.e. the source of financial flows) can reduce the risks of providing finance to farmers by linking it to access to technical assistance for improving agricultural practices and for administering the money. In addition, implementing agencies can facilitate farmers' compliance through more flexible collateral requirements and by adjusting payback periods to better align with local agricultural calendars. This confirms the importance of integrating access to finance into broader packages of support to smallholder farmers and SMEs. None of the implementing agencies studied are formal Financial Service Providers (FSPs), but most are connected to one or more FSPs with some ESG requirements. For these requirements to have an impact in the field, however, the intermediaries (who connect the providers and the recipients of funds) have to look for finance that allows them to provide the comprehensive package needed to reach out to the farmers, SMEs and communities that implement the sustainable practices (Byakagaba et al. 2021;IIX 2021;Lawrence and Louman 2021;Mawesti et al. 2021). Thus, based on these case studies, many international FSPs are adopting ESG criteria in their investment decisions (but still more need to do so), although collaboration with other actors (government, the private sector, civil-society organizations) will be essential to achieve the desired impacts on local people in the areas where these FSPs make their land-based investments.Yuliana carrying a bucket with oil palm fruits.During the assessment local stakeholders gain greater insight into the financial sources in the landscape and what those sources invest in. And by analyzing the impacts of those investments on previously agreed-on landscape goals, they can identify financing gaps, as well as those flows that most need transformation. The assessment method has two phases. Phase 1 consists of an overview of the landscape economy based on existing reports. After preparatory work by a consultant, participants in a multistakeholder platform (MSP) workshop identify the principal sectors that contribute to the economy in terms of money, number of people involved or land area directly affected. During Phase 2, the MSP participants identify the main financial flows for each of these principal sectors, and discuss their perceptions of the impacts of these flowsboth positive and negative -on landscape goals. This information is then validated through sectoral focal groups and interviews with key informants. Figure 1 shows the main results of such an analysis in an oil palm landscape in Indonesia.  Participants in the landscape assessments perceived the exercise as a good way to discuss land uses and their potential conflicts and synergies from a different -for them, innovative -perspective. Also, the assessments were inputs in subsequent landscape-level climate action plans, and some of the participants in the workshops showed interest in replicating the analysis for their own particular financial flows.There is still a clear need for more solution-oriented research to stimulate wider uptake by smallholders. This should focus on improving understanding of what types of partnerships (encompassing state regulations and nonstate sustainability initiatives) have been established, how they have been structured, which ones have been effective, and whether there is need to adapt them to different contexts. For example, it is still unclear how new publicprivate initiatives are engaging with nationally owned processes for reform. Such processes include debates around agrarian reform, the capturing of state revenue losses, licence review and social forestry (Luttrell et al. 2018). Aligning sustainability initiatives with these agendas is crucial to avoid undermining them. There is also a need to address performance gaps in the sector, with regard to social impacts, productivity and carbon emissions.Bolaina workers at the sawmills, Pucallpa port Ucayali river.Corporate actors are increasingly looking for place-based solutions such as jurisdictional approaches 4 and/or territorial sourcing using science-based targets. Many are trying to identify ways to resolve the tensions between the materiality of sourcing (i.e. what is being extracted from a particular landscape), and how much they need to put back in terms of improving livelihoods, access to clean drinking water and support for educational and primary health-care facilities. Such approaches are not new, but in the context of new reporting requirements aligned to the Sustainable Development Goals, they are increasingly perceived to reduce reputational risks. They will require building bottom-up processes that are able to define and achieve targets in specific locations with local producers.Extensive engagement with national and provincial authorities in Indonesia was also undertaken in relation to planned investments associated with large-scale land acquisitions in Papua Province, Indonesia, and with SMEs in the furniture industry (Purnomo et al. 2014) FTA and its partners -including the former Finance Alliance for Sustainable Trade (FAST), SNV and Profundo -have communicated research results on innovative finance through their ongoing engagement with Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) events. 6 A community of practitioners has committed to developing innovative financial instruments to fund restoration, and to strengthen the role of certification and accountability frameworks across supply chains. 7In the early 1990s, the failure to establish a binding international convention on forests, combined with growing evidence of the importance of forest ecosystems to the global environment, had a major influence on the governance of forest resources. At the same time, the first attempts were made to develop sustainability standards by public bodies such as the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO), and by NGOs such as the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). In addition, several Western countries, notably those in the European Union, began to develop national and transnational public policies to compensate for the absence of an international convention. The Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan 8 was the result of this process in 2003.The forestry sector and tropical commodities such as coffee, cocoa and bananas have been at the forefront of certification and of efforts to advocate for and implement sustainability initiatives (Pacheco et al. 2011 FTA research has also influenced public policy in several producer countries. In Cameroon, for example, the government has recently imposed a requirement for legal timber to be used in all public procurement. 11   In Indonesia, FTA conducted work to support forest reforms related to the implementation of the country's VPA. FTA research also supported smallscale furniture enterprises and their suppliers in central Java through the establishment of the Jepara Small-scale Furniture Producers Association. This allowed members to negotiate with the Indonesian Furniture Industry & Handicraft Association, and with the Jepara Wood Traders Association. About 85% of the producer association members have seen an improvement in total production, sales and profits in the last few years. 12  Over the past twenty years, the governance of tropical forestry and agricultural sectors has grown in complexity. Private-sector and civil-society organizations have been increasingly involved in building alliances, platforms and multistakeholder process to improve the regulations for timber and commodity crops that place pressures on forest landscapes, and to tackle their social and environmental impacts. A growing number of governance policies and mechanisms have been adopted by individuals or groups of consumer countries, transnational corporations, or platforms involving international and national NGOs. This has also contributed to fragmenting governance systems, given the strong emphasis of these policies on specific sectors and forest-risk commodities. FTA has examined some of these new governance mechanisms, focusing on the timber, palm oil and beef sectors, to identify emergent approaches, evaluate theories of change and impact pathways, and contribute to evolving policy recommendations and strategies for privatesector engagement (Wardell 2020).The sustainable forest management paradigm was a major driver of change in forest governance, which motivated the launch of the FLEGT Action Plan and subsequent negotiations with producer countries to define its content. Given the difficulty of agreeing on a definition of sustainability, the EU and its partners have retained legality as the primary objective of their collaboration. A major effort was made by the EU to support the definition and clarification of legality criteria for timber production and trade in producer countries. FTA contributed to this effort in several countries, including Cameroon and the Central Africa Republic (CAR); see Brown et al. 2008;Tacconi 2007;Cerutti and Lescuyer 2011;and Lescuyer et al. 2014. However, in the context of implementing the VPAs, FTA's main focus was characterizing national timber markets and supporting informal smallholders, mainly in Central Africa and Indonesia. Although the domestic sector is mentioned in the VPAs, it emerged as a blind spot in their implementation and in national public policies. Numerous publications produced by FTA 13 showed the importance of domestic consumption and regional wood flows, and contributed to putting the domestic sector on the political agenda of many producer countries and the European Commission.These outcomes are the result of numerous, constructive and long-term interactions with FTA's partners. This is illustrated by the evolution of cooperation between FTA and the Ministry of Forests (MINFOF) of Cameroon on legal timber over the past ten years:A wood seller at Montée Parc Market, Yaoundé, Cameroon.Photo by Ollivier Girard/CIFOR• between 2007 and 2009, MINFOF was mainly informed of FTA research results; • between 2009 and 2012, MINFOF was formally consulted on the inputs/ outputs of FTA research projects; • from 2013 until 2021 MINFOF was a formal partner of FTA projects, with co-production of knowledge, shared management of activities, joint budgets and bank accounts, and co-responsibility for delivering results.This long-term collaboration has allowed for a concerted effort to produce impacts such as the decree adopted in December 2020 that imposes a requirement for legal timber in all public procurement. 14  In parallel to the work on FLEGT and the formalization of small-scale timber harvesters, the implementation of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) standard was the subject of several studies by FTA, especially in Central Africa. Three angles of research were addressed:1. The impact of FSC was the subject of numerous methodological studies (Romero et al. 2013(Romero et al. , 2017) ) on the perceptions of stakeholders (Cerutti et al. 2020), and in terms of local governance (Tsanga et al. 2014), environmental sustainability (Cerutti et al. 2011) and social aspects (Cerutti et al. 2014b(Cerutti et al. , 2017). 2. An analysis of FSC audits in three tropical river basins brought to light some local and systemic limitations of this private-sector certification approach (Piketty and Drigo 2018;Piketty et al. 2019). 3. The interactions between private forest management and public policy were reviewed and detailed for several Central African countries (Tsanga 2021;Lescuyer et al. 2021) and contributed to convincing the governments of Gabon and Cameroon to fully or partly endorse the FSC standard in order to support sustainable forest management and timber traceability. FTA insights on and recommendations for forest certification were also used by the stakeholders who revised the national FSC norms in Cameroon, Congo and Gabon that were published in 2020 and 2021.Since the late 1990s, forest governance has not only been associated with forest management and timber legality, but has also rapidly encompassed the issue of agricultural crops that lead to growing deforestation, particularly in tropical landscapes: the so-called forest-risk commodities. Examples of these commodities include palm oil in Southeast Asia and beef from cattle ranching in the Amazon.In Indonesia, public authorities, driven by economic development goals, have adopted policies favouring the expansion of oil palm plantations. Several production models have been studied by FTA, including their uptake of environmental concerns and their impacts on small producers. The implementation of RSPO, the international sustainability standard for palm oil, has given rise to much discussion on both its content and its implementation. Discussions have also included the politics of approaches to stimulate sustainable production and trade, particularly those linked to EU policies. Malaysia and Indonesia developed their own mandatory national standards for palm oil (MSPO and ISPO, respectively) within relatively complex frameworks that regulate land allocation, production systems, incentives and business models.Growing concerns about sustainability in the forest and palm oil sectors were related to the uptake of and reporting on specific practices, measuring target achievements for social and environmental indicators, establishing traceability, screening suppliers, and adjusting to finance screening guidelines. These have progressively added complexity to the governance of supply chains. Pacheco et al. (2018b) show that such complexity is the case in the palm oil sector. This has led to the development of multiple approaches to implement sustainability initiatives that also relate to how supply chains are structured (Rajeev et al. 2017;Agrawal et al. 2018;German et al. 2020). Pacheco et al. (2018b) group them into three categories: 1) individual company-or group-focused approaches based on the adoption of voluntary sustainability standards; 2) sectoral approaches with a focus on supply-chain-based interventions; and 3) combined supply chain and territorial approaches at the jurisdictional level. Each approach has its potentials and limits, and can lead to different associated risks and benefits for the stakeholders, depending on their influence in the specific landscape or supply chain (Wardell et al. 2021).There is much controversy regarding palm oil development in Indonesia, which is mainly linked to its contradictory impacts (van Noordwijk et al. 2017). The sector is a significant driver of economic growth and is important to the development of Indonesia's economy at both the national and subnational levels. However, it is also a major driver of biodiversity loss and deforestation in the country, which leads to an important carbon debt, particularly when oil palm expands into peatlands (Pacheco et al. 2017a). A recent independent evaluation of FTA's palm oil research in Indonesia, based on a portfolio theory of change (Davel et al. 2020) showed that this research had contributed to the partial or full realization of 18 of 21 outcomes (ibid., x; also see Box 5). Targeted policy changes have occurred at the provincial level (e.g. provincial regulation in East Kalimantan) and the international level (e.g. addressing gender issues within RSPO). Overall, the most influential mechanisms leveraged by FTA's research portfolio related to the production of new, neutral and credible knowledge, and the reputations of CIFOR and FTA and its partners. The evaluation showed a need, however, for more planned coordination, cohesion and coherence across research efforts on palm oil issues in Indonesia (Davel et al. 2020, xiii). A summary of the key lessons learned from the evaluation is presented in Box 5.  There are still gaps in FTA knowledge in terms of the role and functioning of multistakeholder partnerships (MSPs) associated with forest-risk commodities.Shea butter production process near Chiana, Kassena Nankana District -Ghana.Photo by Axel Fassio/CIFOR Box 6. Shea -a gendered value chain and the Global Shea Alliance Shea fruits, shea nuts and shea butter are non-timber forest products from the shea tree (Vitellaria paradoxa), the most frequently occurring tree species in the agroforestry parklands of West Africa. FTA's research on shea value chains was initiated in West Africa in 2013 (Wardell and Fold 2013;Rousseau et al. 2015). FTA research findings have been presented at conferences of the Global Shea Alliance (GSA) and at virtual events during the period 2018 to 2021. Findings included novel research methods to assess the security of shea tree tenure (Rousseau et al. 2016a), processes of social differentiation (Rousseau et al. 2016b), and opportunities for and risks of globalized trade for women shea producers (Mollins 2020).These partnerships provide a mechanism to build coalitions of interest groups through \"the balanced representation and participation of all categories of stakeholders\" (Cheyns 2011, 1). MSPs have subsequently been conceived of as pathways of influence (Cashore and Lupberger 2015), and as promoting stakeholder learning dialogues (Cashore et al. 2019)  2018). Other reviews have focused on health-related MSPs (Hemmati 2002); the exercise of power through MSPs for sustainable agriculture (Cheyns and Riisgaard 2014); MSPs to support small and medium-scale forestry enterprises in Indonesia (Purnomo et al. 2014); MSPs in integrated landscape initiatives (Kusters et al. 2018); and subnational MSPs (Sarmiento Barletti et al. 2020).To build on lessons learned through these earlier exercises, an FTA review of multistakeholder initiatives, predominantly associated with forestrisk commodities and established during the period 1990 to 2018, was commissioned in 2021 (Wardell and Cheyns 2021). This review aim to summarize some of the outstanding challenges faced by many MSPs, notably ensuring greater smallholder inclusiveness, oversight and the role of auditors, funding/sponsorship of MSPs, knowledge systems, and access to information.The New York Declaration on Forests in 2014 (NYDF 2021) and the Amsterdam Declaration Partnership in 2015 (Amsterdam Declaration 2015), initiated ambitious individual and group commitments and pledges from key corporations and some governments, including those at the subnational level, to tackle persisting deforestation. FTA has analyzed some of the institutional challenges emerging from these commitments, and the scope and potential of public and private arrangements to implement them, as well as the associated obstacles (Piketty et al. 2015;Piketty et al. 2017a;Pacheco et al 2017c;Pacheco et al. 2018a;Jopke and Schoneveld 2018;Brandao et al. 2020). FTA's main emphasis was on the institutional arrangements needed at the subnational or landscape level, involving a diverse range of stakeholders, to halt deforestation by combining supply chain and territorial approaches with a focus on beef, soybean and palm oil.In Brazil, starting in 2006, some innovative institutional arrangements between the public and private sector induced major shifts in the governance of the soybean and beef cattle value chains, the main drivers of land-use change in the Amazon. A moratorium was signed by the major soy buyers, forbidding them to trade soybean planted in areas deforested in the Amazon biome after 24 July 2006 (the cutoff date was later postponed to 2009).Regarding the beef cattle value chain, a Conduct Adjustment Agreement/ Termo de Ajustamento de Conduta (TAC) was signed between the main meatpackers, NGOs and the government. The main meatpackers committed to not using any suppliers who were involved in illegal deforestation after 2009 (Nepstad et al. 2014;Gibbs et al. 2015a;Tonneau et al. 2017). 17   These cases show that in spite of progress made in reducing deforestation, the systems for verifying compliance with environmental regulations do not address sustainability issues sufficiently broadly, nor do they address all legality issues (Piketty et al. 2017b). Neither soybean producers nor cattle ranchers are obliged by these arrangements to restore their forest reserve, an obligation of the forest code, if they fully cleared it before the cut off date of the Soy Moratorium or of the TAC (Piketty et al. 2017b). This results in unfair procedures that offer equal access to farmers who fully cleared their property before 2008 and those who fully respected the Forest Code (Tonneau et al. 2017). The situation of the suppliers is also problematic in the case of the beef cattle value chain: indirect suppliers of calves are mostly medium and small farmers who are spread over a huge territory that is very costly to monitor. Some of them, particularly smallholders, are settlers living in remote areas where deforestation still occurs (Godar et al. 2014;Piketty et al. 2015).The TAC led to only some components of public regulations being enforced, mostly the control of illegal deforestation by direct suppliers. However, the TAC does not guarantee that illegal deforestation is completely banned from the beef meat supply chain or that soybean suppliers are fully respecting the Forest Code.Cattle farming is a key driver of deforestation in Brazil. Rio Branco, Acre, BrazilPhoto by Kate Evans/CIFOR 17 Direct suppliers are cattle ranchers selling their animals, adult and fattened, directly to the meatpeackers. Indirect suppliers are producers selling their calves, two or three years younger, to such cattle ranchers. The TAC implies that all direct and indirect suppliers will be monitored but in practice only direct suppliers are monitored.FTA research has added two critical elements to these debates. The first is that commitments to zero deforestation should not be considered in isolation from the wider processes of forest degradation that are also unfolding in forest landscapes. This has been shown in the Brazilian Amazon (Blanc et al. 2017;Bourgoin et al. 2018) and confirmed recently by a global worldwide assessment (Vancutsem et al. 2021). Zero-deforestation commitments alone, while effective for halting forest conversion, may also lead to forest mosaics difficult to effectively maintain and with low potential to conserve ecosystem services; commitments may be even more compromised if their implementation depends only on individual farmers' decisions. Wider collaborations, such as those to enhance connectivity in landscapes, may be needed to guarantee the restoration of ecological functions in threatened landscapes.The second element is that land-use intensification in a zero-deforestation context is not spatially uniform, since farmers aim to optimize the use of natural resources by intensifying land use in areas with high agricultural potential and leaving others areas for forest conservation or regeneration (Plassin et al. 2017;Poccard-Chapuis et al. 2021). This calls for a betterCattle farming in Brazil.understanding of the original land conditions, and of the interactions between zero deforestation and forest conservation, restoration, forest degradation and land intensification. FTA has shown, by studying the Paragominas municipality in the eastern Brazilian Amazon (Poccard-Chapuis et al. 2021), that it is technically possible to map these dynamics and optimize future land-use scenarios while halting deforestation and reversing forest degradation. These efforts are linked to governance mechanisms operating at the subnational level. Working at this governance level is essential to build the rules and individual farm protocols for landscape design and for monitoring land-use changes.Furthermore, zero deforestation target, whether net or gross, 18 cannot be dissociated from wider goals for supporting sustainable agrarian and forestry transitions in forest landscapes. Preserving and restoring the ecosystem services provided by forests in conservation lands is as important as restoring soil fertility in agricultural lands for sustaining agriculture and livestock to effectively guarantee long term zero-deforestation commitments (Piketty et al. 2017a;Tonneau et al. 2017). FTA research found that private initiatives implemented at the supply chain level alone are insufficient to guarantee such objectives and require different types of public and private arrangements that involve supply chain and territorial goals (Pacheco et al. 2017d).Additional work was conducted by FTA to explore the political economy of zero-deforestation commitments in specific jurisdictions in Kalimantan, Indonesia, where jurisdictional approaches were emerging as well as perspectives for public-private arrangements (Luttrell et al. 2018). The major supply chain actors, at the meeting of the Tropical Forest Alliance 2020, held in 2019, 19 defended the need to embrace jurisdictional initiatives with more ambitious goals than just zero deforestation.Given the importance of better understanding the feasibility and potential of jurisdictional approaches to tackle deforestation and enhance the provision of ecosystem goods and services, FTA has undertaken research in selected jurisdictions of Brazil, Colombia, Ghana, Peru and Indonesia (Piketty et al. 2018;Poccard-Chapuis 2020;Van der Haar 2019;Nieto Mendez et al. in press). Empirical knowledge about how jurisdictional approaches work in practice and under what conditions they are effective remains scarce, however (Chervier et al. 2020). FTA's work provided evidence of the progress achieved in some jurisdictions in their efforts to reduce deforestation, but also found that there is often no local uptake of zero-deforestation targets alone by jurisdictions. In addition, each jurisdiction is unique in its biophysical, social, economic and institutional features (e.g. spatial configuration, agrarian structure, land-use activities and deforestation drivers), and is also shaped by external factors (e.g. market trends, value chain configurations, and interventions that interact in distinct ways in each jurisdiction). This means that jurisdictional approaches may offer the opportunity to tailor solutions to specific contexts ( Box 7). It also means, though, that different jurisdictions may not be equally ready to adopt measures to halt deforestation, and reach either net, gross, legal or illegal zero-deforestation targets (Brandao et al. 2020). Therefore, monitoring of implementation is essential, both to demonstrate progress and point out weaknesses and to continue to build learning and stakeholder engagement, acknowledging any potential and actual obstacles.In the Amazon, the TerrAmaz project was officially launched on 10 September 2020. The project supports Amazonian jurisdictions, starting with five pilot territories in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, in the fight against deforestation and the transition to sustainable development. The project will receive EUR 9.5 million in financial support from Agence française de développement/French Development Agency (AFD) over four years. 20 TerrAmaz fits with France's commitment to the International Alliance for the Preservation of Forests and the national strategy against imported deforestation (La Stratégie Nationale de lutte contre la Déforestation Importée/SNDI). 21 Two of its pilot sites are FTA case studies: Guaviare department in Colombia and Paragominas municipality in Brazil. There, the commitment of local actors, including local governments, has been confirmed by the signing of agreements to jointly implement the project. 22 Importantly -and despite the resumption of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon in recent years -Paragominas has confirmed its commitment to control deforestation in its territory, and still records a low rate of deforestation. The TerrAmaz project also works in Madre de Dios, Peru, and builds from knowledge produced by FTA in San Martín Province, Peru.FTA research also contributed to improved understanding of the implications of zero-deforestation commitments by large companies in Indonesia in the form of various pledges around No Deforestation, No Peat, and No Exploitation (NDPE), and to identify what was missing for their effective implementation (Luttrell et al. 2018). These commitments were a response to global demands from non-governmental organizations to clean up supply chains and raise standards. At the same time, at the national and subnational level, new governance arrangements emerged in many countries for sustainability initiatives involving government, the private sector and other non-state actors. There is still a need for more basic knowledge, such as how much deforestation can be attributed to forest-risk commodities, how much of it is due to smallholders, the effect of supply chain initiatives on reducing deforestation and improving smallholders' income, and how benefits flow along the supply chains. Research is also required to assess the outcomes of the new partnerships emerging around finance, extension services and supply chain governance.As with the governance of palm oil, the evolution of governance arrangements to manage tropical forests has become increasingly complex (Zeitlin and Overdevest 2020). Earlier research on certification systems indicated that although benefits from price premiums and market access were limited, less tangible benefits were more common, including learning, improved governance, community empowerment, and reputational gains.Aerial view of the Amazon rainforest, near Manaus the capital of the Brazilian state of Amazonas. Brazil.Photo by Neil Palmer/CIAT These benefits may justify the cost of certification (Cerruti et al. 2014b;Carlson and Palmer 2016). The FLEGT theory of change is based on three types of actions: timber production, timber demand, and global timber trade standards and dynamics. Through its Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs), FLEGT works in more than a dozen countries. An independent evaluation of the EUR 900 million invested in the FLEGT Action Plan during 2003-14 concluded in 2016 that it was a relevant and innovative response to the challenge of illegal logging and that it had improved forest governance in all target countries, but that it needed to address new challenges, in particular deforestation and forest conversion (EC, 2016).Extensive FTA research conducted since 2010 has contributed to improved policies and practices promoting sustainable timber production in several countries (for example, the decree adopted in Cameroon in 2020 to impose legal timber in public procurement, and proposed improvements in FSC's certification system). Research on the significance of domestic timber markets led the EC to include domestic timber in the negotiation of some VPAs (Cerruti et al. 2014a; see also Cerruti et al. 2020) and caused some countries such as CAR to put timber domestic markets out of the scope of their VPAs (Lescuyer et al. 2014) Different types and scales of forest industries have had different experiences with timber legality licensing. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) continue to experience significant technical and financial difficulties related to the licensing process. Additional research is needed to address the key issues and challenges that SMEs face, and to identify support mechanisms that will help them deal with adverse impacts (Maryudi et al. 2021). To this end, FTA continues to support an FSC initiative to develop and test the New Approaches project to promote greater smallholder engagement by developing and testing a simplified regional FSC standard in Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and India (Brady 2019).Supporting transitions to more sustainable beef production in the Amazon also constituted an important part of FTA's research portfolio. Research built on a well-developed understanding of the conditions that drive cattle ranch expansion in the Amazon, and of the diversity of production systems and their environmental and social impacts in the Amazon (Pacheco and Poccard-Chapuis 2012;Nepstad et al. 2014). FTA research contributed to understanding the potential land limits of the cattle agreements i.e. the TAC and former private agreements between Greenpeace and meatpackers (Piketty et al. 2017b). It also supported efforts to build the necessary evidence to advance improved technical models in order to promote sustainable cattle intensification that is adapted to a range of farmer means and needs. Indeed, many current models aim only to maximize land productivity and have relatively high costs of labour, equipment and inputs, which are very demanding of knowledge and labour quality and not possible for many farmers. Research has argued that achieving sustainable beef production in the Brazilian Amazon's agricultural frontiers requires not only publicprivate institutional arrangements to enforce compliance with environmental laws, but also incentives and reward systems that facilitate the uptake of silvicultural systems that use natural resources more efficiently (Pacheco et al. 2017c;Plassin et al. 2017). Researchers engaged regional financial institutions to assist in the design of tailored loans that acknowledge production systems with higher environmental standards.During Phase II, FTA broadened its communications through governmentdriven policy dialogues, such as a keynote presentation at an event in Brussels in June 2017 with DEVCO on tackling deforestation and illegal logging (Pacheco 2017d). The FTA Science Conference 2020, \"Forests, trees and agroforestry science for transformational change,\" held 14-25 September 2020, involved two streams. One addressed inclusive business models and value chains; and one involved reducing barriers to inclusive landscape finance. 23 Some papers from the conference were selected for inclusion in an Agropolis/CGIAR book presented at the World Summit on Food Systems in New York in September 2021 (Agrogolis/CGIAR 2021).The multiplication of sustainability initiatives has been driven by the growing complexity and diversity of conditions under which agrifood and timber supply chains operate. These encompass geographical, demographic, logistical and cultural challenges associated with global value chains as well as more specific variations in knowledge production, extension services, technology transfer, national and international legislation, credit access, value chain development, and pricing mechanisms. They involve many different types of actors, including farmers who make land-use decisions as a function of their access to land and other assets; urban consumers; environmental NGOs lobbying for change; financiers; investors; and buyers of commodities. All of them have a direct or indirect influence on land-use decisions.Private-sector actors have increasingly defined and monitored their own sustainability performance by using certification standards or by developing their own procedures and criteria. More recently, a discernible shift toward landscape or jurisdictional approaches is seen as a way to meet sustainability goals. The growing complexity of policy regimes inevitably results in ambiguities and can lead to trade-offs between gains and losses. A recent FTA review (Wardell et al. 2021) presents a synthesis of the multiple public, private and hybrid governance initiatives that aim to promote sustainable supplies of key forest-risk commodities. Drawing on the published literature and scientific discussions, including those held at the recent FTA 2020 Science Conference (see footnote 28), the review summarizes some of the outstanding challenges that urgently need to be addressed in order to achieve the targeted impacts.Increasingly, the institutional arrangements that are emerging to govern global supply chains involve the inclusion of more non-state actors to enhance social and environmental governance. Non-state actors often require periodic adjustments in governance arrangements during implementation to ensure that these measures are adapting to changing circumstances and political influences. Recent experience with deforestation trends in Brazil is a case in point (Carvalho et al. 2019). Other recent research (German et al. 2020) has noted a trend in the evolution of agricultural supply chains towards more exclusionary agribusiness as governments scale back support to smallholders, as more stringent standards raise barriers to entry, and as firms streamline operations to enhance competitiveness.Environmental NGOs are increasingly engaged as intermediaries to support companies to address social and environmental risks in the supply chain, and to help subnational governments meet their sustainability commitments (Abbott et al. 2012(Abbott et al. , 2017;;Pacheco et al. 2018b;Busch and Amarjargal 2020). Such initiatives also foster partnerships between corporations and governments around shared objectives of rural low-carbon development, sustainable landscapes or jurisdictions, and deforestation-free supply chains. These partnerships may adopt different ways of functioning depending on the main actors who orchestrate them: corporations, NGOs or governments (Pacheco et al. 2017d). In addition, the perceptions of different types of stakeholders vary along each supply chain (Camargo et al. 2018).The continued growth of a relatively small number of agricultural (e.g. soybean, palm oil, cocoa, coffee, rubber and beef) and forest commodities (primarily timber) in global trade will continue to put pressures on forests across landscapes in the tropics and subtropics throughout Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Such pressures are amplified by the growing domestic demand for these commodities in producer countries. The latest Forest 500 report 24 indicates that no palm oil, soy, cattle or timber company that committed itself to eliminating deforestation from its supply chain by 2020 will meet this goal (Earthsight 2020). Others have noted that \"policies designed to achieve zero deforestation commitments are not being adopted or implemented at the pace needed to meet 2020 goals\" (Curtis et al. 2018(Curtis et al. , 1111)). This suggests that there are still many challenges to ensuring sustainable supplies of forest-risk commodities that meet private standards (Mayer and Gereffi 2010; Challies 2012; Waldman and Kerr 2014;Wardell et al. 2021).The growth in trade over the past three decades has been matched by improved access to information on the social and environmental impacts associated with global and domestic supply chains for agricultural and forestry commodities. This is particularly the case regarding those commodities with higher exposure to civil-society scrutiny (e.g. soybean in the Cerrado in Brazil, beef in Brazil, palm oil in Indonesia, and cocoa in West Africa). This growing scrutiny comes from civil-society organizations, consumers in importing countries, international banks, and shareholders of consumer goods companies. They want producers and consumers to develop and implement a diverse array of instruments and tools to promote sustainable or deforestation-free sourcing as a way to reduce exposure to reputational, financial and regulatory risks. Multistakeholder platforms (MSPs) emerged, among other reasons, in response to criticisms of government failure in the Global South, and the amplification of \"voice\" in the GlobalThis nursery is used to produce young cocoa seedlings for the establishment of plantations.North, particularly through social media. MSPs provided a mechanism to build coalitions of interest groups through better representation of and participation by all categories of stakeholders. However, recent FTA research in Sumatra, Indonesia, by Purnomo et al. (2021) observed that the contributions of governance and the political economy to sustainability remain poorly understood. They emphasized (ibid.) that considering political-economic factors in designing and implementing commodity interventions is a must.In particular, the development community and financiers must stop prioritizing technical and financial support for businesses at scale or with scalability potential. They need to move away from disciplinary siloes and start to embrace a systems perspective. Instead of helping big businesses become larger, their emphasis should shift to helping businesses become better. This would entail a rethinking of prevailing funding strategies and conditions; for example, by incorporating environmental and distributional indicators, and by prioritizing business support to sectors that advance the objectives of sustainable food systems (e.g. those for nutrient-rich crops with circular production potential and crops susceptible to climate shocks). See Schoneveld (in press) for a full analysis of such transformational pathways.Moreover, the lack of substantial results from companies on tropical deforestation and the increased pressure from Western consumers (represented by both citizens and NGOs) appear to have given a new voice to states over the last two or three years in the search for workable solutions to combat deforestation. In the years to come, there will be a need to better understand and manage ambiguities and trade-offs during the implementation of complex policy regimes. The growing multiplicity and complexity of governance initiatives does not necessarily equate with greater effectiveness in terms of actions on the ground or with reduced rates of deforestation and forest degradation.Building on the legacy of FTA's research on value chains, finance and investments over the past decade, future strategic initiatives will need to emphasize four key elements:• strengthening partner capacities in developing countries to co-design and deliver evidence-based solutions to address supply chain and investment constraints (Leeuwis et al. 2017).• For more information about capacity development conducted within FTA, see Highlight No.16 in this series (Wardell et al. 2021).• strengthening engagement through a broader array of national, regional and global multistakeholder initiatives (e.g. GPSNR, GSA) and business forums (e.g. Chain Reaction Research, Accountability Framework Initiative) by co-developing knowledge products and services on the thematic issues that CIFOR-ICRAF research will continue to address;• putting greater emphasis on subnational initiatives and interventions with broader coalitions of partners to develop, test and monitor hybrid governance regimes;developing more rigorous outcome monitoring and evaluation systems encompassing ex-post tracer impact studies 25 and innovative territorial certification models.Over the last decade, the CGIAR Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) has undertaken innovative basic and applied research across different scientific disciplines to improve policy and practice and facilitate the uptake of new knowledge, tools and approaches -both from the top down and the bottom up. FTA's research on value chains, finance and investments has focused on supporting transitions to more sustainable and inclusive supply chains and business models while helping to achieve broader objectives of low-emissions development and climate change mitigation and adaptation in production landscapes.  "}

main/part_2/0250228428.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"14948e1e973598617c447c06d78026fe","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://repository.cimmyt.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/23ce5343-4c9a-421a-9547-0d189c250545/content","id":"1813817063"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"0f8fbf36-2bfd-4954-b1a3-eef8fe41a8f3","content":"CIMMYT is an internationally funded, nonprofit scientific research and training organization. Headquanered in Mexico, the Center is engaged in a research program for maize. wheat. and triticale. with emphasis on improving the productiviry of agricultural resources in developing countries. It is one of III nonprofit international agricultural research and training centers supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). which is sponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The CGIAR consists of some 40 donor countries. international and regional organizations. and private foundations.CIMMYT receives core support through the CGIAR from a number of sources, including the international aid agencies of Australia,. Estimates of expected annual regional productivity loss (ARPL) for wheat-related problems 27 Table 6. Relative importance of unscored problems (lower number indicates higher priority) 27 Table 7. Researcher-identified rice crop problems and researchers' prioritization. Haryana, India, 1992 wet season 35 Table 8. Suggestions for action, by problem category 36 Table 9. Suggested priority actions, by problem and action class (wheat survey team) 37 Table 10. Suggested problem-solving research for three major rice-wheat system problems (rice survey team) 40 Table A1. Participants in the rice and wheat diagnostic surveys, Haryana, India, 1992 41 This repon contains the findings of diagnostic surveys conducted during the wheat and rice seasons of 1992 in Kamal and Kurukshetra Districts of Haryana State. India. Scientists from ICAR, HAU. CIMMYT. and IRRI participated in these surveys. Methods of rapid rural appraisal were used, similar to those employed in other rice-wheat diagnostic surveys in India and Nepal.The survey area. located on the Indo-Gangetic Plain in northeastern Haryana State. is characterized by a semiarid climate. Annual rainfall averages only 704 mm, falling mostly in the summer monsoon season. Irrigation is essential for growing rice and wheat. The soils in the study area are light to medium in texture (sandy loam to clay loam), alkaline in pH, and low in organic matter. Some soils in the southwestern part of the study area are salt affected.Most irrigation water in the study area comes from tubewells. with only about one-fifth provided from canals. Most of the groundwater is of good quality (although sadie in the southwestern part of the study area).Rice and wheat are the major crops grown by farmers, with sugarcane, oilseeds, pulses, fodder crops, potatoes. and vegetables making up the balance. Rice-wheat is the major cropping pattern. Rice-berseem clover and triple-crop patterns featuring rice, toria (Brassica campestris) and wheat (or sunflower) are also found.Livestock production and dairying are important components of the farming system. Animals are largely cared for by women. These enterprises interact strongly with the rice-wheat system, partly through the supplies of farm yard manure (FYM) they make available. Despite high livestock populations, the use of FYM on crops is declining because dung is increasingly used for fuel. The main sources of livestock fodder are wheat straw. rice straw (especially Basmati), berseem, fodder maize and sorghum. oats, and cut grasses. Fodder scarcity is a particular problem in sodic areas, where crop yields are lower and there are fewer a1ternati ve crops.Tractors are used mainly to prepare land for planting wheat, and most land preparation is done with tractors. Tractor numbers have tripled in the last 10 years. Disc harrows and cultivators are the only implements available. Farmers perfonn 4-8 tillage operations prior to sowing wheat on lighter soils and 8-12 operations on heavier soils. More operations are used where rice stubble is a problem. Fewer are used when rice is harvested late. Farmers often bum rice straw to facilitate tillage in wheat. The high number of wheat tillage operations appears to be a problem in the study area. Extensive mechanized tillage increases costs and contributes to soil compaction. Reasons given by farmers for extensive tillage include the need to incorporate rice residues, to prepare a fme seedbed, and to break up clods in heavier soils.Turnaround time between rice harvest and wheat planting is usually 15-35 days after modem varieties (MVs) of rice, but turnaround is reduced to 4-12 days after Basmati. Pre-irrigation is usually given to improve wheat germination.Almost all wheat is broadcast sown by hand at a seed rate of around 100 kglha. Low plant populations are found on 20-30% of wheat fields. however. Waterlogging, use of poorly stored seed, poor plant growth. and poor tillering were suggested as causes of low wheat populations.Some of the wheat in the study area is planted [ate, in early December. The long turnaround time between rice harvest and wheat planting appears to be the major reason for this. although late harvest of Basmati rice. loria, and sugarcane also can affect wheat planting date. However. late wheat planting appears less common than in other rice-wheat areas of South Asia.Wheat varieties commonly planted by farmers include HD-2329 (nonnal and late planting), HD-2009 (normal planting), and HD-2285 (late planting). Leaf rust was observed on all of these varieties. Leaf firing and blight was also present on HD-2329. but these diseases need more evaluation. As for rice. the area sown to Basmati varieties is said to exceed 40% of the rice area and to be increasing. Basmati rice is grown largely on well-drained maggra land having medium-textured soils. Basmati is grown by both large-and small-scale fanners.Varieties popular in the study area include Basmati-370, Haryana Basmati-l, and Taraori Basmati. Farmers find Basmati attractive because it sells for a higher price and costs less to produce. Straw of Basmati rice is also preferred for feeding livestock.Farmers usually use their own wheat seed, saved from the previous crop, or seed acquired from their neighbors. Sometimes farmers purchase and then multiply certified seed for use in the following year. Wheat seed was observed to be contaminated with barley, but many fanners noted that wheat and barley mixtures usually do not reduce yields or the price received for harvested grain.Farmers use high rates of fertilizer on wheat (100-150 kg Nlha and 50-75 kg P20/ha) but claim that they need to use more fertilizer now compared to 10 years ago to get the same yield. Few farmers use potash. The use of FYM on crops appears to be declining. especially for rice and wheat. Continuous rice-wheat cultivation, declining levels of organic matter, and other causes were suggested for suspected problems of soil health.Weeds affect yields of both rice and wheat. An annual regional productivity loss for wheat of nearly 8% was estimated for the problem of Phalaris minor infestation -higher than for any other wheat-related problem that was identified. Nearly all farmers use Isoproturon herbicide for control; few weed by hand. The effectiveness of chemical weed control varies considerably among farms. Data recently collected by scientists suggest that P. minor is becoming resistant to Isoproturon. If confinned. this problem represents a major threat to the future productivity of continuous rice-wheat systems. The incidence of different weeds affecting rice and wheat appears to be changing over time.Aphids and termites were identified as minor insect pests for wheat. Insect pests identified as problems for rice include leaffolder, white-backed planthopper. and stemborer.The survey team observed leaf blight, loose smut, and some rust in fanners' wheat fields but did not consider them major problems. However, the year was not favorable for rust development; more disease might be observed when rainfall is more abundant. Additional work is needed to evaluate productivity loss to diseases, especially leaf blight. The most imponant diseases affecting rice in the study area were blast, foot rot, and bacterial leaf blight.Groundwater depletion is a serious problem in the study area, and water tables have fallen as much as 20-25 ft (about 6-7.5 m) in 10 years. This problem has raised the cost of irrigation and may eventually threaten system sustainability. Excessive pumping of groundwater. slow replenishment of aquifers, and transpon of water to other areas of the state by canal all contribute to this problem. In about 10% of the study area, especially in the southwestern part.poor groundwater quality (sodicity) is a problem. Few alternative sources of good quality water exist in these areas; however, rice-wheat is not a common pattern there.Wheat harvesting and threshing take place from April to mid-May. Most wheat (80-90%) is harvested manually and threshed mechanically. The rest is harvested by combine. especially on larger holdings where family labor is insufficient. Migrant labor is important for harvesting and threshing wheat and transplanting rice.In brief, among the problems that affect wheat as well as rice, weeds are a near-term problem that limits both rice and wheat production. Declining soil fertility and soil health, as well as groundwater depletion. are longer-term problems that have implications for the sustainability of the rice-wheat pattern. In addition, poor groundwater quality is an issue in a few areas.Suggested actions to address these problems include additional diagnosis, monitoring to assess longer-term effects of farmers' practices and alternative technologies, research on alternative solutions to problems that are thought to be well understood, extension, and research on policy implications (for providing information to policy makers).Haryana is a major agricultural state in northwestern India. A large part of Haryana is located on the Indo-Gangetic alluvial plain. where rivers issuing from the Himalayas, along with groundwater, provide water for irrigating crops. Two of the most common crops in the state are rice and wheat; in 1989-90, rice accounted for II % of the cropped area in Haryana. and wheat accounted for 33%. Typically these two crops are grown sequentially in a rice-wheat cropping pattern. This cropping pattern, found throughout the state. covers nearly 500,000 ha (Hulce and Huke 1992). but is concentrated particularly in the northeaSt \\Figure 1). Rice and wheat are both important food grains for Haryana's large population, which is growing rapidly at 2.6% per year (Appendix B. Table B 1). Rice and wheat from Haryana also make a significant net contribution to India's food reserves. In all nine rice-wheat study areas, research has commenced with diagnostic surveys conducted during the rice and wheat seasons. These surveys bring together scientists of different disciplines and commodity programs to describe and analyze the rice-wheat system at each study area. Particular attention is given to interactions between rice and wheat, and between the rice-wheat pattern and the rest of the farming system. Survey analyses have resulted in the development of a research agenda for each study area, to guide the actions of a mUltidisciplinary team from the national agricultural research system (NARS), working in partnership with (and receiving support from) the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).This report presents the findings of exploratory diagnostic surveys conducted during 22-29 March, 1992 (the wheat season) and 27 September-2 October, 1992 (the rice season) in the Karnal-Kurukshetra study area.Both the rice and wheat diagnostic surveys in Haryana employed well-known methods of rapid rural appraisal and adaptive research planning (Tripp and Woolley 1989, Fujisaka 1991). As with many rapid rural appraisals, these surveys were characterized by opportunity sampling (including farmer groups and key infonnants, as well as individual women and men fanners), the integration of field observations with semistructured farmer interviews, and a review of secondary data. The surveys aimed to describe farmers' practices and fanning system interactions, identify problems of productivity and sustainability, generate hypotheses on their respective causes, and suggest ways of addressing these problems? Appendix A lists the names of survey participants and their institutional affiliations.The surveys were structured to take advantage of the study area's generally good roads. Participants were divided into small groups. On a given day, each group was provided with a vehicle and was sent to a preselected part of the study area. Villages visited during the wheat survey are shown in Figure 2. Some of the same villages were visited during the rice survey. A higher proportion of fanners interviewed for the rice survey lived in independent compounds, which may have biased the survey toward the larger, mechanized farmers. Participants were encouraged to interview women as well as men farmers. Considerable information on the role of women in the farming system was obtained during both surveys.Discussions with farmers or farmer groups were guided by a list of priority themes or \"guidelines.\" Survey partlcipants were expected to arrive at an understanding of fanners' perspectives on the guide issues. As the surveys progressed. guidelines evolved from general themes to specific questions. reflecting changes in the understanding of survey participants. During the wheat survey, guide issues ranged broadly over land types, farming system components, crop-livestock interactions, cropping patterns, wheat management and problems. and system problems associated with threats to sustainability. During the rice survey, guide issues focused more closely on farmers' agroecological classifications and their correlations with farmers' practices, rice production inputs and outputs, and rice crop problems and farmers' solutions to those problems, Participants returned each day to a meeting room for afternoon or evening discussions, Observations and impressions were shared, challenged, and synthesized, and a new set of guidelines was developed for the next day's visits, For the wheat season survey. points of consensus or controversy among the survey groups were recorded on a computer using personal infonnation management software 3 and sorted by theme, group, and date. Survey notes were printed and circulated among the participants daily to check for consistency and correctness. This procedure enabled a draft report to be written within days of the survey's completion.Towards the end of each survey, discussions focused on productivity and sustainability problems (and their causes) identified by fanners and scientists. Problems were ranked and actions to address the highpriority problems were discussed. Suggested actions included additional diagnosis. research to examine solutions to well-defined problems, extension. and policy analysis.The study area is located in the heart of the rice-wheat area of Haryana State (Figure 1). It lies between 29°11' -30°16' N latitude and 76°II' -77°IT W longitude; it is about 240 meters above sea level.The climate of the eastern subzone of Haryana State (including the study area) is classified as semiarid, tropical to subtropical. Annual rainfall ranges from less than 300 nun to over 1,000 mm (mean 704 mm). About 75-80% of the rain falls between June and September. Winter rains add only SQ..l25 mm to the annual total and, compared to the monsoon rains, vary more from one year to the next (NARP 1990). Mean air temperatures are around 29-31 °C during the summer and l6.5-18°C in the winter. These temperatures range from a maximum of 45°C in the summer to a minimum of less than 5°C in winter (Figures 3 and 4). Annual potential evapotranspiration is 1,400-1,600 mm, varying from 600-750 mm in the summer to 400-450 mm in the winter. Annual water deficits range from 600 to 1,100 nun per year. Irrigation for rice and wheat is necessary to make up for these deficits. Kamal and Kurukshetra Districts comprise part of the Indo-Gangetic alluvial plain laid down by the Indus River system. Most of the rice-wheat tracts in these districts are located on the flat alluvial plain. Nonetheless. farmers recognize several distinct land types, largely distinguished by differences in elevation, with accompanying changes in soils and hydrology. Land types identified by fanners during the survey include maggra (the upper part of the toposequence), dakkar or dungi (medium to lower). and jhil (or \"ponds:' the lowest land, where prolonged flooding is common). Most cultivated land is maggra, some is dakkar (30-35%), but little isjhil. There is a strong relation between land types and soil types: lighter soils are found on maggra and heavier soils on dakkar aIldjhil. It should be noted. however, that in the rice-wheat tract, maggra may include loam soils of medium texture:S oils in the study area are tropical arid brown to arid brown (TypiclUdic Ustochrepts). These soils are calcareous but do not have calcium carbonate layers within a l•m depth. They are very low in organic carbon. Their texture ranges between sandy loam and clay loam. Levels of available phosphorous and potash are medium to high, whereas nitrogen is low. Soil pH varies from 7.0 to 8.5. except for some places that have problems of salinity and sodicity (Table I). Fanners tend to classify soil by texture, but they also recognize some salt-affected soils. Their classifications include: rosli or rerili (sandy); doyam or darmiyani (sandy loam or loam); chahi (good, well-drained soils); dakkar or chikni (clayey relative to other soil types, or \"hard\" soils); and kallar (\"no plants grow,\" salt-affected) or reh (\"crusting of surface salts\"). Farmers also refer to soils of mixed texture (domar or \"two kinds of soils\"), which appear to be a combination of rasH and heavier soils (dakkar and chikni).Source: Rice Research Station, Kaul, Ha/Y8f1a.Agriculture in the study area relies heavily on irrigation. especially water from tubewells. In Kamal District. data from 1989-90 show that about 77% of the irrigated area was served by rubewells and 23% by canals (Appendix B, Table B2). Reliance on tubewells was lower in Kurukshetra District. where 65% of the irrigated area was served by rubewells and 35% by canals.From 1979-80 to 1989-90. net irrigated area increased from 86% to 97% of cultivated area (Appendix B. Table B3). However. the proportion of area irrigated by tubewells relative to canals did not change. During the survey it was estimated that 75-80% of the wheat was irrigated with tube wells. and the remainder with canals. No rainfed wheat was observed.An analysis of gwundwater quality in Kamal District reported in 1976 revealed that 60% of the samples were good quality water and 5% were normal and marginally saline water, whereas 21 % were sodie and 10% saline-sodie. Most of the poor quality saline-sadie water was concentrated in the Assandh block in the southwestern part of Kamal. Bicarbonates were the dominant anions in water with low electrical conductivity (EC). The proportion of chlorides and sulfates increased with increasing EC. In Kurukshetra District, 76% of the water samples were good, 4% normal, 15% sadie, 2% marginally saline, and 3% saline-sadie. WaterquaJity issues from the farmer's perspective are discussed below, especially in the section on \"Groundwater Quality.\"Rice and wheat together account for nearly 80% of total cropped area in the study area (Appendix B, Table B4). Sugarcane. oilseeds, fodder, potatoes, and vegetables are also important crops. Major cropping patterns in the study area include rice-wheat, rice-berseem clover, and rice-(loria,5 potato)-(wheat, sunflower). The rice-wheat pattern covers the largest area; virtually all farmers use this pattern on at least part of their farms. Rice-berseem also appears to be grown by most farmers. although it covers only 5-10% of the area. The rice-(toria. potato)-(wheat, sunflower) pattern is far more variable, concentrated in areas with suitable land and soil typeS.6 In the rice-wheat pattern, both medium-duration modem varieties (MVs) of rice and Basmati rice varieties are used; mostly short-duration rice varieties are used in the rice-berseem pattern.Farmer interviews revealed that some cropping patterns were associated with specific land and soil types.ALthough a continuous rice-wheat rotation is followed on both maggra and dakJcar, the rice-toria-wheat pattern (which features the use of short-duration sathi rice varieties) was concentrated on lighter soils on maggra lands. Alternatives to rice on maggra lands include fodder sorghum, colton, and fodder maize.Rice-rice-wheat with short-duration satm rices is increasing, especially in fields close to tubewells. Sathi rices are not found on reclaimed kallar land. although medium-duration MVs of rice and Basmati rice are grown there. Alternatives to wheat in the upper landscape include berseem, onion, and sunflower. In the lower daJckar only rice is grown in the wet season, whereas berseem is grown instead of wheat on a small area in the second season.~Brassica campt!stris.A variety of minor cropping patterns are also found, including:• Those wrth a third crop following rice-wheal (e.g., rice-wheat-green manure; rice-wheat-rice); these patterns are essentially intensifications of the fundamental rice-wheat pattern.• Those featuring a longer-term rotation between rice-wheat and sugarcane (e,g., rice-wheat-sugarcane-ratoon).• Those entirely without wheat (e.g., rice-sunflower; rice-sugarcane-ratoon-sunflower).• Those featuring fodder sorghum or maize as a summer crop, such as (sorghum, maize fodder)-rice-berseem;(sorghum, maize fodder)-rice-wheat; (sorghum, maize fodder)oberseem.The survey team occasionally observed fields of oats, winter vegetables (e.g., garlic or onions), or winter pulses (lentils, chickpeas). Some villages have substantial concentrations of winter cash crops (including sugarcane), but the incidence of these crops is exceedingly variable within the study area.The influence of sodic water on cropping patterns (assessed through visits to brackish-water areas) was found to depend on the extent of sodicity and the availability of alternative sources of water. Where reasonably good tubewell water (i.e., only slightly sadie) or canal water is available, nee-wheat is still the main cropping pattern. Groundwater of poorer quality is often mixed with better quality water for crop production. Where no sources of good quality water are available, however, monocropped rainfed summer pearl millet is more common. In sadie-affected areas, pulses (with the exception of pigeon peas) are not grown.Although the surveys focused on the rice and wheat enterprises. farmers' livestock activities also received considerable attention because livestock and crop activities were expected to interact strongly. Trends in animal populations and in the use of fann yard manure (FYM) on crops were examined, since these trends have implications for the future productivity and sustainability of the rice-wheat cropping pattern.According to fanners. milk sales are increasing as a source of income, especially among smaller-scale farmers. 7 Since consumption of dairy products within the farm household does not appear to have decreased. the implication is that the number of dairy animals per fann is also increasing (or that milk production per animal is increasing). Nonetheless. fanners generally assened that overall livestock populations per farm are roughly constant. Numbers of bullocks and cows are said to be decreasing, while buffalo numbers are increasing. sThis view of animal numbers as approximately constant was confinned indirectly by women. who reported spending an increasing proportion of their time caring for livestock -not. however. because there are more animals. but because better care of dairy animals (especially buffalo) improves animal health and increases milk production and cash income. Also note that dairy buffalo consume more fodder 7 Some farmers suggested that migrants from other areas (\"Punjabis\") tend to be more active in this field.than dairy cattle. One constraint to increased livestock numbers, then, may be labor scarcity. Women perform many of the tasks associated with animal husbandry and already dedicate a surprising proportion of their time to these tasks (Table 2). Cutting! harvesting green fodder (own field) Total Labor (hours/day) 1.0 , .5 0.5 0.5 1.5 1.0 6.0 A desirable herd size was reported as being around L5-20 animals. Few farmers have this many animals. however. Landless farmers or farmers with very small holdings typically keep three to four animals at most (and many keep none at all) because they lack access to adequate fodder and sufficient space. Fodder management has become increasingly important as animal feeding patterns have changed from open-range grazing to stall feeding.Major sources of fodder include wheat straw, Basmati rice straw, berseem, fodder maize or sorghum, oats, and cut grasses. Straw from MV rices is rarely used. Mustard (grown in small amounts mixed with the wheat crop) is often used to enrich rations, especially for dairy cattle. Berseem is particularly important as a source of green fodder during the dry season. occupying around 10% of cuLtivated land at that time. Farmers report that production of berseem has increased substantially to meet the more demanding dietary requirements of dairy animals but that this has not been achieved by expanding berseem area. Rather, berseem yields have been increased through greater use of better varieties, nitrogen fertilizer, and improved management.Finally, fodder scarcity is especially an issue in areas where water is brackish, where crop yields (and crop residue yields) are lower.Women report that, for all practical purposes, there are no community forests from which they can obtain firewood. Limited amounts of firewood are obtained from branches of trees located in the farmers' own fields or (for landless farmers) by the roadside, from dry twigs of pigeon pea. mustard. or Sesbania aculeata or occasionally from other crop residues. However, the most common source of fuel is dung cakes.Total FYM production is steady or even increasing, but the amount of FYM diverted from use as fertilizer to use as fuel is increasing. About 80% of cooking is done with a mud stove called the karat a structure designed for slow cooking which uses dung cakes as fuel. The kara is used to boil milk, cook pulses, or prepare animal concentrates. Only about 20% of cooking is done with a chulha 9 using flTewood for fuel-this includes the preparation of chapatis and deep frying, both of which require a hot flTe. In general. women are aware of alternative sources of fuel other than flrewood or dung cakes. For various reasons, however, they prefer not to use them. 10 The consequence of these trends is that FYM use in the rice~wheat cropping pattern is on the decline. This decline, combined with the removal of crop residues for fodder and the burning of residues not used for fodder (e.g., MV rice straw), goes a long way towards ex.plaining the low levels of organic matter in the soil (Table 1).Even when FYM is available for application to crops, transporting it to the field may be a problem. Less labor is required to transport FYM to fields closer to home; fields farther from the homestead may not receive as much FYM as fields that are closer. The transport problem is complicated further by greater crop intensification: it becomes more diffficult to use animal-drawn carts to transport FYM to fields. because cropped fields block the movement of the cart.The role of women in agricultural work appears to vary by caste and social status. Women of higher castes, e.g., Rajput, do not engage in field work. Middle-income women of other castes may work in the field of the family farm. whereas women from lower castes work in their own fields and in the fields of others, for wages or on a share basis. When possible, the preparation of dung cakes is left to scheduled caste women or laborers. Virtually all middle-and lower-income women. however, help harvest and thresh wheat. Women bring the sheaves of wheat to the threshing machine. load threshed grain in sacks for transport to the farm household, dry and clean the grain, and store it. Men are responsible for tillage, sowing, irrigation, and application of fertilizers and herbicides. In earlier days, women were responsible for hand weeding wheat, but this practice has declined in importance with the introduction of herbicides. Women do not participate in the reclamation of saline or sodic lands. As noted above. women assume reesponsibility for a large proportion of farm tasks involving flre wood and fodder collection and livestock management. (Note that additional information on women's role in rice-wheat farming is provided throughout this report.)Farmers reported a number of differences between larger and smaller farms. ll Smaller farms appear to be somewhat more diversified. A higher proportion of the income from small farms was received from dairy products, whether these were consumed in the household or sold for cash. Small farms probably have more animals per hectare because dairy animal husbandry is labor intensive, particularly for women. Partly as a consequence, large-scale farmers are more likely than small-scale farmers to have some fields that never receive FYM.Larger farms are more likely to be confronted with labor scarcity at periods of peak labor demand, such as rice transplanting, the rice harvest. and the wheat harvest. FuU•time servants, family members, and locally hired day laborers are often inadequate for operations that must be performed on time, and the availability of migrant laborers from other states can be uncertain. This is one reason that large farms have disproportionately adopted combine harvesting.Available secondary data indicate that the distribution of landholdings within the study area is highly unequal: 35% of holdings account for only 5% of cultivated area. Mean farm size is around 3.2 ha. Greater efforts should be made in forthcoming diagnostic activities to contact and interact with smallscale and marginal farmers.Wheat. Approximately half a dozen wheat varieties are recommended for planting in Kamal and Kurukshetra Districts. These can be classified by recommended planting date into two groups. The first group, comprising varieties recommended for timely planting, includes HD-2329, HD-2009, and WH-283 (older varieties now susceptible to rust, powdery mildew, and Kamal bunt), WH-542 (a newer variety resistant to rust, powdery mildew, and Kamal bunt), and WH-157 (recommended specifically for salt-affected soils). The second group, varieties recommended for late planting, includes HD~2285 and WH-29 1.Recent surveys conducted by researchers from HAU indicate that virtually 100% of the wheat area in Kamal and Kurukshetra Districts is planted to improved varieties. Although no data are available on the area planted to individual varieties, the diagnostic survey confmned that the recommended varieties are grown widely. Information provided by farmers, as well as visits by scientists to several hundred fields, . revealed that HD-2329 and HD-2009 are by far the most popular varieties for timely planting, whereas HD-2285 and HD-2329 are preferred for late planting. A few farmers use other varieties, including HD-2204 and WH-147 for timely sowing and HD-1553 for late sowing.Wheat seed management practices appear relatively consistent throughout the survey area. Most farmers plant seed they have saved from the previous cycle, in a few cases supplemented by seed acquired from a neighbor. Farmers prefer to use their own seed to economize, since purchasing new certified seed every year would be expensive. Nevertheless, they recognize the desirability of periodically replacing seed to ensure genetic unifonnity as well as to avoid buildup of weed seeds. Many fanners accomplish tbis by purchasing small quantities of certified seed on a regular basis, preferably from the Haryana Seed Development Corporation, or else from private traders (however, the quality of seed sold by private traders is said to be unreliable). Every three to fOUf years, farmers purchase enough certified seed to plant approximately 10% of their total wheat area; they save the production from this certified seed and use it to plant their entire wheat area in the following year. In this way, fanners replace their wheat seed on a regular basis. By purchasing a relatively small quantity of certified seed and multiplying it themselves, they avoid the cost of total seed replacement. Despite farmers' claims to be replacing their seed regularly, many fields in the survey area were observed to contain mixtures of wheat and barley. According to fanners, certified wheat seed is almost always pure; thus, contamination with barley probably occurs on the threshing floor or during combine harvesting. 12 The incidence of wheat-barley mixtures varies widely, ranging from as low as 5% of fields in some villages to as high as 35% in others. Most farmers are unconcerned about such mixtures, claiming that a low level of contamination with barley plants does not adversely affect overall wheat grain yields. Furthermore. they point out that under the present grain marketing system one basic price is paid for wheat, regardless of whether it contains a small amount of barley. Scientists' estimates of grain yield losses attributable to wheat-barley mixtures were 1-4%.In addition to possibly reducing yields, the presence of barley in wheat fields may invoke another cost. Several farmers acknowledged that whenever the percentage of barley rises above a certain level, they replace their seed by purchasing a fresh lot of certified seed. To the extent that wheat-barley mixtures compel farmers to replace their seed more frequently than would otherwise have been necessary, the presence of barley may be invoking an economic cost. Impure stands were also noted in rice.Basmati rice vs. modern varieties. Over the past several years, many farmers in the study area have replaced medium-duration rice MVs with Basmati rice, much of which is grown before wheat. Basmati area is now said to exceed 40% of the area sown to rice and is increasing over time. However, the incidence of Basmati varies enormously over different parts of the study area. The core of the Basmati rice tract is shown in Figure 2.Basmati is grown largely on well-drained maggra land having medium-textured soils. and is grown by both large-and small-scale farmers. Basmati varieties include Basmati•370, Haryana Basmati-l, and Taraori Basmati. Farmers find Basmati attractive because of its excellent price (well over twice that of MV rice) and relatively lower cost of production (including a lower water requirement and lower rates of fertilizer application). In addition, Basmati rice straw is a good and preferred source of fodder, unlike straw from MV rice. These advantages more than compensate for lower Basmati rice yields, possibly more disease problems, and possible lodging in more fertile soils. Farmers feel that the Basmati-wheat pattern may be less exhaustive of soil nutrients than MV rice-wheat.The case of Basmati rice is interesting for several reasons, including its effects on wheat land preparation and wheat planting date. Basmati rice is harvested later than MV rice (in November, as opposed to the end of October), so tillage practices for wheat are adjusted accordingly to enable farmers to plant wheat on time (before 1 December). Turnaround time is around 25 days after MV rice, but only around seven days (and sometimes as little as two days) after Basmati rice. This relatively rapid turnaround is achieved by pre-irrigating rice fields where wheat will be planted, instead of waiting to irrigate until after the standing rice crop has been harvested.Nineteen large-scale farmers were interviewed more fonnally regarding management, costs, and returns for Basmati and MVs (Table 3). The respondents grew both Basmati and MVs, had a mean farm size of 6.8 ha, and planted rice on 5.4 ha. Of the 5.4 ha of rice. 2.4 were planted to Basmati and 3.0 were planted to MVs. Basmati required much less water than the MVs (two to three irrigations per week rather than seven for the MVs, from about 10 days after transplanting). Lower irrigation costs were not reflected in the budget for two reasons. First. fanners paid a flat rate for electricity ($1.50Ihp/mo) to run their pumps. Second, and contrary to \"common sense,\" the electricity payment extended over a longer period (because of the longer duration of Basmati rice) and therefore was higher. Farmers applied similar rates of phosphorus (125 kglha diammonium phosphate) to Basmati and the MVs. but higher rates of nitrogen (about 163 kg vs. 375 kg urealha) to the MVs. Insecticide and herbicide use were essentially the same for the two types of rice, as were costs of land preparation (largely mechanized), transplanting, weeding, harvesting, and threshing. These latter operations were done mainly by hired labor. Overall, production costs for Basmati ($213/ha) and MVs ($224) were essentially the same.Yields of Basmati (2.4 tlha) were half those of MVs (4.8 t/ha). Gross revenues, however. were higher for Basmati ($940Iha) than for MVs ($6l8/ha), because farmers received a much higher price for Basmati ($0.40Ikg) compared to the MVs (SO.13/kg). Net revenues, therefore, were about double for Basmati ($727/ha) compared to MVs ($393/ha) (Table 3).Land preparation for wheat consists of a variable number of tillage operations designed to incorporate organic matter (e.g., crop residues. FYM, green manures) and to prepare the seedbed for planting. The vast majority of farmers now prepare their land using tractors. Only a small proportion (probably around 10%) still use bullocks. Tractor numbers increased more than three-fold in the 10 years from 1980 to 1990 (Appendix B, Table B7). Most tillage operations are done using hired machinery. as less than half of the farmers in Kamal and Kurukshetra Districts own tractors. Disc harrows and tine cultivators are the most commonly used tillage implements. The number of tillage operations carried out in any given field is highly variable and depends on numerous factors, some of them interrelated:• Soil type (light vs. heavy).• Power source for tillage operations (tractor vs. bullock).• Ownership of power source (owned vs. hired).• Type of previous rice crop (Basmati vs. MV rice).• Planting date of previous crop (early vs. late).• Method of disposal of crop residues from previous crop (removal vs. burning).• Method of harvesting previous crop (combine vs. manual).No attempt was made to determine the average number of tillage operations associated with each of the many possible combinations of factors. Most fanners reported that 4-8 tillage passes are usually made on lighter soils and 8-l2 passes on heavier soils. In general. the lower end of these ranges prevails if wheat is being planted after rice and the previous rice crop was harvested manually (resulting in the removal of rice straw from the field). The upper range prevails if the previous rice crop was harvested by combine harvester (leaving the rice straw scattered in the field, so that it must be chopped andincorporated). 13  However, an important exception to these general rules is when farmers bum the rice straw left in combine-harvested fields. Fewer tillage operations are needed then.The high number of tillage operations used to prepare land for wheat planting is an important problem in the rice-wheat system. The problem has two dimensions. First, in the shon run, the high number of tillage operations adds substantially to the cost of producing wheat (especially compared to alternative reducedor conservation-tillage methods practiced elsewhere in the world). Second, over the longer run, the high number of tillage operations may contribute to soil compaction problems.Although the survey participants were unable to estimate the total wheat area subject to an excessive number of tillage operations, all agreed that the problem is widespread in the rice-wheat system. A problem-cause diagram was developed to organize hypotheses on possible factors contributing to the high number of tillage operations used in preparing land for wheat planting (Figure 5). Several causes were identified: 14• The need to incorporate crop residues left from previous rice crop. Both of the predominant rice harvesting methods tend to leave significant amounts of crop residues in the field, either straw and/or stubble (in the case of combine harvesting and hand harvesting of MVs) or simply stubble (in the case of hand harvesting of Basmati cultivars). This creates a need to incorporate residues, which is difficult, given that farmefS' tillage implements are not efficient at chopping and incorporating rice straw and stubble.13 Ten years ago there were no combine harvesterS. but their numbers are increasing slowly and their presence must be considered in future research (Appendix B, Table B7).14 It should be stressed that causes of problems discussed in this and foUowing sections are hypotheses. stimulated by field observation and discussion with farmers.• The need to prepare a fine seedbed tilth for wheat after puddled rice. The puddling practice normally done to prepare land for rice transplanting destroys the structure of the soil (for the wheat crop), creating the need for a high number of tillage operations to prepare a fine tilth for wheat planting. 15 • The need to break up clods in clay-/oam soils. Wheat is often grown after rice in clay-loam soils, which are relatively heavy. A high number of tillage operations are needed to break up clods in these soils.In rice-wheat cropping patterns, the turnaround time between ric;e and wheat vanes, depending on the type of rice that is grown. In the case of medium-duration MVs, which are usually harvested by late  October, farmers generally have l5-35 days to prepare land for wheat. In the case of Basmati rice, which is usually harvested in mid-November. farmers generally must complete land preparation within only 4-12 days to avoid planting the wheat crop late. Farmers surveyed during the rice cycle reported sowing wheat by the end of November, regardless of what kind of rice they planted. They intentionally decreased turnaround time by reducing the number of tillage operations and by shortening the periods between tillage after harvesting Basmati rice. Nonetheless, field operations conducted during the wheat survey indicated that late-sown wheat fields were concentrated in areas cropped to Basmati in the previous season.Land preparation for wheat typically involves a pre-irrigation to soften the soil for tillage, to facilitate the decomposition of organic matter, and to raise the soil moisture content to ensure good germination of the wheat crop. In rice•wheat cropping patterns, the timing of the pre-irrigation varies with the harvest date of the preceding rice crop. since the harvest date detennines how much time is available for timely completion of land preparation for wheat. When the preceding rice crop consists of a medium-duration MV harvested in October, the pre•irrigation usually takes place after the first two cultivations. However, as noted earlier, when the preceding rice crop is Basmati rice (harvested in November or even December). the pre-irrigation is often done into the standing rice crop to speed turnaround time. In this case, farmers must wait four to five days for the soil surface to dry before entering the field to harvest manually. Where combines are used for rice, fields must be left to dry somewhat longer so that they can support the weight of the combine. In this case. pre-irrigation for wheat must be done after the rice harvest.Throughout Kamal and Kurukshetra Districts, wheat is usually planted using the broadcast method. Most farmers sow around 100 kglha of seed. Farmers prefer to broadcast seed because large areas may be planted quickly and broadcasting requires very little labor. Seed drills are rarely used, partly because suitable designs are lacking (i.e., drills capable of effectively sowing wheat into the remaining rice straw and stubble). The drills that are available tend to get clogged by the stubble and end up acting more as rakes than drills.Despite its clear advantages of speed and labor savings, the broadcast method of sowing has one disadvantage: it can result in suboptimal plant stands. Visual inspection of farmers' fields revealed that a significant proportion of the total wheat area is characterized by plant populations that are lower than desirable. 16 (Interestingly. researchers' estimates of the percentage of wheat area affected by low plant populations varied widely, from 10% to 60%, in part because different groups visited different areas.) Associated productivity losses were estimated at 5-15%.A problem-cause diagram was drawn to summarize hypotheses to explain low plant populations in wheat (Figure 6). Four primary causes were suggested:• Use of the broadcast method for planting wheat. Although broadcast seeding need does not necessarily result in low plant populations, some fanners seem to use inadequate quantities of seed when broadcasting. The recommended seed rate for broadcasting is around 125 kglha. but many fanners use considerably less.• WaterlDgging. Low plant populations in some wheat fields can be attributed to waterlogging. especially waterlogging occurring during germination and emergence, when wheat is most sensitive to this problem. Waterlogging, which is a particular problem in sadie soils, often is caused by inadequate land leveling (due to a lack of appropriate tillage equipment). Waterlogging is also a problem in soils characterized by hard pans, which frequently develop as a result of shallow conventional tillage for wheat involving a high number of operations.':~.  • Poor seed germination. Poor seed germination may also be a cause of low plant populations. Poor seed germination may result from the nature of the seed itself -for example. farmers plant poor quality seed or varieties poorly adapted to particular soil conditions (e.g.• sadie soils). Alternatively, poor seed germinabon may also result from abiotic stresses, such as uneven soil moisture at planting.• Poor growth and tiIIaring. Plant stands were observed near harvest, when poor growth and tillering after germination could have been afactor in creating poor stands. Late planting, poor nutrition, drought, waterlogging, weed competition, and other factors can be responsible for poor growth and an inability to compensate for poor emergence. Factors leading to poor growth and tilieTing need to be separated out from those causing poor emergence, since they are different.The recommended date for planting wheat in Kamal and Kurukshetra Districts is l5 November. While most farmers agree that this date is optimal for maximizing yields, not aU farmers can get their wheat crop into the ground by mid-November. Thus, wheat planting begins in early November and stretches through December and occasionally even into January.Planting date is important. Experimental data from Haryana show that when wheat planting is delayed past the middle of November, yield begins [0 fall off at a rate of approximately l.2% for every day's delay (Figure 7). Similar data from Pakistan show a decline of 1% per day after the end of November (Hobbs 1985). Although the rate of decline may be mitigated somewhat by using a variety adapted to late planting, yield losses will still occur for short-duration varieties.Districts? To answer this question, it is necessary first to agree on the meaning of the term perceptions, as well as the empirical evidence from these other studies, an effort was made during the survey to estimate the extent of the problem in Kamal and Kurukshetra Districts, to detennine its causes, and to explore possible solutions. \"lateness\" used by farmers corresponds closely to the definition used by researchers: wheat planted on or after I December is considered to be \"planted late.\" In the absence of fannal survey data, it is not possible to state precisely the percentage of wheat area planted by specific dates in Kamal and Kurukshetra Districts. However. visual inspection suggested that 5-25% of fanners' fields had been planted lale enough to result in yield losses of 10-25% in these fields.A problem-cause diagram was developed to summarize hypotheses on the causes of late planting of wheat (Figure 8). Several factors were identified as contributing to late planting in wheat:..: ..:.;,. \", Machinery failure (pumps, electricity, tractors)Machinery not available (especi ally hired tractors)The presence of rice stubble reqUires extensive ti lIage to obtain a fine seedbedExcessive soil moisture at time of tillage Note: Problems, primary causes, and secondaly causes are represented by rectangles, hexagons, and cwa!s. respectively. • Late harvesting of the previous crop. Late planting in wheat occurs most often because the previous crop has been harvested late, Most of the wheat that is grown after amedium-duration rice MV is planted close to the optimal planting date in mid-November. When wheat is grown after Basmati rice, less time is available for land preparation. When wheat is grown in a rice-(totia. potato)-wheat rotation, the totia or potato crop is usually not harvested until late November or early December, and wheat planting is frequently delayed. The same situation arises when wheat is grown after sugarcane or late-planted Basmati rice.• Long turnaround between the previous crop and wheat. Late planting of wheat may also be caused by a long turnaround between the previous crop and wheat. In the rice-wheat rotation. long turnaround usually results from the high number of tillage operations needed to incorporate crop residues left in the field following the rice harvest. sometimes exacerbated by failure of the machinery (tubewell pumps, tractors) needed for land preparation operations, including pre-irrigation.• Unfavorabfe weather at planting time. Unfavorable weather can also contribute to late planting in wheat. Even when the previous crop has been haNested and land preparation has been completed, wheat planting may be delayed if rain falls after the fields are pre-irrigated, leaving the soil too wet for planting and final land preparation.Increasing intensification in the rice-wheat system has forced farmers to become increasingly conscious of the need for sound management practices to maintain soil fertility. preserve soil structure, and protect soil health.Among soil management issues, fertility management and soil physical degradation are both important. Fortunately, many fanners in the principal rice-wheat areas are by now well aware of the need to replace the large amounts of nutrients extracted every year by multiple cycles of ever-higher-yielding culli vars. Soil fertility management generally involves applying some combination of fertilizer and organic material (crop residues, FYM, and green manures).Fertilizer use on wheat and rice. Most farmers in Kamal and Kumkshetra Districts apply 100-150 kglha of nitrogen to their wheat (slightly less in fields where FYM has been applied to the previous rice crop). The main source of nitrogen is urea, although the diammonium phosphate (DAP) that is used also contains some nitrogen. Nitrogen fertilizer is broadcast, typically in three split applications: at planting, after the first irrigation (25 days after planting), and after the second irrigation (25 days later). A few farmers apply an additional top-dressing after the third irrigation, especially if the leaves are showing signs of yellowing. Top-dressed fertilizer usually is applied four to five days after an irrigation, as soon as it becomes possible to enter a field without sinking into the soil.Phosphorus use on wheat is also ~ignificant in Kamal and Kumkshetra Districts. Most farmers claim they apply 50-75 kglha of P 2 0 S ' The main source of phosphorus is DAP, although occasionally single super phosphate (SSP) is used when DAP is unavailable. Phosphorus is nearly always applied basally, broadcast during the final stages of land preparation.Fertilizer use on nee varies by the kind of rice grown. Farmers apply similar rates of phosphate (25 kglha P205) to Basmati and MVs, but they apply higher rates of nitrogen to the MVs (about 75 kglha vs. 170kg/ha).Trends in fertilizer use proved difficult to discern at the farm level. Some farmers reported that use of fertilizer has leveled off during recent years, although nearly all stated that current levels of fertilizer application are significantly higher than they were 10-15 years ago, when yields were lower. In contrast. other farmers asserted that they have to apply increasing amounts of fertilizer simply to maintain the same yields.Crop residues. The increasing intensification of the rice-wheat system seems to be changing the role of crop residues in the farming system. Because farmers need to achieve rapid turnaround between rice and wheat (or potato and wheat. or coria and wheat), they now view straw and stubble as more of a problem than as a source of nutrients andlor material for improving soil structure. At the same time. given the growing scarcity of grazing land, straw and stubble are increasingly valued as livestock feed. For these reasons, incorporation of crop residues seems to be diminishing. Rather. these residues are increasingly burnt. or removed and fed to animals, to facilitate land preparation for the ne~. crop.Farm yard manure. Despite declining in importance during recent years, use of FYM continues to be widespread in the rice-wheat system. Virtually all farmers apply FYM to their fields, although application strategies vary depending on its availability. the area to be covered, and cropping panerns. Most farmers now have sufficient FYM to cover only about 10-25% of their fields per year, so that they can apply FYM to a given field on average only once every four to 10 years.In general, farmers follow a regular application schedule. cycling among fields according to a more or less fixed rotation. However. the rotation may be interrupted to afford preferential treatment to certain fields, such as fields that show particular signs of nutrient deficiency or fields used for vegetable production. These preferred fields may receive FYM as often as once every three years. AU fields typically receive FYM at some time or another, with the exception of some fields of farmers with extensive landholdings. Also, farmers who rent land rarely apply FYM to rented fields.Farm yard manure application rates vary. Fields used for cereal production receive around 20-25 tlha (fresh weight), and fields used for vegetable production receive more than 30 t/ha.When used in a straight rice-wheat rotation. FYM is always applied before the rice crop. Partly this is because there is more time available to apply FYM before the rice crop, whereas land preparation for wheat is constrained by the need to avoid late planting. An additional factor causing FYM to be used before rice is that the dry (wheat) season is used for composting FYM collected during the rainy season.In contrast, FYM collected during the dry (wheat) season is normally used to make dung cakes and is not applied as fertilizer.Green manure. Few farmers in the study area practice green manuring. Fewer than 5% of the fanners contacted during the diagnostic survey grew a crop of dhaincha (Sesbania aculeata) between wheat and early sathi rice. Although many farmers are aware of the benefits of green manuring, most simply do not have enough time to fit a green manure crop into the rotation. Some farmers pointed out that another reason for not growing green manures is that the implements needed for incorporating green manures are not available. Also, considerable irrigation would be needed to grow a green manure crop, as it would be grown during the driest and hottest part of the year.Weeds are a major problem in wheat in Kamal and Kurukshetra Districts. The principal weed is Phalaris minor. followed by wild oats (AvenafatLUl). Canada thistle (Cirsium arvense) and bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis) are also present and on the increase.Wheat. Although the incidence of P. minor is difficult to estimate. it seems safe to say that. in the absence of control measures. virtually all wheat fields would soon be infested. with yield losses as high as 75%. Farmers continue to ex.perience yield losses even after applying herbicides.Nearly all farmers in Kamal and Kurukshetra Districts use herbicides to control P. minor in wheat, and the P. minor problem seems to be declining over time as more and more fanners use herbicide. Very little manual weed control is practiced. Reasons fanners give for this include the high cost of labor. the difficulty of entering fields for hand weeding without damaging the wheat crop. and the difficulty of distinguishing between P. minor and wheat during early growth stages. Isoproturon. the herbicide used most widely to control P. minor. is usually mixed with urea fertilizer or a sand/soil mix and broadcast after the first irrigation. Despite significantly reducing weed populations, this method of application does not always result in uniform control and is not completely effective -infestation with uncontrolled P. minor still may be high enough to cause yield losses of up to 30% (panicularly in fields where rice straw has been burned). However, the uneven performance of Isoproturon may be as much the result of adulterated product sold by private traders as of ineffective application methods. Moreover, some scientists feel that P. minor is becoming resistant to Isoproturon.Rice. To control weeds in rice, farmers use pre-emergence herbicides and family or hired labor for weeding if infestations are severe. If they believe that weed pressure is not too severe, farmers usually harvest weeds for fodder. Late removal of the weed Echinochloa crus-galli possibly leads to yield reductions.Wheat. Insect pests do not appear to be a major threat to wheat in Kamal and Kurukshetra Districts.Aphids in low numbers were reported throughout much of the survey area, but it seems that they cause discernible yield losses in wheat only rarely. (This issue needs monitoring in the future.) Termites (white ants) were seen to cause occasional, highly localized damage to ungenninated seed, but the total area affected appears small (0-2%), and productivity losses are probably negligible (0-5%).Rice. Insect pests identified as problems for rice included leaffolder, stemborer, and white-backed planthopper. Of these, leaffolder and white-backed planthopper were more severe, each accounting for an expected rice productivity loss of more than 10% per year for the study area as a whole.Wbeat. Farmers did not consider diseases to be a major problem during the 1991-92 wheat season.Survey participants claimed to have observed few disease problems during the survey. 17 However, the diagnostic survey was done in a year when weather was unfavorable for many wheat diseases, so that levels of infection may have been lower than normal.Pathologists noted that several diseases were widespread throughout the survey area. although at relatively low levels of infection. Leaf blight was observed in 50-80% of farmers' fields, but rarely at levels capable of causing sizable yield losses. Loose smut was also observed in 50-90% of farmers' fields, but again at very low levels. Because most of the wheat observed during the survey was still in the grain filling or ripening stage, levels of Kamal bunt infection could not be detennined, even though Kamal bunt at times has been an imponant disease in the survey area.Rice. At the time of the rice survey, Basmati was at the heading stage and MVs were being harvested, so it was difficult to take direct observations of rice diseases. Based on past experience, survey team members suggested that blast, foot rot, and bacterial leaf blight were important diseases. However. only blast was thought to lead to important yield losses at the level of the study area.Irrigation of wheat. All wheat produced in Kamal and Kurukshetra Districts is irrigated. The wheat crop normally receives four to six irrigations; more irrigations are done on higher land featuring lighter soils (e.g., doyam soils), and fewer on low-lying land featuring heavier soils (e.g., dakkar soils). If rainfall is relatively abundant during the growing season, fewer irrigations may be necessary. Preirrigation, a universal practice in the study area, is used to ensure sufficient moisture for good wheat germination. Additional irrigations are given, on average, every 20-25 days during the tillering, heading, flowering, and grain filling stages.As mentioned above, approximately 80% of the total wheat area in Kamal and Kurukshetra Districts is irrigated from tubewells and only 20% from canals. The increasing reliance on rubeweUs seems to be a function of decreasing availability of canal water. much of which is being divened to suppon irrigation further south. Many farmers in the survey area agreed that canal water is not normally available during the wheat season.Groundwater depletion. Groundwater depletion is a formidable problem in the study area. Some farmers estimate that the water table has fallen by 20-25 ft (about 6.0-7.5 m) during the past 10 years. In the shan run, this increases the cost of pwnping water from tubewells. directly raising the cost of wheat production. Over the longer term, the sustainability of the cropping system may be threatened. Figure 9 shows water table fluctuation in Haryana from 1974 to 1991. During this period. much of the rice•wheat area in the two selected districts experienced water table decline on the order of Q-4 m.Groundwater quality. Water management practices in Kamal and Kurukshetra Districts are influenced not only by the quantity of available groundwater, but also by its quality. This is particularly true in the so-called \"brackish-water\" areas, where groundwater quality is poor due to sodicity. In these areas. fanners have adopted a set of practices designed to minimize problems.One common strategy is simply to bore deeper tubewells for access to aquifers containing better quality water; in some of the brackish-water areas, fanners now pump water from as deep as 100 m. Additional practices designed to manage poor quality groundwater include using scarce canal water as efficiently as possible; mixing canal water and tubewell water to minimize the toxic effects of the groundwater; and planting crops that require less irrigation (e.g., pearl millet).Fortunately, soils contaminated by sadie groundwater often can be reclaimed by applying gypsum. Farmers are well aware of this treatment, and, with the exception of some conununal land, large tracts of formerly contaminated land have been reclaimed. Because treatment with gypsum is fairly simple, soil problems caused by sodic groundwater seem to be diminishing through time. Only in a few areas did farmers report that the problem is increasing.Wheat harvesting generally takes place from 15-30 April; threshing begins soon after harvesting and extends through 15 May. Approximately 80-90% of the wheat area in Kamal and Kurokshetra Districts is harvested manually and threshed mechanically. Only 10-20% of the wheat area is combine harvested. Manual harvesting is preferred because combine harvesting does not permit recovery of the straw, which is valued as livestock feed. IS On smaller landholdings, harvesting and threshing usually involve family labor. Harvesting generally is done by women, while threshing tends to be performed by both men and women. Most threshing is done by hired mechanical threshers; men operate the threshers, while women collect bundles of straw and bag the threshed grain. On larger landholdings, family labor is rarely sufficient for completing the harvest in a timely fashion, so fanners supplement family labor by hiring migrant laborers (typically from Eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar) on contract.The rates charged for contract harvesting vary. In 199 L, most contract laborers in the study area were paid in kind at a rate of 100 kg of grain and 50 kg of straw for harvesting, and 150-200 kg of grain for threshing one acre (0.40 ha) of wheat. The few who were paid in cash recei ved 250-300 Rs/acre (618-741 Rs/ha) for harvesting and another 350-500 Rs/acre (865-1,235 Rslha) for threshing. These rates somewhat understate the total cost of contract harvesting, however. since migrant and local laborers also receive food from their employers, and fodder for their animals. By way of comparison, during 1991 the rates charged by combine harvesters for contract harvesting of wheat averaged around 250-300 Rs/acre.The main wheat-related problems identified during the diagnostic survey can be separated into four categories:• Factors that appear to reduce wheat yield (e.g., late planting or competition from P. minot,.• Seemingly inefficient use of purchased inputs, regardless of whether yields are reduced (e.g., excessive tillage when reduced tillage would result in similar yields).• Seemingly inefficient selection of enterprises or cropping patterns (e.g., late planted wheat instead of sunflower).• Practices thought to lead to resource degradation or reduced system sustainability (e.g., long-term decline in soil health).Care was taken to distinguish between problems (as defined above) and causes of these problems (Tripp  and Woolley 1989), Farmers' socioeconomic circumstances, such as a lack of credit, are often loosely referred to as \"problems,\" but these affect productivity or sustainability only to the extent to which they also affect biological or physical processes. These socioeconomic circumstances are assigned a causal role in this analysis, but are not considered \"problems\" in light of the definition being used.Wheat-related problems are sunimarized in Table 4. in the order in which they were elicited during the survey (that is, they are not yet ranked). Problems were introduced into the listing based on fanners' suggestions, direct observation of problems in the field, and background information. Factors thought to be problems based on researchers' previous experience or secondary data were at times included, although many dropped out during the ranking process. Note that there were multiple sources of information for most problems.To distinguish the most important from the least important problems. survey participants developed a weighted scoring model. Survey participants were divided into fOUf groups. Each group independently estimated fOUf parameters for each problem:• The percentage of farmers in the study area affected by the problem.• The percentage of rice-wheat area affected by the problem.• The productivity loss associated with the problem, when the problem is present (expressed as a percentage of current yield).19• The frequency of the problem (expressed as apercentage).The product of percentage area. percentage productivity loss. and percentage frequency provides an estimate of the expected annual regional productivity loss (ARPL) associated with the problem. expressed as a percentage of current yield. The ARPLs for a particular problem were compared and averaged over groups. When groups were unable to make a quantitative estimate, question marks were inserted in the model. The results of the scoring exercise may be seen in Table 5 (scores in Table 5 are averages over the four groups).Of the 15 problems identified, five received reasonably high scores. These are (in order of importance):1. Weed competition. 2. Declining soil health, 3. Poor groundwater quality. 4. Low plant population. 5. Late planting.The total ARPL for wheat was estimated to be around 25% of current yields.It is clear from Table 5 that the importance of weed competition and soil health issues lies primarily in the large proponion of the study area affected by these problems. In contrast, other priority problemspoor groundwater quality, low plant populations. and late planting -appear to affect only a small proportion of the study area. It is instructive that the problem with the highest productivity loss for affected fields (poor groundwater quality) does not receive the highest priority in tenns of ARPL. Some problems (those in Table 5 with question marks) could not be scored because of insufficient information. Survey participants were asked to rank these from 1 (most important) to 5 (least important). Rankings were summed over groups (Table 6). According to these rankings, groundwater depletion and excessive tillage warrant funher attention. Note: See Table 4 for a more complete description of lhese problems.Table 6. Relative importance of unscored problems (lower number Indicates higher priority) At the time of the survey, Basmati rice was at the heading stage and rice MVs were being harvested.Other than a few fields infested with weeds and at most 15% of fields affected by some leaffolder, rice stands were very good. The survey team, however, thought that rice pests and diseases constituted major problems (this hypothesis was based partly on past experience). These problems are listed in order of priority in Table 7. Research on these ricespecific problems is already conducted by HAU and other rice scientists and is therefore not discussed further here. Other problems noted in rice were weeds (a system-wide problem. discussed below) and impure stands. Several problems identified in the course of the rice-and wheat-season diagnostic surveys are systemwide problems. One -weeds -is a near-term problem. Problems of soil fertility and soil health, groundwater depletion, and poor groundwater quality are longer-teon problems that have implications for the sustainability of the rice-wheat cropping pattern. These problems and hypotheses for their causes are discussed below.A problem-cause diagram was developed to summarize hypotheses about factors contributing to the problem of weeds in wheat and rice (Figure 10). In wheat, P. minor is of particular concern. Several factors were identified:• Use of FYM promotes distribution of weed seed, Although no formal study has been conducted in the survey area on weed dynamics, it seems likely that the use of FYM is afactor in weed infestation. Weeds are frequently gathered along the edges of fields and from uncultivated land for use as fodder. Given that most weed seeds pass intact through the digestive lracts of livestock, manure from these animals is infested with weed seed. Applying FYM to cultivated fields thus promotes distribution of weed seed, contributing to the buildup of weed problems.  • Higher labor costs leading to less hand weeding and more herbicide use in rice and wheat, which may contribute to a shift in weed composition.• Poor weed management in rice seedling nurseries and weed seed contaminants in rice seed, leading to transplanting of weeds.• Weed flushes in rice caused by interruptions in irrigation, which in tum result from unscheduled electric power interruptions.• Herbicide is often ineffective. One reason P. minorcontinues to cause yield losses in wheat is because chemical control methods are often ineffective, for several reasons. First, the dosage may simply be incorrect, enher because of improper mixing, farmer ignorance or attempts to economize on the product, or because the commercial product was adulterated. Second, the dosage may be correct, but the timing of the application may be inappropriate. which sometimes happens because the farmer cannot obtain the herbicide on time (for example, delays in the distribution channel) or because of delays in irrigating the crop. Third, the method of application may itself be ineffective, especially since most farmers broadcast herbicide mixed with urea or sand. Suitable sprayers and nozzles for effective herbicide application are not readily available to farmers. The efficacy of herbicide applications may also be diminished by the ash left when rice residues are burnt in the field. Fourth, there is some evidence that P. minoris becoming resistant to Isoproturon, amajor herbicide used in wheat cultivation. If confirmed, this will represent amajor threat to the future productivity of continuous rice-wheat systems.A problem-cause diagram was developed to summarize hypotheses on reasons for problems of soil fertility and soil health (Figure 11). Several factors were identified:• Soil chemical problems. Many soils in Kamal and Kurukshetra Districts appear to be developing nutrient deficiencies that adversely affect wheat yields. These nutrient deficiencies are probably associated wrth low and declining levels of soil organic matter, stemming from removal or burning of crop residues, decreasing application of FYM, and limited use of green manuring. Although application of chemical fertilizer succeeds in replacing some of the nitrogen and phosphorus extracted by the intensive rice-wheat cropping pattern, fertilizer use is unbalanced in the sense that other, minor nutrients may become progressively limiting.• Soil physical problems. Many soils in the study area appear to have compaction problems. Perhaps the single most important cause of soil compaction is the high level of machinery use, including both conventional tillage for wheat (involving many shallow passes) and combine harvesting (in some areas). In addition. the puddling performed to prepare fields for rice transplanting effectively destroys -from the point of view of the wheat plant -soil structure and deteriorates soil physical properties. Some of the deterioration in soil physical condition can be attributed to reduced incorporation of crop residues and FYM. Besides directly inhibiting root growth, soil compaction adversely affects wheat yields by preventing water infiltration, thus contributing to water stagnation. Stagnation caused by compaction appears to be aparticular problem in sodic soils.• Other soil health problems. Pathologists participating in the diagnostic survey expressed concem that continuous rice-wheat cropping may facilitate buildup of soil-bome pathogens, which could conceivably affect crop yields in the future. Relatively little is known about this, however.A problem-eause diagram was developed to summarize hypotheses on causes of groundwater depletion (Figure 12). Several factors were identified:• Excessive pumping ofgroundwater from tubewells. Groundwater depletion occurs primarily because of excessive pumping from tubewells. Although excessive pumping can be traced to anumber of causes, three were identified as most important. First, steady population growth in the region is leading to intensification of the cropping system, Water staptlon  which naturally increases the demand for irrigation water. Second, poor management of water at the farm level apparently exacerbates the problem, as many farmers use groundwater inefficiently (this is hardly surprising, given that the cost of water to farmers remains low). Third, supplies of canal water -which could be used as an alternative to tubewell water -are inadequate. in part because canal water is diverted to the south to support irrigation in other areas of the state. Canal water apparently is supplemented by tubewell water before being diverted to other areas.• Slow replenishment of aquifers. The depth of the water table has been falling because the increased reliance on groundwater for irrigation and other uses has been depleting the region's aquifers faster than they are replenished through rainfall. Effects of land management practices in other areas on aqUifer replenishment were not examined.   A problem-cause diagram was developed to summarize hypotheses on factors contributing to poor groundwater quality (Figure 13). One primary causal factor was identified:• Insufficient alternative sources of water. Poor quality groundwater limits wheat yields only in those parts of the stUdy area (less than 10% of the total) where alternative sources of good quality irrigation water are unavailable. This includes areas where good quality groundwater cannot be obtained by varying the depth of tubewells and where supplies of canal water are exceptionally scarce. Farmers reported that the eHects of poor quality groundwater are most pronounced in fields located farthest from irrigation canals.During the survey, important interactions among problems became apparent. Figure 14 synthesizes these interactions, focusing on the major problems identified during the surveys. It is not surprising that many of these problems are associated with farmers' selection of the continuous rice-wheat cropping pattern, a tendency noted in previous diagnostic surveys. Figure l4 illustrates hypothesized interactions and linkages among a number of problems in terms of how they are affected by such system-level factors as selection of cropping pattern, groundwater use policy, and trends in using FYM for fuel vs. fertilizer.:L . .    Problem-cause diagrams, however, are not used merely to illustrate the influence of fanning system parameters on crop-specific problems. They also serve to elicit suggestions for possible ways in which research. extension, or public policy can address -and solve -these problems. The suggestions for action are presented next.An understanding of the possible causes of problems uncovered during the survey helped identify opportunities for agricultural research, extension, or policy to contribute to solving those problems. Specific opportunities were identified for the following classes of actions:• Diagnosis: Actions to better define problems that are poorly understood, including testing of hypotheses on the incidence and severity of asuspected problem, and its corresponding causes. Diagnostic activities may take the form of surveys, experiments, or an assessment of secondary data.• Monitoring. Actions conducted in the context of periodic return visrts to apanel of farmers (this category overlaps to a certain extent with the more general category of diagnosis). Monitoring specifically aims to quantity changes over time in tarmers' practices and problems, and trends in system productivity and land quality.• Research on possible solutions: Actions whose primary purpose is to develop and assess alternative solutions to problems that are fairfy well understood. These actions may take the form of farmer-managed or researchermanaged experiments or surveys of the responses of different farmer groups to major problems.• Extension: Actions to accelerate adoption of a well-known solution that seems feasible and attractive, tor solving a well-understood problem.• Research on policy. Actions whose primary purpose is to study the policy implications ot a problem or asolution. Some actions may serve to inform policy makers of the costs and benefits associated with alternative policy options.Altogether. 33 opportunities for action were identified. These are listed in Table 8, grouped by problem, with action classifications marked for each.A final discussion among wheat survey participants developed infonnal and tentative rankings among these alternative actions. 20 A small number of actions were selected as being of the greatest importance (Table 9). Note that many of them call for additional diagnosis or research on policy, not just for additional research on alternative technical solutions. A similar list was developed by the rice survey team (Table 10).  Intensive farm-level study of rice harvest activities and how these affect tillage for wheat (including studies of manual VS. combine harvesting for rice. with respect to cost. differential impacts on social groups. etc.).Modifications in rice combines 10 ease straw management (baling, windrowing. etc.).31. The use ot water additives to improve water quality for the rice-wheat system.32. Screening of wheat varieties tor use under sodic conditions.33. Development of crop management practices to cope with problems associated with the use ot poor quality groundwater. 2. Ways to increase the effectiveness of broadcast application methods tor helbicldes amently in use.Alternative methods of hertliclde application to Improve their effectiveness (broadcast vs. alternatives).7. Health, farmer safety, and environmental issues in the useef pesticides, including hertlicides.10. The use of alternative planting practices (e.g., row planting) to facilitate mechanical weed control.16. Study of crop residue and FVM management to detennine effects on soil health. especiaJly nutrient cycling.The suggested agenda for action is ambitious. Although some of the actions already have been taken by scientists at HAU, many have not. A number of the suggested actions aim to address major problems through system-level interventions. or by using leverage points that rely on links between one enterprise or problem and another (e.g., numbers 8. 13, 15, 16, 18. and 30 in Table 8). System interventions of this kind, along with a new appreciation for policy issues (e.g.. numbers 3, 23, and 29) provide fresh opportunities for researchers and extension workers to collaborate with farmers.Finally, the use of farmer monitoring appears repeatedly in the list of suggested actions. given concerns about issues related to sustainability. This theme warrants just a bit more discussion here.It was noted in the introduction to this report that the NARS-CIMMYT-IRRI collaborative research project on rice-wheat systems in South Asia has a number of objectives. One of these is to assess the sustainability of this system. To meet this objective, researchers must study the long-term effects of farmers' practices and alternative technologies on the quality of resources devoted to rice-wheat cultivation. They must aim, in short, to \"measure sustainability.\"Without going into detail on interpretations and definitions of sustainability , or how that concept might be made operational,21 it may be noted that a well-focused monitoring program can help \"measure sustainability.\" Such a program allows the measurement over time of changes in farming practices, farming systems, and land quality (including soil chemical and physical measures). Changes in land quality and system productivity can then be analyzed and assessed. holding constant such confounding factors as technical change and changes in input use levels. A successful monitoring program requires the participation of several disciplines, working together with a representative sample of fanners, over an extended period. 22 Whether or not farmer monitoring begins in Haryana in the near term, it is clear that researchers and extension workers have their work cut out for them. Incomes and employment for millions of farm families in the study area depend on rice and wheat cultivation. Opportunities to improve the productivity of the rice-wheat pattern -and chances to conserve the quality of resources farmers devote to this pattern -should not be neglected.21 For a discussion of interpretations of the notion of sustainability. and different approaches to its measurement. see Harrington (1992).22 A full discussion of issues in planning and implementing farmer monitoring progams goes beyond me scope of this paper.A summary of some of the issues involved in such programs may be found in Harrington, Hobbs. and Cassaday (eds.) (1993).Statistical Data from Kamal and Kurukshetra Districts  "}

main/part_2/0274258780.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"11117f0fd589f3adb72d7c368968a685","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/6e96eb11-467b-4c71-92d9-232c444460bc/retrieve","id":"-815176453"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"d8a60303-7661-4a4f-9596-fdabbfb9f741","content":"◼ Community groups in Nyando are the most preferred source of agricultural (and other types of) credit.◼ Despite the importance of CSA, few households are seeking agricultural credit to invest in CSA related activities.◼ School related expenses (e.g. tuition fees) are among the major reasons for borrowing. ◼ Innovative forms of collateral, such as group shares, flexible repayment terms, social capital in the form of number groups, wealth endowment and household savings, are the most important determinants influencing borrowing in the Nyando area. This Info Note summarizes the findings of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) interventions in Nyando Climate-Smart Village (CSV) targeting smallholder farmers with climate-smart agriculture (CSA) approaches to help them better manage their farms, and to adapt and mitigate the effects of climate change. The work was done by University of Nairobi Masters and PhD students as part of a financial diaries study involving two counties in Kenya and 122 sampled households. The project specifically focused on adoption and cross breeding of Galla goats as a scalable intervention, agroforestry, water catchments and the introduction of learning sites for greenhouse and fish farming to help farmers diversify their farming activities and sources of income. This study's objective was to assess the borrowing behavior of farm households in the CSVs of Nyando.Since 2011, CCAFS has been involved in programming that focuses on increasing food security, adapting to changing climatic conditions and mitigating the adverse effects of climate change and variability by local smallholder farmers in the Nyando Basin.Farmers were introduced to several interventions such as drought-resistant varieties, crossbreeding of small ruminants, water harvesting and agroforestry among others, to help them improve and diversify their incomes, adapt and mitigate the effects of a changing climate. Among the activities needed to realize these objectives was the need to create innovative financial products for smallholder farmers to adopt and upscale the CSA technologies. It is against such a backdrop that we decided to:◼ Identify the credit facilities that farmers in CSVs seek in a farming calendar year;◼ Assess the factors influencing their decision to borrow and how much they borrow.The average household size is six members which could be a sign of high dependency. There are more male headed households but women constitute the majority in group membership. The groups are very popular in the area, with over 90% of the households being members. The primary occupation of the households is agriculture which is practiced in two seasons. Other occupations include salaried work and running small businesses. The cropping seasons influence the demand and seasonality of credit with the 2 nd season of July-December registering the highest demand for loans ( Households which have adopted and are practicing CSA have higher demand for credit facilities. The reason is that climate-smart technologies are relatively expensive to adopt and may require substantive amounts of investment.Given that most Nyando farmers are poor and their incomes are not enough to finance adoption of these technologies, we sought to understand where they get resources to finance CSA practices. Most households have adopted at least one CSA practice/technology. The mean average money borrowed was approximately Ksh.13,000 (US$ 130) with interest rates charged ranging from 8% to 53%. Farmer groups are the main source of credit for most of the households (42%), while formal sources such as banks and micro-finance institutions are not popular with farmers. About half of the households (46%) did not seek credit ( Given that almost half of the households do not participate in the credit market, it was important to explain the factors that influence farmers participation (borrowing) in the credit market. The analysis shows that the loan repayment period, collateral (group shares), household savings and social capital (number of groups household members belong to) are key determinants. Farm households in Nyando prefer a relatively longer repayment period to settle their loans as their incomes are irregular given that they depend mostly on farming which is seasonal. Using group shares as collateral encourages farmers to borrow as their contribution acts as security to the loans. A share is affordable (Ksh. 50) and hence within the reach of most poor rural households in Nyando. Groups are a form of social capital and they are a source of information and training for the members. Through such, farmers acquire information on improved farming investments and methods. Household savings are a precursor to borrowing as households who save can provide collateral to loans hence farmers who save tend to borrow more.The intensity of market participation (the amount that farm households borrow/secure) is influenced positively by loan repayment period, wealth endowment and social capital (number of groups household members belong to). Wealth endowment includes assets such as land, household, farm assets etc. The more the assets the higher the ability to provide collateral and the more the need for more resources to finance farm operations hence the more they are likely to borrow. The number of groups form part of social wealth and membership to more groups translates to more access to credit and higher likelihood to borrow. Engaging in agriculture as the main occupation of the household had a negative influence on how much farm households borrowed. This might be associated with the risky nature of agricultural activities exacerbated by fluctuating commodity prices.From the analysis we can conclude that informal credit sources, especially community and self-help groups, are the most preferred sources of credit for the farm households of Nyando. It is also evident that a small percentage of farmers borrow to invest in these smart technologies. Flexible loan repayment terms, innovative types of collateral (use of group shares as collateral), wealth endowment, social capital (membership/number of self-help groups) and household savings are key significant influencers of demand for credit by smallholder farmers. Finally, there are a lot of uncertainties associated with agricultural production and from our analysis, practicing agriculture as a primary occupation discourages credit acquisition.We therefore recommend that the government should fast track the implementation of the CSA plan alongside providing CSA tailored financing options to help adoption and up scaling. The state and other stakeholders should consider using groups as a financing avenue as they have shown high success rates and thus serve as a viable option for credit provision to needy farmers compared to set ups that crop up every time there is a government or NGO credit package.Financing and lending stakeholders need to consider simplifying lending procedures and making loan repayments and collateral flexible enough to reach poor farmers and use the groups financing model to penetrate this section of the population.Groups provide social capital which act as collateral when accessing credit, and can be used for technological transfer awareness. Thus, the government can penetrate rural finance by using groups as opposed to ad hoc-set ups that normally mushroom when a finance package is announced.Farmers, especially rural smallholder farmers practicing agriculture, are more credit constrained and prone to risks and losses as opposed to the other economic sectors, and the state can help them by providing crop and livestock insurance facilities through farmer groups to cushion them against farming risks. "}

main/part_2/0275542235.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"9420ac735f0f4ae13c4ea118965be04b","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://publications.iwmi.org/pdf/H044919.pdf","id":"1727391401"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"8ca2f37c-fcd4-4a56-947e-75f8e797edf6","content":"The demand for food, feed, fiber and bio-fuel is expected to more than double in Asia within the next 50 years. Furthermore, dietary demands are changing, generally to more water intensive foods, especially animal products such as milk, meat and eggs. The expanding and changing characteristics of production will require increased water supplies and especially those that are reliable. Water demands could as much as double by 2050 if we continue with business as usual (Molden, 2007).More than any other continent, Asia's agricultural production capacity is based on irrigation. With roughly one third of the continent's cultivated land under irrigation, and approximately three quarters of the world's irrigated area, irrigation is fundamental to the food security of the region. Production of staple crops was boosted by over 135% from 1970 to 2007, and concurrently rural poverty was significantly reduced, in large part through intensification of production under irrigation (Mukherji et al, 2011).While the earlier irrigation developments were primarily large scale public irrigation systems for the production of staple food crops, over the course of the past two decades the continuing expansion of irrigation has been primarily due to increasing development of small \"atomized\" systems where the control of the water supply is closer to the farmer, and which have allowed increased levels of productivity and diversification. Rather than diversions from large rivers and major reservoirs, the primarily sources of water for these later developments have been either groundwater or small surface storage. Groundwater, generally developed by the farmers themselves, is already the dominant source for irrigation water in South Asia, and is increasing in importance in areas of South East and East Asia.This development of groundwater has led to major governance challenges in parts of South Asia where it is being over-abstracted. That said, with the growing demand for water in agriculture and the importance of reliable sources for higher value production, yet to be developed groundwater resources in more water abundant areas of the region, such as Eastern India and parts of South East Asia, present opportunities for increasing production. In addition, further investments in small scale storage at the farm and community levels, and re-configuration of existing large scale public systems are proving to be viable strategies for improving access to more reliable water supplies.As with Asia as a whole, in South East Asia agriculture is by far the largest consumer of water, estimated to be 68% of total withdrawals in Viet Nam, and around 98% in Cambodia (WRI, 2009; Table 1). However, the proportion of irrigated land in in this region is relatively low compared to other countries in Asia (ranging from 7% of total cropland in Cambodia to 31% in Viet Nam [World Bank, 2009a]).Despite the relative abundance of renewable freshwater in the region, agriculture is vulnerable to local climatic variability, with significant risks from both floods and droughts, even under current climate conditions. Increasing and safeguarding expanding production will require continuing improvements in water management. Agricultural production growth in the region has been outstripping population growth (see Johnston et al., 2010 for a more detailed discussion of agricultural trends), and is becoming increasingly commercial. With total agricultural land in South East Asia having expanded by less than 5% in the past two decades, the increases in production have mostly come from intensification through improved seeds, fertilizer usage, production practices and irrigation. Most National Governments now view expanding the area under irrigation as key to further increasing production and reducing the climate-related risk to the agricultural sector. For instance, while Cambodia has less than 0.75 million hectares of irrigated land, this is three times what it was twenty years ago (Johnston et al, 2010).The mega-deltas and floodplains of the Red, Mekong, Chao Phraya, and Irrawaddy rivers, produce half of the rice in the region and approximately 8% of the world supply.Traditionally wet season (May to October) rice with some supplementary irrigation was the main production system, but increasingly irrigated crops in the drier and less flood prone seasons have become the dominant systems. For instance, the wet season rice is now only 10% of the annual production. This trend increases the demand for reliable water supply during the periods when availability of water resources is lowest. Elsewhere in the region, the extent of development has been more varied. For example, while there remains further room for intensification, Thailand's investments in small to medium irrigation systems has increased dry season production in inland areas of the country. On the other hand, in Cambodia a little more than one tenth of the annual rice production is grown outside the wet season (Johnston et al, 2010). The development of large areas for coffee in the Central Highlands of Viet Nam and the Bolavens Plateau of Lao has been made possible through irrigation from groundwater, but, as in South Asia, the groundwater in these locations is becoming over-exploited.The extent to which agriculture has already intensified, specialized, and increased the use of inputs varies between and within countries in the region. China, Thailand and more recently Vietnam, already have relatively well developed commercial agriculture sectors, where there has been significant adoption of intensive small-scale irrigation technologies (drip irrigation, greenhouses, plastic mulches etc) for high value crops.Other countries, such as the Lao PDR and Cambodia, are at much earlier stages in this transition.Market demand for agricultural production will increasingly drive agricultural investments, and thereby determine the use of water resources. Meeting the region's food and other agricultural requirements over the coming decades will require significant increases in productivity, diversity and reduction of risk, which necessitates wide-spread adoption of improved agricultural water management approaches in both irrigated and rainfed systems.Investments in agricultural water management must focus on more flexible approaches, including small-scale, on-farm systems and groundwater irrigation that involves the relevant local communities. Of course, concurrent investments to facilitate access to markets are also required."}

main/part_2/0295523486.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"1c52d4083255c9959994bf0bf05777be","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://repository.cimmyt.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/027ac23b-6f93-43ea-844f-bd98c374718a/content","id":"695805087"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"4e701fa6-ab5a-41be-90ae-b71899c0ce0d","content":"Effective regional crop improvement networks sustainably develop new crop varieties that benefit farmers, consumers, and other value chain actors through proven and innovative impact pathways.Greater investment in crop breeding should happen through shared regional programs:• Agree on regional market segments and prioritize per crop. • Regional programs implement portions of the portfolio, according to comparative advantages.There is no recipe for allocating the responsibilities and resources; must discuss and agree by each regional crop breeding team.Renewed commitment to benefit 'hard to reach,' resource-poor farmers and consumers is essential:• We recognize that reaching resource poor farmers with seed of appropriate, improved varieties is wickedly challenging. • We are investing a greater proportion of the budget in socio-economic analyses to identify, validate and implement effective impact pathways. • Engagement: Extensive engagement with value chain participants for each crop and region identifies the key traits for improvement and informs the development of a strategic crop improvement plan for the region. • Market segments: The strategy identifies market segments (Table 1) of greatest regional importance. The responsibilities to implement breeding pipelines for the prioritized market segments are agreed and shared between CIMMYT and NARES. • Approach: Co-designing and co-developing new cultivars through a regional network addresses regional needs and builds decentralized capacities for sustainable crop improvement. This approach is widely applied, for example to effectively use data (Box 1), genomics tools (Box 2), and to tackle crop diseases of regional importance (Box 3). • Measuring: Metrics for tracking seed business cases for farmers and seed companies were developed and applied.Amidst investor demands, breeders ought to keenly investigate the expectations of consumers and farmers to arrive at the best parameters for breeding choices.\"Our focus is to develop and offer farmers novel crop varieties and solutions that address critical challenges, including variable climates, low soil fertility, geographic and market isolation, and limited diet diversity. To enhance the adoption and turnover rates of dryland crop varieties, we conducted scaling scans with teams from 16 countries to identify intervention points, design strategies, and pilot these initiatives. We developed and applied metrics to track seed business cases for farmers and seed companies, revealing that groundnut seed presents the weakest business case, while the profitability of sorghum and millet hybrids varies.We prioritize characteristics that meet farmer and consumer preferences, stimulating the adoption of new varieties that enhance profitability, yield, and nutrition.Our approach incorporates both proven and innovative models to ensure reliable, affordable, and profitable access to seeds of these new varieties.Program Assessment and Implementation:• Collaboratively assessed NARES breeding programs in 9 focal and 8 affiliated countries, identifying strengths and areas for improvement. • Co-led regional crop improvement programs with NARES, optimizing breeding schemes and integrating CIMMYT/CGIAR programs with germplasm from multiple sources. • Initiated molecular breeding strategies for sorghum and pearl millet and agreed on regional phenotyping sites for disease and insect threat assessments.The first and crucial step to increasing food production, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, is the availability of sufficient quantities of seed.\"  Illustrative example of regional market segments and sharing of responsibilities for implementing breeding pipelines (BP) Groundnuts"}

main/part_2/0310871563.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"03fb11a31c49730154a5d7225e58ac9a","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/98ed175f-9d99-4101-a3f1-dcd812a7c950/retrieve","id":"-1782080167"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"1600a48c-8ed3-4acd-8ec8-d03060f64af2","content":"P787 -Livestock and fish production, consumption of animal-sourced foods, and climate change to 2050 Description of the innovation: Decision-makers are increasingly concerned about the impacts of climate change on agriculture and the need to invest in adaptation. Estimates of adaptation costs exist but are now dated. This innovation created and used an integrated system of updated climate, water, crop and economic models to assess new estimates of the costs of key agricultural investment to support adaptation. Results shared with the gates foundation and the global commission on adaptation through a publication. New Innovation: No Innovation type: Research and Communication Methodologies and Tools Stage of innovation: Stage 3: available/ ready for uptake (AV) Geographic Scope: Global Number of individual improved lines/varieties: <Not Applicable> Description of Stage reached: The innovation (the new models and their outputs) were used to share updated adaptation estimates with the Gates foundation and Global commission on adaptation for their use in planning funding for agricultural research and development."}

main/part_2/0315162802.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"f933e403e2b6db44036be5b313a12865","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/216fbcde-703b-4aea-93cb-886d27288a18/retrieve","id":"1859232605"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"2b7a05de-9da4-4622-aa94-6e3da7c73017","content":"In 1998, Cambodia established its first community fish refuge (CFR) pond, and a total of 915 have been put in place (Fisheries Data 2021). According to WorldFish research, proper pond management can increase catch as much as 71 percent for poor families who depend on fishing in paddy fields (WorldFish 2017). Managing CFRs involves a range of activities, such as building ponds, canals and passages and establishing habitats. But one of the important is patrolling. During the dry season, patrolling protects breeding stocks in a CFR pond, where fish take refuge when the water recedes from isolated ponds in the surrounding rice field. This, in turn, allows the fish to reproduce and repopulate the CFR system during the next rainy season.Fish from CFR pond systems are an important source of food and income for millions of Cambodians. However, the country's fisheries currently face many pressing issues, including population growth, climate change, habitat loss and illegal fishing. These threaten both the quantity and quality of local natural fishstocks.At the start of the rainy season, when heavy rains return, CFR ponds are reconnected to paddy fields. This creates a channel or canal that allows fish to swim from the pond and into a flooded rice field, where adult fish spawn and juveniles grow. When the water in the fields recedes, at the end of the rainy season, the fish then return to the CFR pond.During the rainy season, fishing offenses often occur along the channel, as people set up various traps and barriers and use illegal fishing gear to catch fish passing through. Even during the 6 months of the dry season, when fish in these systems take refuge in CFR ponds, offenses continue to occur.We developed this guide to patrolling CFR pond systems with the following objectives in mind:• Provide technical guidance and knowledge to patrol teams to help them protect fishstocks and prevent illegal fishing in CFRs.• Respond to the need for regular patrols by CFR committees, local authorities and Fisheries Administration (FiA) cantonments.• Serve as a reference and guide for CFRs throughout the country and for relevant agencies and partners to use and to implement their patrolling effectively.• Help inform policies and planning for fisheries in the country.The guide includes information gleaned from the following sources:• a review of existing materials on CFR patrols• two consultative workshops 1 held to gather experiences on proper stocking practices among local communities, FiA officials, private sector actors and nongovernmental organizations• consultation meetings on the draft guide with national FiA officials in January and February 2023• efforts to build on the patrolling experience of the Sustainable Aquaculture and Community Fish Refuge Management (SAFR) project and the Rice Field Fisheries Project Phase II.The general purpose of patrolling CFRs is to protect, preserve and conserve breeding stocks of fish and other aquatic animals to maintain their reproduction capacity and ensure food security, now and in the future. Patroling activities aim to prevent all illegal fishing in CFR pond systems and all fishing in conservation areas of these systems. Patrolling also raises awareness of the benefits, protection and preservation of fish in CFRs and strengthens the sustainable management of these pond and rice field fisheries.CFR members elect the leader of the patrol team. Those on the patrol are appointed by the commune chief and the relevant local authorities, including the CFR management committee, local authorities (village heads, village deputy-heads, village members, the village security guard) and citizens or CFR members.Each CFR has two to seven patrol teams, and each team consists of two to five members depending on the size of the CFR, proximity to town, location and the conservation area. Teams must be officially recognized by the commune chief to conduct patrolling.As part of the process to elect the CFR committee, the patrol team's roles and responsibilities are discussed and agreed upon and then set out in the CFR's bylaws.The main roles and responsibilities of the patrol team include the following: Prevent the placement of all fishing gear in conservation zones as well as the channels connecting the pond to the rice field.  Seize any gear found in the channel to the CFR pond and in protected zones.  Report all offenses immediately and collect evidence, including photos of the crime scene, and hand it over to the nearest local authority, competent armed force and fisheries officials for legal action.Patrolling must comply with the CFR's bylaws, including regulations on fishing gear, conservation zones and protected zones, which can differ between CFRs. Regular patrols may focus on either general areas or specific parts of the CFR system by season and time.During the dry season, fish congregate in CFR ponds. This, in turn, attracts fishing activities whether the pond is known as no fishing area and is protected by law.Channels include canals, creeks, streams and other waterways that connect the CFR pond to rice field ecosystems. During the rainy season, fish migrate out of the pond and into the field to spawn and then return to the pond to take refuge for the dry season. Illegal fishing often occurs along channels, especially ones near a CFR pond. As such, patrolling the channel is essential to control activities that could prevent the fish from using it, especially at the beginning (May to July) and end (November to December) of the rainy season. Regular patrols during these periods will help ensure that the fish can move to the pond to spawn and then return safely to the rice field.Spawning and nursery grounds are where fish feed and grow. They are also where the public is allowed to fish for subsistence purposes. In their bylaws, most communities define areas for protection according to their various sizes. In addition to protected zones, patrolling may also take place in a nondefined way within a rice field. The community has the right to report any offense, particularly illegal fishing and other practices such as channeling water for the purpose of fishing and fishing with banned gear, like electrofishing.Rice fields are often too large for teams to patrol and manage effectively. If the community wishes to patrol the field outside the protected zone, it must consult with relevant fisheries officials, the commune chief or councilors to secure an agreement in terms of extent, time and frequency of patrols and to focus specifically on illegal fishing.The relationship between the frequency of patrols, intervention activities and the location of CFR ponds:  Improvements like deepening the pond and fishing installation (dead branch of trees) within it will require less patrols.  The proximity of the ponds, channels and protected zones to the village center helps minimize the need for frequent patrols.  Shallow CFR ponds require more patrols compare to deep CFR, as do any of the three components of the CFR (refuge ponds, channel and rice field) that are far from the village.The patrol team must explore the possibility of any illegal fishing in the area and how to combat it, taking into consider the time and location that it often takes place.This following is a case study of actual patrolling in the Kaek Ngout CFR located in Kampong Chheu Teal Village, Taing Krasau Commune, Prasat Sambo District, Kampong Thom Province:-During the dry season (November to May), communities conduct regular patrols with motorcycles, intermittently, for 6 hours a day. Patrols take place between 05:00 and 07:00 in the morning, 13:00 and 15:00 in the afternoon and 17:00 and 19:00 in the evening. -Between these times, patrols are done as needed.-During the rainy season (June to October), patrols are done by boat, both during the day and at night.When planning patrols, communities need to take the weather into consideration, as more illegal fishing tends to happen:-Early in the rainy season (May to July) when it rains heavily, some illegal fishing occurs. -At the end of rainy season (November to December) when the northeast monsoon prevails illegal fishing, such as electrocution, fishing with fine mesh nets, or fencing, happens.4.1Step 1: Knowledge of fisheries laws and CFR bylawsAll team members must have received training on many relevant subjects to be able to conduct effective, successful and safe patrols: fisheries laws, provisions relevant to protection and conservation, permitted fishing gear, and penalties  CFR bylaws, conservation zones, protected zones, permitted fishing and conflict resolution  roles and responsibilities of the patrol team  CFR systems and their functions  how to use equipment such as radio transceivers, cameras  approaches to addressing offenses  planning for effective patrols  documentation for M&E of the patrol process, offenses, illegal gear or illegal fishing encountered during patrols and their reporting  a pre-patrolling assessment of the overall state of offenses in all three components of the CFR system, the locations and time the offenses often happen, the nature of the offenses, illegal fishing gear identified by the community, trends of illegal fishing, causes of such trends, solutions to reported cases, and the nature of cases resolved by local authorities and competent agencies.For patrols to be successful, communities need to have the proper equipment and documentation. This includes a radio transceiver, telephone, contact numbers of relevant authorities, rain gear (for rainy season patrols), flashlight, motorbikes or boats (paddle or motorized), mosquito net, hammock, uniform, boots, solarpowered CCTV, guardhouse and first aid kit.In addition, the members of the patrol team must know how to operate and use the gear, and solar-powered CCTV, as well as how to communicate with local authorities (commune and police). CCTV should be installed according to patrolling needs of the community, as it saves time and provides evidence of offenses.When encountering an offense, such as illegal fishing gear or illegal activities within the CFR system, the patrol team must take the following actions: Take photos of the crime scene with the perpetrator(s). Report the offense to the nearest local authority and competent agencies and then hand over the photos so that they can take action against the offender.  Advise and educate offenders with a written warning.  For multiple offenses, file a report immediately to the local authority and competent agencies for legal action.  Financial fines or penalties may be imposed in accordance with the provisions of the fisheries law and compensation sought for any damage.Community bylaws contain penal provisions and fines for illegal fishing, though they may vary between communities.  All financial fines and compensation for damages must be supported with receipts and reports acknowledged by the village and commune authorities and administrative police or fisheries agency.More information is provided in Annex 1 regarding the nature of offenses, gear types and solutions.Community leaders or commune chiefs must regularly review patrolling activities to assess their effectiveness. The process includes the following: Review the patrol diary and logbook.  Review the patrol report.  Inspect patrolling activities.  Respond to fishing offenses reported by the patrol team.  Report offenses immediately to the relevant authorities, such as the commune, FiA and local police.In addition, the CFR committee must report monthly results of the patrols and address any problems encountered during patrols in monthly commune meetings.Along with law enforcement, patrol and CFR leaders should monitor trends in offenses. Whenever there is an increase in offenses, CFR leaders and local authorities should meet to discuss the underlying causes and develop plans to address them. This could include, for example, raising awareness of the benefits of CFRs and the bylaws associated with them and by enforcing fisheries laws.Monitoring, evaluation, and action planning should also be done regularly.Annex 1. Guidelines for supplementary patrols.Actions, when encountering offense Actions, when not encountering offenseIllegal fishing in CFR conservation areas (refuge pond and protected zones)Fishing in contradiction to the provisions of fisheries laws Take action in accordance with provisions in fisheries laws.Corroboration in offenses Take action in accordance with provisions in fisheries laws.Fishing with gear in conformity with fisheries laws in conservation areas and protected zones When seeking financial compensation in the amount as set in the relevant CFR bylaws, evidence will not be returned.Remove the gear.Littering and dumping waste in or near CFR ponds Seek financial compensation in the amount as set in the relevant CFR bylaws. Remove the waste.Take action in accordance with provisions in fisheries laws.Remove the gear.Fyke net made of mosquito netting Take action in accordance with provisions in fisheries laws.Remove the gear.Mosquito nets or bag nets Raise awareness among offenders regarding relevant provisions in the CFR bylaws and the fisheries laws so that they do not commit repeated violations.Remove the gear.Take action in accordance with fisheries laws.Hand the gear over to the competent agency.Fine mesh net across the channel Take action in accordance with fisheries laws. Remove the gear.Annex 2. Form for recording patrolling activities in the SAFR project. -Prevent all fisheries offenses in the CFR and the entire area or report offenses to the local authorities.-Perform other duties as advised by the FiA.-Produce progress and financial reports for relevant stakeholders and the CFR members.-Liaise with competent agencies, local authorities and stakeholders to prevent and suppress fisheries offenses in the CFR area.-Convene meetings of the CFR committee to consolidate and evaluate outcomes of their work on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis.-Attend meetings with commune councils and the FiA upon invitation.-Raise awareness among local people and stakeholders on the CFR's bylaws, internal regulations, and benefits.Article 2: All relevant agencies in the commune and individuals in article 1 and 2 shall ensure the decision effectively from the date it is signed. December 2, 2021 Sann Kor Commune Chief Ouch Sreng"}

main/part_2/0319552246.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"ee62122d86656e3bbfe2bea639c1047e","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/64182575-dbdb-48dd-8176-ee25900cd1a8/retrieve","id":"-1011071272"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"b4ad0171-273e-40e0-b4dc-d90c993c43ec","content":"Numerosas personas y entidades colaboraron en las diferentes fases del present e estudio. A todas estas personas y entidades nuestros agradecimientos. En particular agradecemos a los Drs. Steve Temple, Manuel Torregroza y Charles Francis por sus valiosos comentarios sobre varios aspectos del estudlo; a Aldo patruno, Octavio E.Per Pinstrup-Andersen ** Una de las principales tareas de la investigaci6n agrfcola es la de desarrollar una tecnología con la capac.idad de aumentar la producción de los productos agrícolas por unidad de tierra. Para tal fin es esencial que la investigación agrícola enfoque a los factores que limitan el rendimiento a nivel de la finca. Para buscar un gran impacto de la investigación sobre los rendimientos en las fincas productoras, se necesita saber no l1nicamente los problemas investigables en el proceso de producción, sino también la importancia relativa de cada uno de estos problemas y el tipo de solución aceptable para el agricultor.A pesar de los grandes esfuerzos hechos en la itlvestigaci6n y fomento sobre el cultiva de maíz en Colombia, los rendimientos por hectárea a nivel nacional han aumentado muy poco durante los últimos treinta años. En más del 70 por ciento de las fincas productoras de maíz en Colombia se encuentran rendimientos por debajo de los 800 kiloa/ha y el rendimiento promedio nacional sigue siendo entre 1.000 ':l l. 400 kg/ha y.A qué se atribuye la falta de aumento en el rendimiento del maíz? El presente trabajo pretende dar una respuesta parcial a ese interrogante. El objetivo general es identificar y analizar los factores asociados con bajos rendimientos en el cultivo entre pequeños agricultores en Colombia a través de una descripci6n del proceso de la producci6n. Los principales datos para el estudio fueron recolectados entre 372 agricultores con menos de 10 hectáreas de mafz y localizados en tres departamentos del país. Además se buscaron datos de los vendedores de insumas agrícolas y ofi<:inas de servicio de extensi6n en los mismos departamentos.El presente informe está. organizado en la siguiente forma: DcsC'ripei6n y análisis de los aspectos sobresalientes del proceso de producción de marz en pcqucl\\as fincas con base en las encuentas hechas entre pequeños pruductores, vendedores de insumas y agencias de extensi6n.:l\\Iientras que la dcscr Lpci6n y análisis presentados se limitan a los aspectos más sobresalientes, se elabor6 un suplemento en el cual los datos recolectados están organü',ados en tul orden lógico para facilitar una inr.crpretación más a fondo, según las necesidades e intereses del lector. Copias de este suplemento están disponibles en la Unidad de Producciones Gráficas y Editoriales del ClAT.Resumen y conclu:;;iones La mitad de los agricultores t>ntrev[;,tados sembraron el marz acompañado con otros cultivos principalmente frrjol, habas)..-ajonjolí. El tamaño promedio del maizal era de 0.8 he('táreas. El 80 por ciento de los agricultores tienen menos de una. hectárea en el cultivo. La población de plantas está por debajo de lo recomendado, por lo menos en los casos en donde se cultiva el mafz solo. Son comunes las pérdidas del cultivo durante el primel' pedodo de crecimiento debido a falta de lluvia y ataque de insectos. Las prácticas culturales se hacen principalmente a mano o con bueyes. El uso de insumos modernos tales como semilla ffi('Jomda, abono e imH'cticidas es muy limitadu. El insecticida es el insumo más utilizado.Las tierras usadas por los agricultores entrevistados para la producci6n de mafz generalmente son ácidas y muest.ran deficiencias de f6sforo y nitr6geno. Más de la mitad de los cultivos observados mostró daño de insectos. Los insectos más frecuentemente encontrados fueron Spodoptera, Diatraea y Heliothis. Casi dos tercios de los cultivos mostraron enfermedades. Las enfermedades más frecuentes fueron Helminthosporium, Phylacora y Roya. Según las observaciones del campo el control de malezas era eficiente y la presencia de malezas no parece ser un factor limitante de importancia en el rendimiento.El conocimiento del agricultor respecto a tecnologra n10dPTna parece ser muy limitado y los rendimientos son bajos. Los principales factores asu{;iados con los bajos rendimientos parecen ser conuiciones eco16gicas adversas tales como variaciones en ]a lluvia, tierra deficient.e en nutrimentos, presencia de plagas y enfermedades, y la falta de conocimiento sobre la disponibilidad y el uso de tecnología moderna para reducir el impacto de estas condicionos. Por lo tanto, y según la información del presente estudio; el pequeño productor ue máiz en las rlJgiones estudiadas tiende a pensar en el rendimicntD ('omo determinado por fuerzas mayores y a buscar lID aumento en la pl'Oducci6n a través del aument.o del á.I'ea en vez del de la producción por unidad de área.Los resultados obtenidos sugieren que el beneficio para el pequeño agricultor de un mayor uso de solamente uno de los insumos modernos, sea semilla mejorada. abono o insecticida no sería lo suficientemente alto para compensar el costo y un posible cambio en riesgo e incertidumbre. A medida que se reduce el impacto de uno de los factores ambientales ad\\'ersos, parece muy probable que la presencia de otro • inhibe un aumento signíficativo en el rendimiento. Por otra parte, la falta de crédito y el desconocimiento de ciertos insumas, y su empleo, unidos a la baja disponibilidad de estos productos en algunas épocas hacen difícil para el agricultor pequeño aplicar un conjunto de insumas. Por lo tanto, el estudio respalda la hipótesis de que el pequeño productor de maíz, a pesar de que no adopta la nueva tec.nologfa disponible, acMa en una forma que mejor le conviene dadas sus limitaciones.El mensaje para los programas de ínvestlgación y fomento es que se necesita un conjunto de tecnologfa que:1.Corresponda a los problemas a nivel de la finca y 2.Aumente el rendimiento y las ganancias econÓmicas aún bajo condiciones ambíentales adversas.1\"0$ problemas principales identüicados en la producción de mafz en las fincas entrevistadas son:1.Suelo ácido y deficiente en f6sforo y nitrógeno 2.Variaciones en lluvia 3. Presencia de los insectos Spodoptera, Diatraea y Heliothis 4, Presencia de las enfermedades Helminthosporium, Phylacora ji Roya 5. Falta de conocimiento sobre algunas prácticas culturales, necesidad de ímiUffiOS modernos y forma de usarlos n.Falta de conocimiento sobre lugar de venta. de insumos y í.rndisponibilídad de ciertos insumos.Para desarrollar un conjunto de tecnología de alta utilidad para el pequeño productor de mafz se sugiere enfocar la investigación bacia el desarrollo de variedades (no hlliridos) resistentes al ataque de los insectos y las enfermedades anteriormente mencionados ~/ y con capacidad de alto rendimiento bajo condiciones adversas en cuanto a lluvia, acidez del suelo y bajo contenjdo de f6sforo. Además, se necesita má.s .... investigaci6n sobre las mejores prácticas culturales y uso de insumo s en sistemas de cultivos intercalados.Los esfuerzos de fomento deberfan ofrecer un conjunto de tecnología Con las características a.nteriormente mencionadas y suficiente crédito para cada agricultor para que se pueda aplicar el conjunto completo de tecnología necesaria para le\\l,&ntar el rendimiento y la ganancia econ6mica y reducir las variaciones en los rendimíentos causados por factores que se pueden controlar con la nueva tecnología .. Además, sería útil mejorar la comunicaci6n entre los técnicos del programa de fomento y exten-si6n y los agricultores para que 108 últimos sean nlejor informa.dos sobre la disponibilidad y uso de insumos y los aumentos potenciales en los rendimientos que conllevan la aplicación de tecnologfa. Es también importante mencionar que los programas de investigación y fomento deben contemplar la disponibilidad de los insumas sugeridos. OtraS conclusiones basadas en el presente estudio se encuentran en la parte Descripci6n y -AnáliSis del Proceso de Producci6n de Maíz. lVIETODOLOGIA Origen y recolección de datos Los datos básicos para el estudio fueron recoleccionados entre 372 productores de marz eU tres departamentos: Antioquia, Boyacá y Tolima (Figura 1). Se seleccionaron estos tres departamentos por su gran número de pequeños productores de maíz y su importancia dentro de la producción nacional. Se limit6 la recolecci6n de datos a productores con menos de 10 hectáreas con maíz dados los rendimientos bajos entre estos productores en comparaci6n con los de los productores con mayores extensiones del cultivo. Los datos se obtuvieron a través de observaciones de campo y entrevistas con los agricultores. Se hizo una sola visita a cada una de 372 fincas. Las observaciones de campo suministraron datos sobre los aspectos bio16gicos y físicos del cultivo talf's como presencia, intensidad y frecuencia de enfermedades, insectos, etc. Además se tomaron muestras de suelo en cada finca. Las entrevistas se enfocaron a conseguir información sobre la disponibilidad y uso de ínsumos, crédito y asistencia técnica .Y la. actitud del agricultor hacia el cultivo y el uso de nueva tecnología. Los datos fueron recolectados por un equipo de ingenieros agr6nomos y economistas previamente adiestrados en identificaci6n de problemas agro-bio16g'icos en el campo y técnicas de enCuestar. La muestra de agricultores dentro de cada departamento fué seleccionada en base a información disponib\"E localmente sobre la población de productores de maíz.Con el prop6síto de suplementar la informaci6n obtenida de los agricultores se hicieron encuestas a vendedores de insumas y extcnsionistas en las . localidades en . donde se entrevistaron los agricultores. En total se entrevistaron 60 vendedores y 42 agencias de extensión.Antes de entrar en el análisis de los datos recolectados en las fincas productoras de mafz, se presenta una visión g'eneral sobre la importancia del maíz en el pa[s en base de datos secundarios.LA lMl'OHTMICIA O¡';L :VIAIZ EN COLOMBIA nivl'n,os criterios pueden ser tenidos en cuenta para evaluar la importancia del mafz en Colombia. Aspectos tales como: área comprometida en el cultivo, número de participantes en el proce~o productivo) estructura de la producci6n, estructura del consumo, dü,irlbuci6n geográfica de la producci6n, etc., ponen de relieve el papel que juega el cultivo deniro del sector agdcola columbiano. Ellos también son indicadores relevantes de la magnitud. de los problemas que aquejan su proceso productivo y de la urgente necc:,)idad de identificar las causas qUB conforman esta problemática.A n~8 con maíz La ::i'uperficie con mar:.: reprpsenta entre un 20 a ~J por ciento <lel área en cultivos en Colombia 'ª-./. En valores absolutos ello cqlJ.ivale a unas 600 a 800 mil hectáreas de maíz. En términos de área el único cultivo comparable es el café que ocupa entre Wl 20 a 30 por ciento del área en cultivos. Entre laoS granos, el arroz, que es el segundo en importancia después del maíz, solamente ocupa entre 1Ul 6 a 10 por ciento del área mencionada.Corno lo lnuestran las cifras C'onsignadas en el Cuadro 1, la superficie con maíz. en los últimos seis anos ha sido en promedio de 800 mil hectáreas/año. Comparada esta cifra con la correfipondiente a 1940 se encuentra un incremento del a6 por ciento en 33 ailos. En el último ano (lH73) el área con marz se redujo drásticamente, a tal puntD de a;,imilarse a la de los primeros cinc.~o años de la década del 4ü (.Figura 2). Lsta reducci6n en el át'ea es adjudicada llásicamenté al sector comercial de la producci6n de maíz, según consta cn la evaluaci6n del cumplimiento de metas y programas de producción elaborado por el Ministerio de Agricultura 21.OchoCil'ntos a novecientos mil toneladas/ai'to ha sido en promedio la producci6n nacional de marz durante los últimos diez ailo::,. El valor dv ('sta produeei6n representa entre Un 9 a 10 por cientu del valor de la producción agrícola (tDdus los cultiv0S, i.nclufdo el l:afé), porcenw.je que ..,,610 es supe-rado por el café y el algodon Q/.En 197:) la cantidad de maíz. se \"\\\"i6 seriamente afectada cOmu consecuencia de lB reducción del área mencionada anteríormenie. Para subsanar el déficit ell ofer1.a creado por lB reducción en área se hi•f.o nect'sarío incrementar las importaCiones.)\"8 en los anos unteriores (l~)71-1~J72) la demanda (:reckn1..e de maf!. situada frente    --------H,•l-Ü 4214 't{i •18 :)0 32 345(; :)8 UD HZ G4 fi(-i 68 70727:\"3 fil,rura 2. MAIZ. Area -Rendimiento -Producci6n. LÚ1l'a~ de iendl-,ncia Rendimiento El rendimiento promedio nacional pOr hectárea es bajo, se estima entre Los 1. 000 y 1. 300 kg/ha (Cuadro 1). Los rendimientos más bajos se encuentran entre 105 agricultores con fincas menores de 10 hectáreas, siendo del orden de 750 kg/ha en 19()G . §./. Un informe reciente del 1\\tinisterio de Agricultura reporta para el sector . tradicional lID rendimiento de 800 kg/ha para 1973, mientras en el sector comercial se encuentran rendimientos de 2.500 Y 3.000 kgjha y.En el Cuadro 1 se puede observar que el rendimiento no aumentó sustancialmente en 33 años. En la Figura 2, donde se muestran las l:fueas de tendencia de la producci6n, áreas, rendimiento y poblaci6n, se puede apreciar c6mo la de rendimiento casi es una paralela al eje de abcisas. Ello explica por qué las lIneas de tendencia de la producci6n y de área guardan la misma direCCión y similar pendiente. En relaci6n con la pendiente es interesante anotar el contraste que presentan las Irneas de producci6n y poblaci6n.La producci6n de maIz en Colombia es dual; de un lado se enCuentra una agricultura tradicional, donde el empleo de insumos técnico;:¡ es muy limitado si no nulo, §/    • orientada parcialmente al consumo casero, con escasos y heterogéneos excedentes individuales para el mercado, con alro empleo de UUU1P de obra familiar o asalariada~ Este sector está compuesto en su casi totalidad por fincas inferiores a las 10 hectáreas las cuales representan el 73 por ciento del total de fincas productoras de maíz; ocupan entre EÜ 40 a 44 por ciento del área dedicada a este cultivo y participan con 32 a 35 por ciento de su producci6n nacional §./.De otro lado se encuentra Wla agricultura comercial, orientada totalmente al mercado con acceso a recursos tecno16gicos y financieros, con buena capacidad de ne-gociaci6n de insumos y productos. Este sector denominado comercial está. compuesto por el 23 por ciento de las fincas productoras, ocupa entre 56 a 60 por ciento del área y participa Con el 65 a 68 por ciento de la producci6n nacional V.El dilema, -caracterrstica común a las condiciones de dualidad-se plantea cuando es necesario fijar polftica.s de precio, de fomento agrícola, de investigaci6n agrícola, de subsidios, etc., dado que la esencia misma del problema, o sea la coexistencia de dos estructuras de producción diferentes, hace difrcil la formulación de políticas de beneficio conjunto. Es por ello necesario definir claramente las metas, dado el sector que se pretende beneficiar y tratar de evaluar las implicaCiones que sobre él y sobre la producción traerán las medidas o políticas que se planean.Localizaci6n geográfica de la producción 'lEI maíz se cultiva en todo el país, excepción hecha de las regiones selváticas, de las tierras bajas deshabitadas o escasamente pobladas por indígenas ajenos a las labores agrícolas. Crece desde el nivel del mar en las costas del norte y del occidente, hasta las alturas de má.s de 3.000 metros en las elevadas serranras. bu cultivo se realiza en condiciones extremas desde el ptUlto de vista de la precipitaci6n, como en la Península de la Guajira que tiene un régimen de lluvias muy pobre, o como el Departamento del Chocó que tiene uno de los índices de precipitaci6n más elevados del globo\" 10/.La descripción anterior ilustra el grado de dispersi6n de la producción de marz • • en Colombia. Esta dispersión conlleva aspectos positivos tales como:1.La disponibilidad del grano para consumo en casi cualquier sitio o regi6n.La disponibilidad de material básico que la diversidad de razas de maíz, producto de los diferentes pisos térmicos}' el tiempo, han puesto a disposición de los fitomejoradores.El aprovechamiento de lo~ ~uelos de lauera tan frecuentes en un pars de la topografía de Colombia.DANF. fulecín ]\\lensual de Estadística. Desafortunadamente la~ mismas condiciones benéficas, Consecuencia de la dis-pcrs1ón de la producci6n, tlenen implicaciones negativas a saber: l.La magnitud de la tarea de investig'dci6n -tanto en el área técnica como socioeconómica-dada la C:Olnplejidad estructural y la diversidad climática ;.' cdafo16gica para la cual se trabaja.~.La lllagnitud de las eampaüa~ de difu};ión de la nu(:va teenologfa.J.La complejidad de los programas y polftica~ de crédito, a\"'iswno:.:ia técnica v mercado.Una vez descrita y analjzada a grandes rasgos la hH'alizaci6n geográfica de la producci6n, se precisan a continuación las zonas de producción según su impurtancia rehltiva, en diferentes perrodo}; y bajO distintos criterios.Distrihuci6n de la produccí6n de mafz.Si bien todas las reglones del territorio nacional con área en cultivos partidpan pn la producci6n de mafz, no todas presentan el rnit::>mo grado de participaci6n. Para definir la importancia se han fijado tres criterios: área, rendimiento y producción, aplicados a cada departamento. Los resultados i:)C consignan en el Cuadro 2. Cuadro ~. DeQartalllentoH má.s importante:::; en la produce i6 n de maíz. lBn 11/. .El primer lugar en cuanto a área corresponde a Antioquia, departamento que participa con el 12.2 por ciento del área total en maíz. En el lapso 1955-1966 este departamento ocupaba el primer lugar en área y producci6n y el segundo en rendimiento. Para 1972 se observa cómo ha sido desplazado por el Valle en cuanto a pro-ducci6n física. En 10 que hace referencia a rendimientos, Antioquia ha desaparecido de entre los siete primeros lugares, tal como lo indica la información contenida en el Cuadro 2.Dado que el desplazamiento ha sido en términos de producción y rendimiento y no de área es de inferir que ello se deba a la adopci6n de nueva tecnología por parte de la agricultura comercial localizada primordialmente en los valles de los ríos Cauca y Magdalena.ConSumo y estructura del consumo La producci6n de maíz se orienta fundamentalmente al mercado interno, muy esporádicamente se realizan exportaciones de este grano. El mercado puede dividirse en dos grandes grupos a saber: 14/ 1.Demanda para consumo industrial y animal, comprende un 35 por ciento de la producción nacional.2.Demanda para consumo humano. comprende el 65 por ciento restante.La demanda para consumo industrial contiene la parte de la produccí6n destinada al consumo no directo y que es sometida a un proceso de transformación. Tal es el caso del marz adquirido por las fábricas de alimentos concentrados para animales y los de grasas y aceites vegetales. Las primeras absorben la mayor producción del maíz destinado al consumo industrial.En CaJi, por ejemplo, un 82 por ciento del maíz total consumido es demandado por el grupo de población de más bajos ingresos. El consumo promedio es de 97 a 100 gramos per capita/día (El promedio en los grupos de mayor ingreso es de 37 gramos pel' capitajdía). En términos de nutrici6n. el maíz consumido por los habitantes de los estratos bajos representa cerca de un 18 a 20 por ciento de su ingesti6n total diaria de proteínas y calorías. Constituye junto con el arroz la fuente prinCipal de estos elementos nutritivos 17 j.Tomando la disponibilidad de marz para consumo }mmano en Colombia 18/, se ha estimado el consumo de proteína y calorías provenientes del maíz y Su relaci6n con los' requerimientos normales. Los resultados se muestran en el Cuadro 3. Se observa un progresivo descenso en el consumo per capita, explicable por cuanto la tasa de incremento de la producción ha sido bien inf~rior a la de la poblaci6n y las importaciones no han subsanado el d6ficit 19/. Estimado en base a cifras del Cuadro 1 y de destino de la producci6n de maíz reportado por el JVIínis!erio de Agrü.:ultura...EN PEQVEÑAS FINCAS E sta parte del trabajo se propone describir y analizar el proceso de producción de maíz en pequeñaS fincas. La descripción hace referenCia a seis temas especfficos:-Características de los agricultores -Características físicas de las fincas -Características morfológicas y de localización -Características del cultivo -Características de empleo de nueva tecnología -Percepción de los agricultores sobre los problemas del proceso de producción de maíz.La informaci6n se analiza en base a tres criterios de agrupación: L Altura sobre el nivel del fiar 2. Sistema de cultivoDepartamentos.Las razones para usar tres tipos de agrupaciones son fundamentalmente: poner a disposición de las diferentes disciplinas la visión que más interese de la informaci6n recolectada, y buscar factores de homogeneizaci6n para facilitar el análisiS. Arura que dada la dimensi6n y variedad de la informaci6n recogida, los criterios de agrupa-• ci6n na pueden ser únicos pues de ser válidos para unos aspectos no lo son para otros.Asf pues, la altura se seleccionó como determinante que es del clima en las regiones tropicales montañosas, factor que está asociado con una gran variedad de características edafológicas y ecológicas en general.El sistema de cultivo que comprende dos grupos, Intercalados y no Intercalados, hace referencia al hecho de que el maíz se siembra solo o en compañía de otros cul-I tivos. Su posible relación con rendimientos, incidencia de plagas y enfermedades, orientación de la producción, earacterfsticas agron6micas, etc., 10 definieron como criterio de agrupacjón.Atendiendo a la división polníca de Colombia \\-dadas las diferencias eco16gicas, económicas, sociales e infracstrueturales, SE' turn6 eo01O tercer criterio de agrupaci6n la división por departamentos.En el suplemento del presente informe se presentan los datos recolectados en forma de promedios y porcentaJes en tablas que siguen una secuencia dentro de cada tema a trata1'. Ellas desc:.riben detalladamente la producci6n de mafz en pequeñas fincas según altura, sistema de siembra y departamento y por tal raz6n en el texto s610 se mencionarán los aspectos más sobresalientes en t..-uanto a las implicaciones que puedan tener sobre los rendimientos y la producci6n.Cuatro aspectos ayudan a definir al agricultor ínvoh1Crado en la produccí6n tradicíonal de mafz: edad, educaci6n, ocupación y cargo o relaci6n de propiedad.El promedio de edad encontrado entre los agricultores es de 48 anos, independiente de en qué departamento o altura esté ubicado y de qué sistema de cultivo practique. Los mayorcs porcentajes se localizan en el rango de los 30 a 5U aflos (44.7 por cie.nto para el total). Le sigue en importancia el rango de los 50 a 70 años en edad.La educación es una de las cal>acterfsticas más inquietantes. El 48 por ciento de los entrevistados no ha recibido ninguna clase de edut-'8.ción, y el nivel promediu alcanzado por los que han recibido alguna educación es apenas de 3 años.Estas cifras son más alarmantes en Tolima donde cerca del (jO por ciento de los agricultores de maíz son analfabetas.La ocupación predominante es la agricultura .. Se encuentra un porcentaje de obreros agrfcolas (16.9 por ciento) que tienen el cultivo en condición de aparcería o son arrendatarios. El porcentaje de obreros agrícolas es especialmente alto en Antioquia y Tolima. Se encuentra un pequeño porcentaje de obreros industriales localizados en Antioquia y Boyacá no así en Tolima. En el caso de Boyacá son obreros de la Siderúrgica principalmente y en AntioqWa del área industrial de Medellin.El 71 por ciento de los ag-.ricultores son dueños de sus cultivos de maíz. El porcentaje restante tiene el cultivo en su condici6n de aparceros, arrendatarios o mayordomos de las fincas. El mayor porcentaje de propietarios del cultivo se encuentra en Boyacá.Este tema incluye el tamaño de la finca! del maizal, el rendimiento promedio, la orientac16n y cultivo principal de la finca.El tamal10 promedio de las fincas maiceras de la mUestra es de 3.8 hectáreas. El 48 por ciento de las fíucas tiene menos de una hectárea. Tomando la. clasificación por departamento se encuentra que Tolíma presenta las fincas más grandes, 6.3 hectáreas en promedio. En tanto Boyacá presenta las más pequ(~fias, el G2 por ciento de las fincas se agrupa entre los rangos 1/3 de hectárea a una hectárea y Su extensión promedia es de 1.5 hectáreas.En el sistema de cultivo si bien no se observan diferencias muy marcadas en los grupos que lo integran. en cuanto a tamaño promedio. se encontró un alto porcentaje de fincas menores de 0.3 hectáreas con cultivos intercalados (22.1 por ciento) en comparaci6n con 9.9 por ciento no intercaladas. El tame..ño promedio del maizal no llega a una hectárea. Ello significa que en promedio sólo un 25 por ciento de la extensión de la finca se dedica al cultivo del marzo En Autioquia se encuentran los maizales más grandes en términos absolutos. En términos relativos a la superficie total de la finca, Boyacá es el que representa mayor área en maíz. Entre los sistemas de cultivo los maizales intercalados presentan mayor área en maíz y en promedio menor porcentaje de la finca dedicada a marz.Ello parece sugerir que en estas fincas el maíz forma parte de la huerta de subsistencia de la familia campesina.Los rendimientos por hectárea encontrados vienen a corroborar las cifras que Se presentaron en la introducción de este trabajo. El rendimiento promedio encontrado es de 798 kg¡ha. Respecto a esta cifra es necesario anotar que el 9.3 por ciento de los agricultores informaron haber perdido 18, cosecha pasada. Incluído este rendimiento cero, se obtuvo el promedio mencionado. Excluyendo del promedio el porcentaje de los que perdieron la cosecha el rendimiento es de 890 kg¡ña. Antioquia muestra. el rendimiento promedio más alto de los tres departamentos y Boyacá. el más bajo J 1,060 Y 737 kg¡ha respectivamente.Dado que los promedios se ven afectados por cifras extremas, se •dispuso la informaci6n por rangos o clases para dar una visi6n más objetiva de la situaci6n. Asr por ejemplo• y a pesar de que no se identifican diferencias significativas entre los promedios de rendimiento de los dos sistemas de cultivo considerados, se encuentra que el 59 por ciento de las observaciones provenientes de las fincas con maizales intercalados, se concentran en los rangos 2 y 3 (menos de 350 y 350 a 700 kgjha.) , en tanto que para 108 maizales no intercalados los rangos más frecuentes son el 3 y 4 (350 a 700 y 700 a 1.000 kg/ha).~on el objeto de conocer la relaci6n entre tamaño de finca y rendim1ento por hectárea, se confrontaron los rangos establecidos para cada variable. No Se encontró ninguna correlación; cualesquiE9:'a sea el tamaño de la finca, el mayor porcentaje de ellas se ubica en los intervalos de rendimiento proXimos a los 750 kg/ha. Un aspecto interesante es el de que el total de agricultores menores de. media hectárea no conoce sus rendimientDs o por lo menOs no en términos absolutos.La importancia del ma.íz dentro de la finca fué definida por 108 agricultores entrevistados. Para el 67 por ciento de ellos el maíz es el principal cultivo. Ello implica que para el 33 por ciento restante si bien cultivan el maíz Su importancia es secundaria.La relativa importancia del marz en el conjl.mto de cada fillca, 'lada de un departamento a otro, de una altura a otra y para cada sistema de culthl\"o. Para Tolima s610 el 33 por ciento de las finca:s tiene el maíz como el cultivo más jmportante. Distinto es el cano de Antioquia y Eoyacá en donde cerea del 8ü por ciento de los agricultores lo consideran su princípal l.'t1ltivo.El dato más interesante quizás es ('1 que se refiere al sistema de cultivo. Vn alto porcentaje de los propietarios de maizales no intercalados (78-por ciento) consideran el marz su principal cultivo; en tanto que entre los intercalados, un menor porcentaje de agricultoros (57 por ciento) lo consideran su cultivo prindpal.Cuando el m.af:¿ no fu6 considerado importante en la finca se les requiri6 a los agricultores acerca de cuál era entonces su principal cultivo. Las respuestas varían según la altura primordialmente. Bajo los 1. 5üO metros de altura, el ajonjolí ocupa el primer lugar, en segunda instancia van el algod6n y el banano. Sobre los 2.500 metras, la papa y arracacha, seguidos por el trigo y la cebada guardan la mayor importancia. En la altura intermedia -1. 500 a 2.500 metros-la importancia se diluye entre varios productos tales como papa, arracacha, hortalizas y frutales. La orientaci6n principal de las fincas entrevistadas es la agricultura, solamente el 9 por ciento tiene como principal actividad la ganadería. E sws porcentajes son válidos para cualesquiera de los grupos establecidos.Características morfológicas y localizaci6n geográfica de las fincas de maíz Este tema hace referencia a la topografía de las fincas y a su ubicaci6n física y climática.Los datos confirman la di spersi6n geográfica de la producción de maíz mencionada en el capítulo introductorio. Se definieron seis niveles de altura que van desde menos de 500 metros hasta los 3.000 metros sobre el nivel del mar. Con excepci6n de la altura de transición (1. 000-1. 500 m. s. n. m.) en donde no se encuentran observaciones sobre presencia de fincas maiceras, en los demás niveles se distribuyen en proporciones similares.Los departamentos seleccionados corresponden en términos de las fincas ~_ illafz entrevistadas a 2 zonas climáticas agrIcolas de Colombia: a) TaBma con el 68 por ciento de las fincas bajo los 1.000 metros de altitud se puede clasificar como cálida, b) Boyacá con el 74 por ciento de las fincas entre los 2.500 Y 3.000 metros se puede clasificar coruo fría y AntiOquia dada su topograffa muy quebrada, incluye diversidad de climas y aquí están representados sus dos climas extremos. Dentro de la clasificación por sistema de cultivo es interesante anotar la tendencia de los maizales intercalados a situarse en las temperaturas extremas, pero especialmente en las m;is frías. Ello puede quiz;is explicarse como una defensa contra los riesgos de las condiciones drásticas del clima en estas altitudes. Es posible también que dada la larga duración del período vegetativo del maíz en las zonas frías (aproximadamente un año y hasta 16 meses en las alturas próximas al pliramo), los agricultores limitados por su escasa área 21/ se \\,ean en la necesidad de obtener el 21/ En esta altura se enCljentra el mayor porcentaje de fincas con extensiones inferio res a una he('tárea.mayor rendimiento de su tierra, no en términos de marz. sino en términos de disponibilidad de alimentos durante el largo perrodo comprendido entre la siembra y la cosecha del maíz, lo cual esperan lograr intercalando cultivos que sean más precoces.Para cerca de la mitad de las fincas estudiadas, el lote donde estaba localizado el maíz era plano, el 45 por ciento presentaba una pendiente mediana y el 6 por ciento ora muy pendiente. Esta distribuci6n es válida, con ligeras modifícaciones para cual quiera de las agrupaciones establecidas> lo cual permite concluir que en general los maizales estudiados !lO se encuentran establecidos en fincas con problemas de topografía serios que incidan sobre sus suelos.En este punto se eonsidera la localizaci6n de las fincas en cuanto a los centros urbanos más próximos donde se pueda adquirir insumas. La distancia promedia encontrada es 7. 8 kil6metros y el 65 por ciento del total de fincas entrevistadas distan menos de 5 kil6metros de los centras urbanos mencionados. A excepci6n de Tolima donde las distancias son un poco mayores, para la mayorfa de las fincas la distancia en sr no parece ser una buena explicaci6n del poco uso de nueva tecnología.Esta sección del trabajo eS quizás una de las más importantes por cuanto pone a disposici6n de los investigadores una informaci6n detallada de los aspectos agroeconómicos de la producción de maíz en pequeñas fincas, dentro de las actividades de preparaci6n, siembra, prácticas culturales, control fitosanitario y riego.De las observaciones de los cultivos por parte de los agr6nomos que realizaron las entrevistas se desprenden los siguientes aspectos generales, los cuales se tratan en detalle más adelante.Más de la mitad de las fincas presentaban síntomas de daño de insectos y enfermedades.Un RO por ciento de los maizales sin diferencias de altura, departamento o sistema de cultivo, presentaba síntomas de defieiencias minerales.~.Cerca del -t0 por ciento de los maizales presentaba srntomas de deficiencia de agua.L La ¡Jl'eseneia de majeza.:.; en los maizales es baja.Caracterfsticas ffsicas y qufmicas del suelo Las características analizadas son: textura, pR, contenido de materia org\\1nica, f6sforo y potasio. La información que se presenta es el resultado del análisis de las muestras de suelos recogidas en cada una de las fincas visitadas.Con este término se describe la proporción de elementos de distinto tamaño que conforman el suelo t los cuales se denominan arcilla, arena y limo. La propor-ci6n en que éstas entran en el suelo lo definen como arenoso, arcilloso o limoso según sea el que predomine. Cuando los tres elementos entran en igual proporci6n, el suelo se denomina franco.En promedio la textura que predomina en los suelns de las fincas visitadas. es la franco arenosa, le sigue en orden de frecuencia la arcillosa. Se observa variación en los grupos identificados; los suelos de las fincas de los departamentos de Antioquia y ToUma presentan textura arenOSa primordialmente. No asr Boyacá en donde el mayor porcentaje de fincas presentan suelos arcillosos y franco arcillosos.El pH mide el grado de acide~ o alcalinidad del suelo; la mayoría de los cultivos crecen mejor en suelos cuyo pH se encuentra entre 6.5 Y 7.5.El promedio de pH encontrado fue dc 6.1. El mayor porcentaje de fincas se encuentra en el rango 6.1-7.5 con un 45 por ciento de observaciones. El 22.5 por ciento presentó un bajo pII (menor de 5.5). De otra parte el 2.4 por ciento presenta pH por encima de 7.5 lo cual se identifica con suelos alcalinos.Los mayores grados de acidez se encuentran especialmente entre los 1. 500 Y 2.500 m. s. n. m. y los mayores grados de alcalinidad se encuentran bajo los 1.000 metros. De 10 anterior se concluye que el problema de alcalinidad no es tan fuerte como el de acidez en las fincas maiceras.El síguiente cuadro sin6ptico ayuda a cyaluar el <:üntenido de materia orgánica encontrada en el análisis de suelos. Altos contenidos de materia orgánica pueden implicar baja disponibilidad de nitrógeno asimilable para la planta.Basados en esta clasificaci6n se tendr[a que el 79 por ciento de los suelos SOn de origen mineral. En total el 20 por\" ciento de las fincas presenta contenidos en materia orgánica muy bajos (menos del 2 por ciento). Analizando esta informaci6n por altura se encuentra que los suelos más pobres en nitr6geno, dado el bajQ contenido de materia orgánica se localízan bajo los 1. 500 metros y sobre los 2.500 metros.En Mrminos de la siguiente clasificaci6n se encuentra que el 32 por ciento de las fincas elrt:revistadas presenta problemas de deficiencia de f6sforo, y un 23 por ciento presenta niveles de f6sforo poco aceptables. El 45 por ciento restante no presenta deficiencias.Clasificación Menos de 15 p.p. m.f::>'uelo deficiente en f6sforo de 15 a 30 p. p. m.Más de 30 p.p. ffi.Las deficiencias más marcadas se encuentran en las fincas situadas bajo los 1. 500 m. s. n. tu. y en los de más de 2.500 m. s. n. m.La evaluación de la presencia de potasio en los suelos de las fincas de mafz se ha sometido al igual que los otros minerales a lUla tabla de clases.Los puntos de referencia establecidos ~e definieron en colaboraci6n con el Ing. Carlo,s Fk~•. Los errores que pueda haber en interpretación son de los autores.Potasio -meg./lOO gr.Meno::. de: 0.1:' de 0.15 a 0.30 Más de 0.30 Clasificación :'uelos deficiente:;; en potasioDe acuerdo con esta clasificación el 12.4 por ciento de los suelos presenta deficiencia de ¡x>tasio, }' el 26.3 por ciento es ligeramente deficiente. El porcentaje restante o sea el 61. 3 por ciento no presenta deficiencias de este mineral.Las deficiencias má.s marcadas en los subgrupos en que se dividieron las fincas se encuentran especialmente sobre los 2.500 metros.Los resultados que se presentan son producto de la observación del cultivo por parte del grupo de ingenieros agrónomos que entrevistaron a los agricultores de maíz. En algunos casos en Tolima. es de prever que dado que los maizales se visitaron cuando el cultivo estaba en estado avanzado la identificaci6n de algunos de ellos se dificulta en especial en cuanto hace relaciÓn a intensidad.Por lo que respecta a frecuencia de síntomas de deficiencias minerales en las plantas se encuentran que ésta es bastante alta. En cerca del 80 p<Jl' ciento de las fincas se observó deficiencias. La intensidad de la deficiencia no parece muy alta para ninguno de los minerales considerados. Nitrógeno es el que presenta el mayor porcentaje (24.2 por ciento) de fincas con sfutoroas de deficiencias graves o muy graves. Para f6sforo el 16.6 por ciento. potaSio 12.1 por ciento y magnesio 14.3 por ciento del total de fincas entrevistadas presentan deficienCiaS calificadas entre graves y muy graves.PreparaCión de la tierra La preparaci6n de la tierra a mano es una de las prá.cticas más comunes en las pequeñas fincas maíceras. El 39 por ciento de los agricultores usa este sistema. Le sigue en importancia la preparaci6n con bueyes. El empleo de tractor sólo es practicado por el 22 por ciento de 105 agricultores, El 15 por ciento de los agricultores entrevh;tados no prepara la tierra para la siembra de maíz. Estos porc.entajes varían grandemente cuando ~e toma la información agrupada en departamento, así en Antioquia predomina la preparación a mano. El porcc!lltaje dI.> los que no preparan es el más alto encontrado en cualquiera de los gn¡pos. ~o se emplea la preparación con bueyes. F.n Tolima l'S donde se encuentra el mayor grado de mecanización en la preparación de la tiC'rra. mientras en Buyacá predomjna la pre-paraci6n con bueyes.En la c1asificaci6n por sistema de cultivo no se encuentran diferencias tan marcadas, pero es interesante anotar que las frecuencias de preparación a manO y no pre-paraci6n, SOn bastante rM:s altas en el grupo de maizales solos que en el de los intercalados con otros cultivos.Respecto al uso del tractor es de anotar que entre Wl 60 a 70 por ciento de las fincas podrían usar tractor en raz6n. a Su topografía, y solamente el 22 por ciento en promedio 10 emplea • El obstáculo puede residir en el tamaño del lote, pero es quízás más posible que la disponibilidad de mano de obra y de animales de tracción. unidos al tamaño de la finca, sean los factores que inciden en el medio y sistemas de preparación empleada.El 46 pOl' ciento de los agricultores acostumbra arar la tierra antes de cada siembra de marz. El 54 por ciento restante. que no realiza esta labor, acostumbra generalmente desyerbar antes de la siembra, dejando dentro del lote las plantas desechadas. A nivel de departamento se encuentra que en Antioquia solamente el 6 por ciento de los agricultores ara la tierra, na asi en Boyacá donde el 93 por ciento realiza esta práctica.En el sistema de siembra se observa que en los maizales intercalados hay mayor proporción de fincas que realiza la labor de arada, que en los maizales sol~s.Ello se explica por la clase de cultivo intercalado. Los maizales donde se encontró papa, arracacha y ajonjolí, pero especialmente papa y ajonjolí, casi en la totalidad de los casos fueron arados antes de sembrar el marzo No ocurre la miSma situaci6n, por lo menos no con la misma frecuencia, con fríjol, habas y pUtano.En cuanto a las labores de preparaci6n, nivelaciÓn, rastrillada y otras anteriores a la siembra, s610 merece mencionarse que al promediO el número de fincas donde se practica es muy reducido, y que al igual que toda la informaci6n pertinente a preparaci6n del suelo se encuentran diferencias marcadas entre Antioquia y Boyacli.Las diferencias mencionadas en la preparación del suelQ observadas entre Antioquia y Boyacá, parecen obedecer a la tradición o costumbre, pero como éstas siempre tienen Su arraigo, es posible que el tipo de suelo (más o menos pesado) y/o el sistema de cultivo predominante en la región inciden en la clase de labores previas a la siembra. Es bien interesante que los sistemas de cultivo empleados en cada unO de los dos departamentos comparados también presente marcadas diferencias.FI método de siembra predominante t's el de hacer ho.vos, muy típico en la producci6n tradicional de marzo Generalmente los agricultorc:-; disponen de una vara (pt'daz,o de madera), cuya dimensión está dt'tí:rminada por la distancía entre plantas que prefiera el agricultor. Con ella se torna la medida entn' un hoyo y el siguiente y al mismo tiempo sirve para abrir el hue<..:o dundc se depositan los granos de semilla. Este método determina que la sjembra se realiCt: manualmente.El sistema de sÍ('mbra se refiere al hecho d~ que el ma[z se siembra solo o en asocio () compaiUa de otro cultivo. Para efectos de este estudio al primero se le denominó jn1.ercalado y al segundo no intercalado 23/.Los dos sistem8S son cmplc:ldos prfictic[lment.e en igual proporci6n de fincas. 1-'51-di:..;trjbución c;:¡mbip cU8ndo se observan los datos parcjales, 8bf por ejemplo sobre los 2. 500 metro~ pt'edomin;:¡ el cultivo intercalsúü, al contrario de las regiones m,sti b.\"j.\"s donde predomLn:1 el maíz solo.Vista la situación por departamento se eneuentra que:-En Antioquia el ma,yor porcentaje de tincas cultiva marz solo.-En Boyacá el mayor porcentaje de fincas cultiva maíz intercalado.-En To1ima hay una ligera tendencia al cultivo intercalado, predominantemente en las regiones más altas {más de 1, 500 metros).El cultivo intércalado más frecuente en el maizal es el fríjol, le sigue en importancia el haba y el ajonjolf. Lógicamente que el cultivo intercatauo en el maízal varra grandemente con el clima; así por ejemplo en la zona que podría llamarse cálida (bajo los 1.500 m.s.n.m.}, el cultivo intercalado más frecuente ee. el ajonjolf , seguido en importancia pt\"JT la yuca y el plátano. Entre los 1.500 y 2.500 m.s.n,m., el fríjol y la arracacha muestran las frecuenc-ias más altas. Por último sobre los 2.500 metros, el fríjol y las habas son las má;:, frecuentes en el maizal. Vale decir que el -HO por ciento de los cultivos intercalados en esta altura presenta una asociaci6n leguminosajgramfnea.El número de cultivos intercalados dentro del lote de maíz es generalmente uno. Sin embargo en el 38 por ciento de los cultivos intercalados se encuentran dos o más cultivos dentro del maizal, a veces hasta cuatro. La presencia de numerosos cultivos en el maizal es máó-; frecuente en la altura superior a los 2.500 metros. Esta información apoya lo dicho anteriormente, acerca de que los cultivos intercalados se localizan preferencialmente en la altura próxima al páramo, donde el período vegetativo del maíz es tan largo que motiva al agricultor a buscar cultivos más precoces mientras espera la cosecha del maíz.. La densidad de siembra promedia e:-; de 32.000 plantas por hectárea, y muestra una tendencia a aumentar a medida que se sube en el nivel de alt.ura. SJbre los 2.50U metros se encuentra el mayor promedio de número de plantas por hectárea -55. uOO plantas-o La distancia promedia entre hoyos es ue 110 centímetros Ji el número de plantas por hoyo es de :3.3.En general la densjdad de siembra e:s bastante baja, las recomendaciones son del orden de las 60.000 plantas por hectárea. La densidad (le siembra baja podría jus-El término intercalado no significa que el cultivo que acompañe al maÍ7, Si.' encuentre entre do.s matas de maíz. La denominación sólo hace referencia a que en el mismo lote de maí7-ha.ya otro cultivo.tificarse por el hecho de que se encuentran otros cultivos dentro del maizal, los cuales contribuyen a reducirla, pero curiosamente donde se observ6 mayor densidad de siern-bT!~ de mat:z fue en los cultjvos intercalados.El (jfj por ciento de los agricultores entrevistados ha tenido que resembrar en una o más ocasiones porque el cultivo se pierde en las primeras etapas de su crecimiento. bPgún los agricultores las causas de pérdida son fundamentalmente el daño de insectos y la falta de agua.El aporquejllamado también ctlltivada, es una prá.ctíca cultural muy importante que además de remover las malezas próximas a la planta, ayuda a la aireaci6n del suelo y le permite un mejor anclaje al maíz, protegiéndolo del volcamiento.El aporque cs la práctica más común entre los pequeños agricultores de mafz, el 96 ¡x>r ciento realiza esta 1aoo1' y el promedio es de 2 aporques por cosecha. Una cuarta parte de los agricultores realiza entre tres y cuatro aporques por cosecha.El UHO de aporque y la frecuencia con que se practica, explican la baja concen-' t1'8ci6n de malezas en el maizal. LfI rotaci6n de cultivos solamente es practicada por el 23.8 por ciento de los agricultores. Se encontr6 que el 85 por ciento de los agricultores más pequeños (menores de una . hectárea) no realiza esta práctica.. En cuanto a los agricultores más grandes del grupo en estudio se encontr6 que menos de la mitad de ellos (40 por ciento) rota el cultivo.La mayor frecuencia de rotaci6n se encontró en la parte alta (más de 1. 500 m. s. n. nl.) de Tolima y Boyacá, y también en la parte baja del Tolima.El cultivo de rotación más común es la papa, bien sea que se utilice como el único cultivo de rotaci6n (24.6 por ciento) o como WlO de los cultivos de rotaci6n. Del total de fincas donde se rota el cultivo, el 33 por ciento rota con papa. El ajonjolí es uno de los cultivos de rotación más importantes pero su uso se limita a la parte baja del Tolima.El empleo de leguminosas, fríjol, haba, como cultivo alternativo es casi nulo, y solamente ~e encuentra en la altura media (1. 500 a 2.500 m. s. n. nl.).El 90 por ciento di\" lo~ agriC'u1tores entrevjstados no riL'ga su;:; maizales. El ,>;2 por ciento de los que nn utHizan riegp no dispone de agua para regar. Falta de mJraestructura para la aplkación dd riego os el principal limiLante de su uso entre los agrlcultorcs que sí tienen agll3 disponible. Solamente el 25 por ciento de los agricultores que no usó riego inlorm6 que no espera aumentar sus rendimientos usándolo.Al respecto de implicaciones de la {alta de riego es interesante anotar la in-formaci6n anterior sobre resiembra, obsérvese como el 66 por ciento de hs agricultores a veces tiene que resembrar porque el cultivu se pierde en las primeras etapas de crecimiento y una de las causas más frecuentes de esas pérdidas es la escasez de agua.En este numeral se ÍllCluye la informat!ión sobre incidencia de insectos y enfermedades en los maizales. El control fitosanitario se trata en el Capítulo de Uso de Insumas. InsectDs 1';1 58 por ciento de los maizales mostraba síntomas de daño de insectos en la époea de la encuesta. Este porcentaje es bastante más alto en Tollma. Dado que un buen número de los maizales de este departamento se encontraba en estado de forma-cJón de grano, se pensó en la posibilidad de que el e!stado vegetativo del cultivo y la incidencia de plagas estuvieran relaCionados. El análisü, de correlaci6n no mostr6 relación entre estas dos variables. en tanto que el clima si está determinando mayormente la incidencia de las plagas en el maizal.Los insectos identificados más frecuentemente fueron :::.podoptcra (44.3 por ciento de los maizales) y Diatreae (35.6 por ciento de los maizales). No obstante, en términos de área. la situaci6n es un tanto diferente, del total de área cubierta por los ma zales visitados el 22 por ciento estaba afectada por Diatraea y el 20 por ciento por Spodoptera. Independiente del departamento, altura y sistema de cultivo, estos dos insectos se destacan por la frecuencia con que se encuentran en todos los gru}X)s.En promedio el 61 por cientD de los agricultores reportó pérdidas por daño de insectos. :Es interesante anotar que el 74 por ciento de los agricultores que en la cosecha actual presenta síntomas de daño de insectos, informó haber tenido pérdidas por causa de los insectos en la cosecha pasada.El 62 por ciento de todaf3 las fincas de la muestra presenta síntomas de enfermedades. Dentro de los departamentos el más afectado es Antioqula, donde el 88 por ciento de los maizales estaba afectado. Este orden de importancia se conserva también para área total afectada por cada una de las enfermedades m~ncionadas.En promedio el 60 por ciento del maizal en cada finca se encuentra afectado por enfermedades.Caracterfsticas de empleo de nueva tecnología Uso de insumos Este tema. comprende varias partes. En primer lugar se presenta la distribu-ci6n de los agrk'Ultores de acuerdo al uso de cada insumo con el fin de dar una visión general del grado o nivel de tecnología de éstos. En segundo lugar se presenta información pertinente al uso de cada insumo tal como:1.Clase y Upo usado y época de aplicación.Críterios para selecci6n del insumo usado.Fuentes de informaci6n que -inciden sobre el uso de un insumo.Expectativas en cuanto al uso de insumos por parte de los que no usan.Expectativa en cuanto a uso de insumo s y crédito.El uso de insumos modernos por parte de los agricultores entrevistados es bastante bajo. En orden ascendente se describe a continuación la distribuci6n de los agricultores de acuerdo al uso de cada insumo: 0.8% de los agricultores usa matamalezas.5.3% de los agricultores usa semilla mejorada.16.2% de los agricultores usa fertilizante químico (Urea o compuesto).de los agricultores usa insecticida.33. So/¡;de los agricultores usa fertilizante (Qufmico u orgániCO).O de otra forma:1.:1% usa semilla mejorada, insectícida y fertilizante.12. OC/;• usa 2 tnsuffiüs -más que todo fertilizante e insecticidas. Uso de semilla mejorada.Como se v1.6 anter101'mL~nte, solament.e (>1 5.3 por ciento us6 semilla mejorada, Ioealizado principalmente en Tolima y B(Aacá. En To!ima predomina el uso de hfuridos dentro de los agTicultorcs que u~an semilla mejorada, y en Boyacá el de variedades.El porcentaje restante o s ea 94.7 por ciento usa semillas regionales y sobresale el uso de las variedades regionales amarillas en Antioquia y Boyacá. En Tolima predomina la variedad regional blanca.Interrogados los agricultores acerca de cuánto tiempo llevaban utilizando la variedad que tenían sembrada en el momento de la encuesta respondieron así: Siempre el 19 por ciento; más de 10 años el 21. 8 por ciento y menos de 2 años el 31. O por ciento.Debido a que dentro del rango de más de 10 años se encuentran frecuentemente observaciones de agricmtura que han usado la semilla por •:l0 años y más, el promedio se ve afectado, y por ello se encuentra que para todas las observaciones el nú-lUcro de años de uso de la semilla sembrada en el momento de la encuesta era de 20 años.En Tolima se encontr6 una mayor tendencia al cambio de tecnología en el cultivo de maíz. El 56.2 por ciento de los agricultores ha utilizado la semilla por menos de 2 años y no es tan frecuente la respuesta siempre.A los pocos agricultores que informan haber cambíado de variedad recientemente, se les preguntó acerca de las razones que les habían llevado a realízar el cambio. Las respuestas m~s sobreS.alientes fueron: \"Me dijeron que es mejor\\! (28 por ciento), el rendimiento es mayor (10.7 por ciento), mejor adaptaci6n a este clima (9.7 por ciento), todo8 los vecinos lo siembran (6.7 por ciento).La fuente de informaci6n sobre semilla predominante para los agricultores entrevistados son los vecinos. Entre las entidades de fomento agrícola, el lCA y la Caja Agraria, son mencionados en total por 5.8 por ciento de los agricultores.En cuanto al tiempo de aplicación de la úrea, es interesante observar que la mayoría la aplica después de sembrar, en tanto que los compuestos se acostumbra aplicarlos primordialmente en el momento de la siembra. Dada la volatilidad de la úrea, la práctíca de aplicación después de la siembra parece correcta.Es curioso que exista esta diferencia en la época de aplicaci6n, dado que la gran mayoría de luro; agricultores informaron que sus decisiones aeerea del uso de fertilizantes estaban determinadas por su experiencia y costumbre. Solamente el 0.8 por ciento menciona el lCA como consejero en sus práctic:as de fertilización y ellO por ciento a los vendedores.Dado que la cantidad de fertilizante empleada generalmente está por debajo de las recomendaciones o necesidades, se les pregunt6 a. los agricultores si esperaban que usando más fertilizante aumentada el rendimiento. El 83 por ciento respondió que sr, y que si no USó más fue primordialmente por falta de crédito y dinero o por ser muy eoswso el abono. Cerca de la mitad de los agricultores que no usó abono dijo que ello era debido a la falta de cródito v dinero, un 20 por ciento expone como raz6n la falta de costumbTe de usarlo y un 10 por ciento el hecho de no estimarlo~ n.ecesario. Esta última razón es espe.eialmcnte frecuente en Toljma. La indtsponibUidad no es mencionada por casi ningún agricultor .. En su gran mayoría, los agricultores que no usaron fertilizante creen en la posibilidad de aumentar sus rendimientos si 10 usan y manifiestan que si tuvieran crédito comprarían el producto.El 2(i por eü'nto de los agricultores usó ínsecticidas. Como se puede observar en la introdueci6n de esta .sección es el insumo moderno más frccuentement(' usado por los agrictdtol'cs de mar?,. Dentro de la cla~ificaci6rJ IJor departamcnu), Tolima se destaca por el ma.vor porcenta.j~ de uso de insecticidas; en Antioquia por el contrario el\" porcentaje es muy bajo. Dent.ro de los sistemas de cultivo es interesante observar que son los agrkultoces con maizales intercalados los qUé presentan mayor uso de insecUcida.s. Lo;.; inseetici.daB utilizados por los agricul.tore:s se clasifican en términos de Illakria qurmica que ](l..:; f'~1'actl'rice, <':1( razón a que los nom]Jres c:omerciale8 pueden ser de conocimiento mlly Jucat.En relaci6n al tipo de plagas identificadas en el campo. los insectieidas utilizados son correctos en general, a excepción de WlOS insecticidas sistémicos que no presentan mayor frecuencia. El insecticida lo aplican generalmente cuando se observan daños de insectos en los maizales y en segundo lugar cuando el maíz ha alcanzado cierto tamaño.Cerca dd 60 por ciento de los agricultores que us6 insecticidas presenta aún pérdidas por daño de insectos. Según la opini6n de estos agricultores ello es debido fundamentalmente a tres razones: a) no haber usado el ti}X) correcto de insecticida, b) no haberlo aplicado a tiempo, y c) calidad del insecticida.A este respecto es importante anotar que el uso de insecticidas clorinados de bajo efecto residual y de menor toxicidad para el insecto (también para el agricultor cuando lo transporta y aplica) que un fosforado, puede ayudar a explicar la situaci6n.Como en los insumas anteriores, la influencia de los vecinos en la toma de decisión del tipo de insumo a usar, es bastante grande. No obstante es el uso df' insecticidas el que menor influido se ve por ellos. En camhio la influencia de los vendedores cobra importancia. por lo que respecta a las entidades de [omento agrícola, se observa una mejor!a do .';;u influencia sohre el agricultor, si se le compara con la que ejercen en el uso de los otros insumos.Los agricultores que no usaron insecticida informan que las razones del no use del insumo son principalmente la falta de dinero y/o crédito (el 37.4 por ciento), la falta de costumbre (el 24.!j por ciento). Solamente el 2.5 por ciento informa que no lo usó porque no es necesario.Es evidente que la falta de costumbre y la falta de conocimiento pueden considerarse muy ligados y entonces se puede decir que la falta de crédito junto con el desconocimiento del insecticida, son los factores que determinaron el bajo uso del insecticida entre los pequei'íos agricultores de marz.El 82 por ciento de los agricultores que no us6 insecticida, cree que puede. aumentar el rendimiento de los maizales usá.ndolo.Requeridos acerca de las posibilidades de usar insecticidas si pueden conseguir el crédito, el 74 por ciento responde que sí pero quizás la respuesta más ra-pion81 es la de que '!depende del costo del crédito\" dado por el 15 por ciento de los agricultores.Mercado de insumo\", Con el propósito de averiguar la disponibilidad de insumos v la estructura y funcionamiento del mercado de insumo.'> en las regiones incluIdas en el presente estudiu, se formularon una ser le de preguntas a los agricultores sohrc el particular. lVlás de la mitad de los agricultores que us6 fertilizantes lo compró en almacenes de la Ca ia Agraria mientras que Wla tercera parte de los agricultores lo com-pro en almacenes privados. Los insecticidas fueron comprados más que todo en almacenes privados (50 por ciento) mientras que tul 26 por ciento de los agricultores lo compró en almacenes de la Caja Agraria. La semilla que se usó se origin6 más que todo en la misma finca de la cosecha anterior (64 por ciento) mientras que el 27 por ciento de los agricultores compró semilla de otros productores, principalmente de los vecinos.El criterio usado por el agricultor para seleccionar el lugar de compra de los insumos es fundamentalmente el conocimiento del vendedor, y su percepci6n sobre la honradez del vendedor. El segundo criterio se refiere al que ofrece mejor crédito y el tercero al que ofrece el producto al menor precio. El transporte de los insumo s para las fincas de los agricultores entrevistados aparentemente no es problema grave. El 73 por ciento de las fincas puede recibir los insumo s en bus o cami6n y el 65 por ciento tiene lUl vendedor de insumos a una distancia menor de 5 kil6metros.Según los datos del presente estudio parece que tulO de los factores más limitantes en el uso de insumo s modernos es la falta de conocimiento sobre vendedores de tales insumos. Menos de la cuarta parte de los agricultores entrevistados conocra vendedores de semilla mejorada y menos de la mitad de los agricultores conocía vendedores de fertilizantes y/o insecticidas. Otro problema aparente es el de la falta de disponibilidad de los insumos requeridos en los almacenes locales. Una tercera parte de los agricultores entrevistados dijo que a veces no se había podido conseguir insecticida o fertilizantes cuando se solicitaron y un 13 por ciento dijo que no habfa semilla cuando querra comprarla. El resultado principal de la falta de estos insumas fue que se _sembró el mafz sin el uso de aquellos.Aquf se muestran los resultados de tula serie de preguntas hechas con el pro-p6sito de determinar el nivel de comwücRción entre los agricultores entrevistados y las agencias de extensi6n agrícola. La mitad de los agricultores inform6 que un agr6nomo de servicio de extensi6n habra visitado la finca durante el año pasado. Sin embargo, únicamente ellO por ciento de los agricultores sabía donde quedaba la oficina de extensi6n del leA. Una parte sumamente reducida de los agricultores entrevistados tenía informaci6n sobre las recomendaciones del leA en cuanto a variedades, fertilizantes e insecticidas. a usar en la producci6n de maíz. Con base en los datos coleccionados se puede concluir que en realidad no exisUa casi ninguna cOffiwlÍcaci6n entre las oficinas de extensi6n y los agricultores entrevistados sobre los aspectos anteriormente mencionados. Los vendedores de fertilizantes y lo insecticidas fueron una fuente má.s importante en cuanto a informaci6n sobre el tipo y la cantidad de estos insumOs que se deberran aplicar en la producci6n de marzo Sin embargo, la fuente más importante en cuanto a este tipo de informaci6n sigue siendo los vecinos.La fuente principal de crédito para 108 agricultores entrevistados fue la Caja Agraria. en 14 por ciento de los productores obtuvo crédito para comprar insecticidas mientras que únicamente el (í por cicnto lo .obtuvo para compra de fertilizantes.Aproximadamente la mitad de los agricultores entrevistados dijo que no había esca-~ez de crédito para su cultivo de maíz, un 7 por ciento dijo que había rechazado el crédito ofrecido. La razón prineipal para haber rechazado el crédito fue que no les gustaba deber.Percepción de los agricultores sobre los problemas del proceso de producción de maíz Aquí se muestran los resultados de una serie de preguntas cuyo objetivo era identificar la percepción del agricultor en cuanto a sus problemas principales en la producción de maíz y soluciones para estos problemas. En primer lugar, el 81 por ciento de los agricultores afirmó el interés de producir más del cultivo. Las principales razones por las cuales no s e hizo fueron la falta de tierra y dinero. Se puede concluir en base de los datos de las encuestas que el pequeño productor de maíz piensa principalmente en aumentar el área y no tanto en las posibilidades de aumentar la producción por lUüdad de área. Hay una tendencia de tomar el rendimíento Como dado por fuenas mayores. Esta hipótesis está respaldada por el hecho de que la mitad de los agricultor~s dijo que los principales factores por les cuales los rendimientos de maíz son bajos en Colombia son el mal tiempo y la mala tierra. La falta de conocimiento sobre el cultivo de maíz entre los agricultores fue otro factor importante.La mjtad de los agricultores entrevistados no sabía cuál habra sido el rendimiento de sus maizales en el semestre anterior a la encuesta y dos tercios de los a~ gricultores no sabfa cuál era el rendimiento promedio de los maizales de la regi6n.Es de presumir que el agricultor conozca S\\l producción en términos de si fue mejor o peor que otra cosecha y ésto es suficiente para él. Sin embargo este h~ eho constituye un limitante para los programas de investigación .y difusión de nueva tecnología. Fs bien diffcíl por ejemplo, explicar la producci6n en t6rminos de algunas variables si aquella (la producción), se desconoce. Ello a su vez implica una mayor dificultad en la determinaciÓn de prioridades de investigación.Con el propósito de obtener informaci6n específicamente sobre la mejor manera de aumentar los rendimientos según su punto de vista, se pidió a cada agricultor esCoger entre cuatro posibles maneras, la que él considerara más importante. Las cuatro maneras eran:1.Usar más insecticidas.Usar semilla mejorada.Usar más fertilizantes. y 4.1;8a1' una mejor técnica de c...'Ulti\\'o.Un poco más de la tr'rl'era par1c de los a~rÍl'ullurcs dijo qUl' Un mayor usu de fertilizantes era 10 más importante. en !Joco rUenos d0 una tereera parte diio que lo más importante era utilizar una mejor técnica de cultivo. Un 15 por ciento de los agricultores seleccionó semilla mejocada como la manera más irnl>Ortante de aUIhentar rendimientos del maíz.CARACTElUSTICAS DEL MERCADO DETALLISTA DE HiSl'MOS AGRICOLAS E sta sección del estudio se propone describir el mercado detallista de insumas agrfeolas, que opera en las áreas urbanas próximas a las fincas de los pequeños produetores de maíz anteriormente descritas. La informaei6n obtenida por medio de encuestas a los detallistas de insumas agríeolas, se presenta bajo los siguientes temas:Relación vendedor de insumas-agricultor Crédito y condiciones de crédito.Dado que las tablas del suplemento describen en detalle el mercado de insumas estudiado, dentro del texto s610 se mencionarán y analizarán los puntos más sobresalientes, especfficamente aquellos que complementan la información de los agricultores y que contribuj'an a la evaluaci6n de las causas de baJos rendimientos en las pequeña oS [im: as de maíz.El 71 por ciento de los almacenes detallistas entrevistados pertenece al s(\"ctor prjvado. El porcentaje restante corresponde a las agencias de las entidades de fomento agrícola; tal es el caso de los almacenes de provisi6n agrícola de la Caja Agraria 24/ :v de las cooperativas de pnxiuco::i6n del INCORA. El sectDr privado lo integran los comerciartes y las a~ociaciones de agricultores denominadas federaciones.Solamente el lB por (' K'Oto de lus almacenes se dedica cspecfficamentc a la yenb de insumas técnicos, vale decir semilla mejorada, fertilizantes y pestiCidas. El ~:.: pOI' ciento restante SOn almacenes misceláneos que proveen al agricultor, además de los insumo s técnicos. de implementos a.grícolas -azadones, palas, overoles, bombas. etc.-, y de algunos artículos para el hogar -estufas, ollas, planchas, vajillas, etc,-.La Caja Agrada cuenta con ccrea de ;\")00 almacenes de provisi6n a.2yfcu]a 10-('alizados en todo el part>..,\"\". \"Tal variedad de artfculos vendidos puede implicar un conocimiento insuficiente por parte del vendedor que asesora a los agricultores en la selección de los insumos técnicos. Pero de otra parte los agricultores que acuden a estos almacenes en busca de implementos, herramientas, etc., son potenciales usuarios de los insumo s mencionados.Clasificación de los detallistas según tipo y cantidad de insumo s vendidos La totalidad de 10::-> almacenes entrevistados vende insecticidas, el 92 por ciento vende fertilizantes, en tanto que s610 el 20 por ciento vende semilla mejorada. En las regiones estudiadas la venta de semilla mejorada de mafz se realiza exclusivamente en los almacenes de la Caja Agraria, entldad que también participa en la pro-ducci6n de semilla. Es posible que para los otros productores de semilla mejorada, en su totalidad entidades privada):; ~, no les resulta rentable llevar sus productos a estos municipios apartados y sea ésta la razón de que no se encuentren otros vendedores de semilla diferentes a la Caja Agraria.La unidad mfnima de venta de semilla es el kilo. El G[) por cicnto de los agricultores que compra semilla en los almacenes entrevistados, compra menos de un bulto o sea menos de 2S kilos. Ello sugiere que Se trata de pequeños agricultores, dado que la densidad de siembra recomendada está entre 15 y 17 kilos por hectárea.De 10 anterior se desprende que la unidad mínima de venta nO puede explicar el bajo uso de semilla mejorada. Esta hip6tesis que es comúnmente formulada, tampoco encontr6 fundamento entre los agricultores. Solamente el 1.6 por ciento informÓ no haber usado semilla mejorada por no haber podido adquirirla en pequeñas cantidades.De otro lado el hecho de que s610 el 20 por ciento de los distribuidores al detal venda semilla mejorada, explica el desconocimiento casi total que mostraron los agricultores sobre vendedores de este insumo.En cuanto a los fertilizantes, prevalece la venta de compuestos como el triple 14 y el 10-30-10. En promedio, el 72 por ciento de los almacenes vende abonos compuestos y el 24 por ciento vende abonos simples, principalmente úrea.Entre los insecticidas predomina la venta de clarinados; ésto es especialmente frecuente en Boyacá y Antioquia no asf en Tolima, donde los fosfarados y carbamatos cobran iropo rtanc ia.Los insedicidas clorinados más frecuentemente vendidos son el Aldrfn y el Toxapheno. Entre los fosforados el MetU parathion. Al respecto de esta informaci6n es intereaante observar la similitud que guarda COn la suministrada por los agricultores.Xorha Rufz de Londoño. La Distribuci6n y Uso de Insumos para la Industria Agropecuaria en la Zona de Influencia de Cali. PIMUR, 1969.Esta secci6n trata de determinar la disponibilidad de insumas para los agricultores en las áreas estudiadas, a través del manejo de inventarios y de los criterios expuestos por los vendedores para definir clase y cantidad de los insumas a adquirir.La frecuencia de compra varía de un insumo a otro. Para bH fertilizantes y la semilla acostumbran hacer compras peri6dicas, siendo mIÉ frecuentes las mensuales y semestralcf::i. Para los insecticidas son más comunes los pedidos ocasionales. Los productos se compran cuando el agricultor los solicita o cuando se agotan las existencias en el almacén.Esta situaci6n el:> curiosa dado que los vendedores de insecticidas y fertilizantes son esencialmente los mismos. Ello puede explicarse por las diferenCias existentes en el sistema de mercadeo de los dos insumos. Los canales de comercialización de fertilizantes son bastante simples; el número de mayoristas es reducido pOr lo cual es común que los fertilizantes pasen directamente de la fábrica a.l detallista. Los insecticidas en cambio presentan canales de comercialización más complejos, los productos llegan al detallista a través de numerosos distribuidores mayoristas los cuales están localizados en las capitales y ciudades prinCipales de todos los departamentos 26/.Esto jmplica para el detallista mayor facilidad para obtener los insecticidas que los fertilizantes, raz6n por la cual los pedidos de fertilizantes requieren ser más programados.La mitad de los vendedores informaron sobre escasez periódica de insecticidas, semilla y fertilizante s. Las épocas de mayor escasez V'aTfan de un departamento a otro Según la respectiva época de siembra. El problema de escasez más serio parece ser para los fertilizantes úrea y triple 14:. Para los insecticidas y semilla no hubo concenso entre los vendedores en la identificación de cuáles presentaban mayor esca:-:.ez.Fn concepto de los minoristas entrevistados, las principales causas dí..' escasez de algunos insumos son: dMicit a nivel mayorista y gran demanda por el producto. Esto puede expresarse como oferta ineficiente o insuficiente. U's criterios según los cuales se rigen los vendedores para deeidir el tipo Y clase de ll.'jumo a comprar son fundamentalmente dos: la demanda del agricultor y su experiencia y tradieí6n en el negocio. Al respecto valdría la pena traer a colaci6n las respuestas dadas por los agricultores a la pregunta de c6mo decide el tipo de insumo Las respuestas más Jrecucn-u.,s fueron en orden de importancia: por experiencia \\\" costumbre; por lo que aconsejen los vecinos .\\ los •vendedorelS. ~61 l'iOI'ha Ru(z de Lundoño. Op. CH.El mercadeo de los insumos agrícolas aquí considerado, así como su produc-ci6n y uso, son relativamente recientes en Colombia. Es obvio entonces que la tradi-ci6n, costumbre, experiencia, etc., no son explicaciones muy aceptables como criwrios que rijan la toma de decisi6n de los agricultores y vendedores. Necesariamente en este proceso están incidiendo o bien las entidades de fomento agrícola, aún a pesar de los porcentajes, o bien los fabricantes de insumos a través de programas publicitarios.Relaci6n vendedor de insumas-agricultor Esta secci6n del estudio trata de identificar el papel que desempeña el vendedol_ en las decisiones del agricultor, los criterios en que basa sus recomendaciones y su actitud ante la ausencia en su almacén de algún insumo demandado por el agricultor. También se hace menci6n de los fertilizantes, insecticidas y tipo de semilla recomendados por el vendedor para el cultjvo de maíz, en la cosecha durante la cual se realizó la encuesta.Se encontró que en promedio el 36 por ciento de los agricultores que compra semilla, fertilizante e insecticida en los almacenes entrevistados. solicita consejo de los vendedores. La informaci6n requerida por el vendedor para dar las recomendaciones pertinentes vada según el insumo. Para los fertilizantes 10 más hecuente es requerir por el tipo de cultivo y/o por las recomendaciones del agrónomo. Para la semilla, el clima donde se va a desarTollar el cultivo y para el insecticida el récord del agrónomo y/o el tipo de insecto que está atacando el maizal.Cuando el agricultor solicita un determinado insumo que el vendedor no tiene, ~ste opta en la mayoría de los casos, por venderle otro producto; bien sea alguno que ~1 crea que lo remplace o cualquier otro que él teng\"a en el almacén.Con el prop6sito de tratar de identificar el conocimiento del vendedor acerca de los problemas de los maizales de la región, se les preguntó sobre cuáles eran los insectos que causaban mayor daño y qué insecticida recomendaba más comúnmente contra ellos. Más de la mitad de los vendedores identificó '?Püdoptera como el insecto más dañino, seguido por Heliothis y Diatraea. Es oportuno recordar que los agrónomos que realizan la encuesta a los agricultores encontraron estos insectos en los cultivos de maíz.El Aldrín y el Toxapheno son 100 insecticidas mayormente recomendados por los vendedores. Estos insecticidas también son los de uso más frecuente entre los agricultores entrevístados.Crédito y condiciones de crédito El 80 por ciento de los vendedores informa que da crédito a los agricultores a un plazo promedio de 140 días. La tasa de interés varía con el plazo; créditos a término de 30 días no pagan interés. S'uperiores a este plazo el interés yarfa según el vendedor: c.~ja AgTaria e Incora cobran interés inferior al 12 por ClenW anual, los al-macenes privados en tanto fijan tasas de interés que van desde el 18 al 30 por ciento anual.El respaldo exigido para otorgar el crédito es primordialmente la hipoteca y la garantra personal. El conocimiento del cliente y sus referencias son factores definitivos para conceder el crédito. Los vendedores que informaron no conceder crédito adujeron como razón fundamental el riesgo, ésto es, que no pueden obtener un respaldo de la deuda suficientemente seguro.Como se observó con los agricultores, solamente el 14 por ciento obtuvo algún crédito para su cultivo, no obstante que la mitad de los entrevistados afirmó no tener problemas para conseguirlo. Sin embargo, parece bastante difícil para el pequeño agricultor cumplir eon las condiciones exigidas por el vendedor para conceder crédito.Fn el propósito de obtener una visión 10 más completa posible de las causas que comorman la problemática de la producción de maíz en pequeñas fincas, se realizaron entrevistas a las agencias de extensión agrícola que operan en las áreas nlrRles de los departamentos y municipios estudiados. Sus conceptos sobre las condiciones agronómicas del cultivo, sirven como complemento y apoyo a la ilÚormación obtenida cn la encuesta de agricultores. De otra parte la evaluación de las limitaciones con que tropieza -el servicio de asistencia técnica, formulada por los agentes de extensión constituye una valiosa ayuda en la identificación del problema estudiado.Se visitaron 42 agencias de extensión, pertenecientes en su totalidad a las entidades de fomento agrrcola. El 26 por ciento de ellas localizado en Antioquia, el 41 por ciento en Tolima y el 33 ¡x:>r ciento en Boyacá. Los entrevistados son ingenieros agr6nomos y prácticos agrícolas que prestan el servicio de extensi6n o lo administran.Para el 70 por ciento de las agencias entrevistadas, su área de trabajo cubre un promedio de cuatro a cinco municipios por agencia y es atendida por tres o cuatro agentes de extensión. Vale decir, un municipio por cada agente de extensión aproximadamente. El área promedia por municipio es de 60.000 hectáreas. Existen también las agencias centrales (el 30 por ciento restante) cuya área de trabajo es todo el departamento.El número de agricultores de mafz atendidos por cada agencia varía sustancialmente de un departamento a otro. En Antioquia cada agencia atiende un promedio de (jGO agricultores de maíz por semestre, en Tolima 70 y en Boyacá 280.El ~H por ciento de las agencias entrevistadas presta asistencia t6cnica en maíz. Los agricultores atendidos son en un 90 por ciento pequeños agricultores con fincas cuyo tamaño es irúerior a las 10 hectáreas.Evaluaci6n agronómica del cultivo de maíz Agu{ se presenta la evaluaci6n agron6mica del cultivo de maíz de pequeños a-¡¡ricultores, formulada por los agentes de extensi6n entrevistados. En términos generales los problemas por ellos mencionados, son esencialmente los mismos identificados en este estudio a través de las encuestas a agricultores.Lo más interesante quizás, es el aspecto de condiciones .Y controles fitosanitarias. En los tres niveles estudiados o consultados: productor, minorista de insumo s agrícolas y agencias de extensi6n, se encuentra unanimidad. en la identificaci6n de las plagas que atacan el mafz y del tipo de control qufmico usado y/o recomendado. Esta situaci6n parece apoyar la híp6tesis formulada anteriormente sobre la influencia de las entidades de fomento agrícola o de los fabricantes, en la toma de decisi6n del tipo de insumo a usar en el caso de los agricultores. o del insumo a vender en el caso de los minoristas. Los resultados obtenidos hacen factible dar cr6dito a las entidades de fomento agrícola a pesar de que ni los agricultores ni los vendedores los mencionan como partrcipes de su decisi6n.E valuación del servicio de asistencia técnica El 53 por ciento de los agentes de extensiÓn entrevistados, estima que el servicio de asistencia técnica suministrado no es el mejor que se pueda brindar. Las razones para esta afirmaci6n son dos principalmente:No se puede llegar a un buen número de agricultores debido a escasez de personal, indisponibilidad de transporte y dispersi6n de los agricultores,La tecnología dihmdida no puede ser adoptada por el agricultor debido a su falta de recursos econ6micos y de educaci6n.En raz6n a los Umitantes mencionados opinan que se podría mp.jorar el servicio si se dispusiera de más recursos para el funcionamiento del servicio de extensi6n en sr mismo, y para suministrar crédito a los agricultores.Factores gue inciden en bajos rendimientos de maíz A solicitud de los entrevistadores los agentes de extensi6n visitados, enunciaron en orden de importancia los factores que, en su opinión, afectan los rendimientos de maíz en la región. Se observa que el uso de semilla de bajos rendimientos, es el factor mencionado como el más importante por el ,1} por ciento de los entrevístados. \"Co 20 por ciento opina en tanto, que es la falta de agua el factor más importante. En segundo término estaría la falta de minerales, en opini6n del 31 por ciento de los entrevistados.En términos generales se encUIO'utra que es la semilla de bajos rendimientos, el factor más limiiante de la producción on conceptcJ de los extensionistas. El 72 por ciento la ubica en los tres primeros lugares. Al daño de insectos, a la falta de agua y a la mala preparación de la tierra, se les da un lugar secundario: s6lo el 38 por ciento los clasifica entre los tres primeros factores de bajos rendimientos, o sea que el 62 por ciento piensa que su incidencia es mínima. Por 10 que respecta a las malezas y enfermedades podría afirmarse, en base a 108 resultados, que no se les concede casi ninguna importancia.A nivel no de la producción regional, sino de la producción nacional de maíz, opinan que el uso de semilla mejorada y mejores técnicas de cultivo son factores importantes para aumentar los rendimientos de maíz.Evaluación del sistema de créditD para pequeños productores El 66 por ciento de los técnicos visitados cree que el sistema de crédito existente no es el mejor para el pequeño agricultor, piensa que podría mejorarse coordinándolo con asistencia técnica y ampliando los cupos y condiciones de crédito.Con respecto a la pregunta de si pequeños productores de maíz pueden obtener la cantidad de crédito que necesitan, el 63 por ciento contest6 que no debido a que tienen que llenar una serie de requisitos a más de tener lUl1l propiedad que pueda ser hipotecada.Evaluación del mercadeo de insumas y productos Las dificultades de transporte especialmente y en menor escala los bajos precios, son anotados por los extensionistas como los principales problemas que encuentra el agric)Jltor para el mercadeo de sus productDs.En cuanto al mercadeo de insumas, cerca de la mitad creen que existen problemas con la oferta de estos productos; especialmente problemas de escasez y por tanto sus recomendaciones se ven sometidas a las existencias del almacén.En general los extensionistas no creen que los vendedores de insumo s sean fuente de consejo importante para el agricultor, asf como tampoco ellos se consideran fuente de informaci6n para el vendedor."}

main/part_2/0320708197.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":null,"keywords":null,"sieverID":"6a6fe02d-2922-45ec-97fb-f3f21701c232","content":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"}

main/part_2/0337230468.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"968631198aa6e80362bf2889735c625b","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/b1a32f32-25cb-4f4a-8527-afa75df69880/retrieve","id":"-1133471745"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"7b565103-8c2f-4522-9097-b718d946055d","content":"Burkina Faso, plus de deux tiers de la population dépendent de l'agriculture pluviale comme source de nourriture et de revenus. Cependant, la rareté et l'insuffisance de l'eau ou l'irrégularité de la pluviométrie expose les agriculteurs à des risques de perte de leurs récoltes. Le changement climatique aggrave la variabilité pluviométrique et rend la pluviométrie moins fiable. Néanmoins, les différentes catégories d'usagersagriculteurs, pêcheurs, éleveurs, usagers domestiques, citadins, industries émergentes -et les écosystèmes dépendent de l'accès à l'eau en qualité et en qualité suffisantes en temps opportun.Depuis les années 90, le Burkina Faso promeut des politiques de gestion intégrée des ressources en eau, enréponse à la tendance de développement mondial d'une part, et pour parvenir à une distribution plus équitable de l'eau d'autre part. Cependant, les autorités locales peinent à gérer les ressources en eau de manière intégrée, et l'écart entre les politiques nationales et la gouvernance locale de l'eau reste important. L'un des défis majeurs est l'absence d'une compréhension commune du concept de gestion intégrée des ressources en eau entre décideurs politiques et les usagers de l'eau.Au cours de la seconde phase (2010)(2011)(2012)(2013) de la recherche du Challenge Program on Water and Food (Programme de défi pour l'eau et l'alimentation, CPWF) du Groupe consultatif pour la rechercheLa modélisation d'accompagnement a motivé les membres du Comité Local de l'Eau dans le bassin versant de la Bougouriba à se rencontrer plus souvent, à élaborer un plan de gestion, et à assumer leur rôle de mise en oeuvre de la gestion intégrée des ressources en eau.Le potentiel de développement de l'utilisation de la modélisation d'accompagnement existe. La modélisation d'accompagnement peut aider à opérationnaliser plus de trente comités locaux de l'eau et à faire progresser la mise en oeuvre de la gestion intégrée des ressources en eau au Burkina Faso. "}

main/part_2/0376806611.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"d9bb10cf5878479ebd20be91d84f39f9","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/6f5f251e-0e11-493a-9e50-1b5ee3095ab2/retrieve","id":"-43499428"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"a3ca8d82-d201-4e6b-bb1d-b229d8df02c3","content":"Maize (Zea mays L.) is Ihe mas! important crop in Ihe hill farming system in Nepal. It plays an important role in the livelíhood of the people living in lbe Mis. The hilIy area of the Palpa, Gulmi, and Arghakhanchi districts eXlending lowards Pyuthan and further weSI has a unique geophysical environmenl, which is different from other maize-growing areas in Nepal. Farroers in Ihis area not only have poor aecess lo agricultural inputs, including improved genetic materials, bUI the improved varieties tested so far do not exactly match Ihe unique growing condilions .nd the needs of farmers in the area. Therefore, Ihe major proportion of maize in the Palpa, Gulmí, and Arghakhanchi districts is domínated by local variolies. Several f.cton; are responsible for low productívity and for other associated problems of maíz. production in Ihe area. lnitia!ly researchers perceived low yields assocíated with inferior local vanetíes as lhe main constrainl in maize produclion for lbe area. Based on pasl expenence and success in upgrading the productivity of local landraces through lbe introductíon of high-yielding varieties and subsequenl seed selechon, a breedíng program was formulaled in order lO address Ihe problem. The inít.al objective of the program was to increase fanners' access to new, improved genetic materials and provide them with trainíng on mass seleelion. However, a dífferenl seenario emerged during lhe site-selecrian survey and lhe process of settiog research goals. Farroers reported lhal maíze productíon in lhe area was aff.cled maínly by lodging problerns, Farmers in Ihe area have deveJoped and maínlaíned a variety called Thulo pínyalo Ihal produces good yields and a1so meets theirfodder requiremenls. However, the variety is prone lO severe lodgíng, resulting in yield losses of 15% lo 85%. Farrners lherefore strongly suggesled tha! ralher lban introducing new varieties, their local varieties be improved 10 address Ihe problem. In Ihis way, Ihe breeding program changed trom increasing grain yield to reducing lodging in Ihe target envíronrnenl. Thís paper discusses how farmers set their own breedíng goals and Ihe implícalions for methodological approaches ro participatory plan! breeding.Maize (Zea mays L.) is the second most importan! crop after rice in Nepal. It is grown largely on ban land (rainfed upland cornmonly associated with farm forestry) during summer and usually rotated with millet or beans. Maize is also grown as the sole crop at lower altitudes (below 1000 m) and at higher altitudes (above 1600 m). It is also grown in khet land (bunded land where at least one crop of puddled rice is cultivated) at altitudes below 1000 m during the spring season. Maize cultivation occupies nearly 0.8 million hectares (almost 30% of the total cultivated area), and 80% of this is under terraced hill fanning, producing over 1.3 millíon tones/annum (MoA 1995).The productivíty ofmaize is quite low (about 1.7 tonneslhectare), which is reflected by a high incidence offood-deficit households in the hills ofNepal. A number of factors appear to be involved in M, Subedi is a prograrnme officer (plant breeder), P.K. Shrestha is a programme officer (socioeconomist), S. Sunwar is an asst, plant the low productivity ofmaize in the middle hílls ofNepal. These ínclude raínfed farming with uncertain rainfall, poor access to chemical fertilizers and declining application of organic manure, and lack ofvarietal options and access to improved genetic malerials suitable lo local conditions.ln areas where improved maize varieties have been introduced, farmers tend lo grow the same seed for a number of years without replacing it or without practicing standard seed-selection procedures. As a result, these varieties generally deteriorate rapidly due to genetic contamination with poorer heterogeneous landraces aml/or due lo unconscious selection for negative traits, as farmers generally use either grain for seed or seleet harvested cob for the seed. Practice ofselecting standing plants for the seed is rarely seen among the farmers.From the point ofview ofvarietal improvement, the problem ofmaize production in the hilly areas ofNepal is therefore threefold. First, farmers' access to new, improved germplasm is highly limited; second, the recommended varieties do no! mee! the multiple varielal needs of local farmers; and third, varietal deterioration occurs over time in the farmers' fields. To address these problems, Local Initiatives for Biodiversity Research and Development (LI-BlRO) is currently researching a farmer-Ied participatory plant-breeding (PPB) exercise in maize in the Gulmi district ofthe westem hills ofNepal.The maize-growing envirornnent of Gulmi has a unique geophysical envirornnent and represents the large hi1ly areas of the Palpa, GuImi, and Arghakhanchi districts extending towards Pyuthan and further west. The maize is grown in outward sloped terraces of bari land under raínfed conditions, with minimal external inputs (seeds, fertilizers, and plant-protection measures). Farmers in the area have poor access lO agricultural inpuIs, including improved genetic materials (Kadayat et al. 1998;Sthapit el al. 1997). Moreover, access 10 new sources of maize germplasm-thal closely matches farmer-preferred traits-in the traditional seed-supply system is limited. A survey ofpreferred trails carried out in 16 villages in the Gulmi district revealed that grain and fodder yield, aato (grit) recovery, taste in various cuisines, graín color, resistance to lodging, and time ofmaturity are the most cornmonly cited preferred traíts (Subedi and Shrestha, Unpublished; Kadayat et al. 1998). As a result, the major proportion of the maize area in the Palpa, Gulmi, and Arghakhanchi districts is planted to local varieties. The local varieties are the products of continuous seed selection carried out by farmers, consciously or unconsciously, over many generations and are well adapted to the local envirornnents and meet furmers' multiple needs. However, these varieties have a number of undesirable traits that require urgent attention in order lo ensure food security in the regíon.LI-BIRO carried out a study to analyze the situation in the Gulmi and Arghakhanchi districts lo develop a future strategy for agriculture. Maíze was the most important crop; however, average productivity was reported to be low: below 1.5 tfha in both districts (Kadayat et al. 1998;Sthapit et al. 1997). This may be partly due lO a low supply of inputs in these districts, as the improved seed sold by Ale during 1996/97 was 1.22 mt in Gulmi and 0.91 mI in Arghakhanchi (Kadayat et al. 1998;   Sthapit et al. 1997). Researchers concluded that the low maíze 'yields were due to poor access to new, improved genetic materials and deterioration offarmers' maintained variety because ofpoor seed-management practices (figure 1). In such a situation, providing farmers with improved maize varieties and seed-selection skills appeared to be a practical and sustainable solution. As a resuIl, helping farmers improve local maize varieties for yield-related traits became the goal of the programo However, A different scenario emerged duríng the selectíon survey for lhe research site and in research-planning discussions wilh farmers at lhe research sites. Farmers felt lhat poor production performañce was associated wilh the lodging of maize plants ralher than yield traits, lhemselves, in most commonly grown local maize varíeties.An extensive reconnaissance survey was conducted in large areas of the Palpa, Gulmí, and Arghakhanchi distrícts during the process of selecting research sites for the project A rapid survey of28 villages was done, and farmers were consulted to verify the research problems in maize production and determine lhe suítability of these villages for implementation ofthe research programo Potential sites were screened and narrowed down to síx villages. Particípatory rural appraisal (PRA) and field observations were done by a multidisciplinary team in lhese villages. Discussions were held in the farming cornmunities during the site-selection process in order to colleet information about lhe geophysical condition ofthe area, socioeconomíc situation ofthe farming cornmunities, and farmers' interest ín ｾ ＠ lhe proposed programo Problems were discussed with farmers in greater length during lhe survey. Preferred-trait analysis was done during the PRA to verify the researchable problems. Major traits of interest and problems associated with the preferred traits were identified in the process.Varietal performance for the trait of interest was díscussed wilh farmers duríng lhe site-selectíon survey in order to understand farmers' needs and varíetal strengths and weaknesses in relation to a particular trait. Thís exercise was important in order to develop a breeding program based on needs and problems. In this process, ínformatíon on lhe desirable and undesirable characteristics ofbolh local and reeornmended ímproved varietíes was colleeted.Farmers were found to grow a number ofvarietíes (viz. Thulo pinyalo, Thulo seto, Sano pinyalo, Sano seto, Amrikane, Kaude, Rato dhanthe, Thorgeli pinyalo) to suit their growing environment and to meet theír household needs. Thulo pinyalo is the mosl popular variety ofthe region and occupies as rnuch as 80% ofthe maize area in sorne villages. Farmers liked rnost ofits traits. This variety has good taste in all recipes, good grain and fodder yield, the biomass (both green and dried) is very rnuch líked by the livestock, and it is easy to sel! and barter because it has bold, fiint grain with an attractive grain color. However, farmers had lodging problems with this variety, leading to as much as 85% production 1055 in the worst season (table 1). Lodging problerns are equally high in other local varieties (viz. Thulo seto and Amrikane); however, the arca under these varieties is very low. It was reported that the low production of Thulo pinyalo has more significant implications for the food security ofthe region than any other variety. So, the lodging in Thulo pinyalo was considered a major problem.Resistance to lodging frorn thick stalks and strong, stout plants has been perceived by the farmers of the surveyed villages as the rnost desired characteristic in a recommended improved variety (table          2). The least desired characteristics were a relatively low grain and fodder yield compared to that of large local varieties, followed by inferior taste. Low fodder yields have been found to be associated with the low height of improved maize varieties, compared to local varieties. Farmers of Banjha reported lhat al! fue improved varieties under cultivation in the village were introduced nearly six years before, and now there is no difference between local and ímproved, due to heavy and récurren! cross-fertilization with local varieties.F armers of the surveyed villages reported that high-yield potential and resistant to lodging were the most preferred traits for maíze, followed by good taste and high stover yield (table 3). Farmers perceived that graín yield is closely associated wíth the extent of lodging; they felt that these two parameters are highly interrelated and essentially synonymous. Farmers ofDarbar-Devisthan reported that lodging problems are due to tall plant height, and therefore, they perceived relatively shorter plant height as one of the mos! preferred traits to be considered in the maize improvement programo Revisiting farmers 10 discuss maize-production problems in the targeted area and to verify research hypotheses with farmers revealed that causal relationships in poor maize performance were no! properly established. Earlíer, a new research hypothesis surfaced, which explained Ihat the poor               performance of maize in the area is not due to yield traits but to lodging tendencies, and this, in turno leads to poor production (figure 2).In light ofthe new research hypothesis that emerged during the site-selection survey, a one-day village workshop was organized with the farmers at each research site selected for the implementatíon of the program. Farmers at the research siles opined that the local variety Thulo pinyalo has good yield and meets their requirements. They strongly suggested improvíng Thulo pinyalo for lodging resístance rather than just introducing new varieties. The underlying causes of lodging in Thulo • The very tall plant stature ofthis variety is the main reason for lodging. Farmers reported it having as high as 27 ¡eaves in one plant. In field observations, the plant height of Thulo pinyalo was found to be as high as 5.1 meters. Ear height has been found lo be more than two meters under good growth conditions. The weight of the tassel and eob al such a height contributes to the extensive lodging of the thin-stalked Thulo pinyalo, even under mild wind pressure.• Thulo pinyalo artains luxurious grov.ih in fertile land, which is one ofthe reasons for lodging.• Disease and insects attack the stem.• The lodging is greater after prolonged rainfall foIlowed by winds. Aceording lo farmers, they faee substantíal yield reductíons even with mild winds, as very weak plants lodge under such conditions and fall on other, nonlodging plants. This phenomenon oecurs in cycles and can affeet large areas.• The plants are more prone lO lodging during the lasselíng stage because of Ihe increased weighl al the top of the plant.• Yield is inversely related lo lodging. Yield los ses due to lodgíng in this variety are as high as 85% in the worst season. Thulo pinyalo produces more grain than high-yielding varieties (HYV s) in a normal season and less if there is a Jot of rain and wind.• Lodging is greater in wet areas al lower e1evations than in flat areas at the lop of the hills.• Lodging does not QCcur every year. However, there is no distinct partero. High winds during tasseling contribute to severity of the problem.Several possible options were discussed with the farmers lO achieve the goal. The options that could be implemented within Ihe project framework and which farmers considered possible lo imple-ment, considering their resources (time), knowlcdge, and skills, were chosen by the farmers' group. There were mainly three types of activities: a mass-selection program, a crossing program, and a participatory variety selection (PVS) programoThe involvement of farmers in analysis of researchable problems helped change the researchers' perceptions ofthe problem (table 4) and redefine the goal oflhe maize-improvement programo The redefinirion ofthe breeding goals ofthe maize-improvement program provided guidelines for refining the research process !hat had been proposed initially. A multiple approach (mass selection, crossing, screening of improved/pipeline varieties, and PVS) was taken to address the problems, some of which had not been considered before, F armers liked the mass-selection technique because they perceived it as a simple method and as a possible option to improve specific traits, keeping the desirable traits ofthe variety intact. The crossing program was chosen in consideration ofthe slow genetíc gain in fue mass-selection method, partícularly in farmers' fields, Considering the long gestation period ofthe variety-improvement program, which may delay the delivery ofbenefits to the farmers, the variety-selection program was planned. This would provide farmers with access to new, improved genetic materials to test in ruverse farming situations,A farmers' research committee was formed at each site in order lo empower farmers and to ensure farmers' leadership in the project. It was decided that the committee would be equally responsible for the planning, implementation, and mO!litoring ofproject activities. The committee works as an interface between farmers and researchers. It is expected that involving farmers in the planning and  implementatíon process will help in capacity building and increase ¡he farmers' sense of ownership in the programo Farmers are very supportive and cooperative in the project area. However, in some technical matters farmers' had different perceptions and altitudes, which changed along with the time. For exampie, farmers perceived that plants with short height could not produce good yields, that detasseling leads to total sterility in maíze, etc. In the beginning, Ihis made it difficult for researchers to facilitate some oflhe field activities, such as crossíng, demonstrating short-statured varietíes, etc. Later, the farmers found thal their perceptions were not correct, and their faith in the researchers increased, leading to better understanding, cooperation, and collaboratíon. Some farmers who were no! positive about the program in the begirming are the strongest members ofthe team now.Involvement offarmers in the plarming process resulted in the development of more specific breeding objectives, which were more focused on the farmers' perceíved needs. It has helped to refine the context and process of the participatory plant-breedíng program and has gíven farmers a leading role in the decision-makíng process. In eastem India, rainfed rice represents a major component in thediet and income,of.millions of resource-poor people. In these harsh environments, the rate of adoption of modem rice varieties is Iow. Subsístence agriculture ís stilI quite important, although market integration is slowly progressing (Pingali 1997). In these transition systems, grain quality and taste strongly ínfluence the adoplion of modem vaneties. The maín source of vanation in grain qualíty ís the vanety, although envíronment and genotype-x-environment interactíons also affect grain quality. Different grain types, and therefore dífferent vaneties, are needed for self-consumptíon, market sale, and vanous preparatiollS or to pay wages in kínd. For plain rice, precooking practíces influence the vanetal choíces. Among the most common is parboíling, which is an age-old practíce in sorne regions of eastem India, where rice ís partly cooked before being air-dried and then sun-dried to improve íts nutritíonal, cookíng, and storage attributes, Preferences may vary across income levels, various social groups requiring vanous vaneties.Qualíty tests for breeding lines are routinely conducted by scientists in the laboratory. In the frame of a partícipatory plant-breeding project with methodologícal objectives started in ¡ 997 under the collaborative program wíth the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and the Internatíonal Rice Research Institute (IRRI) (Courtois et al. 1999), we developed a methodology to evaluate the grain quality ofrice vaneties in collaboration with fanners. To test the methodology, the Eva/tia/ion o{ Uplalld Rice Varieties-\"w\"'it!!.\".!-F:-\"'arcem\"'e;e:rs'--_______________ _ sensory evaluation of a set of upland rice varieties was organized in a village of eastem India. The objectives of this study were (l) lo document the process of rice preparation at the farm level for raw and parboiled rice, (2) to estimate the influence of the two modes of preparation on rice quality and identify the best varÍeties in each case, (3) to colleet informa1Íon about quality characteristics that determine varÍetal acceptability by female and male farmers, and (4) 10 relate the preferences with the physico-chemical properties of the varieties determined in laboratory.Fifieen modem upland rice varieties and a local check (Brown Gora, widely grown by upland farmers) were tested. The test was conducted in 1998 in the village ofthe Korahar dÍstrict ofHazaribagh, Bihar, India. These varieties had been prevÍously tested for their agronomic values in a participatory varietal tria! conducted in the same víllage (Courtois et al., submitted).Rawrice F or each variety, two kilos of sun-dried paddy of good quality were used. The paddy was dehulled and mílled using a dhenld, a big wooden bar moving up and down around an axis. The dhenld was operated by two women, one of them moving Ihe dhenld wÍIh her leg, the other shuffiíng the paddy grain afier every stroke of the dhenki. Al! Ihe varieties were dehulled and milled by Ihe same two persons under the same condítions. The times necessary for completion of dehulling and milling, and Ihe milling recovery (percentage of milled rice weight on rough rice weight) were recorded.The head rice recovery (unbroken grains) was not quantified but estimated visually (milled rice appearance ).Before cooking, one kilo of c1eaned rice was washed with water. Aluminum vessels called bhude/i were used to cook each variety separately. All bhude/i were ofthe same capacity. The women sug• gested using 3 liters of water to cook I kg of raw rice. The bhude/i wilh water was kept on the fire up to Ihe boiling point, when the washed rice was added. The cooking test was done by pressing the cooked rice between Ihumb and index finger. The same woman did the eooking test for all varie1Íes.The cooking time of each variety was recorded. The excess water was drained and Ihe cooked rice was displayed on a pattal (leaf mat) for sensory evaluation.As decided by the women, 2.5 kg of paddy were soaked in 3 liters of water in a tin container for 18 houis. A common belief is that the soaking of paddy should be done in the evening rather than during daytime, wilh the excess water drained in the moming, to avoid Ihe heat oflhe day. A temperature Ihat is too high would induce Ihe soaked paddy to ferment, leading to poor rice quality, high breakage, and bad odor (Bhattacharya 1985). The soaking ofpaddy in water startedat 4:00 p.m. and the water was drained al 10:00 am the next day. Afier decanting Ihe water, the soaked paddy was steamed on Ihe fire. During Ihe steamÍng process, the tin containing the soaked paddy was covered with a gunny bag to avoid loss ofheat. When Ihe husks of the paddy started cracking, Ihe container was taken off the fire. The steamed paddy was spread in the shade on a mud floor for drying. The paddy was dried in the shade for 48 hours wilh intermittent mixing. It was then exposed lo Ihe sun for complete drying. An indigenous technique was used to test the proper drying ofpaddy. Twenty lo 30 grains ofpaddy were dropped on a hard floor. The graíns were crushed underfoot by rotating Ihe heet If this removed Ihe grain husk, Ihe rice was considered to be well dried and ready for dehulling. For dehullíng and milling, 2 kg of c1eaned paddy were used and the same process as for raw rice was followed.More water is needed to cook parboiled rice than lo cook raw rice. The women suggested adding 7 liters ofwater to cook 1 kg ofparboiled rice. For the subsequent operations, the same process was followed as for raw rice.A protoco! for lhe practica! organization ofthe sensory evaluation was desígned following the recommendations of Arnerine, Pangborn, andRoessler (1965) andDel Mundo (1991) and adapting them to the realities of an eastern lndian village.Twenty-four farmers (12 women and 12 men) particípated in Ihe sensory evaluation, A hedonic scale was used. The farmers were asked lo indicate whetherthey líked (score 1) ordisliked(score O) the varieties for mílled grain appearance, cooked rice appearance, odor, color, texture (softlhard), stickiness, laste, and overall acceptability. The samples were numbered and randomized to límit the \"first-sample bias.\" The raw rice and parboiled rice were evaluated on different days to limil the teslers' fatigue.The tests were perforrned at the technology laboratory Gf the Central Rice Research Institute, Cuttack, India, for raw rice and in N.D. University of Agriculture and Technology, Masodha, Faizabad, India, for parboiled rice, The parameters measured for raw rice were milling recovery, head rice recovery, grain length and width, alkali value, volurne-expansion ratio, kernel-elongation ratio, and amylase content. For parboiled rice, hulJing and milling recovery and grain shape were measured.Forrank comparison, Spearrnan's coefficient of correlatíon was used when only two rankings were compared. A Kendall coefficient of concordance was used, as described in Siegel (1956), when more than two rankers were involved. The mean comparisons were perforrned using a Student's t-test.No difference between the two modes ofpreparation was observed for mílling time (table 1). Raw rice took significantly less time to cook as compared to parboiled rice. Milling recoverywas significantly higher for parboíled rice in comparison to raw rice. There was no significant difference between farmers' practices and laboratory method for raw rice but recovery was higher with farrners' practices for parboiled rice. The lower coefficients of variation in the case of parboiled rice índicated a buffering effect ofparboiling across varieties for recovery, which explains why parboiling is considered an excellent means to recover poor-qualíty samples.The method of rice preparation had a great impact on the ranking ofthe rice varieties for aH traits, as shown by the nonsignificant and sometimes negative rank correlations between the two seis of Note: ** = signifieant at (be 1% leve1; ns ｾ ＠ flot significant seores (table 2). The preferred varieties in tenns of aeceptabilíty were RRI51-3, RR352-1, and RR354-1 for raw rice, and RR50-5, RR352-1, and RR354-1 for parboiled rice. For breeding purposes, it was interesting to identifY varieties that could perfonn well under both preparations. RR352-1 and RR354-1 scored quite well in this respect.The farmers were also asked to indicate the fOUT varieties they liked the mosl (high seore indiealed high preferenee) and the fOUT varieties they liked the least (this time high seores indicated high dislíke). By this means, only one variety, RR354-1 recorded a good seore for both raw and parboiled rice (table 3), being liked by 67% ofthe farmers as parboiled rice and 58% ofthe fanners as raw rice. RR151-3 and RR352-1 were apprecíated by the farmers as raw rice but not as parboíled rice.Inversely, RR2-6, RR I 66-645 , and RR265-1 were líked by the farmers as parboíled rice but not as raw rice.For raw riee as well as parboiled rice, the rank correlatíons among characteristícs scored by funners were very strong and posítive (table 4) except for stickiness, for which they were also positive but more seldom significant. This means that there is probably no need ID ask the fanners to seore aH these traits. The aeceptability or the choice of the three or four most preferred varieties should be enough to represent the group of traits. A simplification of the testing procedure an important in order to facilítate the integratíon of partícípatory approaches ín the fonual breeding system and tD sustaín fanners' participatíon. :.:. >:  Opinions of women and men fanners were similar, with significant to highly significant correlations between their rankings for milled rice appearance, cooked rice appearance, texture, color, and taste (table 5). The on1y traite for which their agreement was weaker was stickiness ami, to lower extent, odor. In terrns of overall acceptability, there was no difference in women and men farmers' opinions on the tested varieties nor in their final choices of the varieties they liked most and leasl.The ranks given by farmers for the various quality traits were compared with the ranks ofthe same varieties for the main chemical properties of raw rice measured in the laboratory: alkali value, volume expansion, amylase content, and eIongation ratio. Elongation ability was negatively correlated with stickiness r -0.55, significant at the 5% leve!) but that was the only significant case. In the samples tested, amylase conten! did not seem to have any link to farmers preferences for texture r = -0.14) or stiekiness r = 0.04).It is unexpected to see so few relationships between consumer preferences and measurable chemical properties, since these are standard parameters used by all chemistry laboratories. However, for the varieties inc1uded in the evaluation, the variability for sorne traits was limited and therefore consumers had difficulty assessing differences.There was little relationship between farmers' field ranking and grain quality for parboiled rice, as shown by the very low coefficients of correlation for rank and a negative one for the ranking based on yieJd (tabIe 6). The relationship was stronger and positive for raw rice. Thete was no particular reason why the rankings should be correlated, but a strong negative correlation would complicate the breeding work. These results confirm tha! participatory varietal selection should not stop afier harvest. Sinee a compromise might be necessary, at least for parboiled rice, the trade-offbetween eritena for agronomic performance and cooking quality applied by farmers has to be assessed.  Grain quality is an important selection criterion (Juliano and Villareal 1993), Sensory evaluation with farmers allows us to assess varietal preferences under conditions of food preparabon very close to that of the final consUmer. F or the set of varieties tested, men and women seemed to share the same opinions. The physico-chemical analysis <lid not indicate much power to predict the results of farmers' rankings, The methodology was satisfactory although quite costly in tenns of organizabon time. It is importan! to define whích of the two modes of preparation (raw rice or parboiling) is mos! prevalent in the target area, since they lead to different varietal cholees. A slmplification of the ranking system by reducing the number of ranked traits is possible,Maize is the firsl mos! important food crop in the hílls ofNepal in terms ofboth area and its eontribution to household food security. It occupies about 0.8 million hectares (about 35% ofthe total cultiva!ed area); 78% ofthis is in terraced hill fanning, which produces over 1.3 million lonnes per annurn (CBS 1999). The productivity of maize, however, is quite low (L 7 lonneslhectare) and, as a result, there lS high incidence offood-deficit households in the hills ofNepa!. One of the major contributing factors lo this low yield is the poor perfonnance of fanner-mamtained maíze varieties. Fanners' access to new seeds and varieties is extremely poor and, al the same time, a majority of farmers tend lO keep their own seed without replacing it for years. It ís estimated that nearly 90% of the total seed requirements for eereals and other food crops in the country is met by the traditional seed-supply system (Cromwell et al. 1993;Joshi 1995). Sinee maíze is an open-pollinated crop, even new varieties rapidly get contaminated with the undesired traits oflocal varieties. On the other hand, most of the new varieties developed so far neither fit well with local environments nor meet farmers' diverse needs. Therefore, it lS increasingly being realized that breeding must be carried out in the target envirournent with the full participation of farmers so that the users' perspective is well reflected in the new varieties developed. -The environments where maíze is produced in the hills ofNepal are very diverse in tenns oftopography, soil types, and use of production resources. There are also differences between fanners and fanning cornmunities in terrns of aecess to resources (Le., wealth) and food culture, whích is govemed largely by ethnicity. These dífferences exist no! only between wider agroecological zones bu! also between fanning famílies in the same víllage. F or these reasons, fanners require a large number of varietal options to fit into diverse production ni ches and to meet the varied consumption Various sources of ínformatíon have been used in lhe reporto These include focus-group discussions (FGDs) conducted during particípatory rural appraisals, particípatory gender analysis, and household baseline surveys undertaken at the Darwar Devísthan and Simichaur research sites at lhe inceptíon of the project. Separate FGD sessíons were held wilh different groups of furmers, categorized by gender, wealth, and ethnicity. Ihere were two categories under gender-male and female; three categories under wealth-rich, average, and poor; and three categories under ethnicíty-BrahminlChhetri/Jogi (BCJ), GurungIMagarlNewar (GMN), and KamiIDamai/Sarki (KDS). The categorízation of farming-household weallh was done by lhe farmers themselves, using their own perceptions and knowledge of wealth of lhese households. The ethnic categorization was done by researchers on the basis of sociocultural similarities.The participatory gender analysis involved lhe analysis of gender roles and decision-making pattems in lhe production and utilization system for maize. A sample of 30 selected households was facilítated in doing lheir own gender anaIysis by using a pictorial set of aman, woman, and child, and maize grains, to indicate their roles. Similarly, a detailed household baseline survey was conducted to colleet detailed and widely representative information, which al50 served as a major source of information for this reporto It involved a questionnaire survey of 100 households (40 at Darwar Devisthan and 60 at Simichaur) selected using a stratified random sampling technique.Users' perspectives in maize production and utilizationThe perspective of users in maize production and utilization was analyzed u5ing two socioeconomic variables: ethnicity and the weallh categories derived from participatory wealth ranking. The analysis of gender perspectives, on lhe other hand, utilized inforrnation from male-and female-headed sample households lhat were included in lhe household baseline survey. Ofthe total sample households surveyed, 19% were female headed. These are mostly de jacto household heads, Le., women have taken charge of managing the farm while men work off-farm away from home for several months, mostly in India.The characteristics of the heads of maize-growing households are presented in table l. The family members who make major farming deeisions are mature, with an average age of 50 yeara. Their literaey rate is much higher (81 %) compared to the nationalliteracy rate (39.6%). However, a majority ofthem (47%) are either barely literate or have a primary-Ievel school education. The family member making tbe main farming decisions is younger and more iIIiterate in the average and poor wealth eategories, in tbe KDS and GMN ethnie households, and in female-headed households.The charaeteristics of the maize-growing households are presented in table 1. The maize-farming families are relatively larger than nonfarming families, with an average of seven members per faroily. The family size is, however, relatively smaller in the average and poor wea1th categories and in tbe KDS and GMN ethnic households than in other households. Thi, implies that the family labor availabJe to these households is less than in other households. Though farming is the major oceuparion for tbe households of tbe two research sites, fami Iy members of72% ofthe farming households are engaged in off-farm activiries to earn additional cash ¡ncome for the family. The percentage distribution oftbese households across wealth categories and male-and female-headed households is similar. The percentage ofhouseholds with farnily members engaged in off-farm acrivities, however, is slightly higher in the GMN and KDS households than in the BC] households.Maize is the main livelihood crop fo. tbe farmera of the research sites. The maize production in the area is subsistence-oriented and production is largely for self-consumption. The self-produced food, however, is not adequate to mee! household food requirements. About 86% of tbe farming household experiences food deficits from less than one to 1I months of the year, and the average length of food self-sufficiency ís only about seven months. The degree of food deficiency varies among the different household categories. The average time of food self-sufficiency is lower in average and poor households, in BCJ and KDS ethnic households, and in female-headed households.Only a small proportion ofthe households (10.4%) sell maize. The proportion ofhouseholds selling maize is similar across households of different ethnic eategories but is lower in the average and poor households and in male-headed households. A high proportion of the households (61 %) purchase maize to offset theÍf food-grain deficit. The differences in the proportion of households purchasing maize is highJy significant (p < .0001) across'wealth categories but no! significant across ethnic categories and across male-and female-headed households. There is virtually no market influence on farmera' choice ofmaize varieties.In general, farmera are smallholders witb an average maize-growing harí land holding ofO.4 hectare, scattered over an average number of 2.3 parcels (table 1). (Bari represents rainfed upland where amaize-based cropping system is dominant.) The average holding size and tbe number of parcels of barí land decrease with the wealth ofthe farming household. The differences in barí land holdings are highJy significant across wealth categories (p < .0001). Simílarly, the variation in number of parcels of barí land per household is also significant (p < .05) across wealth categories. These differences in harí land holdings and the number of harí parcels per household are not statistically significant across either ethnic categories or male-and female-headed households.  Livestock fonns an important and integral part of the fanning system and, among other things, provides a major source of nutrients (Le., manure) for plants. Buffalo, cattle, goats, and chickens are the main kínds oflivestock in the area, wíth an average lívestock unít of2.8 per household. The average livestock unít ís highest among households in the rich and BeJ categories and lowest in poor and KDS households. This difference is significant across wealth (p < .0001) and ethnic (p < .01) categories. Simílarly, the female•headed households have lower livestock units per household than the male-headed households, but this dífference is not statistícaI1y significant. The resource analysis thus indícates that BeJ households have the most resources, followed by GMN households, while KDS households have the fewest resources. Similarly, female-headed households have comparatívely fewer resources than rnale-headed households.The access farmers have to improved maize varieties suitable to local environments and their own needs ís quite límited (table 1). Only 13% ofthe fanners reported growing improved varieties of maize; however, they know the value of changing theír old seeds. Ahout 39% ofthe households reported exchanging their seeds during last five years with other fanners. The users' and gender analysis showed that access to new maíze seeds is similar across al! wealth categories. However, GMN and KDS households have a complete lack of access to new maíze seeds, and a lower proportion of rnale-headed households reported cultívating improved varieties than díd female-headed households. The proportíon of households changing seeds over the last five years, however, ís greater in the poor wealth category, suggesting that farmers in t1ús category change seed more frequently than do the others. Since these households are also híghly food deficit, they may be consuming the seed and, therefore, bOITowing seeds from other farmers. The proportion ofhouseholds changing maize seeds ¡s, however, similar across ethnic categories and between male and female-headed households.Símilarly, fanners' access to teclurical services and inforrnation on technology is also poor. On1y about 3% of the maize-growing households reported participating in agriculture-related training, and on1y 6% participated in educational tours. Likewise, about 15% of the households reported receiving infonnation on improved technology for rnaize production. This reveals that externa! technica! support to farrners in their attempts to develop better maize varieties is quite limited. The proportion ofhouseholds particípatíng in agricultura! training and tours is lower in the average and poor households than in rich households. A chi-square analysis shows significant dífferences (p < .05) in access to infonnation on ímproved technology for maize production across wealth categories. Similarly, on1y BeJ households reported having participated in agricultural training and tours or receiving ínfonnation on improved maize production. The proportíon of ferna!e-headed households particípating in agricultural training and tours and receiving infonnation on improved maize production is lower than male-headed households.Farmers have been found to grow about eight dífferent types ofmaize varieties, which they broadly categorize into two maize types: one is a large type (Thulo makai) with taU plants, big cobs, large grains and long rnaturity, while the other is a srnall type (Sano makai) with short plants, small cobs and grains, and short maturity. A majority ofthe farmers grow large-type maize, and it covers about 87.7% of lhe total maíze area. Among the large varieties, Thulo pyanlo alone covers about 80% of the area planted to this type, which reflects that, although farmers grow a large numberofvarieties, a large portion ofthe maize-growing area is covered by a relatively small number ofvarietíes.A majority ofthe households grow one to two varieties ofmaize (46.5% to 45.5%, respectively) in a season (table 2). Onlyabout 8% ofthe total maize-growing households grow more than tbree varieties per season. The varietal diversity maintained at household level, therefore, is low (figure 1). The ANOVA result shows that the difference in the number of maize varieties grown at household level is significant (p < .05) across wealth categories but not significant across ethnic categories and between male-and female-headed households. A higher proportion of poor households grows one variety of rnaize, compared to rich and average households. This is contrary to !he currently held view that small farmers maintain significant amounts of crop genetic diversity (Jarvis et al. 1997) and agrees with the fmdings of other studies (Rana and Kadayat 1999). Similarly, though no! significant, a very high proportion ofKDS households (90%) grows only one variety of maize.' \" 100% 'tl 90%\"O 80%.c: ., 70%' \" Farmers who grow more tban one variety mentioned various reasons fur this (table2): to prepare different food items, to harvest at different times, to suit dífferent land types, to use as animal feed, and to meet fodder requirements. However, a majority ofthe farmers (67.9%) grow to suit dífferent types of land, and this is true across all wealfu and ethnic categories and between male-and fernale-headed households. Ihe ANOVA result suggests that fue number ofmaíze varieties grown at household leve! is not signifieantly related to the size of the hari land but is highly signifieantly related to the number ofparcels of bari land the farmer is planting to maize (p < .0001). This indicates tbat with the increase in the number of parcels of bari land, the number of maize varieties grown at household level also increases. This also confirms ¡he PRA finding that farmers in the area grow large-type maize on more fertile land while small-type maize is grown on less fertile soil. The number of bari pareels, therefore, appears to be the strongest determining factor in deciding the number of maíze varieties to be grown per season. It is, however, true tbat farmers use multiple eriteria to select maize varieties for their household production.The gender differences in the use of sorne eriteria to choose maize varieties are striking. A large proportion of fernale-headed households (more than tbree times !he number of male-headed households) mentioned growing more than one variety to meet fodder requirernents for their livestock.Ihis is also confirmed by the PRA findíngs. During the focus-group díscussions, women farmers 5.0 3,1 7,0 0.9 13,3Note; Elhnicity is represented as BCi = BrahminlChhelrilJogi; GMN = Gurung/MagarlNewar; KDS = KamiIDam.i!Sarki.strongly expressed their preference for tall varieties ofmaize Iike their local varieties because taller varielies produce more fodder than short varíeties. Women appear 10 be more concemed with this issue because managing livestock fodder is largely theír responsibility. Similarly, women fanners are very particular aboul Ihe suitability of maize varieties for inlercropping, especíally wíth legumes (cowpeas and beans), because these help them meel the vegetable and pulse requirements of their families. The latter sometimes leads to conflicts with their male counterparts because intercropping with cowpeas and beans makes maize plants vulnerable to lodging and can cause big 105ses in the maize yield.Maize is the staple food for fanning households in the study area. Different preparations of maize are made for household consumption, ofwhich steamed grit (makai ka bhat) i5 the mos! common preparation, reported by 77% oftotal production (table 2). Farmers, therefore, prefer maize varíeties thal have high grit recovery. They perceive that ye!low (colored) maize has higher grit recovery and, therefore, prefer colored varieties over the white ones. The food preparation ofmaize is similar across households of different wealth, elhnic, and gender categories, and a majority ofhouseholds use it in grit formo Users' and genderdifferences in the choice ofvariety, Iherefore, do not appear lo be influenced by differences in the use of maize.The analysis díscussed aboye indicates that fanners' choíces for maíze varíeties are not greatly influenced by theír differences in weallh, ethnicity, and gender, Le., different categories of fanners have preferences for similar types of maize varietíes. F anners across all wealth, ethnic, and gender categories grow only one or two maize varieties per household and, therefore, their varíetal needs are not very diverse. However, farmers use multíple criteria ín selectíng the varietíes they grow.They prefer to have as many traits oftheír preference as possíble ín one lo two maize varietíes. InIhis way, they are able to maintaín and manage the variety of their-preference fora long•duration. Since maize ís an open-pollinated crop, a large number of varieties is difficult lo maintain and manage. Thi5 analysis ís also confirmed by the findings of the PRA conducted al the project research siles. The participatory breeding program, therefore, should focus on developing fewer maize varíelies with multíple traits lhat reflect fanners' preferences. Priority should be given lo the maize varieties Ihat have higher grit recovery, grow welI under different land conditions, produce high biomass for use as fodder, and alIow good intercropping with legumes.The informalÍon on gender roles in maize production and utilization is based on a participatory gender analysis done with 30 maize-growing households selected for lhat purpose. The results show that there are distinct gender roles for men, women, and children in the production and utilizalÍon of maize in lhe hilIs ofNepaL Women supersede men in their involvement in all three major functions ofmaize production and utilization: namely, (1) production, (2) household utilization and marketing, and (3) seed managemen! (table 3). Their involvement is particularly high in the application of compost and farmyard manure lo the maize fie1d; seed processing, treatment, storage, and preparation for sowing in the next season; and intercroppíng of maize with beans, cowpeas, pumpkins, and other crops.The results ofthe gender analysis show lhat women are also the prime decision makers in the family and lheir contribution to decision making in actívities related to maize production and utilization is higher than that their male counterparts in the fumily (table 4). Their contribution to decisions is particularly high in the selection of crops fOT intercropping with maize, deciding on date and time of weeding and earthing-up in the maize fields, and in most ofthe activities relaled lo utilizatíon and marketing and seed management The gender analysis thus suggests that women have important roles and a stake in the varietal-improvement programs designed to develop farmers' preferred varieties. Their particípation in the whole process of variety development should be ensured and properly utilized.Particípatoryplant breeding seeks to use the knowledge and experiences farmers have accwnulated over generations. It al so creates an environment for mutual learning and sharing, which closes the knowledge gap and sets the stage for a working partnership between the farmers and researchers.al Users' and Gender Perspective in Farm Quantity 01 grilslflour lo be milled al a limeWhen lo carry maíze grains lo the mili (tor milling)Food ítems lo be cooked daily 5. Whelher lo sale maize or nol 6. Facilitating and supporting farmers in their plant-hreeding activities then becomes easy and smooth. Based on this understanding, farmers' breeding knowledge was assessed by surveying a sample of 113 households selected randomly. An analysis of the influence of gender, wealth, and ethnicity on the distribution of such knowledge was also done and ís presented in table 5.Ibe majority ofthe households (more than 90%) separate seed and graín in advance, but the seed selection is almost entírely done from the cobs, and generally righ! after the barvest Farmers virtually do no! practice seed selection on standing crops. Ibe majority of the households select big, good-Iooking cobs with big, bold grains for seed. Similarly, almos! all farmers follow tbe practice of discarding grains on the tips ofthe cob when the cobs are shelled for seed. Only about a quarter of the farmers are knowledgeable about the role ofseed replacement in maintaining varietal purity and vigor. Farmers' knowledge on the more technical side ofbreeding, such as identification ofmale Table 5. Distribution oC Breeding Knowledge by Gender, WeaIth and Ethnicity (% Households) ----------------. -------------------------1----Weallh .alellori ., On standing ClOp 0,1 10,0 0,0 0,0 1,0 0,0 0,0 1,0 0,0 No/e: Ethnicíty is represeoled as BeJ = BrahminlChhetri/Jogi; GMN = Guruog/Magar/Newar; KDS = Kami/DamaiISarki, lncorparation al Users' and Gender_FerspecthJe in Fan and femate plants and theír functions, was found te be very pOOL Similarly, a majority ofthe farmers also do not know the actual mechanism tha! causes new maize varieties to rapidly deteriorate, compared to other cereal crops like rice and wheat. The survey thus revealed that there is good scope and a need for sharing scientífic breedíng knowledge prior to the inception of a partícipatory plant breedíng program in order to enhance farmers' confidenee and thereby inerease theír ínterest and participation,The project on fanner-Ied participatory plant breeding of maize has just completed one season of work. A number of consíderations have be en made, as suggested by the analysis of the users' and genderperspeetive ofmaize produetion and utilization. These are briefly discussed below.The breeding objective has been redefined to ímprove the production performance of a widely grown maíze variety, Thulo pyanlo, rather than creating a large díversity of maize varieties in order to improve the productivity ofthe niche envíronment. This variety has all the traits preferred by the farmers except one, i.e., lodging resistance, Reducing lodging in this variety is now the maín objective of the breeding program. In addition, the selection of improved maize varieties to be used as one ofthe parents for crossing with Thulo pyanlo was done in a way that ensured that they met most ofthe farmers' preferences for different traits, These included relatively taller, stout plant varieties like Ganesh I and 2, Rampur composit, Rampur 1, Khumal yellow, and Pop 22. This would help to combine good traits from a large number of varieties into a few fanners' preferred maize varieties. At the same time, attention has also been gíven to meeting the specific needs of the niche environment through a participatory variety-selection program, which provides farmers with a choice from a large number of maize varieties.Farmers have fonned their own research cornmíttee at both the research sites to ensure their partieipation in and influence on the ｾ ･ ｳ ･ ｡ ｲ ｣ ｨ ＠ process, These research cornmittees are well represented by different categories offarmers and 41% ofits members are women, The Farmers' Research Committee. in consultation with the farmers at large, decide the breeding objectives and the research process. They also select research farmers to participate in the farmer-led maize breeding prograrns implemented at the research sites, Since farmers themselves select research farmers, it is envísaged that this wílllead to the development of maize varieties preferred by a large number of fanners. Similarly, under participalory variety-selection program, care is taken to distribute the seed of new maize varieties to different categories of frmners.Based on the findings ofthe survey on the distribution of maize-breeding knowledge among farmers, field-based training was provided lo the research farmers in order lo supplement farmers' knowledge with practical scientific breeding knowledge, Attentíon was given to representation of different categories of farmers, inc\\uding women. Forty-five percent of the total trainees were women. This consideration will also be made in future farmers' training programs.The initial survey indicated that farmers use multiple eritería for the selection of a particular maize variety. Farmers may give different weights to these eritería to suite their individual needs and resources. Wíth this in mind, the colleetion and analysis of users' and gender-differentiated data have been built into the research process to ensure Ihat users' and gender perspectives are incorporated into the partícipatory breedíng programo Data are collected in a form that allows users' and gender-differentiated data to be anaIyzed, which will facilitate the drawing of inferences about whether users' and gender differences make a significant difference in the process and product of participatory plant breeding in open-pollinated crops like maize.The users' and gender analysis indicates tha! the differences among maize-growing households in regard to wealth, ethnicity, and gender do not have any significant influence on their choices for dífferent maize varieties. Similarly, farmers across aH wealth, ethnic, and gender categories grow only one 10 two maize varieties per household; therefore, their varietal needs are not very diverse. This is contradictory to what has been found in the case of self-pollínated crops. This appears to be largely because a large number of varieties is díffieult to maintain and manage in open-pollinated crops like maize. Farmers, however, use multiple cnterí,a in selecting the maize varieties they grow and prefer to have as many traits oftheÍr preference as possible in one to two varieties. It is, therefore, important for the particípatory breeding program to focus on developing fewer maize varieties with tbe multiple traits that farmers prefer. Women farmers have strong preferences about the quantity and qualíty of the fodder by-products of maíze and the suitability of new maize varíeties for intercropping with legumes. The research process should allow farmers of different categoríes to use their eritería in developing and selecting new maize vaneties, Farmers of a!l categories generally lack adequate practical breeding knowledge, and they are specifieally poor in scientific reasoníng, regardless of whatever breedíng knowledge they have. Supplementing farmers' knowledge with practica! scientific breeding knowledge is, therefore, necessary to empower farmers to sustain theÍr breedíng ínítiatives.Rice is the principal crop grown during the wet season (June-October) and i5 the staple food in Madhya Pradesh, eastero India. In this regíon, rice is cultivated on 5.35 million hectares, wíth an annual production of 6.46 millíon tons. This state contributes 9% to the national production from 12.8% of ¡he national acreage. Eastem Madhya Pradesh, k:nown as Chhattisgarh 18 considered the rice bowl ofthe state. Ofthe total rice area, 80% is rainfed, and drought, which occurs every two years, i5 a major constraint ín íncreasing rice productívity in the regíon. The rice yield in the regíon ís low (abon! 2.3 tons per hectare) and ís below the national average. Because of the frequent droughts, the majority offarmers are not willing to risk investíng in farm inputs to inerease productívity. Sustainabílity and yield stabilíty are the most important considerations of farmers in the management of their farming systems. Rural poverty still persísts in this regíon, and about one-thírd of the total poor in Madhya Pradesh depend on rice production as the basic source of Iivelihood. Thel'efore, improving rice pl'oduction and productivity could directIy lead to a substantial reduction in the rural poverty in the regíon (Janiah et al. 20(0). F or the last four decades, a total of 512 modero rice varieties have been released in Indía. Howevel', hardly 10 to 20 ofthe released varieties are in the seed-productíon channel. For example, the average age of cultivars for which there i5 a demand fol' breeder seed is 11 years. The average age of cultivars in certified seed production ranges fiom 12 to 17 years in the states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan (Virk, Packwood, and Witcombe 1996). Only a few modero varieties have been successfu11y adopted in the irrigated ecosystem.RX. Sahu, V.N. Sahu, M.L. Sharma, T. Pati\" K. MeAlIister, R.K. Singh, and S. S.rkaruog are scientists from lndira Gandhi Agricultural University (IGAU), Raipur, Madhya Pradesh; !he IntemaMnal Rice Research InstItute (IRRl). Los Baños, Philippines; and Ihe IRRl-Delhi offic., New Delhi, lndi One of the main reasons for low adoption of released varieties in the rainfed environments is lhat farmers have inadequate exposure to new cultivars. If adoption rates are to be improved, farmers need to try a wide range of novel cultivars in their fields in partícipatory varietal-selection (PVS) programs. The cultívars should include prereleased cultivars, advanced hnes, and already released cultivars from other regíons or countries (Whitcombe et al. 1996). This would give farmers a 'basket of choices' of varied genetic material (Chambers 1989). Another reason for low adoption of modern varietíes is that the breeding process does not meet fanners' diverse needs. Released rice varieties are not suited to the complex and heterogeneous rainfed agroecologícal environment or to the diverse uses and needs of dífferent socioeconomíc groups of fanners. In Uttar Pradesh, India, Maurya et al. (1988) tested advanced Hnes of rice in villages and successfully identified superior material that was preferred by fanners. Understanding farmers' preferences and needs is crucial for successful adoption and dissemination of improved rice cultivars.In 1997, a fanner participatory breeding projecl was initiated at the Intemational Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and conducted in castem India (Courtois et al. 2000). This is a collaborative project among plant breeders and social scientists from IRRI and six national agricultural research institutions located in eastern India. The Indira Oandhi Agricultural University (IOAU) in Raípur, Madhya Pradesh, is one of Ihe collaborating cenlers. The main objeclives for pursuing fanner participation in plant breeding are as follows:• lo test the hypothesis that farmer participation in raínfed rice breeding can help develop suílable varieties more efficiently• to identify stages along the breeding process where faImers' participation has the most impact and to develop and test a methodology for effectively involving fanners in the breedíng program• 10 improve understanding of male and female criteria for selecting specific rice varieties• to differentiate between the influence of fanner participation and decentralizatíon of the breedíng program• to develop rice varietíes suítable for heterogeneous rainfed environments and which meet fanners' preferences Thís paper focuses on methúdologies for improvíng our understanding of fanners' (including women farmers') criteria for seleeting specífic rice varieties and how these eriteria were considered in participatory breeding strategies for rainfed lowland conditions in Madhya Pradesh, eastem India.This study ís based on a sample survey of75 rice-fanning households in Ihree villages oflhe Raipur district, Madhya Pradesh. Surveys were conducted to characterize fanners' cropping/fanning systeros, rice varietal diversity, degree of market orientation, gender roles, as well as soeioeconomic differences, and lo relate these to farmers' rice varietal preferences. Farmers were interviewed in regard lo the positive and negative attributes of the traditional and improved varieties they grow and other seed-related information. A method of particípatory weighted ranking was uscd to elicit male and female farmers' eritena for selecting rice varielies accordíng to specific land elevations and information on how they trade offbetween traits. Basic informatíon (name, age, sex, caste, size oflandholding, elevation ofrice plots, etc.) was colIected from male and female heads ofseparate households who are actively involved in rice farming. Twenty cards that iIIustrate traits of rice cultivars were shown and explained to lhe farmers. Referring to a particular land elevation (upland, for example), each farmer was asked what traits he/she considered when selecting rice varieties for lha! elevatíon. The traits that the farmer did not consider important were discarded. Wilh lhe remaining cards representing the chosen traits, the farmer was lhen asked how much weight he/she gave to each trait out of 16 ana (16 ana= 100 paise, 100 paise = 1 Rs). F or this process, a total of 16 pieces of stone were provided to the respondent to assign the weights according to hislher choice. An average weight was then computed by getting the sum of all lhe values assigned per trait, divided by lhe number of respondents, afier which lhe proportion of each trait to all traits was calculated. This melhodology in eliciting farmers' perceptíons also provides room for trading off between traits (Sharma el aL 1998; Paris et aL 1999)F armer participatory approaches for lhe identification or breeding of improved crop cultivars can be usefully categorized into participatory varietal selection (PVS) and participatory plant breeding (PPB). PVS is a more rapid and cost-effective way ofidentifying farmer-preferred cultivars, if a suitable choice of cultivars exists. A successful PVS program has four phases: (1) a means ofidentifying farmers' needs in a cultivar, (2) a search for suitable material to test with farmers, (3) experimentatíon on its acceptability in farmers' fields, and (4) wider dissemination of farmer-preferred cultivars (Whitcombe et al. 1996). In all ofthese phases, understanding farmers' local knowledge, perceptions, and criteria for varietal selection ís important in ímprovíng rice varieties for rainfed ecosystems.Two approaches were used to strengthen farmers' involvement in the project: (1) farmers were invited to lhe research statiDn to view a broad range of genetic materials, and (2) farmers were asked to grow a set of diverse materials in their own fields using their own level of management and inputs. Two farmers in each village volunteered to evaluate 16 rice genotypes on lheir fields using lheir own labor and level of management. Two sets of medium-duration rice genotypes were planted in two farmers' fields in Tarpongi, which has comparatively lighter soils. One set each of late-duratíon varieties was planted in Saguni and Khairknt villages, which have heavy-textured soíls. The set of rice genotypes include prereleased genotypes (F7-F8), advanced lines from lhe Shuttle Breeding Project, and a local check. During specific phenotypic stages of rice production, farmers and plant breeders, using a visual melhod, evaluated and ranked the same set ofrice genotypes on lhe station and on farmers' fields. Kendall' s coefficient of agreement was used to measure the agreement among farmers, among plant breeders, and between farmers and breeders. Farmers recorded lhe reasons for their ranking in lheir diaries. This was done for consecutive years from 1997 to 1999. In 2000, lhe number ofrice genotypes was reduced to five choices (plant breeder, farmer, one common, and a local check). These genotypes will be evaluated before harvesting, bolh at lhe station and on farmers' fields by pIant breeders and farmers.Characteristics 01 the research sites and the larm households This research is being conducted in three villages in lhe Raipur district located on lhe Chhattisgarh plains ofMadhya Pradesh. On lhe Chhatisgarh plains, rice is grown mostly in the lowlands in a drought-prone ecosystem. Drought is a major climatic constraint for rice crops in lhis region. The general c1ímate of the region is dry sub-humíd, where annual potential evapotranspirationallossesCrileria fo,. Rice Varielies are higher than the annual raínfall, whích is about \\300 mm. Over 90% ofthe rainfall is reeeived during the period from June to October. The monsoon sets in by 15 June and withdraws around 15 September. Winter conditions set in by mid-November, when the average minimum temperature reaches around ¡5°C. Hence, the rice erop should mature before this time. Sometimes winter conditíons set in early-by the thírd week ofOetober--and thís results in íncreased sterilíty and, thereby, low productivity. Under such fragíle eondítions, the identificatíon of suitable genotypes should be based both on climatic and edaphíc eharacteristies (IRRI-IGAU 2000).The research sites are located in tbree villages: Tarpongi, Saguní, and Khairkut in the Raipur distriet. Tarpongi is 29 km in the north of Raipur; Saguni and Kharkut are 5 km to the west of Tarpongí. These villages are located within 50 km ofIGAU. There are 200 to 250 households in each village. More than 90% ofthe farming households in these villages belong to the other backward caste with small and margínallandholdings (owning less than a hectare), ofwhich the majority are Hindus. Male heads of households have an average of four years in school, while the majority of the women have lower levels of education and did not go to schooL AH ofthe farmers interviewed owned their own land. In eaeh village, 25 farmers were interviewed with regards to their fanníng and eropping systems, rice díversíty, and their eriteria for varietal selection. The survey was conducted in 1997 and 1998.The areas for rice production in these representatíve villages are heterogeneous. Farmers in these villages classify their land according to the topography/slope, such as upland, midland, and lowland. The light so¡ls in the uplands are cIassified by farmers as bhata (entisols), while the sandy loam in the midlands are referred to matasi (ínceptisols). The heavy-textured soils in the lowlands are referred to as kanhar (vertisols). Most of the drought-prone areas have light-textured soíls, whereas the more favorable arcas have heavy-structured soils. Tarpongí has líght-textured soils while the other two villages have heavy-structured soils. The length of the rice-growing season is primarily dependen! on moisture availabilíty, whích ís dependent on slope and soiJ type.Rice ís grown mainly in the rainy season (kharif) in a biasi system. Land preparatíon is done by bulJocks and rice is dry-seeded at the beginning ofthe rainy season in June. When enough rain has accumulated in the field, 25-to 30-day-old seedlin[s are wet-plowed, laddered, and redistributed. This traditional practice, ca1led beushening or biasi, is common in many rainfed areas of eastem India, particularly in Madhya Pradesh. Farmers continue tms practice with the beliefthat ít helps to control weeds and stímulate root growth (Fujísaka el aL 1993;Singh, Singh, and Singh 1994). Farmers grow purple-colored rice varieties as a strategy to identífy and eradicate wild rice (which is prevalent in this region) at an early stage of crop growth.F amily members provide the major source oflabor for rice cultivation. While maJe family members do most of the land preparatíon, rice broadeasting, and applícation of chemicals, females are predominantly responsible for weeding, applying farmyard manure, harvesting, threshing by band, winnowing, and managing seeds for storage. Seed selectíon ís done by both husband and wífe. Other post-harvest activities, such sun drying, dehusking, and parboiling are exclusively done by women. Caring for livestock and, consequently, daiJy collection of green fodder for the livestock is done mostly by women (Sharma et aL 1997). Thus, women's criteria for rice varietal choices may be influenced by their roles and responsibilíties in farming and their social and relígíous obligations, and may differ from those ofmen. The majority ofthe farmers obtain new seeds from their neighbors and from extension workers. Only 24% obtain new seeds from IGAU. This indicates a lack of awareness among farmers about the new technologies developed at the university. Weeds are prevalen! in farmers' fields, and roguing the rice fields to protect the purity of seeds is not cornmonly practiced ín these villages. Rice mixtures and weed seeds are commonly found in the seed stocked for the next season.The cropping intensity in these villages is low because ofthe lack of supplementary irrigation water during the rabi season. The cropping systems in the villages are rice-fallow, rice-lathyrus, or rice-chíckpea (table 1). The chickpea and lathyrus crops are grown as relay crops (locally called utera in rice).  A high díversity ofrice varíeties exists in these villages. The names of the varíeties grown by farmers in these villages are shown in table 2. Ofthe total area grown to rice in the lowlands ofTarpongi, 73% is grown with traditional varieties, while the rest (27%) has modem varíeties. Twenty years ago, there were about 20 traditional varíeties; however, this number has declined. In contrast, in the uplands of Saguni and Kharkut, the adoption of modem varíeties is slightly higher than thethe adoption of traditional ones. Traditional varíeties such as Safri-17 and Chepti gurmatia are popular in the lowlands. The main reason for adoption of traditional varieties in the lowlands with heavy soíls is because aH the traditional varíeties are tall and can sustain even late biasi operations.According to the rainfall pattem and soíl types of Chhattisgarh, farmers grow varieties according to the land elevation, hydrology, and soils. Rice varieties with a growth duration ofless than 110 days are grown on the upper (undulating) portion ofuplands with loamy to sandy Boíl bhata (entisols). Rice varíeties with a growth duratíon of 110 to 130 days are allocated mainly to the midland (gently undulating) sandy loam matasi (inceptisols). Varieties with a growth duration ofup to 140 days are best suited for light soils, such as those found in Tarpongi village. Late-maturing varíeties (140 to 155 days) are ideal for low-lying, heavy-textured dorasa andkanhar soil types, such as those found in Saguni and Khairkut. Crops are grown chronologically wífu fue lowland fields planted first and the upland helds planted last. Lowland fields are submergence-prone and need to be sown early so fuat seedlings are already establíshed before fue fields are flooded.Afier identifyíng the modern and traditional varieties fanners grew, questions were asked about positive and negative attributes. These questions were open-ended and no attempt was made to ¡mpose a priori categories of answers, Table 3 shows the list of positive traits of popular traditional varieties such as Safrí-17 (late duratíon) and Chepti gurmatia (medium duration). Alfuough fuese traditíonal varieties have !ower yields, fanners prefer fuem because of fueir combined positíve Swarna and Mahamaya are two modem varieties tha! have thepositive qualities present in the traditional varieties. Swarna is a high yielder, late maturing and semi-dwarf. Farmers perceive tha! these varieties can tolerate drought Mahamaya, similar to Chepti gurmatia, also has the purple leaf sheath and purple auricle, which help to distínguish it from wild rice. 1t has potentially higher yields !han the traditional varieties; however, the modern varieties are mOfe susceptible lo diseases (bacteria! blight and gall midge). Mahamaya is also susceptible to lodging because of íts short starure (table 4). Actually, Swarna was released in 1982 from Andhra Pradesh and was tested by ¡he plant breeders. However, it was not recommended to farmers before 1992. The adoption of Swama has been fast and it has replaeed local varieties such as Safri and Dubraj and improved varieties such as Mashuri. However, sine e 1992, not a single variety with these positive combined eharacteristícs eould be relcased by the local brceders in IGAU  .lI\"'q;::ua:::n.::I\"'IIy<-_____ -'-_Mahamaya was only released in 1997. Both Swarna and Mahamaya were released for irrigated rice ecosystems, but because oftheir perceived ability to tolerate drought and theÍr high market demand by traders, these two varieties have become ver)' popular, Millers and traders prefer Mahamaya for making beaten rice and puffed rice. Poor farmers and agriculturallabarers who are paid in terms af"}

main/part_2/0390332127.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":null,"keywords":null,"sieverID":"ce4d5c4d-7f4b-47e7-a688-0282d16bcc47","content":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"}

main/part_2/0396290697.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"98fbb8b39d13ea4342c3324cac69e181","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/5e0fc1d0-a0f6-4e01-90fa-bf22d2d6cbef/retrieve","id":"1451771738"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"1a120d5c-b63e-4c5e-b117-73cca35868d5","content":"Mekong: To reduce poverty and foster development through management of water for multiple uses in large and small reservoirs i 2. Project:This project is about assessing the value of water in its various uses. It sets out to estimate the costs and benefits of different uses of WSI water at reservoir and catchment levels. It includes an assessment of water needs for major water uses (agriculture, fisheries, ecosystem, and⁄ or hydropower) and features the application of quantitative and qualitative valuation techniques to estimate costs and benefits associated with different water management strategies and scenarios.Water valuation means expressing the value of water-related goods and services so as to inform sharing and allocation decisions. It covers both use and non-use values, extractive and in situ use values, and consumptive and non-consumptive use values. It features quantitative and qualitative approaches and considers relationships between interconnected and interdependent water uses. Project outputs will take the form of valuation estimates that reflect the distribution of costs and benefits: across uses and users (considering gender differentiation), across scales (in the reservoir and across the catchment area considering other WSI).Valuation is seen as essential to well-informed water resource management. Valuation will support a structured mechanism of multi-stakeholder dialogues, helping stakeholders to express their values and perceptions on the use and management of water resources. Assessing and communicating these values is the basis on which stakeholders will seek well-informed decisions in multi-stakeholder platforms.While critically important for national development, Water Storage Infrastructures (WSI) have not always been successful in responding to local populations' needs. In the Mekong River Basin many of the large WSIs are being developed exclusively as a response to national (or regional) hydroelectricity priorities, often with little consideration for fisheries, local livelihoods, or environment/biodiversity issues.Several projects have been implemented in the recent past in an attempt to address these issues, such as the 'Mekong Wetland Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Use Programme', the IUCN 'Strengthening pro-poor wetland conservation using integrated biodiversity and livelihood assessment' project (Springate-Baginski et al. 2009) or the Australian National University 'Economic valuation of wetlands in Vietnam's Mekong Delta' project (Do and Bennett 2006). Through collaborative research, stakeholder dialogue addressing environmental flows and/or economic valuation, these studies highlight that the uncontrolled modification of flows, particularly through WSIs, is a major issue in the Mekong basin.Earlier CPWF projects on improving water allocation in the Mekong basin or in the Tonle Sap (CP 67 and CP71) and participatory modeling (CP25) are also worth noting as they offer valuable experiences in designing assessments/methods that enhance capacity of local stakeholders to engage in planning decisions. These different projects developed and field tested various tools to improve stakeholders' coordination through the collective identification and assessment of scenarios of change and action plans.A range of fisheries valuation studies implemented in the region (e.g. Baran et al. 2007) also highlight that fisheries and aquatic resources-although crucial to the income, livelihoods, and subsistence of the local population-are often overlooked and undervalued by scientists and government planners (Ratner et al. 2005).In sum, participatory valuation studies implemented in recent years indisputably improved understanding of the positive and negative impact of WSIs on livelihoods, ecosystem services, and downstream communities. However, with the major exception of the IUCN project mentioned above, few of these valuation studies have been implemented in a truly integrated and all-inclusive manner. Instead, emphasis is commonly put on one dimension only (environment, fisheries, hydropower, or agriculture). As recognized by L. Emerton \"Putting integrated assessment into practice presents many challenges; most people have specific technical skills and experience which apply to only part of the process\" (Emerton 2005).In this proposal, we use the term total value of WSI to refer to the integrated social, environmental and economic value of water uses related to existing or future WSIs.From valuation projects completed in the Mekong basin and other parts of the world (e.g. Birol et al. in press), several lessons can be drawn.First, there is wide recognition that water resources are increasingly under pressure, facing growing demand from different uses and activities (e.g. Laplante 2005). Very real and particularly difficult choices will have to be made in many basins-the Mekong basin being one particularly important case given the number of people who depend upon the basin's water resources and the rapid pace of infrastructure development. As these choices are often likely to benefit some stakeholders at the expense of others, negotiation and conflict resolution tools are increasingly required. In particular there is an urgent need for tools and approaches that can help stakeholders reach agreement on sharing and allocation arrangements for water-related goods and services.Second, WSIs often reduce the economic value associated with certain types of water use (e.g. fisheries) while increasing the value associated with other uses (e.g. energy). Therefore, even though in aggregate the total economic value of water use may be higher with WSIs than without, it is the change in economic value across different types of uses and different types of users that ultimately matters. In other words, planning and investment should not be driven by economic efficiency alone. Distributional considerations are also critical.The third lesson draws upon the point above and highlights the limits of economic valuation analyses. As many recent reports concluded (e.g. Turner et al. 2004), indiscriminate use of purely economic approach risks overemphasizing \"monetary expressions of value\" at the expense of two other important dimensions: environmental values, such as the role of water flows in maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem integrity, and social values, such as using water to grow food or fish to ensure food security. Better integrated valuation frameworks are needed that recognize the multiuse/multi-user nature of water as a commodity and as a public good, giving equal consideration to water's economic, social and environmental uses.Fourth, there have been to date very few attempts to integrate biodiversity assessment, economic valuation, and livelihood analysis within a single framework. At best, assessments are carried out separately and brought together only at the final analysis stage. More commonly, a single aspect of resource use or management is investigated in detail, while broad (and often uninformed) assumptions are made about other elements. This indicates a need to develop new integrated assessment methods which bring together these different elements under one unique water value framework. The tool kit developed by the IUCN Integrated Wetland Assessment (IWA) project is one of the first successful attempts to do so, but its core focus is on wetlands (Springate-Baginski et al. 2009).Finally, as underlined by the World Commission on Dams guidelines, sound valuation of water services can only be done through a process involving all stakeholders and through an analysis including many disciplines (not simply economics). Top-down valuations of water resources by external experts/economists have to be complemented by bottom-up/participatory processes and must reflect multi-disciplinary and gender sensitivity (WCD 2000).The ambition of the six national and international institutions involved in this research proposal is to draw upon these lessons to develop a science-based framework addressing water valuation in relation to WSI in the Mekong basin, and to respond in particular to the Basin Development Challenges (BDC) described in Sections 5 and 7 above.The following are the research questions that this project should address:  What is the value of alternative and multiple uses of water relative to a narrower focus on hydro-electric power generation or irrigation?  To what extent can declines in the value of water, as a result of being used for alternative purposes, be mitigated to sustain the value of water for hydropower?How will your research address these research questions?The project will develop and apply an integrated water valuation framework for assessing the total value of water-related services in the context of the Sesan, Sre Pok and Sekong River (3S) basins, with the objective to provide practical and policy-relevant information to national and regional policy-makers and stakeholders. The project is designed as an all-inclusive package of activities and outputs, but will additionally benefit from the close institutional and scientific links that exist with the other BDC projects submitted by the IMWI-WorldFish-ICEM consortium (Projects 1 and 3).Our analysis will include a direct integrated assessment of WSI for agriculture, fisheries, ecosystems, and hydropower and apply it to the situation of the Nam Theun 2 dam in Laos, the Sesan 3a and Sesan 4 in the Se San basin in Vietnam and the Lower Sesan 2 dam in the same basin in Cambodia.In the Mekong region and the 3S basins in particular, one of the critical issues faced by policy makers is the lack of clear understanding about the complex interactions between the different development opportunities and threats created by the different cascades of recently-built (or future) dams. A good illustration is the situation of the Nam Theun 2 dam, where the latest WorldBank-ADB report highlighted the \"commendable progress\" made by the project in terms of infrastructure, but noted the \"challenges that the resettled populations are facing in their transitions to new income generating opportunities\". The project is designed to produce the following 4 major outputs:Output 1. Total value of water multi-uses estimated in the 3 focal basins The primary output of this project will be the estimate of costs and benefits of different uses of WSI water in the three focal basins. Through this output the project will expand and strengthen knowledge and information about existing water uses and development scenarios. As such it will directly address the first research output identified by the CPWF above.In parallel, the modeling module will allow the project to explore the potential trade-offs of alternative development scenarios at selected sites and provide an understanding of how sensitive key socio-economic and environmental indicators are to these development scenarios. This component will directly contribute to Project 4 on water governance by providing a building block to facilitate multi-stakeholder dialogue on water uses. The modality for this will be finalized with Project 4 team during the Basin Inception Workshop.Together these two components-valuation and modeling tool--are expected to promote a more complete understanding of how water resources are used and managed and how alternative uses could lead to improved WSI water allocations in the selected sites. Additionally, the aim is to generate and disseminate policy-relevant tools/lessons for application in other river basins in the developing world.The second primary output of this project will be the development, implementation and field-testing of an integrated valuation framework for WSI's water uses. Through this output the project will directly addresses the second MTP project research output identified by the CPWF.The design and testing of this framework which aims at assessing the total value of water uses in an integrated manner will be an important International Public Good. While we acknowledge that promising advances have been made recently to develop integrated frameworks in relation to wetland use values, similar methodological breakthroughs have yet to be achieved for other major resources and in particular for water uses and WSIs. The objective of this proposal is to develop and test -in the particular context of the 3S basins-such integrated valuation framework.The project will produce several types of scientific and communication outputs: (a) A series of publications summarizing/synthesizing the project main results. These will include one comprehensive methodological report presenting the conceptual work (integrated water valuation framework and modeling tool), and a series of scientific articles summarizing the results of the framework applied to the three focal basins (ideally one paper per basin plus one regional synthesis). Through these publications the main results of the project will be communicated to researchers, experts and practitioners involved in similar questions in the Mekong and other basins in the developing world (see Section 10.3 below).(b) A series of policy briefs and leaflets for policy-makers, planners and civil society produced in Vietnamese, Lao and Khmer, summarizing the main findings and recommendations of the project, plus one additional brief in English synthesizing these recommendations at the regional level. The expected outcome is increased awareness and capacity of local and regional planners, policy-makers and managers to apply this integrated framework for planning and management of present and future WSIs in the Mekong and elsewhere.(c) An open access website specifically aimed at disseminating widely the progress, outputs and main results/recommendations of the project. This website will be hosted by the CPWF basin focal project (project 5), with WorldFish responsible for providing updates to content from Project 2.Since integrated valuation of water is not well established in developing countries, in particular in the Mekong region, capacity building will be an integral part of the work, embedded in all activities of the project. Policy-makers and planners at the district, national and regional levels will benefit from the implementation of the scenario exercise and from participation in the expert/stakeholder consultation. Conjointly, on-the-job training in valuation methods, data analysis and joint authorship of publications will offer important capacity building opportunities for local partners.The project will mobilize and rely on the complementary expertise of a team of analysts with long practical experience and solid theoretical background. As most activities are highly complementary and integrated, the majority of the team members will be involved across the full range of activities. This setting will ensure the unity and efficiency of the team work and increase the long-term coherence of the project. Within this integrated working approach however, leadership and responsibility for specific tasks will be allocated to different partners, based on their experiences and skills, as follows.The development of the conceptual framework for integrated water valuation (Output 2) will be the result of a multi-disciplinary effort by all senior analysts of the team (cf. Steps 1 to 4 in Section 10.5 below). However, to ensure the overall cohesion and scientific rigor of the process, the main responsibility will lie with the Resource Economists of IFPRI and ICEM with the support of the rest of the senior researchers.The local partners-selected because of their intimate knowledge of the local context at the three sites and their involvement in previous valuation analyses (cf section 14 and individual CVs)-will coordinate the various grassroots and national-level activities within each focal basin. They will play in particular a leading role in the organization and implementation of the data collection fieldwork.Once data have been collected, the resource/environmental economists, livelihood specialists, and geo-referencing analysts will undertake thorough analysis. In parallel the ICEM water engineer will supplement the existing HEC-ResSim model by incorporating the new data generated by the project. As part of the capacity building component of the project (see below), members of the national institutions will be invited to engage and contribute to the different data analyses.Responsibility for capacity building in data analysis, valuation methods (Output 3) and scientific publications and communication (Output 4) will lie with the international partners as part of their continuous engagement in the project. The project leader (through WorldFish Mekong regional Office) will however pay particular attention to this aspect by monitoring the quality of national partner involvement in the different stages of the research process.The targeted users of the valuation data (Output 1) and associated scientific outputs (Output 4) are national research institutes and universities (e.g., SUMERNET), government agencies (e.g., NMCs, ministries of water resources, energy, rural development, environment, and agriculture) and regional bodies (MRC, GMS), as well as international research agencies and NGO networks (e.g., M-POWER) involved in managing and planning water resources.Policymakers in the basin will be informed of the role and value of water services in the 3 focal basins through targeted distribution of policy briefs to key agencies, and presentations and deliberation on findings at CPWF project 4 dialogue events and other regional forums.The use of an open access website will also ensure that the information is made available to civil society and other stakeholders (see section 12.1 below). The estimates of WSI's total values are also expected to be useful outside the initial area of work (Mekong basin) through the principle of the benefit transfer method.Within the Mekong basin, the main users benefiting from the development of the integrated framework (Outputs 2) will be the national research institutes and universities, government agencies and basin water entities involved in managing and planning water resources (as detailed above). International research agencies and NGOs engaged in water resource management should also benefit. Finally, by its generic nature the framework is expected to be also useful in other basins within and outside the Mekong region.The project workshops will favor scientific \"North-South\" and \"South-South\" exchange. In particular the CG and ARI centers will assist the national partners in updating their knowledge on valuation techniques during the technical workshops (preparatory workshop and feedback workshop -see Gantt chart). South-South exchange will be strengthened through national partners' participation in the various technical and field fieldwork activities and regional forums.The Changes in Knowledge, Attitudes, and Skills (KAS) necessary to ensure successful outcomes for this project are summarized below.Through the dissemination of the information regarding the integrated value of alternative water uses and its distribution in the three focal basins (Output 1), policymakers and planners will be made aware of the existing and potential alternative costs and benefits of water services. In an ideal world this improved information would/should lead to policy changes, including enhanced awareness for 'non-hydro-power' WSIs values. Experience suggests however, that policy is not a linear process and that increased access to information or knowledge is not always sufficient to 'trigger' change in attitude (or in policy).To ensure change(s) in policy and planning, improved governance and accountability are also required. The present project will contribute to this through various means. First, information regarding the WSI's total value will be circulated to main decision-makers and water planners through an expert-to-expert dialogue. Conjointly, the project will also increase the access to information (change in knowledge) in the civil society, local population and other main stakeholders (including the national media) through the open web-site and leaflets published in local languages (Output 4). The communication of the results to the civil society is expected to improve its capacity to engage directly or through the media with the policy makers and lead to an improved governance (more participatory) decision-making process.Scientists and practitioners (including project partners) will learn how to apply-and eventually improve-the integrated water value framework developed by the project (Output 2) through onthe-job training for project partners (Output 3) and through the various technical publications (Output 4). The methodology report will present in detail the different steps of how to plan and implement this integrated valuation framework, and the scientific papers will provide technical discussion adapted to the local-specificity of the different sites.In addition to these expected changes, the project will also 'feed' directly Project 4 on water governance. Through this feed process, it is expected to contribute to another chain of changes involving this time the stakeholders of Project 4 and more broadly of the Mekong BDC.The methodology and activities are presented below. A Gantt Chart illustrating how these different activities are articulated and linked to each other, is provided in section 11 below.Consolidating and refining the links with the four other projects will take place during the Basin Inception Workshop (BIW 7-9 Dec 2009). If/where necessary, adjustments will then be made to reflect the results of the BDC Impact pathways analysis completed during the BIW. The BIW will also be used to formalize the exchange platform by which the project will engage more effectively with Project No.4.Step 1. Formation of a multi-disciplinary team This initial step has already been completed during the preparation of the proposal when the different partners have identified amongst their staff the group of experts who will constitute the project team. Their expertise includes:  economic and natural resource valuation  livelihoods survey and participatory research methods  hydrological modeling  geo-referencing and spatial mapping  policy analysisStep 2. Current state of knowledge and focal issues A desk-based review will collate all available relevant information from the existing literature. Sources will include published papers, 'grey literature', and online databases such as the Regional Technical Assistance (RETA) website http://reta.3sbasin.org/ and in particular the 3S GIS layers Data Base that contains updated maps, census data and other government statistics. The latest version of the MRCs hydropower database, supplemented with information from the hydropower Oxfam database will also be included. For Nam Theun 2, the very comprehensive socio-economic data-base being compiled under the World-Bank/ADB supervision project represents a very informative set of data.Note also that the project has been purposely scheduled to start in Sept 2010 in order to benefit also from the preliminary analyses and data generated by project 1.Step 3: Framework design A series of preparatory e-consultations between the senior economists will be organized to discuss the coverage of the study and the economic methods to be used for the valuation exercise. Various methods are more or less suitable for different kinds of costs and benefits (Young 2005). Market price and surrogate market price techniques are most suitable for direct values, while indirect values are commonly measured using cost-based and production function approaches. Stated preference methods are, in principle, applicable to any category of benefit, and provide some of the few available methods to estimate option and existence values. They also have the advantage to express directly the value that local people place on services. In that context they could be critical to ensure the participatory nature of the exercise.A technical workshop will be organized in order to allow the different 'discipline specialists' to discuss these technical questions. External regional experts will also be invited to contribute their knowledge and expertise to the process. These different tasks will be implemented under the coordination of the project leader but the decision process will be collegial.Step 4. Field sampling programme and planning matrix At this stage of the planning process, the team will decide which subset of information to collect. This needs to be determined in an integrated way, involving researchers from the different subject areas, with a strong focus on identifying the links between the various information sets. For this a data collection planning matrix will be completed following the methodology developed by Springate-Baginski et al. (2009). The main advantage of this planning matrix is to ensure all relevant information is collected through a minimum survey effort, thus avoiding duplication of data, or multiple, time consuming and expensive, surveys focusing on discipline-specific, and consequently restricted, information.Step 5. Field implementation Field work will be conducted in the three sites selected. Preliminary training and pilot survey will be completed before the main data collection is undertaken. The exact combination of techniques used to collect these primary data will be finalized during the planning workshop (Step 4). These will include qualitative and quantitative economic and livelihood analysis, with the primary aim to:  understand and quantify the livelihood outcomes (in terms of income, nutrition, health, gender equality) of water resources from WSIs as well as the related livelihood strategies (fishing, irrigated farming, etc) and stakeholders (i.e. beneficiaries, farmers, fishers, general public, future generations, etc.);  capture the value of the benefits/services generated by these water resources and related livelihood strategies, and estimate the contribution of those to different stakeholders' livelihoods outcomes.Within these surveys, gender-specific sampling frames will be systematically adopted. Note that a common geo-referenced framework will also be used in order to link all the data. The benefits of using this geo-referenced data set will be critical during the data analysis, modeling and feedback and policy engagement -see below.Step 6. Valuation exercise Using the data collected during the field survey, our analysis will aim at assessing integrated WSI water uses. This technical part of the work will be led by the senior economists of IFPRI and ICEM together with critical input from the livelihood experts from WorldFish, CEPA, and DFL-MFA. The integrated nature of the valuation exercise will be ensured through ongoing information exchange between the different analysts. Geo-referencing will also facilitate this process by ensuring that the specialists are all working at the same relevant spatial scale.Step 7. Scenario analysis In addition to the valuation framework, a modeling/scenario component will be implemented using the HEC-ResSim model. The HEC-ResSim is a regional water management model built to simulate reservoir operations and up/downstream river flows. Its description of catchment hydrology is somewhat simplified when compared to distributed hydrological models, however it can provide greater detail at the reservoir and cascade decision-making level. Through its components, HEC-ResSim allows the user to simulate single reservoirs and scale up to complex interconnected cascading systems. It also allows the user to incorporate power plants, spillways, multiple outlets and diversions (for environmental flows, or irrigation). The model is suited to scenario-based analysis because it supports the detailed input of reservoir operating rules and sensitivity to changes in the component architecture, appropriate for exploring the ramifications of possible management decisions.Step 8. Evaluating the new conceptual framework As part of the process of field-testing the valuation framework, a technical workshop will be organized a few months after the completion of the field work. Results of preliminary data analyses will be presented, and potential technical issues/limitations/flaws identified and addressed. Lessons will be drawn and adjustments will be made (if necessary) to perfect the methodology. These various points will then serve as the basis of the first scientific output of the project -see section 10.1).The workshop will also be used to perfect the integrated assessment process itself by ensuring that the data analyses conducted by the different analysts are conducted in an integrated manner.Step 9. Dissemination The last part of the project will consist in a series of communication activities to ensure the dissemination of the various results and conclusions of the earlier stages of the project. The elements of this communication component are presented in greater detail in section 12.1.Elements of information regarding the participatory nature of this project have been provided in sections 10.1 to 10.4 above. To sum up, the research and capacity building activities of the project have been designed to ensure the optimum adoption and best use of the outputs of the project. In particular: Both qualitative and quantitative fieldwork will be undertaken in the three focal basins to ensure that locally perceived water values and uses are correctly assessed.  During the various prepartory workshops, experts working on water valuation in the region will actively help design the research framework and toolkits.  Results of the valuation exercise (Output 1) will be disseminated not only to the decision and policy-makers but also to the local population and wider civil society through short publications in local languages (Khmer, Lao and Vietnamese) (Output 4).  Scientific publications of the main results (Output 2) will be submitted to specifically relevant internationals journals with scope and interests in water resource management, such as the Journal of Water Resource Planning & Management; the International Journal of Water Resource Development; or the International Journal of River Basin Management.  In term of capacity building, specific attention will be paid during the planning and implementation stages and throughout the data analysis and writing/publication to ensure that local partners fully contribute to the research and planning process (Output 3).The premise of the project is that improved information on the value of WSI water-and, in particular, the integrated social, environmental and economic value of these WSI uses-will lead to improved management and planning in ways that better reflect the actual multi-use/multi-user nature of these reservoirs -thus leading to fairer and more equitable development opportunities for all water users. These improvements are expected to trigger changes along a chain of processes and outcomes as follows: better appreciation by policy-makers of the fisheries, agriculture and aquatic ecosystem services -along with hydro-power generation-as essential contributors to poverty reduction.  Indicators of success: Evidence of a more supportive policy environment for change in national and/or basin-level policies related to hydro-power infrastructure development and complementary sectors (agriculture, fisheries, water and environment) in the Mekong Basin.  improved visibility of non hydro-power sectors (fisheries, agriculture, environment) and increased transparency in the policy and decision-making process.  Indicators of success: Evidence of increased engagement of the main stakeholders (in particular local communities or their representatives) into reservoir planning processes at both national and regional level, evidence of the increased integration of the non hydro-power sectors in the planning of the future reservoirs in the Mekong Basin.  enhanced capacity of regional and/or national experts (governmental and non-governmental agencies) in implementing integrated water valuation analyses.  Indicators of success: wide adoption by practitioners of the integrated water framework developed by the project, number of citation/Google counts of the scientific outputs (articles and methodological report), improved abilities of local NGOs and civil society to understand and debate the impacts of changes in water allocation and uses. Laos: the Nam Theun 2 dam in the Nam Theun basin or Theun Himburn (operational) and its proposed extension  Vietnam: Yali Falls in the Se San basin dam cascade (but feasibility of other Sesan dams still needs to be checked), i.e. the Sesan 3a and Sesan 4 dams  Cambodia: the Lower Sesan 2 dam in the Se San basinIn the form of a Gantt chart, constructed as an Excel spreadsheet, which is part of the project workbook.The project is expected to contribute to the following communications products:  A series of innovatively-designed products that communicate research findings to a range of stakeholders with a diversity of interests  Working papers, journal articles and book chapters, particularly in Mekong-based journals and edited volumes, that describe the cumulative impacts of dam operations on downstream resources (particularly fisheries) and livelihoods; that reveal both the positive and negative impacts of hydropower and irrigation at livelihoods levels; that describe the costs and benefits of altering dam operations to the benefit of alternative, nonhydroelectric uses; and that analyze the utility and effectiveness of negotiation techniques across borders and between stakeholder power asymmetries. An open access website with contributions from CPWF partners and stakeholdersOur communication plan relies on the following expected outputs (as detailed above in section 10.1): A series of academic publications including  a methodological comprehensive report presenting the conceptual work (integrated water valuation framework and modeling tool) as developed and field-tested by the project. This report will be targeted at scientists and practitioners with research and/or pragmatic interests in water valuation issues.  a series of scientific articles communicating the empirical results of the framework applied in the three focal basins. Preliminary results and draft versions will be presented at regional or international conferences for peer comments.These academic materials will be complemented by  a series of policy briefs and leaflets for policy-makers, planners and civil society -one for each focal basin-in Vietnamese, Lao and Khmer respectively, summarizing the main findings and recommendations of the project, plus one additional brief synthesizing these recommendations in English. These products will be designed in dialogue with a reference group of planners, to ensure that they address the most timely, practical questions in a way that will be understood by the primary users.  an open access website specifically aimed at disseminating the progress, outputs and main results/recommendations of the project and hosted by the CPWF basin focal project 5. Its content will be updated regularly by the project team.In addition, emphasis will be placed on integration of communication activities across the five basin projects through:  the establishment of a formal feedback process through a series of local and regional workshops to validate the main conclusions of the valuation exercise;  an active dialogue with Project 4 through a formal exchange platform to ensure that the valuation results of this project are fully accounted and integrated into the governance analysis and the various dialogue events organized by Project 4.Finally, it is expected that the Geographic Information System (GIS)-based mapping tools will greatly increase the capacity of the project team to communicate the main results and to engage with the next users (local and regional stakeholders, water policy planners).Briefly describe how you will support an evaluative culture in the project Self examination and learning From the outset, the project will foster self-examination and uptake of research results through a clear action-research approach. The learning process will therefore be ongoing throughout the project. This process will be reinforced through: (i) the organization of field visits and support visits;(ii) an evaluation workshop just after the completion of fieldwork (cf. step 8 Evaluating the new conceptual framework). The objective of this workshop will be to address potential technical issues which may have occurred during the implementation of the field work and/or preliminary analyses of the data. Lessons will be drawn and adjustments made in the methodology.The project's M&E plan aims to ensure a timely and quality delivery of the outputs in accordance with the original schedule and in line with project objectives. To ensure this, a self-monitoring system has been set up, with 7 milestones (A-G) identified across the 5 phases, and spread along the 32 months of the projects (see Gantt chart). These milestones will allow the team to monitor closely the progress of the work. The M&E plan will also benefit from specific standardized procedures established internally by the CG lead-center (WorldFish) as part of its own WorldFish-M&E program, based on internal milestone system. Through this WorldFish-M&E specific program the project will benefit from additional institutional support on this aspect of its implementation.Multi-disciplinary research is at the core of this project as evidenced by Step 1 of the methodology section -see also section 14.Within the project, capacity building is an integral part of the work, embedded in all activities and focusing on various groups of stakeholders. Policy-makers and planners will benefit greatly from the implementation of the scenario exercise and from the expert/stakeholder feedback workshop. Conjointly, on-the-job training in valuation methods and involvement in the data analysis and publication will offer important capacity building opportunities to the staff of the national partners involved in the project.When it comes to access and use of water, gender is a critical element. All fieldwork and data will be administered and handled with a gender-sensitive approach (see section 10.5 on methodology).Through their past engagement in action-research all members in the team (males and females) have developed a deep awareness of this gender issue.The project relies on the assumption that there will be, or can be fostered, a level of willingness among stakeholders and in particular decision-makers and planners to move away from monosectoral planning approach, to embrace a more appropriate (but more challenging and complex) integrated planning process.By identifying and valuing in an integrated manner the multi-use/multi-users nature of WSIs, the project is intended to provide the necessary initial information to facilitate this shift of paradigm and to contribute to the development of successful multi-stakeholder dialogue on water uses in the basin.Due to the relatively small budget available for this project and the need to work in 3 different focal basins across three countries, there is a risk that the partners spread their effort/resources too thinly between these different sites.The team members are well aware of this potential risk and will use their long experience in project planning to reduce it. Additionally the project team will also rely and draw on its very close institutional links with projects 1 and 3 to benefit from scientific and logistic synergy during the implementation of the various phases of the project.Professional disciplineArea of expertise important to this project.Brief description of research responsibilities with respect to the outputs and activities listed in the Gantt chart.Chris  "}

main/part_2/0400716159.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"fc38ab848aef52ae02cb54b91f915bc1","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/2e2a05a1-25e5-41b8-af68-daeadce0e73e/retrieve","id":"1886407720"},"keywords":["Cassava Drought tolerance Stomatal conductance ABA-dependent ABA-independent ABA, abscisic acid","ANOVA, analysis of variance","ACZ, agro-climatic zone","cDNA, complementary deoxyribonucleic acid","Ct, cycle threshold","DAP, days after planting","DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid","DRGs, drought responsive genes","DS, drought susceptible","DT, drought tolerant","GEFC, gene expression fold change","GOI, gene of interest","g s , stomatal conductance","IITA, international institute of tropical agriculture","Lsd, least significant difference","M-MuLV, moloney murine leukemia virus","MAP, months after planting","PP2A, serine-threonine protein phosphatase 2A","RT-qPCR, reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction","RNA, ribonucleic acid","SMC, soil moisture content","SPSS, statistical package for social scientists","STPs, sampling time points"],"sieverID":"3091757a-5830-4f5c-9008-e209552efc75","content":"Understanding drought tolerance mechanisms of cassava is a pre-requisite to improve the performance of the crop in water-scarce regions. Several hypotheses have been formulated to suggest how cassava can withstand a prolonged period of drought. We performed field trials under drought conditions with a selection of 37 cassava genotypes to identify phenotypic and molecular patterns associated with drought tolerance. Plant morphologies varied significantly between cassava genotypes under drought conditions in Kenya, which indicates a strong genetic basis for phenotypic differences. Drought stress reduced yield by 59%, the number of edible storage roots by 43% and leaf retention by 50% on average. Over three years and in two experimental field sites, the most drought tolerant genotype bulked 7.1 ( ± 2.1) t/ha yield while the most drought susceptible genotype yielded 3.3 ( ± 1.4) t/ha under drought conditions. The significant positive correlation of yield under irrigated and nonirrigated conditions suggests that selection of genotypes with high yield performance under well-watered or control conditions should be prioritized to identify genotypes with superior performance under drought stress. The positive correlation between yield and leaf retention provided further evidence that leaf longevity positively contributes to yield in water-deficit conditions. Yield differences could be attributed in part to variation in stomatal conductance (g s ) because selected drought tolerant genotypes maintained higher g s and delayed stomatal closure as compared to drought susceptible genotypes. Further analysis revealed that genetic or molecular differences for g s between drought tolerant and susceptible genotypes could be detected at early stages of water deficit. These differences likely involve both abscisic acid (ABA)-dependent and ABA-independent molecular pathways.Climatic changes aggravate both biotic and abiotic stresses, which have adverse effects on worldwide agricultural productivity (Raza et al., 2019;Lamaoui et al., 2018;Stevanović et al., 2016). Abiotic stresses constrain crop production and threaten global food security (Lipiec et al., 2013;Fahad et al., 2017). Reduced precipitation and changes in rainfall patterns are causing frequent onset of droughts around the world (Lobell et al., 2011). Predictions indicate an increase in the frequency, intensity and severity of drought stress in the near future (Nadeem et al., 2019) with yield reductions of 21 and 40% in wheat and maize respectively being attributed to drought stress on a global scale (Daryanto et al., 2016). Therefore, without sufficient interventions to secure agricultural production under changing climatic and environmental conditions, the negative impact of abiotic stress will be more severe for several crops that are important in large food-vulnerable regions, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia (Rosenthal et al., 2012;Rosenthal and Ort, 2012).One sustainable mitigation measure is breeding and improving stress-tolerant staple crop varieties that can produce higher yields under adverse climatic conditions such as drought. Cassava is an important staple crop for food-insecure populations in Sub-Saharan Africa (Lobell et al., 2008;Rosenthal et al., 2012) and is expected to positively buffer the region under the negative impacts of climatic change (Jarvis et al., 2012). However, cassava productivity can be significantly reduced by insufficient rainfall or low soil fertility (El-Sharkawy, 2004), thus affecting its role as a food security crop. For example, a two-month drought stress during the stages of rapid leaf formation, root initiation and tuberization (1-5 months after planting) can reduce cassava storage root yield by up to 60% (Connor et al., 1981;Alves, 2002). Despite this, cassava is regarded as 'a drought, war and famine reserve crop' (Burns et al., 2010) because it can still produce a yield under adverse conditions often considered non-viable for other crops (El-Sharkawy, 2007;Okogbenin et al., 2013).Traits such as high stomatal sensitivity to limit evapotranspiration, leaf retention and deep rooting capacities have been suggested to contribute to good performance of cassava under water limiting conditions (Alves, 2002;Okogbenin et al., 2013;Lenis et al., 2006;El-Sharkawy, 2007). The physiological characterization of cassava responses to drought has mostly focused on the content of the stress hormone ABA and the associated stomatal conductance (Alves and Setter, 2004a). For example, the sensitivity of cassava stomata to incipient water deficit has been associated with large increases in ABA content (Alves and Setter, 2000). The ABA content of both mature and expanding cassava leaves increases between 3 -6 days of water deficit and decreases after re-watering (Alves, 2002;Alves and Setter, 2004a). ABA has also been suggested as a key contributor to the rapid arrest of cassava leaf growth under water stress and quick resumption of leaf expansion after re-watering (Alves and Setter, 2004b). However, the role of ABA regulation in genotypes displaying various degrees of drought tolerance and its potential in targeted breeding of cassava with increased drought tolerance have not been established.Molecular studies to characterize the cassava response to drought have so far been few. Lokko et al. (2007) identified candidate expressed sequence tags with known roles in drought-response or unique to dehydration-stressed RNA libraries from cassava undergoing drought stress. High-density oligo-microarrays have been used to characterize the transcriptome of cassava in vitro plantlets subjected to artificial drought stress (Utsumi et al., 2012). Turyagyenda et al. (2013) identified four differentially regulated cassava genes in two cassava genotypes contrasting for drought resistance in a pot experiment and suggested their importance in oxidative burst mitigation and osmotic adjustment. Recent work suggests that drought tolerance in cassava is associated with the maintenance of a robust developmental programme sustaining storage root growth under water stress. Therefore, the biomass-partitioning ratio at an early stage of storage root development could be a useful indicator for a genotype to favor storage root growth when resources are limited by water stress (Duque, 2012). Consistent with these observations, a positive correlation between partitioning index at 7 months after planting and harvest index for drought-tolerant genotypes has been suggested as the basis for screening cassava germplasm for drought tolerance (Olasanmi, 2010). We performed threeyear field trials at two sites in Kenya to assess the performance of 37 cassava genotypes differing for agronomic performance under drought conditions using water-sufficient and water-limiting conditions. Genotypes contrasting for yield performance in the water-limiting regime were subsequently selected for experiments in controlled greenhouse conditions to analyze the underlying physiological and molecular mechanisms associated with drought susceptibility and tolerance.Field drought trials were conducted between 2010 and 2012 at two sites: Kibwezi (longitude 37°98\"E, latitude 2°40\"S and elevation of 914 m above sea level and Kiboko (longitude 37°43\"E, latitude 2°12\"S and an altitude of 975 m above sea level), both located within the drought prone Eastern province of Kenya (Shisanya et al., 2011;Mganga et al., 2010a). The two sites are classified under agro-climatic zone five (ACZ-V) within the arid and semi-arid lands of Kenya, which are characterized by soils with low plant nutrient availability, daily mean temperature varying from 15 °C to 35 °C and an average annual rainfall of 450 -900 mm which is often poorly distributed and erratic (Sombroek et al., 1982;Jaetzold et al., 2006;Hornetz et al., 2000). Greenhouse experiments were carried out at ETH Zurich Research Station located in Lindau-Eschikon, Switzerland on latitude 47°26'N, longitude, 8°40'E and altitude of 540 m above sea level (Schneider et al., 2011).The 37 cassava genotypes assessed in this study were sourced from IITA, Ibadan, Nigeria (Suppl. Table 1), based on previous observations of drought susceptibility and tolerance. Soil characteristics (Suppl. Table 2A) and weather elements (rainfall, relative humidity and temperature) were recorded and analyzed from weather stations located within the sites (Suppl. Figs. 1-3). Between October 2009 and February 2012, (Suppl. Table 2B), three successive multi-seasonal field experiments were carried out in a randomized complete block design (RCBD). Ploughed land was split into four blocks of equal size. Each block was then divided into two plots and each plot further sub-divided into two sub-plots for four replicates. Two treatments, irrigated treatment (IRT) and non-irrigated treatment (NIRT) and cassava genotypes were randomly assigned to the plots and sub-plots respectively. Cassava cuttings of uniform length (∼30 cm) was horizontally planted in soil in four rows per sub-plot and four stakes per row (total of 16 plants) at the recommended 1 m spacing between plants and 1 m between the rows (Ng and Ng, 2002). For homogenous plant germination and establishment, all plants were irrigated to field capacity three times per week via an overhead or sprinkler system in Kiboko and for three hours daily through a drip system in Kibwezi.Irrigation was sustained for three months after which non-irrigated treatment was initiated by withholding total irrigation. To mimic common agronomic practiced by smallholder cassava farmers, no fertilizer (inorganic and organic) was applied during planting or establishment of the trial. Field drought trials were terminated through destructive harvesting at nine (9) months after planting (MAP) (Suppl. Table 2B). Eight plants from each cassava genotype per treatment replicate were selected (from inner rows) for determination of agromorphological traits. Leaf retention was visually scored as percent of the leaf-covered stems to the total plant height, the number of edible storage roots (NESR) was counted from each plant and their fresh storage roots weighed as yield following standard phenotypic approaches (Fukuda et al., 2010;Okogbenin et al., 2013). Yield, leaf retention and NESR data were subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA) using SPSS under general linear model for multivariate. Fischer's least significant difference (LSD α = 0.05) was used to separate group means.Three highest yielding and three least yielding genotypes under NIRT were selected from the field drought trials and subsequently used for greenhouse assays. For greenhouse experiment, plants were first multiplied and grown for 3-4 weeks in vitro prior to transfer to soil. The plantlets were subsequently hardened in soil for three weeks under greenhouse conditions of 26 °C/17 °C (day/night) temperature, 60/50% (day/night) RH, 14 hours light at 35 K-lux intensity and average air ventilation rate of 84.7%. Plantlets of uniform size, growth and vigour were selected and transplanted in 4-litre potted soil composed of 40% sand, 35% clay, 25% silt and 21% organic matter (RICOTER Erdaufbereitung AG, Aarberg, Switzerland). Before planting, soil moisture content (SMC) or 'pot capacity' (PC) was determined as described by Alves and Setter (2004b). Plants were grown and maintained at ∼100% PC for 60 days. At 60 days after planting (DAP), four plants from each genotype were subjected to three treatments in a completely randomized design with three replicates. The treatments included water deficit that was attained by withholding total irrigation, control or wellwatered plants that were maintained at ∼100% pot capacity and rewatering treatment, which was initiated once stomata conductance (g s ) could not be measured from plants under water deficit. Daily, between 9. 00 -11.30 am, leaf g s were measured from three fully expanded leaves using SC-1 Leaf Porometer (Decagon Devices Inc., Pullman, WA).Based on declining SMC in the greenhouse experiments, upon WD induction (WDI) (Fig. 1), leaf materials were collected at four sampling time points (STPs). Leaves for STP1 were harvested 3 days after WDI i.e. at ∼65% SMC, STP2 leaves collected 5 days after WDI i.e. at ∼45% SMC, STP3 leaves taken 9 days after WDI i.e. at ∼20% SMC and STP4 leaves harvested after 24 -h re-watering (WDR) treatment i.e. at ∼80% SMC (Fig. 1). Leaves from WW plants (control) were also harvested at each STP. Three upper fully expanded leaves (10 th , 11 th & 12 th from bottom -Suppl. Fig. 4) from each of the three plants were harvested separately (per plant), pooled and stored at −80 °C for subsequent RNA isolation. Total RNA was extracted using pine tree RNA extraction method (Chang et al., 1993), with modifications adopted from Moreno et al. (2011). RNA concentration and purity was determined through Thermo Scientific™ NanoDrop (ND-1000) and integrity determined via 0.8% agarose gel electrophoresis. It is important to note that RNA extracted from genotype TME-419 was consistently of poor quality or integrity. The RNA was degraded, unsuitable for cDNA synthesis and thus TME-419 was subsequently excluded from gene expression analysis.Prior to cDNA synthesis, genomic DNA contamination was removed from each isolated RNA via digestion with DNase 1 (Thermo Fisher Scientific). The treatment consisted of 1.0 μg total RNA, 1.0 μl 10X reaction buffer (with MgCl 2 ) and 1.0 μl DNase 1 (RNase-free). The mixture was adjusted to final volume of 10.0 μl with nuclease free water.The reaction was incubated at 37 °C for 30 minutes and terminated with addition of 1.0 μl EDTA, followed by incubation at 65 °C for 10 minutes. The DNase-treated RNA was then used as a template for cDNA synthesis using RevertAid First Strand cDNA Synthesis Kit (Thermo Fisher Scientific). The cDNA synthesis reaction contained 1.0 μl random hexamer primer, 4.0 μl 5X reaction buffer, 1.0 μl RiboLock RNase Inhibitor (20 u/μl), 2.0 μl 10 mM dNTP mix and 1.0 μl RevertAid M-MuLV Reverse Transcriptase (RT; 200 u/μl). The 9.0 μl master mix was then added to 11.0 μl DNase-treated RNA and incubated for 5 minutes at 25 °C followed by 42 °C for 60 minutes. The reaction was terminated by incubating at 70 °C for 5 minutes. The cDNA sample was then stored at −80 °C for subsequent RT-qPCR.The nucleotide or protein sequences of selected drought responsive genes (DRGs) associated with ABA-dependent and ABA-independent signaling pathways (Suppl. Table 11) were sourced from genomic databases TAIR (https://www.arabidopsis.org, accessed on October 2013) (Lamesch et al., 2012) and NCBI (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, accessed October 2013). Cassava orthologs of selected genes were identified through phytozome BLAST tool (http://www.phytozome.jgi.doe.gov, accessed October 2013) of cassava genome database v4.0 (Prochnik et al. 2012). In cases where the query sequence of the gene of interest (GOI) produced multiple cassava genes during BLAST analysis, the cassava homolog with the lowest Expected (E) value was selected. Transcript sequences of the selected cassava genes were retrieved from Phytozome and used to design gene specific primers (Suppl. Table 12). Reference gene, Manihot esculenta serine-threonine protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) (Czechowski et al., 2005;Moreno et al., 2011) was selected, validated and used to normalize expression of DRGs in the present study. Stability of PP2A expression across all genotypes and under different water regimes was confirmed using BestKeeper v1.0 software (Pfaffl et al., 2004) Primers were designed using PerlPrimer software (Marshall, 2004), following criteria such as annealing temperature (T m ) of 60 ± 1 °C, primer length of 18 -25 bases, 40 -60% GC content and 60 -150 bp amplicon size (Udvardi et al. 2008). Most primers were designed from the 3'-unstranslated region (3'-UTR) since it is generally unique than the coding sequence and closer to the reverse transcriptase start site (Udvardi et al., 2008;Taberlet et al., 1991). Specificity of each primer pair was confirmed through 1% agarose gel electrophoresis (single product of expected size) and analysis of dissociation curves. Primer efficiencies were derived from amplification plots or calculated using the raw fluorescence data (ΔRn) that was exported as output file and subsequently imported into the LinRegPCR program (Ramakers et al., 2003;Ruijter et al., 2009). Primer pair efficiencies ranged between 1.90 -2.02 (95 -101%) (Suppl. Table 13) and therefore considered as suitable for reliable qPCR analysis (Applied Biosystems, 2008;Bio-Rad Laboratories, 2013). Stability of the PP2A reference gene was confirmed under well watered (WW), water deficit (WD) and re-watered (WDR) conditions using Bestkeeper software (Pfaffl et al., 2004;Sang et al., 2013;Zhang et al., 2019).RT-qPCR was performed on synthesized cDNA using 7500 Fast Real Time PCR System (Applied Biosystems®, Foster City, CA). Three cDNA samples representing three biological replicates for each genotype per treatment and sampling time point were subjected to RT-qPCR analysis. The 20.0 μl PCR volumes consisted of 1.0 μl (10 pmoL) primers (forward & reverse), 4.0 μl cDNA templates, 4.0 μl sterile deionized water (ddH 2 O) and 10.0 μl Fast SYBR® Green Master Mix (Thermo Fisher Scientific). The PCR thermal cycles profile applied were adopted from Moreno et al. (2011). The process involved initial cDNA denaturation at 95 °C for 20 seconds; 40 cycles of denaturation at 95 °C for 3 seconds; annealing at 60 °C for 15 seconds and extension at 72 °C for 30 seconds. The default dissociation step consisted of 95 °C for 15 seconds; 60 °C for 1 minute; 95 °C for 15 seconds and 60 °C for 15 seconds. The dissociation curve analysis was carried out at the default setting of the 7500 Fast Real Time PCR System to confirm the specificity of each reaction.Field collected data (yield, NESR and leaf retention) were subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA) using Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) version 21 (SPSS Inc., 2012). The general linear model (multivariate) was applied with Fischer's least significant difference (LSD α = 0.05) procedure used for Post Hoc tests between dependent variables (yield, NESR and leaf retention) and fixed factors (location, seasons, treatments and genotypes) (Suppl. Table 3). Additional tests were carried out to analyze interactions between fixed factors for every dependent variable (Suppl. Table 3). Pearson's product moment correlation coefficient (r) test was used to analyze the inter-relationships between traits, while the overall percent performance of each trait was computed relative to control treatment. Greenhouse generated leaf stomatal conductance (g s ) data was subjected to ANOVA using Sigma-Plot analysis software version 12.2 (San Jose, CA). The differences between groups of means were separated by standard deviations.For gene regulation, qPCR cycle threshold (Ct) data was generated using 7500 Fast System SDS software with default settings. The relative gene expression ratio was computed based on primer efficiencies and Ct differences of treated samples versus control treatment following a modified mathematical model described by Pfaffl (2001) (see Eq. 1). Expression ratio (R) of DRGs (Suppl. Table 11) in each cassava genotype per sampling time point (STP) was normalized with reference gene PP2A (Moreno et al., 2011;Reddy et al., 2016). Expression ratio (R) of DRGs (Suppl. Table 11) in each cassava genotype per sampling time point (STP) was normalized with reference gene, PP2A. This was done by dividing each biological sample or replicate per treatment (WD, WDR & WW) with PP2A. Once normalized to PP2A, gene expression fold change (GEFC) was calculated by dividing the ratio from treated samples (WD & WDR) with ratio of WW controls where a ratio above 1.0 was considered up regulation and below 1.0 considered down regulation. Significance of differences between water deficit (WD), rewatered (WDR) and well-watered (WW) or control treatment pairs in gene regulation were tested with a student t-test (P ≤ 0.05). The GEFC were then converted into heat maps (Figs. 6 and 7).Where E = primer efficiency; goi = gene of interest or DRGs; ref = reference gene or PP2A; ΔCt = change in Ct; WW = well-watered treatment (control); WD = water deficit treatment; WDR = re-watered treatmentDuring the annual field experiment periods, long season rains (January -May) were punctuated by a 4-month drought (June -September) before the onset of short season rains (September -December) in both locations (Suppl. Figs. 1-3). The mean monthly relative humidity (determined between 9.00 -11.00 AM) was fairly constant at both sites, with a lower humidity in Kibwezi, while temperatures were comparable and constant (Suppl. Figs. 1-3). Both sites had dominant clay and sandy clay loam soil textures (Suppl. Table 2A). Higher mineral ions or contents (Cl-, Na + , Ca 2+ and Mg 2+ ), low pH (7.51) and low K + ions (0.66) were analyzed in soils from Kiboko compared to lower mineral contents (Cl-, Na + , Ca 2+ and Mg 2+ ), higher pH (8.52) and higher K + ions (0.82) recorded in soils from Kibwezi (Suppl. Table 2A). Except NESR under location (Ln), ANOVA results showed significant (P ≤ 0.001) differences in yield, NESR and leaf retention between seasons (Sn), genotypes (Gt) and treatments (Tm) (Suppl. Table 3). The Ln*Sn*Tm*Gt interaction was significant (P ≤ 0.001) for LER but non-significant (P > 0.05) for yield and NESR (Suppl. Table 3).Analysis of overall mean output showed significantly more yield, NESR and leaf retention in cassava plants under IRT compared to plants under NIRT (Table 1). Overall yield under NIRT were significantly (P ≤ 0.01) and positively correlated (r = 0.591) with yield under IRT (Table 2). Similar positive correlations between yield-NIRT and yield-IRT were also recorded in both experimental sites and years. For instance, the correlation was significant (P ≤ 0.01) at KBK-S1 (r = 0.891) and KBZ-S1 (r = 0.699) as well as P ≤ 0.05 at KBK-S2 (r = 0.415), and KBZ-S2 (r = 0.531), with non-significant negative relations (P > 0.05; r = -0.007) only observed in KBZ-S3 (Table 2). Other correlation analysis under NIRT showed significant (P ≤ 0.01) and positive correlation between yield and NESR (r = 0.516) as well as between yield and LER (r = 0.449), while correlations between NESR and LER was nonsignificant for this condition (Table 2). Under control or IRT, a significant (P ≤ 0.03) and positive correlation (r = 0.859) was observed between yield and NESR while correlations between yield and leaf retention as well as NESR and leaf retention were not significant (Table 2).All field-screened cassava genotypes were classified either as drought tolerant (DT) or drought susceptible (DS) groups based on yield data (Suppl. Tables 4 and 5). Under NIRT, (with both sites and all seasons considered), the genotypes with significantly higher yield were classified as DT while those with significantly lower yield were categorized as DS (Suppl. Table 6). Based on this criteria, five genotypes (94/0039, 95/0306, 98/0002, I92/0067 and 92/0342) were selected as DT while another five genotypes (PYT, 92/0427, TME-419, I96/1439 and 96/0409) were classified as DS (Suppl. Table 6). Analysis of physiological and molecular response of cassava to drought stress took advantage of those cassava genotypes contrasting for response to drought at the yield level.Table 3 summarizes the average yield performance of the different genotypes. When yields under both NIRT and IRT were considered, genotypes 94/0039, 95/0306 and 98/0002 bulked significantly higher root yield (in both conditions) in all growing periods at each site while similar performances with one exception were recorded in genotypes I92/0067, 92/0342 and 96/2132 (Table 3). The NESR was significantly higher for most DT genotypes as compared to DS genotypes under NIRT, whereas under IRT NESR differences were not significant between the two cassava genotype groups (Suppl. Tables 7 & 8). Genotypic differences for leaf retention (Suppl. Table 3) were also significant but this varied with location. For instance, under NIRT in Kiboko (S1 & S2) the least leaf retention (∼31%) was recorded in a DS genotype compared to the least leaf retention (∼45%) of a DT genotype (Suppl. Table 9). Under the same condition (NIRT) in Kibwezi, the least leaf retention (∼19%) and (∼23%) were observed in a DS and a DT genotype (Suppl. Table 10), respectively.Cassava genotypes contrasting for yield performance in NIRT field conditions were subsequently assessed in controlled greenhouse conditions. Significantly, higher stomatal conductance (g s ) were measured consistently in WW cassava plants compared to plants the WD condition (Fig. 2). Similar comparisons were made between WW and WDR plants. Genotypic variations for g s were also observed especially starting at 6 days after WD treatment (Fig. 3). For example, DT genotypes (98/0002, 94/0039 & 95/0306) exhibited significantly higher g s compared to DS genotypes (I96/1439, 92/0427 & TME-419) with significantly lower g s between day 7, 8 and 9 (Fig. 3). These implied that upon WD treatment, DT genotypes showed less decline in g s (maintained higher g s ) compared to their DS counterparts with rapid g s decline. The genotypes also showed differences for g s after re-watering (WDR) that increased soil moisture to 80% (Fig. 1). For example, all DS genotypes re-gained significantly higher g s compared to DT genotypes (Fig. 4). Under well watered or control treatment, g s variation between DT and DS genotypes were not significant (Suppl. Fig. 5).Candidate genes with potential functions in drought response previously characterized in Arabidopsis thaliana and in other crops were identified in cassava and their expression tested in cassava genotypes contrasting for their response to drought in the present study. The DRGs (Suppl. Table 11) were categorized into either ABA-dependent (ABA-D) or ABA-independent (ABA-I) pathways (Fig. 5) based on Arabidopsis classification. It should be noted that this classification remains to be validated in cassava. After WDI, the expression patterns of ABA-D Correlations between yield, leaf retention and number of storage roots non-irrigated and irrigated conditions in different experimental seasons and sites. (Fig. 6) and ABA-I genes (Fig. 7) were significantly changed and differed between cassava drought-tolerant and susceptible genotypes. As expected, an increasing number of ABA-D genes were up-regulated with decreasing SMC. For example, more genes were up-regulated at ∼20% SMC (STP3) compared to those up-regulated at ∼65% SMC (STP1) (Fig. 7). Further, fewer ABA-D genes were up-regulated at higher soil moisture contents such as 80% SMC (STP4). Gene expressions also varied with genotype. For example, at STP1, more ABA-D genes were up-regulated in DS genotypes and in I96/1439 in particular compared to either down-regulation or non-significant expression changes of these genes in DT genotypes and 95/0306 in particular (Fig. 6). ABA-D genes with contrasting expression patterns between DT and DS cassava genotypes included NCED3, RD29A/B, SLAC1 and SNAC1. These genes were up-regulated in DT genotypes and down-regulated in DS genotypes at STP1 (65% SMC) (Fig. 6). Nearly all ABA-D genes were up-regulated in both DT and DS cassava genotypes at 45 and 20% SMC (Fig. 6). The only exceptions were PYR1 that was down-regulated in both DT and DS genotype at 45% SMC, OST1 and DSTP that were both down-regulated in DT and up-regulated in DS genotypes at 45% SMC, as well as PLDα1 and PYR1 that were up-regulated in DT and downregulated in DS genotypes at 20% SMC (Fig. 6). After re-watering at STP4 (80% SMC), four genes, ABI1, RD20, PLDα1 and MYB44 were upregulated in DT and down-regulated in DS genotypes, while NFYA5, SCaBP5 and SNAC1 were up-regulated in DS genotypes (Fig. 6). Nearly all ABA-I genes were up-regulated upon WD induction at 65%, 45% and 20% SMC (Fig. 7). The only exceptions were ATAF1 that was not up or down regulated at STP3 (20% SMC) in any genotype as well as DREB2A/B and RD29A/B, which were down-regulated in DT genotypes and up-regulated in DS genotypes at STP1 or 65% SMC (Fig. 7). Upon re-watering at 80% SMC (STP4), all the five ABA-I genes (ATAF1, ERD10, DREB1A/B, DREB2A/B and RD29A/B) except ERD10 were down-regulated in the DS cassava genotype 92/0427 (Fig. 7). Expression patterns of these genes in the remaining genotypes were different at STP4 (Fig. 7).The typical bi-modal rainfall pattern of the region (Maingi et al., 2001;Kamau et al., 2010;Mganga et al., 2010b) and the dominant clay and sandy clay loam soil textures in both locations with low organic content and fertility that are common in semi-arid areas (Hornetz et al., 2000) made the two selected sites suitable for our field experiments (Suppl. Figs. 1-3). Although the mineral contents of soil profiles in both locations were relatively low (Suppl. Table 2A), no mineral fertilizer or organic manure was applied. This was to mimic as much as possible some of the common agronomic practices observed in cassava farmersAverage yield (tons of fresh roots ha -1 ) of selected drought tolerant and drought susceptible cassava genotypes in non-irrigated and irrigated conditions in field trials in Kenya.  in both locations. Indeed smallholder farmers in Africa use little or no fertilizer at all when cultivating cassava (Fermont et al., 2009;Nweke, 1994;Kelly, 2006;Biratu et al., 2018). The significant variation among the cassava genotypes between conditions as well as genotype and treatment interactions (Gt*Tm) as well as locations and seasons (Ln*Sn) for yield, NESR and LER indicated strong genetic variability for drought tolerance (Suppl. Table 3). Although genotypic variability suggests a potential for selection of drought tolerant cassava genotypes (Nduwumuremyi et al., 2017), the significant Ln*Gt*Tm interactions present a challenge in identifying or selecting superior genotypes (Tumuhimbise et al., 2014). The significant Ln*Gt*Tm interaction highlight the importance of conducting multi-location field trials to identify the most stable genotypes generally and specifically adapted to semi-arid environments (Nduwumuremyi et al., 2017).The overall impact of NIRT relative to IRT confirmed the negative effect of water deficit on cassava growth and yield (Tables 1-3), which was more severe in Kibwezi than in Kiboko, perhaps as the result of irrigation methods or rainfall, rates of evapotranspiration, or moisture retention capacities of the soils, but comparable to previous reports (Connor et al., 1981;Alves, 2002;Aina et al., 2007a). Performance of traits within and between locations and seasons also varied. For example, overall mean output of yield, NESR and LER under both treatments was higher in season one compared to season two in Kiboko field trials (Table 1). Differences in the timing of rainfall onset and duration of rainfall probably contributed to seasonal trait variation. For instance, season one trial was initiated at the onset of the short rainy season (September 2009) and terminated in June 2010 after the long seasonal rains (Suppl. Table 2B; Suppl. Figs. 1 & 2), compared to season two trial that was established during drier month of July 2010 and terminated in April 2011 (Suppl. Table 2B; Suppl. Figs. 2 & 3). Additionally, during trial in season one, there was rainfall for more than two months before harvest (Suppl. Fig. 1) compared to trial in season two that had longer dry period (Suppl. Fig. 2). Thus, the number of months with rainfall in season two was two months fewer than in season 1. This might have contributed to the higher performance among traits in season one compared to season two (Table 1). While studying the impact of water stress on fresh tuber yield and dry matter contents of cassava under field conditions, Bakayoko et al. ( 2009) equally reported seasonal yield variation based on planting and harvesting time points. Cassava plants exposed to drought during establishment stage (Santisopasri et al., 2001;Pardales and Esquibel, 1996) and immediately before root harvest (Bakayoko et al., 2009) exhibits reduced productivity.The generally significant and positive correlation between yield under NIRT and IRT indicates that cassava genotypes with high yield under NIRT are also likely to perform better under IRT conditions (Table 2). Therefore, our results suggest that initial screening of highest yielding cassava genotypes under well-watered (control) conditions is a reasonable strategy for subsequent screening under water deficient conditions to select genotypes for high yield under drought conditions. The positive correlation between yield and leaf retention under NIRT suggests a positive effect of leaf retention on high cassava yield under drought stress (Table 2). Similarly, Lenis et al. (2006) observed a positive correlation between leaf retention and fresh root production. Prolonging leaf longevity could aid in producing cultivars with improved yield and root quality (Fregene and Puonti-Kaerlas, 2002).The positive and significant correlations between yield and NESR (Table 2), which is an indicator of cassava sink strength (Pellet and El-Sharkawy, 1994), suggests that in addition to storage root weight, NESR can also be included in a selection index designed to improve cassava production. Thus, NESR should be increased to obtain a higher cassava yield because a lower storage root sink capacity reduces the canopy photosynthetic rate and increases leaf starch (Gray, 2000, De Souza andLong, 2018;Stitt, 1991). Similar correlations between yield and NESR have been previously reported in cassava (Adjebeng-Danquah et al., 2016;Tumuhimbise et al., 2014). The non-significant correlation between NESR and leaf retention under NIRT that we found differs from previously reported LER capacity of cassava during periodic drought that positively correlated with root quality or number of commercially viable storage roots (Fregene and Puonti-Kaerlas, 2002).Although cassava is generally considered to be drought-tolerant  (Alves, 2002;Bergantin et al., 2004), our results provide the range of yield reduction that can be expected from exposure to sub-optimal water regimes (Tables 2 nd 3). Water availability is among the most significant genotype-dependent abiotic constraint for cassava (Oliveira et al., 2015). Based on storage root yield under NIRT we identified the best performing or drought-tolerant (DT) and least-performing or drought-susceptible (DS) cassava genotypes (Table 3). Interestingly, most DT genotypes also bulked higher yield under IRT compared to DS genotypes, suggesting that better-performing genotypes selected under water deficit can also be expected to sustain higher performance in areas or during periods with sufficient rainfall. The DT genotypes 94/ 0039, 98/0002, 95/0306, I92/0067, 92/0342 and 96/2132 were particularly significant at the top of 15 highest yielding genotypes under both NIRT and IRT (Table 3). These genotypes showed good yields irrespective of conditions, years or locations and could be incorporated into breeding programs for drought tolerance. They could produce reasonable yields with unpredictable precipitation and temperature patterns associated with climate change. As previously reported, the wide variation within the cassava germplasm for tolerance to prolonged drought presents the possibility to breed and select for stable and relative high yields under favorable and adverse conditions (El-Sharkawy and Cock, 1987).Variations in other morphological traits such as NESR and leaf retention can also be useful markers. For instance, under NIRT, we found significantly higher NESR for most DT genotypes compared to DS genotypes (Supp. Tables 7 & 8), suggesting a higher root sink strength in drought-tolerant genotypes. The number of storage roots harvested per plant may also be an indicator of root sink strength, which is of value in cassava breeding (El-Sharkawy, 2004;Pellet and El-Sharkawy, 1994). However, we note that genotypic differences for NESR were not significant under IRT, indicating that DT genotypes maintain higher root sink strength under NIRT conditions. Variation in leaf retention was not significant between DT and DS genotypes under IRT, but the higher leaf retention in DT genotypes under NIRT field conditions (Supp. Tables 9 & 10) suggest that these genotypes also maintain a higher source capacity. It may thus be preferable to breed and select for better leaf retention when developing varieties adapted to dry areas (Okogbenin et al., 2013).The reduction of stomatal conductance (g s ) in plants subjected to WD is often associated with the decrease of soil moisture content. Similarly, Shan et al (2018) recorded a substantial g s decline in cassava plants under drought stress conditions compared to well-watered plants. Cassava maintains a high g s and internal CO 2 concentration under optimal water conditions, but rapidly closes stomata in response to even a small decrease in soil water potential (El-Sharkawy and Cock, 1984;Alves and Setter, 2000). Importantly, we found no consistent differences for g s between DT and DS genotypes as both groups of genotypes showed a continuous reduction of g s as SMC decreased (Fig. 3). However, between 7 -9 days after water deficit induction, the reduction of g s became more pronounced in DS genotypes (shown by lower g s ) compared to DT genotypes with higher g s (Fig. 3). Cassava plants rapidly recover from drought stress after a rainfall by producing new leaves with even higher g s (El-Sharkawy, 2006, 2007). Relatively similar phenomenon was also observed in greenhouse experiments, in which selected genotypes and particularly DS genotypes showed a rapid and significant increase in g s 24 hours after re-watering, but in fully expanded leaves (Fig. 4). Collectively, our results indicate that sensing of water deficit is similar in DT and DS genotypes but eventually leads to significant differential reduction of g s over a 9-day period (Fig. 3). The selected DT genotypes appear to be less responsive to water deficit conditions as suggested by the delayed increase in stomata aperture upon re-watering as compared to DS genotypes. Relatively similar variation in stomatal leaf conductance has been observed and thus g s seems to be useful parameter in pre-selecting sources of germplasm conferring adaptation to prolonged dry periods (Iglesias et al., 1995). The improved yield performance of DT genotypes under NIRT field conditions can therefore be partially explained by their capacity to prolong stomatal opening, enabling them to photosynthesize for a longer period. The faster opening and closing of stomata has a greater rate of energy consumption per unit leaf area than slower opening and closing (Raven, 2014), which could further accentuate the yield difference between DT and DS genotypes.Despite this, results in the present study cannot authoritatively associate variation in stomatal conductance with plant yield, as these variables were measured in plants cultivated in different systems (greenhouse and field) and stress conditions (short -9 day water deficit; or long-term stress -9 months). Additional factors such as rooting depth response may be one of the differences in genotypes that can explain adaptations to water stress, likely interacting with stomatal conductance responses and thus yield differences. Although we did not measure root depth in the current study, previous research showed that during water scarcity, cassava fibrous roots can extend for more than 2 meters into deeper and wetter soil, from where the plant can extract between 20 -40% of its total water uptake (El-Sharkawy et al., 1992). Also, cassava can maintain adventitious root elongation in drought conditions, which results in a relatively broad horizontal spread of the root system that can recover quickly from drought by lateral root branching and that may be related to good cassava growth and yield performance (Subere et al., 2003). Cassava's access to deep-water layers (Okogbenin et al., 2013) enables the crop endure long periods of drought stress and perhaps extended stomatal conductance and photosynthesis for better yield performance as observed in DT genotypes. Cassava is capable of partially retaining their photosynthetic capacity under prolonged water shortage (Okogbenin et al., 2013) for sustained production.Our results show that stomatal closure was associated with a decrease in g s under water-deficit conditions while stomatal opening was linked to sustained or high g s under control or well-watered conditions in all genotypes (Fig. 2). Similar stomatal closure, opening and reopening in cassava has been reported under field conditions (Alves and Setter, 2000;El-Sharkawy, 2006, 2007). The accumulation of ABA in cassava leaves is correlated with g s and/or transpiration rates and rapid stomatal closure under drought stress (Alves and Setter, 2000). ABA is involved in the regulation of stomata opening and closing to regulate water loss (Mishra et al., 2006). In response to drought, plants synthesize ABA, which triggers closing of stomata to reduce water loss (Schroeder et al., 2001). Studies in model plant species have shown that drought stress signaling is mediated by ABA-dependent (ABA-D) and ABA-independent (ABA-I) pathways to activate several drought-inducible genes (Roychoudhury et al., 2013;Shinozaki and Yamaguchi-Shinozaki, 2007;Chinnusamy et al., 2004). To date, these two pathways have not been well characterized in cassava in the context of water deficit conditions. Our results show that ABA-D and ABA-I genes in the cassava genotypes differing in drought tolerance likely mediate signaling of water deficit conditions as well. Previous experiments that mimicked drought stress using PEG-mediated dehydration in cassava also found changes in both ABA-D and ABA-I regulatory networks and genes (Fu et al., 2016;Li et al., 2017;Li et al., 2017b), similar to the activation of ABA-D and ABA-I pathway genes in other plants (Tuteja, 2007;Shinozaki andYamaguchi-Shinozaki, 1997, 2007).The expression changes of ABA-D and ABA-I genes we observed at 65% SMC suggest a varied molecular response to water scarcity in cassava genotypes, similar to the large natural variation in the expression of stress-related genes in Arabidopsis subjected to soil WD in greenhouse experiments (Rymaszewski et al. 2017). It was also reported that some genes respond to water stress very rapidly whereas others show slow response after drought (Shinozaki and Yamaguchi-Shinozaki, 1997). Most of the ABA-D and ABA-I genes were up-regulated in both DT and DS cassava genotypes at 45% and 20% soil moisture, suggesting a gradual response to water deficit that is consistent with the corresponding significant reduction in stomatal conductance. It is however cautionary to note that the molecular evaluation in the current study refers to the early response to drought stress, as plants were subjected to a 9-day water deficit treatment.We found that expression of ABA-D genes varied with levels of water deficit and between DT and DS cassava genotypes. The number of up-regulated ABA-D genes generally increased with decreasing SMC in both DT and DS cassava but more strongly in DS genotypes and concomitant with their rapid decrease of g s compared to the gradual reduction of g s in DT cassava (Fig. 6). The reduction of g s induced by stomatal closure has been linked to ABA accumulation in cassava leaves in water deficit conditions (Alves and Setter, 2000). The larger number of genes down-regulated after re-watering, especially in DS cassava genotypes, was also correlated with the faster recovery of stomatal conductance in these genotypes. This is consistent with the role of ABA in the signal transduction pathway that connects decreases in relative humidity or moisture to g s reduction (Xie et al., 2006).The contrasting regulation of ABA-D genes between DS and DT cassava at 65% SMC (NCED3, RD29A/B, SCaBP5, PKS3, SLAC1, GPA1, SNAC1), 45% SMC (OST1, DSTP, ABI1, RCW3), 20% SMC (PYR1, PLDα1) as well as 80% SMC after re-watering (ABI1, RD20, PLDα1, MYB44, SCaBP5, NFYA5) (Fig. 6) indicates availability of soil moisture as a key parameter for responses of the genotypes to water deficit. These genes can serve as useful markers for early, moderate and late inducers of stomatal responses to drought stress in cassava or recovery from water deficit conditions. Thus, the genetic analysis of drought stress responses in cassava should involve varying time-courses of drought stress induction, similar to Arabidopsis transcriptome studies of controlled moderate and sub-lethal water deficit conditions (Harb et al., 2010).The regulation of the six ABA-D (NCED3, SCaBP5, PKS3, SLAC1, GPA and SNAC1) and two ABA-I (RD29A/B and DREB2A/B) marker genes that were up-regulated in DS and down-regulated in DT cassava genotypes at early stages of WD (at 65% SMC; Figs. 6 and 7), could be associated with the decrease in stomatal conductance (g s ) as an early avoidance response to drought stress (Harb et al., 2010). Their roles in stomatal closure and drought tolerance have also been reported in other crops or plants. For example, higher ABA synthesis, rapid stomatal closure and drought tolerance were correlated with increased expression of NCED3 and RD29A/B in petunia, tobacco and cassava (Estrada-Melo et al., 2015;Kasuga et al., 2004;Utsumi et al., 2012), SCaBP5 and PKS3 in Arabidopsis (Guo et al., 2002), SLAC1 in rice and Arabidopsis (Kusumi et al., 2012;Imai et al., 2015), GPA1 in Arabidopsis (Wang et al., 2001;Li et al., 2009), SNAC1 in cotton and rice (You et al., 2013;Liu et al., 2014) and DREB2A/B and RD29A/B in canola (Yang et al., 2010). Genes that are markers for moderate and late reduction of g s are correlated with the acclimation of plants to long-term drought (Harb et al., 2010) and are often used as proxies for photosynthesis performance and production in this condition. Of these genes, OST1 and DSTP were up-regulated in DS and down-regulated in DT cassava genotypes while ABI1, RCW3, PYR1 and PLDα1 were up-regulated in DT genotypes and either down-regulated or not significantly regulated in DS genotypes. Thus, these genes are useful markers for drought responses in cassava at lower soil moisture levels.As critical positive regulators of ABA signal transduction (Belin et al., 2006), OST1 is involved in limiting water loss in Arabidopsis leaves through regulation of stomatal closure (Mustilli et al., 2002;Yoshida et al., 2006) while DSTP regulates drought tolerance in rice via stomatal aperture control (Huang et al., 2009). Since ABI1 negatively regulates ABA signaling (Gosti et al., 1999;Merlot et al., 2001), its increased expression in DT cassava would be consistent with the sustained stomatal opening and gradual g s reduction in WD conditions. The up-regulation of the aquaporin gene RCW3 in DT cassava could have a similar effect as the over-expression of RCW3 in rice, which enhanced drought tolerance (Lian et al., 2004). PYR1 positively regulates ABAmediated stomatal closure (Klingler et al., 2010;Okamoto et al. 2013) and PYR1 quadruple (pyr1pyl1pyl2pyl4) Arabidopsis mutant plants elicited strong insensitivities in ABA-induced stomatal closure and ABAinhibition of stomatal opening (Nishimura et al., 2010). PLDα1 mediates ABA regulation of stomatal movements (Hong et al., 2008). Under drought stress, increased expression of PLDα1 resulted in rapid stomatal closure and decreased transpirational water loss in tobacco (Hong et al., 2008) and decreased water loss and improved seed production in Brassica napus (Lu et al., 2013). As summarized in these literature reviews, the roles of these genes could perhaps be also correlated with the current contrasting expression patterns observed between DT and DS cassava genotypes under WD and further linked to the differential stomatal conductance response.The differential expression of drought-responsive genes after recovery from water deficit is correlated with differences in g s between DT and DS cassava genotypes. For instance, the up-regulation of RD20, PLDα1 and MYB44 in some DT genotypes could indicate restricted stomatal re-opening and thus slower g s recovery in DT genotypes, while their down-regulation in DS genotypes would allow faster stomatal reopening and g s recovery. Arabidopsis rd20 mutants have higher transpiration rates that are correlated with enhanced stomatal opening and a reduced tolerance to drought stress compared to WT (Aubert et al., 2010). Transgenic Arabidopsis plants over-expressing AtMYB44 show more rapid ABA-induced stomatal closure, a reduced rate of water loss and enhanced tolerance to drought compared to wild type and atmyb44 mutant plants (Jung et al., 2008).The increased expression of SCaBP5 and NFYA5 in DS cassava genotypes implies a slower rate of stomatal re-opening or a slower g s recovery after re-watering, which would contradict the observed faster g s recovery amongst DS genotypes. In Arabidopsis, NFYA5is strongly induced by drought stress in an ABA-dependent manner (Li et al., 2008). Similarly, under water deficit conditions (65, 45 and 20% SMC), NFYA5 was consistently up-regulated in both DT and DS cassava genotypes (Fig. 6). However, up regulation of NFYA5 upon re-watering in both DS genotypes (Fig. 5a) implied lower g s in these genotypes, an observation that does not concur with the higher g s the DS genotypes exhibited compared to their DT counterparts (Fig. 4). This contradiction cannot be explained in the current study. Previously, drought insensitive nfya5 mutant plants showed enhanced water loss compared to transgenic lines over-expressing NFYA5, which had reduced water loss and tolerance to drought compared to wild type (Li et al., 2008).Some transcription factors (TFs) respond to dehydration but not to ABA and are referred to as ABA-independent dehydration-responsive TFs (Yang et al., 2010). The general up-regulation of the five ABA-I TF genes under WD in all cassava genotypes would be consistent with the synthesis of protective proteins and osmolytes such as dehydrins and proline, which is activated by these TFs (Budak et al., 2013;Vaseva et al., 2012;Movahedi et al., 2012). Similar WD-induced up-regulation of ABA-I genes has been reported in other plants, including ATAF1 (Lu et al., 2007), ERD10 (Kovacs et al., 2008), DREB1A/B or CBF (Shinozaki and Yamaguchi-Shinozaki, 2000), DREB2A/B (Sakuma et al., 2006) and RD29A/B (Jia et al., 2012) (Fig. 5). Over-expression of DREB1B enhanced drought tolerance in transgenic potatoes (Movahedi et al., 2012) while rice plants transformed with DREB1A were significantly dehydration tolerant (Datta et al., 2012).Up-regulation of DREB2A/B and RD29A/B genes in DS cassava genotypes at 65% SMC (Fig. 7) was consistent with the increased stomatal closure or faster rates of g s decline in these genotypes, a similar response previously observed in canola (Yang et al., 2010). The downregulation of DREB2A/B and RD29A/B in DT cassava genotypes at 65% SMC (Fig. 7) can perhaps explain the reduced g s rates and increased stomatal opening in these genotypes. RD29A/B genes are commonly used as markers to monitor stress response pathways in plants and have the potential to confer abiotic stress resistance in crop species grown in arid and semi-arid regions (Jia et al., 2012;Seki et al., 2003;Msanne et al., 2011). Similarly, over-expression of DREB2A improved drought tolerance in pea (Jovanović et al., 2013) and Arabidopsis (Sakuma et al., 2006). ABA-I genes clearly have a role in cassava WG regulation as well because ATAF1, DREB1A/B, DREB2A/B and RD29A/B were rapidly down-regulated after re-watering in the DS cassava genotype 92/0427, consistent with the rapid recovery of g s in this genotype (Fig. 7).In conclusion, we identified a panel of drought-tolerant cassava genotypes that will be useful for breeding to expand cassava production in the arid and semi-arid areas of Africa. The significant correlations we found between yield in IRT and NIRT conditions suggest that initial selection of new varieties for yield could even be performed under normal water conditions because they likely will also perform well in water-scarce environments. Drought-tolerant cassava varieties will be essential for maintaining yield stability, which is vital for sustaining food security especially in arid and semi-arid regions of the developing world where smallholder farmers will be particularly affected by climate change."}

main/part_2/0451901294.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"f785c7d05b3207b34f35ea1ca5eebda0","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/27edcc62-1651-48af-a6ee-e0e58f910be4/retrieve","id":"56320106"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"e83e5506-d38b-4b20-a97d-e15a118784b9","content":"Project Title: P719 -Community management of common pool land resources and conservation of biodiversity at landscape scales Description of the innovation: For the first time in Cuba a Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) has been developed. Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) are an alternative to third-party certification. PGS development in Cuba is an attempt to empower small holder farmers by recognizing and valuing their efforts in the use of agroecological practices, their role as custodians of biodiversity to provide a guarantee to consumers and improve farmers livelihoods. "}

main/part_2/0452127569.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"edc6a69ee85f81590a3a78f6a2a8b1c8","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/209a50a0-c3d1-409f-8a56-8117b3e00a43/retrieve","id":"-1391210174"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"42c1d504-00c3-48a1-b0fc-684050f1f5b4","content":"S mall-scale entrepreneurs in Northern Vietnam have recently learned to produce a better livestock feed by mixing residues from cassava starch processing (which previously polluted nearby rivers) with other locally grown feed resources. They're helping build an eco-efficient future.So are the Rwandan farmers who've adopted new high-yielding and disease-resistant varieties of climbing bean. As is Peru's Ministry of the Environment, which has designed a novel approach for equitable sharing of the benefits and costs of ecosystem services in the Cañete River Basin.For all of these people and many more, eco-efficiency is not some abstract ideal. It's about tangible outcomes from agricultural research, which entail smarter use of resources and translate into valuable impacts, like higher incomes, improved child nutrition, and better water supplies.In pursuit of such impacts, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) has developed a new strategy for the period 2014-2020. Reaffirming eco-efficiency as a guiding principle of our research, the strategy explains how the Center's growing research team and networks will capitalize on past and current work to help build an eco-efficient future.The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) -a CGIAR Research Centerdevelops technologies, innovative methods, and new knowledge that better enable farmers, especially smallholders, to make agriculture eco-efficient -that is, competitive and profitable as well as sustainable and resilient. Headquartered near Cali, Colombia, CIAT conducts research for development in tropical regions of Latin America, Africa, and Asia.Each country and rural community must build its own eco-efficient future. To that end, CIAT Strategy 2014-2020 offers not a detailed blueprint but a call to action on many fronts across the diverse panorama of tropical agriculture.The new technologies, methods, and knowledge that we aim to deliver by or before 2020 will help farmers respond to growing pressures from powerful forces impacting on economies and agro-ecologies across the developing world.Foremost among these forces is population growth. Overall, it will slow markedly toward 2050, but populations in many developing countries will expand significantly, especially in cities, making food insecurity an increasingly urban phenomenon. The emergence of more complex agro-industrial value chains to meet urban demand will create new opportunities for economic growth but could displace small-scale producers and processors. Such growth might also take a heavy toll on farmland, water, and other natural resources, as the competition between food and non-food uses of these resources continues to intensify. Climate change will further magnify agriculture's environmental challenge by steadily diminishing the suitability of many tropical areas for the production of key staple crops.Major trends shaping tropical agriculture will unfold differently in each region where CIAT works, requiring carefully crafted responses.In Sub-Saharan Africa, agriculture will face a combination of high population growth, rapidly degrading farmland, and emerging climate change impacts. CIAT's strategic research on crops (common bean, cassava, tropical forages, and rice), soils, and policy analysis will feed into major initiatives aimed at bolstering food and nutrition security, restoring landscapes to ecological health, and fostering economic growth, based on a sustainable and climate-smart agriculture.For Asia, a key challenge will be to ensure that marginalized upland communities gain a greater share of the wealth created by rapid economic development. To this end, CIAT will work to put the cassava and livestock sectors on a more socially equitable and environmentally sound basis, while also helping curb land degradation, create more beneficial market links for farmers, and cope with the impacts of climate change.Latin America and the Caribbean is a global grain basket and provider of environmental goods, with enormous potential for expanding food exports and putting the management of its natural resources on a sustainable footing. In addition to helping realize these possibilities, CIAT's research will focus on making major agricultural value chains more competitive in response to challenges and opportunities created by trade liberalization and climate change. +254 20 8632001Debisi Araba, Regional Director [email protected] Boaz Waswa, Regional Coordinator [email protected] Jennifer Wiegel, Regional Coordinator [email protected] While farmers have always faced pressure to make better use of their land, labor, crops, and other resources, the forces arrayed against them today make eco-efficiency a more urgent global imperative than at any time in agricultural history. Fortunately, CIAT is better prepared than ever to help farming communities build the eco-efficient future that they and all of us want.Since its inception in 1967, the Center has created a solid set of strengths in research and partnership. These encompass essentially every aspect of tropical agriculture -including the crop varieties that farmers grow, the production systems they manage, the agricultural landscapes they inhabit, the markets in which they participate, and the policies that influence their options and decisions.Moreover, in recent years, we have carefully engineered CIAT's research areas so as to project our strengths and achieve greater impact through CGIAR's global research programs.CIAT's new strategy defines three objectives, which are central for creating upward spirals of sustainable growth:1. Make affordable, high-quality food readily available to the rural and urban poor by boosting agricultural productivity and enhancing the nutritional quality of staple crops.2. Promote rural income growth by making smallholder agriculture more competitive and market oriented through improvements in agricultural value chains.3. Provide the means to make a more intensive and competitive agriculture both environmentally sustainable and climate smart.The research that CIAT will conduct to achieve its objectives aims to put in place eight interlocking pillars of eco-efficient agriculture, which reinforce the wider CGIAR research agenda.Improved seeds are a major leverage point for strengthening food security and making agriculture environmentally sustainable (see page 8). For that reason, the Center will continue to focus a large part of its research effort on the development of new germplasm that is high yielding and resilient in the face of multiple stresses, taking full advantage of recent advances in gene discovery and genomics.Crop landraces and wild relatives offer valuable genes for the development of new varieties that are resilient under stress and use resources efficiently. CIAT proposes to create a state-of-the-art genebank that will distribute both physical seeds from the collections we safeguard as well as the related digital genetic information that is vital for unlocking their hidden potential.Increasing the micronutrient content of crops by means of a breeding approach called biofortification has shown great promise for helping overcome malnutrition.CIAT will continue to develop and promote biofortified bean and cassava varieties, while also promoting food diversification through interventions based on a food basket approach.Improved soil health is critical for optimal expression of crop genetic potential over the long term. To this end, CIAT research will better enable farmers to manage soil biology appropriately, make better choices about soil cover and crops, maintain balanced nutrient supplies, and maximize organic amendments, based on the use of new diagnostic techniques.In recent years, major development agencies have taken up the call to rebuild agriculture's natural resource base. CIAT scientists will contribute by generating more and better soil information with national partners, by mapping soil functional properties (such as soil organic carbon), and by evaluating ecosystem health on a landscape scale.Rural landscapes perform a wide array of vital services, which include the provision of water and food supplies, maintenance of soil fertility, biodiversity conservation, and climate change mitigation. CIAT researchers will work closely with policymakers to create new institutional mechanisms, such as benefit sharing, that better protect these services.Against a background of rapid modernization and globalization, smallholder agriculture has enormous potential to act as an engine of inclusive economic growth. CIAT will develop methods and tools, and conduct research on enabling policies that help build sustained and beneficial commercial relations between farmers organizations and buyers in diverse markets.In response to the formidable challenge of climate change, CIAT has undertaken a major effort to develop and implement novel methods for generating information that can guide policies and decisions. This work includes the assessment of likely climate change impacts and of specific technological options and policy instruments, with the aim of informing national adaptation and mitigation plans.The last 15 years have seen widespread adoption of new varieties of the world's most important food legume. CIAT will build on this achievement by improving smallholder farmers' access to markets, stabilizing yields through greater stress tolerance, and further enhancing nutritional quality.This is the third most important food crop in the tropics and also serves importantly as a livestock feed and industrial raw material. Building on spectacular success in Southeast Asia, CIAT will contribute to a potentially global cassava boom through further improvement in yield and product quality, better agronomy, and concerted efforts to combat emerging pests and diseases.Across the tropics, high-quality forages have proved to be a crucial entry point for enhancing rural livelihoods through more intensive livestock production. CIAT will multiply these benefits by developing and promoting improved feeding practices across a wide range of agro-ecologies and farming systems.Having developed germplasm that is uniquely suited to the diverse rice-growing environments of Latin America and the Caribbean, CIAT will exploit the potential of these new materials for the region and beyond to deliver significantly higher yields and greater resilience under stress.In the years ahead, CIAT will continue to concentrate on four crops that are vital across the tropics and subtropics, pushing beyond past gains to reach new heights of production performance.Boosting livestock productivity is critical for overcoming malnutrition and poverty in developing countries. But how can we achieve this growth without also accelerating land degradation and raising the livestock sector's already large greenhouse gas emissions?CIAT scientists are responding to this challenge through an initiative called LivestockPlus. It builds on growing evidence that improved forage-based livestock feeding systems can lower emissions and store large amounts of atmospheric carbon deep in the soil. Through vigorous development and promotion of such systems, the initiative will help realize the environmental benefits of forages on a large scale, while also exploiting their demonstrated capacity to raise milk and meat production, and boost rural incomes.Rapid urbanization in the developing world is driving profound shifts in human diets, which are worsening nutritional problems while also leading to greater food waste in production and distribution.To help put evolving food systems on a sustainable path, CIAT will embark on research aimed at gaining a better grasp of both the urban as well as rural dimensions of agricultural value chains. New knowledge resulting from this work will better inform crop improvement strategies as well as efforts to reduce food waste, boost the efficiency of key value chains, and identify new opportunities for value addition.CIAT's new strategy calls for a set of forward-looking strategic initiatives that will boost the development impact of our work and open new avenues for future CGIAR research.Large gaps between farmers' current crop yields and those that are economically and ecologically feasible offer key opportunities for sustainable intensification of agriculture. While recent years have seen much progress in determining where and how large the yield gaps are, not enough is known about their causes to ensure that efforts to reduce them will be effective.CIAT is well prepared to address this challenge through research aimed at defining biophysical constraints at a high level of spatial resolution, while also gauging the influence of socio-economic factors, such as market access and gender disparities. On this basis, Center scientists and their national partners will use \"big data\" approaches to develop site-specific recommendations for better crop management.A new development paradigm is emerging, in which better ecosystem services (such as the provision of water, conservation of biodiversity, and climate change mitigation) are viewed both as an environmental imperative and as a key requirement for enhancing livelihoods in rural areas and forests.Through interdisciplinary research with a wide array of national and civil society partners, CIAT will focus on identifying new opportunities to translate improved ecosystem health into concrete benefits for rural people, including greater dietary diversity and new sources of income.CIAT's research is made possible by the multi-donor CGIAR Fund as well as by grants from many organizations, some of which are also Fund donors. We are grateful to all who support our efforts to build an eco-efficient future for tropical agriculture through high-quality science that reduces hunger and poverty while enhancing natural resource management.CONTACT Javier Mateo-Vega Director, Partnerships and Communications [email protected]"}

main/part_2/0459840748.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"32eeebced55a7a083498c7d649bbde5d","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/29b23c07-9463-4adf-9574-8fbeb6a60792/retrieve","id":"1174627225"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"f9975a43-097f-4cf1-b490-ad72f489e76f","content":"Synthesis products of foresight & targeting research related to wheat agrifood systems and plant health monitoring Commissioning Study: WHEAT Part II: CGIAR system level reporting Links to the Strategic Results Framework: Sub-IDOs: • Improved forecasting of impacts of climate change and targeted technology development Is this OICR linked to some SRF 2022/2030 target?: No Description of activity / study: Synthesis/learning products of foresight & targeting research in relation to • WHEAT Agri-food Systems (e.g. wheat consumption dynamics in Asia and Africa by 2030/2050) & • plant health monitoring (e.g. wheat rusts tracking, wheat blast)Staple cereals will continue to play a critical role for food security till 2050, contributing nearly half of both daily calories and protein intake in low-and middle-income countries in Africa and Asia. Climate-change impacts on nutrient levels in staple grains (focus on iron, zinc) might contribute to mineral deficiencies amongst at-risk populations. Researchers found that replacing refined with whole grains could help compensate the climate-change-related reductions in iron and zinc concentrations.Several management strategies for mitigating the effects of wheat blast exits, but a holistic and sustainable approach is needed. The MoT pathogen is fast-evolving and potentially devastating in various agro-ecological zones. A globally intensive effort is needed to prevent its spread."}

main/part_2/0487555123.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"81656323f53ef9b8944f01abf9f0e175","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/40998f28-00a2-42b4-b9a7-e8526c353e5f/retrieve","id":"-2064730245"},"keywords":[],"sieverID":"e6da38a4-c0f2-4671-b18e-bd2aff49502a","content":"The business model converts municipal solid waste (MSW) and fecal sludge into compost for sale to farmers. Subsidized by municipal and/or government authorities, the business aims for partial cost recovery, with its main goal being to reduce open-dumping practices as well as the quantity of waste landfilled and resulting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.The business can be run by a public entity or PPP, with government authorities providing the capital investment for the set-up of the compost plant and providing support for its operation and maintenance. However, the model has the potential to transition from being subsidydependent to full cost recovery and even profit-making by diversifying its revenue streams. By partnering with research and development (R&D) institutes, it can develop a more competitive compost product and increase demand. Additional revenue streams can also be generated through the sale of segregated non-degradable waste to recycling companies and the sale of carbon credits.Case study: Balangoda, Sri Lanka Balangoda compost plant (BCP) in Sri Lanka is a public entity that converts MSW into compost and night soil (human excrement collected at night from cesspools, privies, etc.) into nutrient-rich super compost, as well as treating water and selling recyclables. It was set up to address environmental and sanitation problems in Balangoda city due to waste accumulation.BCP uses an open-windrow processing technology to compost MSW, and water purifying plants and charcoal to treat wastewater from fecal sludge. Although geared towards cost recovery and receiving partial financial support from the government, it generates income fromCompetition risks: Competition can stem from price distortions in the compost market, where the product has to compete with other, often subsidized, chemical fertilizers. Technological risks: Mechanization of the model can lead to increased energy requirements that can be costly, and represent a key challenge for performance, if there are energy shortages. Additionally, the need for advanced skilled labor represents increased operational costs. Social equity risks: Improved waste collection, segregation and recycling may limit informal workers' access to waste value chains and therefore income.There are potential health risks to different actors along both the sanitation and agricultural value chains, associated with the collection, treatment, processing and use of human excreta. Correct health and safety measures must be put in place for workers, and microbial testing should be a routine measure for quality assurance of the compost product.The business model has a high potential for replication in medium to large cities. However, it ranks low on profitability and innovation due to its inherent dependence on the government for financial support and the simplicity of the technology used (usually windrow composting).the sale of compost and recyclables. Compost is sold directly to farmers through agro-outlets in local markets, as well as to various government agencies for landscaping. BCP purchases segregated non-degradable waste from resource centers and schools and resells it to recycling companies at a higher price. Revenue is also generated from taxes charged to entities that do not segregate their waste. BCP has considerably reduced the municipality's waste management costs, created employment, provided farmers with a high-quality organic compost, and improved sanitation health for residents through reduced exposure to untreated waste.Capital investment: USD 352,000 including costs of 1 hectare of land "}

main/part_2/0502900343.json

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+{"metadata":{"gardian_id":"3072c68a5410805800df8e96529e1757","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/e90869cd-549d-47d8-8d5b-a21fb416448c/retrieve","id":"-931981501"},"keywords":["requerida , .:",",S.':: 0.,:.:. '-'\\ <\\-,'.'.\"",". .~,\\:\",\\. V,'",".... . .' .' ~\"., ,,''''' \"'>,,' , .,\\. ~,\\ ~\"<t----:------\",\"',' capa .} ---\"-_.:'-::,-=.,\"?,","~\" A,"],"sieverID":"91d5d3f8-4408-4199-82a3-26cc74186235","content":"El fangueo es un sistema de preparación de la tierra en el fango, es decir en el agua. Ha sido usado desde hace muchos siglos en el oriente donde se usaron búfalos de agua y también hombres para hacer el trabajo.El empleo de maquinaria agrícola comenzó en Japón después de la II Guerra Mundial con tractores pequefios. Los tractores grandes fueron usados al principio en Italia y España y esta práctica llegó a Cuba pocos años después.En la nivelación en seco, los caballones son construidos después de la nivelación, pero con la nivelación bajo agua es necesario construírlos antes de que se pueda comenzar la nivelación.Las etapas a seguir son las siguientes:• 1. La construcción de los caballones en los lugares apropiados y la inundación de la tierra.2. Roturar la superficie de la tierra 3. Mover la tierra suelta de los altos a los bajos. Suelos en donde se puede empicar el fangueoNo todos los suelos son aptos para la utilización del sistema de fangueo, especialmente si se hace con tractores grandes. Si hay demasiada pendiente, los caballones estarán 'muy juntos y no quedará suficiente espacio\"para trabajar entre ellos. Para hacerlos más separados, hay que mover mucha más tierra y no va a quedar nada de la capa superior de la tierra sobre un gran porcentaje del arca. Las tierras más satisfactorias para el fangueo deben tener las siguientes características:1. Topografía bastante plana (menos de 0.7\"/0). Si los caballones están muy junios, los tractores no ti'enen suficiente espacio para dar vueltas.• 2. Capa superior de suficiente profundidad (más de 20 cm. ).• Normalmente no se recomienda quitar más de 7 a 8 cm de la capa supe .. riol' ó se puede causar mermas en la producción, deficiencias de mícronutrientes ó puede exponer subsuelos mucho más permeahles.,3. Textura arcillosa. Se req\\lieren texturas pesadas para soportar los tractores e implementos durante la preparación y las cosechadoras mc-e&nkas durante la l'ecolccción.En la Tabla 1 y Tabla 2 se indica el efecto del declive sobre la distancia horizontal entre lor; caballones. En estos cálculos el intervalo vertical usado es de 10 cm entre caballones.•,. , 5. Tractores grandes con roiotillers y rastra de púas o rastras niveladoras ele agua, de alce hidráulico G, Combinaciones, de preparación en seco con implementos convencionales y nivelación en el agua con rastras de púas En suelos, muy arcillosos y compactos, hay que inundar el campo de 6.1 a 2 selnanas antes de comenzar las labores y usar equipo J11Uy pesado para , í'Obtener suficiente penetrad ón de la superficie para aflojar la tierra. Con 7.el sistema de fangueo en estos campos, solamente se necesita destruír cada segundo caballón y prepara y nivela entre los caballones restantes.(Ver Fig. 2). Con este sistema se puede reducir el area de los caballones aproximadamente un 50\"! •• Si se eliminan todos los caballones, se pueden reconstruÍr en líneas rectas o casi rectas que Sean más o menos paralelas a algunos de los caballones viejos (Ver Fig. 3). Puesto que se va a nivelar entre caballones no es necesario preocuparse por las pequeñas diferencias de nivel. Para usar este método, es necesario tener un buen mapa topográfico, que pueda brindar la orientación técnica necesaria.En la Fig. 4, se puede observar uno de los sistemas usados en la finca del ClAT.En este sistema no Se necesita un mapa topográfico y cualquier agricultor puede adoptarlo. La única desventaja es que se construyen normalmente más caballones de los que se necesitan y el trabajo de los tractores es menos eficiente por razón del tiempo perdido dando vueltas. El manejo del agua en el sistema de fangueo es diferente al sistema tradicional solamente en el hecho de que el agua se usa para hacer la preparación del suelo 'en el primer método y en el segundo método se prepara en seco. La preparación dcbajo del agua se hace con poca lámina para obtener i una mejor incorporación dc las malezas y la nivelación sc hace con más agua puesto que las olas de agua creadas por los implementos trabajando dentro del agua, ayudan en la nivelación y el transportc de la tierra suclta.En suelos alcalinos y sal inos la preinundación por un períodO de 3 a 4 semanas antes de la siembra puede evitar la deficiencia de hierro y lavar las sales, si se drena antes de hacer la siembra. En los suelos fuertemente ácidos. la preinundación también es importante, porque se climina el problema de toxicidad de aluminio y se reduce el peligro de toxicidad de hierro pero nó Se puede dejar Secar el suelo mucho antes de la siembra, porque vuelve a surgir el problema.En suelos muy densos, la preinundación es necesaria para ablandar la tierra y permitir una mejor penetración de los implementos. En suelos livianos, hay que comenzar a trabajar muy pronto después de la inundación y a hacer la preparación en pocos pases o los tractores se hunden.Tan pronto como el suelo esté preparado, hay que hacer la siembra , ya que se puede enmalezar otra vez y se requiere más trabajo. En la siembra es preferible usar semilla pregerminada puesto que se establece más pronto y se puede inundar mas ó menos una semana antes que las siembras hechas con semilla seca. La siembra se hace dentro del agua y el agua se retira del campo de12 a 24 horas después. Es necesario drenar todas las depresiones para evitar fallos de germinación en el campo. Si estos no se drenan, las temperaturas altas pueden matar las plántulas o después de 5 a 6 días dc desarrollo, las plántulas pueden flot,ar sobre la superficie del agua y el viento las lleva a los bordes de los caballones.Cuando las plántulas tienen de 8 a 9 cm de altura pueden tolerar una inundación de 1 a 2 dÍás si es necesario un control de malezas. Después de que las malezas han sido controladas con inundaciones Ó con herbicidas, a los 25 días de edad más o menos se hace la primera aplicación de nitrógeno y en seguida la primera inundación permanente. Si no es posible inundarlo cn seguida, es recomendable inundar el campo y después aplicar el nitrógeno dentro del agua. En la Tabla 3 se encuentra el efecío sobre los rendimientos causados por la demora en la inundadón, después de aplicar el nitrógeno.  11.  O?J-\\2\\1V\\nEn elA T ha sido posible producir buenos rendimientos de yuca, frijol, soya, sorgo y maíz después de algunos cultivos de arroz por el método de fangueo.• \" -.,,,• • \" .. . Algunas de estas areas se consideran entre las más fértiles de la finca.BIBLIOGRAFIA "}