Plant genetic resources (PGR), including collections held in national and international gene banks, provide access to a wide array of genetic diversity and are critical to genomics research, conservation efforts, and applied breeding.

The Innovation for Africa Climate Risk Insurance, InACRI project, addresses the current poor performance and uptake of index-based crop insurance products in Kenya.

CONTEXT: Global and national agricultural development policies normally tend to focus more on enhancing farm productivity through technological changes than on better use of existing technologies. The role of improving technical efficiency in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction from crop production is the least explored area in the agricultural sector.

A Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) approach is fundamental to agribusiness transformation in the Eastern and Southern Africa region. Work package 5 aims to bring about inclusive and scalable agribusiness innovations through targeted GESI support to UU ESA work packages 1-6.

Mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana var. mangostana) is a popular tropical fruit, yet many aspects of its biology and evolutionary history are little known. Its origin remains contentious, although recent findings suggest G. mangostana L. var. malaccensis (Hook. f.) Nazre (synonym: G. malaccensis Hook. f.) as the sole progenitor.

Cocoa is an important commodity crop and source of income for millions of small-holder farmers. Nonetheless, questions on cocoa tree functioning, best management practices and climate change responses remain. Modelling is a powerful tool to address these questions, complementing experimental work that is expensive and time consuming due to the long productive cycle of the cocoa system.

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is the staple food of more than 50% of the world’s population. Manual puddled transplanted rice (PTR) system is still the predominant method of rice establishment.

In the low fertility acid soils of the Orinoquian savannas of Colombia, Urochloa humidicola cv. Tully or Humidicola is one of the most widely planted tropical forage grasses for improving livestock productivity. Low nutritional quality of this grass limits sustainable livestock production in this region.