Plantwise celebrates helping farmers with more than 150,000 plant health queries
Plantwise is thrilled to announce over 150 000 records of visits by farmers to plant clinics have now been stored on the secure part of the Knowledge Bank site, the Plantwise Online Management System (POMS). Plant doctors are diagnosing pests and diseases and providing recommendations to help farmers reduce crop losses.
Plant doctors share their experience of e-plant clinics
Plantwise held an e-plant clinics review workshop on September 8th-9th in Machakos, Kenya. This workshop brought together the 30 plant doctors who, with funds from Dow AgroSciences, are now equipped with tablets and have been running e-plant clinics since their training in June 2015. The plant doctors are using the tablets in their clinics to…
Students celebrate Master’s degree graduation at university ceremony
Agricultural professionals from 10 countries received their graduation certificates on Monday 23 November 2015 at a ceremony to celebrate their successful completion of the first University Neuchâtel-CABI jointly coordinated integrated crop management degree. The Masters in Advanced Studies in Integrated Crop Management (MAS in ICM) programme was launched earlier this year by CABI in partnership…
CABI builds simulation to share plant health knowledge
CABI has built its first simulation to help agricultural advisors share knowledge on plant health with smallholder farmers across the world, and has plans to build more. Plant Doctor Simulator is a fun and engaging way for plant health advisors – also known as plant doctors – to examine virtual 3D plants using smartphones or…
Plantwise progress reported at 2015 Donor Forum
Progress made by Plantwise in 2015 was the subject of the global programme’s annual Donor Forum earlier this month (October 6-7, 2015). The meeting took place in the Swiss Pavilion at the Milan World Expo where Plantwise is the focus of an interactive exhibit. Plantwise executives invited key programme donors to attend the annual meeting…
IPPC secretariat and senior CABI officials meet in Rome
An IPPC delegation led by Secretary Jingyuan Xia met with a delegation of senior officials from CAB International led by CABI CEO Trevor Nicholls on Thursday, October 22. During the meeting the two parties drafted a letter of intent with some specific goals for the future which, once reviewed and finalized, should lay the foundation…
International Day of Rural Women
Today, 15 October, is the International Day of Rural Women. The majority of rural women depend on natural resources and agriculture for their livelihoods. In developing countries, rural women represent approximately 43% of the agricultural labour force, and produce, process and prepare much of the food available, thereby giving them primary responsibility for food security.…
Gender equality in Agriculture: Twenty years since the 1995 Beijing declaration, are we there yet?
On this day in 1995, 17,000 participants from around the world gathered for the Fourth World Conference on Women in which 189 countries around the world signed The Beijing Declaration – a UN agenda for change concerning the equality of men and women. Described as a “milestone for the world’s women”, the resolution set a blueprint…
Ecological Engineering Approach for Rice Pest Management-Need to Popularise its Advantages
Example of Ecological engineering in Vietnam (Photo credit: Dr HV Chien) The rice ecosystems are inhabited by more than 100 species of insects. Twenty of them can cause potential economic losses. With the change in the climatic factors and modern cultural practices adopted for production a drastic change has been…
Water weed removed with surgical precision
Blog written by PT Bandara, CABI Associate, and WMDH Kulatunga, Sri Lanka. “A looming threat imposed by Salvinia molesta was averted through the introduction of a biocontrol agent by technical experts of the Department of Agriculture.” These were the words of Project Director Engineer RB Tennakoon, of the Moragahakanda Kaluganga Development Project, Sri Lanka; a project with…