Sanitary and Phytosanitary measures: Challenges and opportunities in Asia and the Pacific region

Global agricultural exports have more than tripled in value and doubled in volume since 1995, exceeding US $1.8 trillion in 2018. Plant and plant-based products contribute more than 50% to the total trade. International trade in fruits and vegetables stands at 24% followed by 15% cereals; and 10% comprising coffee, tea, cocoa & spices.
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New ePlant clinics to help the most remote farmers in Northern India

Dignitaries at ePlant Clinic launch
Plantwise ePlant clinics have opened in a further five districts of Jammu province in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. With its mountainous landscape, these districts are often inaccessible to public service providers. To make information available to farmers, the Department of Agriculture, Jammu (DAJ) in collaboration with CABI, has established a network of…
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Inclusive advisory services enable the women of Thirumalairayasamuthiram village in India to better manage their farms

Women play a significant and crucial role in agricultural production. An economic survey carried out it 2017-18, indicates that with growing rural to urban migration by men, there is a ‘feminization’ of the agriculture sector, with an increasing number of women in multiple roles as cultivators, entrepreneurs, and labourers. Globally, there is empirical evidence that women have…
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Teaching an app to help farmers

farmer in India holding mobile phone
CABI and the start-up Plantix work together to improve the Plantix farmer app. As a result, the app is now able to detect several diseases for the first time. Worldwide, farmers face huge problems when pests and diseases threaten their crops. The stakes are high and the task to identify precisely the cause of the…
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Working together online to support farmers during lockdown in India

55 year old Valli Kupuswamy carries a bag of grass (for cattle) she collected from her paddy field in Embalam village outside of Pondicherry, India. Photo: Sanjit Das/Panos
“Necessity is the mother of invention” – Plato This is a famous phrase, indicating that a need or problem encourages creative efforts to meet the need or solve the problem. The world is currently going through a difficult time due to COVID-19 pandemic, which has resulted in an almost-complete shutdown of all activities across the…
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New plant doctors in India “monitor the field through a farmer’s eyes”

Launching of Plantwise training in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. With the support of the State Government of Madhya Pradesh, under an RKVY scheme, a 6-day training programme on Plantwise modules was conducted at the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA), Jabalpur, in technical collaboration with CABI.
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Farmers helping farmers to solve crop problems in Nepal

female farmer in Nepal
A farmer has to organize a thousand things before getting the final returns from the crop they planted. Choosing the right season and variety of crop, managing the labour forces during the critical crop periods, water management or waiting for rainfall, crop nutrient management, harvesting the crops, managing the post-harvest losses, and then finally selling…
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In Thiruvaiyaru, plant clinics are “a source of inspiration to do agriculture with clarity, confidence and interest.”

Since 2012, farmers in Thiruvaiyaru block, Thanjavur district in the state of Tamil Nadu, India, have had been using Plantwise plant clinics to help solve problems with pests and diseases. The programme there is run by the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) in collaboration with Plantwise. Agriculture is the primary livelihood of 70% of…
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