Do you like your coffee wilted?

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According to CABI’s Peter Baker at the recent ISEAL Conference the International coffee community may be failing farmers in providing them with support in adapting to upcoming climate risks. Changes in the climate can have dire consequences for farmers within developing countries. They can change the distribution ranges of insect pests, causing pests to migrate into…
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New global plant health resource to improve food security

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From the devastating Coffee Wilt Disease to the infectious Wheat Stripe Rust: for the first time ever, distribution maps, diagnostic support and treatment advice for thousands of the world’s most damaging pests and diseases of plants and crops are being made available free of charge on the new Plantwise website, www.plantwise.org, launched today. The Plantwise…
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Predicting the effects of global warming on insect pests

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It has been estimated that presently pests cause 30-50% of yield losses to agricultural crops in developing countries and these rates are likely to increase with climate change. Although much attention has been given to the impacts of climate change on insect abundance and severity in temperate regions, little is known about potential impacts in…
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State of severe food insecurity in Africa

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On the 7 July the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) announced that an appeal to help more that 10 million people in east Africa, suffering from their worst drought in over half a century, would be broadcast on ITV, BBC, Sky, Channel 4 and Channel 5. 
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Animal and Human Pathogens Can Cross from Manure into Food Crops

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Following the recent outbreak of E. coli food poisoning in Germany that claimed at least 39 lives as of 16 June 2011 and still counting, numerous articles have been written, but many fundamental questions still remain unanswered. As you will remember, contaminated Spanish cucumbers were initially blamed for the outbreak of E. coli infection, which…
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Call for support for sustainable smallholder agriculture

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Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and Kanayo F. Nwanze, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), last week called for a dramatic increase in support for sustainable agriculture, including smallholder farmers, as a way to drive green growth and reduce poverty. This is…
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Rising food prices could press the poor into hunger, warns Oxfam

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 This year, hardly a week seems to have gone by without the release of another report on global food systems and food security. Each has a different focus: in May there was an FAO report highlighting the problem of food waste, while earlier in the year I posted articles on the ‘Hand Picked’ CABI blog…
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CABI publishes third working paper

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CABI’s own, Matthew Cock, covers strategic entry points for funding taxonomic support to agriculture in developing countries in the third working paper published by CABI. The importance of taxonomy to agriculture is discussed, with emphasis on how to address the need for taxonomic support in developing countries. One of the subjects explored by this paper…
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Climate change and the fight against plant diseases

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Earlier this month, Dr Adrian Newton from the James Hutton Institute spoke about the implications of climate change for pathogen defence in plants, at the Society for General Microbiology Spring Conference in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, UK. He explained, “The communities of microbes on plants are complex and include harmless and beneficial organisms as well as…
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Introduction of remote microscopy (RM) into ASEAN Regional Diagnostic Network (ARDN)

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The lack of taxonomists is very much a global issue, hence the establishment of the Global Taxonomy Initiative (GTI) and the BioNET International and its LOOPs. In ASEAN countries, the shortage of in-country taxonomic expertise to identify plant pests and diseases is often compounded by difficulties in access to taxonomic expertise abroad. Thus, ASEANET and…
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