Behind the scenes of Plantwise plant clinics in Uganda
PhD student, Andrew Tock, of the Warwick Crop Centre, has spent three months monitoring Plantwise plant clinic success in Uganda as part of a BBSRC-funded Doctoral Training Partnership. During this time, he kept a research diary (video above), describing his experiences in Uganda and the day-to-day work of plant doctors in the field. To read…
Update: Plant Health News (27 Aug 14)
Here’s a taste of some of the latest stories about plant health, including surveillance robots that can detect weeds and pest insects, a focus on gender capacity development in Ethiopia and smallholder farmers in Africa adopting practices to improve their field soil health. Click on the link to read more of the latest plant health news!
Update: Plant Health News (16 Jul 14)
Here’s a taste of some of the latest stories about plant health, including the varying effects of rain on crops in Ivory Coast, the discovery of wheat genes that control boron tolerance and the projects managed by FAO that aim to improve food security in Africa. Click on the link to read more of the…
Update: Plant Health News (04 Jun 14)
Here’s a taste of some of the latest stories about plant health, including the discovery of a microbe that could help control rice blast, concern over the effects of erratic rainfall on crops in Somalia and the discovery of a gene encoding resistance to stem and fruit rot of pepper. Click on the link to read more…
National Geographic Hackathon taps into CABI & Plantwise data
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0ImHk2YwZU&w=560&h=315] Check out this video to hear how CABI contributed to National Geographic’s Future of Food Hackathon in Washington DC last weekend. CABI’s Dr Martin Parr and Dr Timothy Holmes of the Plantwise knowledge bank describe the type of open access data from CABI which was offered to participants of the hackathon, and how these…
Marginalised issues in food security: Oxford Food Security Forum 2014
A blog by Léna Durocher-Granger and Rachel Hill On 4th May we attended the Oxford Food Security Forum’s Annual Conference. The conference aimed to address some of the topics in food security research that have become excluded or marginalised.
Food security and Biofuels
A short extract of some of the main points raised during the course “Examining Issues around Global Food Security” by Dr Julie Flood from CABI at the Department of Continuing Education’s program of the University of Oxford on March 7th, 2014. The course aimed to highlight the issues of food security/insecurity, and particularly around growing…
Photostory: SDC visits Plantwise Sri Lanka
The story of support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) for the Plantwise food security programme goes back to its inception in 2011. Since the start, SDC has been a major supporter of both in-country programme activities as well as global resources such as the Plantwise knowledge bank. Sri Lanka is one…
2013 Global Food Policy Report: Nutrition in the spotlight
Last month, the International Food Policy Research Institute released its 2013 Global Food Policy Report. This report is the third annual report in this series which aims to give an overview of the food policy developments that have affected food security that year. This includes a review of the key highlights of the previous 12…
The world’s last meal- what does a homogenous global diet mean for food security?
You’d think, from the vast variety of international cuisines that line our high streets and supermarket shelves, that globalisation was widening the global palate. Recent evidence suggests it’s just not the case. As the global diet narrows, concerns are growing for the world’s food security and the ecological implications of setting up a ‘global monoculture’. A recent PNAS study found that…