World Food Prize 2015
Earlier this month, Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, founder and chairman of BRAC, was awarded the 2015 World Food Prize, which honours contributions to the improvement of food supply. BRAC (formally Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee) is the largest development organisation in the world and has been working to enhance food security and alleviate poverty since it…
Closing the gender gap for a food-secure future #AgGenderGap [Video]
In the video below, inspiring women share their views on closing the gender gap in farming under climate change.
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…