Plant doctor advice increasing availability of clean banana suckers in Kitema, Uganda

In Uganda the majority of the young people are unemployed, and efforts to create employment opportunities within the agriculture sector are yielding little to no interest among them. Agriculture is not viewed as a viable employment sector, due to the perceptions that agriculture as a profession is labour intensive, results in high crop losses from…
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Agricultural pest control by bats in Madagascar

A new study has brought to light how native bat species in Madagascar are playing an important role in the control of agricultural crop pests. If more attention and information was brought to this, zoologists from the University of Cambridge believe that bats could reduce the financial strain on farmers for chemical pesticide use as…
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Delight and degrees all round for Integrated Crop Management students

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Twelve international students celebrated the completion of the 2018 Masters of Advanced Studies in Integrated Crop Management (MAS in ICM) course at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Coordinated by CABI and the University of Neuchâtel, the MAS in ICM programme provides students with a comprehensive understanding of the principles of good crop management, with an emphasis on…
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Plantwise Most Read 2018

With 2018 drawing to a close we take a look at the most popular articles on the Plantwise blog this year, along with some firm favourites.
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El Puesto para Plantas de Achuapa, Nicaragua ayuda a mantener la producción de ajonjolí

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Por Solveig Danielsen, Luis Medina, Patricia Castillo y Eduardo Hidalgo El ajonjolí es un cultivo de mucha importancia socioeconómica para los pequeños productores de la franja del pacífico de Nicaragua. Desde principio de los años 90, la Cooperativa Juan Francisco Paz Silva produce y procesa ajonjolí para la exportación de aceite a Estados Unidos, Inglaterra…
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The Achuapa plant clinic helps to maintain sesame yields in Nicaragua

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By Solveig Danielsen, Luis Medina, Patricia Castillo and Eduardo Hidalgo Sesame is a crop of great socioeconomic importance for smallholder farmers of the pacific region of Nicaragua. Since the early 90s, the Juan Francisco Paz Silva Cooperative has produced sesame oil, mainly for export to the United States, England and Japan.
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Swapping Pesticides with Beetles Could Put Money in Farmers' Pockets

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By Wei Zhang. Reblogged from Agrilinks. Every time you see a ladybug—also known as the ladybird beetle—you should tuck it in your wallet as a lucky charm to bring prosperity, according to the folklore of many countries. There’s a grain of truth in the old stories. Research shows that each ladybird in a cotton field in…
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Local innovation as source of adaptation and resilience to climate change

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This is the second guest post as part of our Climate Smart Agriculture Week (20 – 24 November 2017) Climate change poses major challenges to small-scale African farmers, whose own locally developed strategies to address these challenges provide entry points to sustainable processes of adapting to climate change. Partners in Prolinnova – a global network…
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Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle on Guam – an update

An adult male coconut rhinoceros beetle. Emmy Engasser, Hawaiian Scarab ID, USDA APHIS ITP, Bugwood.org 10 years ago the Coconut Rhinoceros beetle (CRB) was first discovered on the western Pacific island of Guam. Since then, these shoe-shine black, miniature invaders have spread to all parts of the island and are laying waste to the local coconut…
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Watch the new Knowledge Bank demo

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http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP6FzVJvb7o&feature=youtu.be Check out the latest video demo featuring highlights of the new Plantwise Knowledge Bank version 2.1. New translation capabilities and offline content delivery make the knowledge bank a shared resource for even more people in more communities worldwide. Regional pages focus on plant health problems that cross national boarders, and improved search and diagnostic…
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