Pest Risk Analysis workshop: spotting Pakistan’s potential invaders

Mealy bug on a branch
Invasive species can cause enormous damage, affecting biodiversity, the environment, and people in invaded areas. They disproportionately affect communities in poor rural areas; people who depend on natural resources and healthy ecosystems to make a living. It is widely accepted that prevention is better than cure, however, how do you work out which species pose…
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Plantwise Knowledge Bank Country Resources – What’s available?

Plantwise Knowledge Bank Country Resources
The Plantwise Knowledge Bank (PWKB) is a free online resource that gathers plant health information from across the world. Over 15,000 pieces of content, which include, pest management decision guide’s (PMDG), factsheets for farmers (PFFF), species pages, photo sheets, manuals and video factsheets in over 100 languages.
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Plantwise Burundi: building extension skills and resources

Plant doctor training in Burundi
The role of extension staff in reaching smallholder farmers with relevant agricultural information is key to enabling them to grow more and lose less to crop pests and diseases. The advice given on agricultural practices helps to improve crop quality and yield and to sell agricultural produce for better prices.
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Three policy recommendations to reduce pesticide risk

Pesticides can provide rapid means of controlling pests and prevent crop losses, but they can also pose a major risk to humans, animals and the environment. A recent research paper, led by CABI’s Dr Justice Tambo, examined whether plant clinics can reinforce the judicious use of pesticides among farmers in Rwanda and Zambia. It also…
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What’s on the horizon?

Ant
Pests do not recognise borders. With the increased movement of people and goods, comes the increased risk of pests moving from one geographic area to another. For this reason, it is important to identify and categorize species that are likely to enter a particular geographic area from another geographic area. CABI’s Horizon Scanning Tool (HST)…
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Women in rural agriculture: a CABI interview

female farmer
Women play a significant role in agricultural production. Although women have limited say in decision-making on family farms, they make up nearly half of the global agricultural workforce. However, female farmers face a number of barriers, which must be addressed if we are to achieve a number of Sustainable Development Goals, including SDG 5: Gender…
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Plantwise Bangladesh: supporting national crop monitoring

Covid-19 hub training Bangladesh
The CGIAR COVID-19 Hub provides a coordinated research response to the global pandemic threatening health systems worldwide, along with posing serious risks to food security and progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. The Hub focuses on supporting national response and recovery work across CGIAR research themes, harnessing knowledge for emergency response, recovery, and resilience.
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Benefit from free access to Crop Pest Management Course

CPM-course
Pests and diseases are among greatest challenges to food security. Around 40% of crops worldwide are lost to pests – putting the livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers and global food security at risk. CABI is helping to mitigate these challenges through strengthening expertise of agricultural workforce in plant health and Integrated Pest Management (IPM)…
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Plantwise Pakistan: National Forum boosts stakeholder cooperation

Plantwise Pakistan National Forum
Key Plantwise stakeholders and partners came together for the National Forum meeting in Pakistan this August. The forum was an opportunity for members to evaluate Plantwise’s success and boost membership cooperation.
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PlantwisePlus: female farmers and rural extension advisory services

Female farmer at a plant clinic
It’s widely known that female farmers make up a substantial portion of the agricultural labour force (43%) in developing countries. However, productivity gaps between farms managed by men and women farmers exist, because women farmers have less access to various production inputs and labour, compared to male farmers.[1]
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