This paper focuses on the role of the Global Facilitation Unit for Underutilized Species in the promotion and facilitation of the sustainable deployment of underutilized plant species to increase the security of food and nutrition and alleviate poverty among poor rural and urban communities.

L'interaction des plusieurs contraintes, à savoir les maladies et ravageurs du manioc, les pratiques culturales inadéquates, la faible fertilité des sols, etc. contribuent à la baisse de la productivité du manioc. Il a été constaté à Luputa et Ngandajika que les champs des agriculteurs y compris les champs de manioc sont souvent infestés par un complexe maladie/ravageur localement appelée « shimbu ». Cette revue a pour objectif l'inventaire des connaissances et des différents moyens de lutte existants ...

Cassava has long been expected to play a key role in rural economic growth in Africa, but has it happened yet? Although research partnerships have produced elite cassava varieties with 50% more yield potential and have demonstrated technologies to improve processing and increase marketing of cassava, the sub sector is constrained by low productivity and marketing difficulties. In DR Congo, Ghana, Malawi and Sierra Leone, for example, the actors in the cassava value chain are yet to respond to trade ...

Recently, there has been a lot of interest to promote bio-fertilizers for eco-efficient intensification of agricultural systems in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Bio-fertilizers are considered cost-effective and environmentally-friendly. In SSA, bio-fertilizers have not been sufficiently evaluated for quality and efficacy because of weak or absence of regulatory frameworks. Consequently, a proliferation of low quality and inefficacious bio-fertilizer products has been reported. Based on a stepwise ...

Cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) remains a major threat to the livelihoods of millions of smallholders in sub-Saharan Africa. This viral disease was initially confined to the coastal lowland areas of eastern and southern Africa. More recently there has been a major new outbreak in the Great Lakes region of eastern and central Africa, and two virus species have been shown to cause the disease. This paper describes a framework that could be used to make a meaningful assessment of economic damages ...

Imagery from recently launched high spatial resolution WorldView-3 offers new opportunities for crop identification and landcover assessment. Multispectral WorldView-3 at 1.6m spatial resolution and LANDSAT8 images covering an extent of 100Km² in humid ecology of Nigeria were used for crop and landcover identification. Three supervised classification techniques (maximum likelihood(MLC), Neural Net clasifier(NNC) and support vector machine(SVM)) were used to classify WorldView-3 and LANDSAT8 into ...

Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) is the most important food grain legume crop in west Usambara highlands, but its yield remains below the potential largely due to nutrient deficiencies in the soils. To identify nutrients limiting bean production, on-farm diagnostic trials were carried out at nine farmer fields around Lushoto town in the short rainy season (vuli) from November 2013 until February 2014, though soil and leaf sample analyses. Bean leaf samples were analysed for macro and micronutrients, ...

Cowpea is important for the provision of both grain for food and fodder for livestock but there is often a trade-off between production of the two. To better understand influences on grain and fodder production, and how these may be utilized. Research was conducted at 5 locations in West Africa using 12 cowpea varieties, with and without insecticide spray. Spraying had a dramatic effect on grain production, but less so for fodder, however there was an effect of spraying on fodder quality in terms ...

Agriculture in the dry savannas is intensifying in response to increasing populations of humans and livestock. As a result, increased productivity demands are placed upon integrated crop-livestock systems and more emphasis is on the roles of legumes such as cowpea. Cowpea has the potential to function as a key integrating factor in intensifying systems through supplying protein in the human diet, and fodder for livestock, and bringing nitrogen into the farming system through nitrogen fixation. ...