The COVID-19 pandemic, surprised many through its impact on the food systems, resulting in collapses in the food production value chains and in the integrated pest disease management sector with fatal outcomes in many places. However, the impact of COVID-19 and the digital experience perspective on Integrating Pest Management (IPM) is still yet to be understood. In Africa, the impact was devastating, mostly for the vulnerable smallholder farm households, who were rendered unable to access markets ...

An ecosystem is inhabited by organisms that rely on it for their livelihoods. For an ecosystem to sustain life, its life-supporting components must be alive to be able to preserve both the ecosystem’s life-supporting components like soil, vegetation, water, etc., and the living organisms inhabiting the ecosystem like humans, birds, domestic, and wild animals, termed as the One-Health concept. This is indispensable for the sustainability of life. Several factors determine the ability of the ecosystem ...

This study reconnoitered the effects of preservative treatments (0.3% Sodium Metabisulphite solution (SMS); and 0.3% Citric Acid solution (CAS)) and drying methods (flash- and cabinet-drying) on the rheological profile, amylose and functional properties of flour from yellow-fleshed cassava varieties. Four preservative-treated flour samples (Sodium Metabisulphite cabinet-dried (SMC); Sodium Metabisulphite flash-dried (SMF); Citric Acid cabinet-dried (CAC); and Citric Acid flash-dried (CAF) were ...

In southern Africa, conservation agriculture (CA) has been promoted to address low agricultural productivity, food insecurity, and land degradation. However, despite significant experimental evidence on the agronomic and economic benefits of CA and large scale investments by the donor community and national governments, adoption rates among smallholders remain below expectation. The main objective of this research project was thus to investigate why previous efforts and investments to scale CA ...

Each year, Africa loses half of its harvest to pests (insects, pathogens, nematodes, weeds). To offset these losses and improve food security, pest management needs to be revamped urgently. Based on a synthesis of all 58 pest management projects conducted by IITA in its 55-year history, we advocate here for the implementation of the five following key climate-smart interventions, which have been shown to increase yields and decreasing CO2 outputs compared to the current practices that are largely ...

Crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa need to increase to keep pace with food demands from the burgeoning population. Smallholder farmers play an important role in national food self-sufficiency, yet many live in poverty. Investing in inputs to increase yields is therefore often not viable for them. To investigate how to unlock this paradox, whole-farm experiments can reveal which incentives could increase farm production while also increasing household income. In this study we investigated the impact ...

A field experiment was conducted in 2018 rainy season at the International Institute of Agriculture Research Farms at Abuja and Zaria to know the adaptability of cowpea genotype to maize canopy in northern and southern Guinea savannah of Nigeria. The experiment consisted of 12 treatment combinations; of three cowpea varieties (SAMPEA 11, SAMPEA 14, and UAM09-126-19-2) in two cropping systems (sole and intercropped with EVDT99) and at two relay dates (5 and 8 WAS). The treatments were laid out in ...

This paper provides an inventory of novel approaches to and mechanisms for quality assurance of the seeds of vegetatively produced crops (VPCs). It explores to what extent seven African countries (Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia) are decentralising and integrating VPC seed systems, in terms of regulations governing the sector, methods of seed production, and methods of seed inspection and certification. It consolidates existing data and presents new data on decentralised ...

Meromacroides meromacriformis (Bezzi, 1915) is an enigmatic hoverfly, first collected in South Africa in the 1850s, but not again until 2020. A further collection in 2022 was also made in the country. While widespread in Africa, the species is rarely encountered and information about its biology is scarce. The recent collections in South Africa were associated with colonies of Schedorhinotermes lamanianus (Isoptera: Rhinotermitidae) found in rot-holes within the trunk of a standing living trees ...

The cocoa rehabilitation and establishment in cocoa-based farming systems in the humid forest zones of West Africa is part of the larger TAFS-WCA initiative that seeks to enhance access to quality, nutrient-dense seed, and climate-smart good agricultural practices (GAP) and reduced post-harvest losses and to see how these have a positive impact on food and nutrition and health security. Within the cocoa sector in West Africa, this initiative seeks to improve yields of cocoa and food crops and ...