News

Lagos, Nigeria, November 23, 2020 – In May this year, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) partnered with the Mastercard Foundation to start the Young Africa Works-IITA Project, an innovative approach to agribusiness training and start-up for Nigeria’s young people.

The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Tanzania, has recognized the importance of research conducted by IITA and partners to address challenges in the horticulture sector as well as the presence and work done by IITA in Tanzania in general..

Hybrid crops are expected to have higher edible yields than their parents, but by how much? A team of researchers comparing the performance of the East Africa Highland banana, locally known as ‘Matooke’, found that some hybrids had bunch weights that were up to two and a half times heavier than those of their best performing parents!

Every year, the Germplasm Health Units (GHUs) of CGIAR centers come together to organize “Phytosanitary Awareness Week”. This year, the International Phytosanitary Awareness Week 2020 event was themed “Phytosanitary Safety for Prevention of Transboundary Spread of Pests and Pathogens”

As part of measures to address the inadvertent spread of pests experienced with germplasm distribution while creating awareness on phytosanitary safety, Germplasm Health Units (GHU) in CGIAR launch a week-long awareness program, 9-13 November.

A paper by an IITA Principal Scientist, Leena Tripathi, on ‘CRISPR/Cas9 editing of endogenous banana streak virus in the B genome of Musa spp. overcomes a major challenge in banana breeding’ was the second most downloaded paper in Communications Biology, an open access (OA) journal. The paper has had more than 12,000 downloads to date, 51 citations, 245 tweets, 16 news outlets, two Facebook pages quoting it, three blogs, one Wikipedia page, and 113 Mendeley citations.

The CGIAR Two Degree Initiative for Food and Agriculture recently organized an online stakeholder consultation to articulate a shared vision, outcomes, and outputs around the One-Health collaborative, multisectoral, and transdisciplinary approach…

After completing a three-year audit cycle, IITA has become a certified member of Excellence Through Stewardship (ETS). ETS is a global organization that promotes the adoption of product stewardship programs and quality management systems for the full life cycle of agricultural biotechnology products.

On 29 September, the National Action Committee on the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) held a virtual workshop on Agriculture and Agribusiness. The workshop brought together notable professionals in the agricultural sector to discuss sustainable solutions to the challenges of food security and trade in Nigeria and Africa.