Productivity and Stress Management

Africa is a drought-prone continent, making farming risky for millions of smallholder farmers who rely on rainfall to water their crops. Maize is the most widely grown staple crop in Africa – more than 300 million people in Africa depend on it as their main food source – but too often it is severely affected by frequent drought. Drought leads to crop failure, hunger, and poverty. Climate change will only worsen the problem...

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has for the last two decades been experiencing a continuous increase in rice consumption driven mostly by a shift in consumer preferences, urbanisation and rapid population growth....

Striga (witchweed) is a parasitic weed that constrains the productivity of staples such as maize, sorghum, millet and upland rice in Sub-Saharan Africa. The weed survives by siphoning off water and nutrients from the crops for its own growth. Striga infests over 40 mill. hectares of smallholder ...

Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L. Walp) is considered the most important food grain legume in the dry savannas of tropical Africa, where it is grown on more than 12.5 million hectares of land. It is rich in quality protein and has energy content almost equivalent to that of cereal grains; it is a good source of quality fodder for livestock and provides cash income...

Maize Lethal Necrosis (MLN) disease has continued to wreak havoc on maize production in East Africa since it was first reported in Kenya in 2011. Since then it has been reported in other eastern Africa countries.

Rice consumption is increasing at about 8 percent a year in many Sub-Saharan African countries. However, the increase in yield per year is less than 6 percent, and in some cases it is decreasing. Consumption in East Africa is also going up, especially in Tanzania, and probably relates to a significant expansion of the area planted under rice, and to some degree the yields, which have gone up about 1.3 percent per year...

TELA® maize are genetically modied (GM) maize hybrids developed by the Water Ecient Maize for Africa (WEMA) project, now known as the TELA maize project. The hybrids have Bt genes that provide protection against stem borer and fall armyworm (FAW) and another gene (DroughtGard® DT) that helps the maize plant better tolerate drought conditions. These two genes have been integrated to new maize hybrids that were bred conventionally for drought tolerance and improved yield.