Malawi’s Principal Secretary for Agriculture, Erica Maganga, led a delegation of Government Principle Secretaries and seed company representatives to Mpilisi and Ulongue in Balaka District on 11 March to observe progress in conservation agriculture (CA) adoption, as part of the country’s Agriculture Sector Wide Approach Program (ASWAP).

Agriculture has the potential to be “part of the solution to reduce the impact of climate change,” according to Dr. R.S. Paroda, Chairman of the Trust for Advancement of Agricultural Sciences, who was one of nearly 100 participants at a launching and planning workshop for Flagship Projects on climate-smart agriculture of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security (CCAFS). Held on 24-25 February in New Delhi, the event was jointly organized by CIMMYT and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), with participants from Bangladesh, India, Nepal and other partnering countries.

Water plays a vital role in crop production, but flooding in vulnerable regions also ruins crops and hinders aid agencies’ efforts to reach people affected by crisis.

World Bank program shores up drought losses by providing Senegalese farmers with short cycle, drought-resistant seeds to help them salvage the season’s crops.

This irrigation reservoir at the Kulumsa Agricultural Research Center in Ethiopia’s highlands captures water from a nearby beer distillery, diverting it from a river.

During 9-11 March, scientists from 90 countries gathered at the Global Forum for Innovations in Agriculture in Abu Dhabi to discuss the looming topic of feeding nine billion people by the year 2050.

The Zimbabwe Maize Breeding Programme was honored on 13 February 2015, as the 2014/2015 Presidential Award winners in agricultural research during a ceremony attended by more than 1,500 people at the Research Council of Zimbabwe’s 10th International Research Symposium held in Harare.

The Feed the Future initiative of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) featured CIMMYT’s Heat Tolerant Maize for Asia (HTMA) project in a recent newsletter, highlighting it as an exemplary public-private partnership. Launched in 2013, the project is developing heat-resilient hybrid maize for resource-poor smallholder farmers in South Asia whose livelihoods are threatened by climate change.

Born out of the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa (DTMA) Initiative and other CIMMYT-Africa maize projects, the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa Seed Scaling (DTMASS) project will improve the demand for and availability of high-quality, affordable, certified seed of drought-tolerant maize varieties for small-scale farmers across eastern and southern Africa.

The Chief Minister of Bihar, India, Shri Jitan Ram Manjhi, affirmed his support for the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA) and its efforts to ensure food security, in a meeting with Thomas A. Lumpkin, director general of CIMMYT, and with government, BISA and CIMMYT representatives on 3 February.