The study on ICRISAT traces the organization’s journey in use of digital tools which began in 2009 and went on to become a critical component of the organization’s mission in 2014 with the launch of Digital Agriculture research theme. This theme is now weaving digital tools across the organization’s research and implementation work which include the following initiatives.

Plantix identifies plant damage and provides diagnosis in either English, Hindi and Telugu or five other languages.

The Sowing app and the Intelligent Agricultural Systems Advisory Tool (ISAT) deliver targeted and timely SMS messages to farmers about sowing and other farm management practices. The Sowing app is a partnership between ICRISAT, Microsoft India, and the Government of Andhra Pradesh. It is currently being scaled up in 13 districts. The ISAT pilot is in its second year and focuses on 700 groundnut farmers practicing rainfed agriculture in sandy soils with low rainfall.

The iHub is an incubator program at ICRISAT for agricultural technology start-ups. There are currently twelve of them including Plantix – a free mobile crop advisory app that successfully identifies common plant diseases in India and Kalgudi – a free online platform which creates feedback loops between farmers and researchers.

The LeasyScan is a phenotyping platform that automatically measures important characteristics related to leaf surface area and water stress of plants. It uses eight laser triangulation scanners and scales to create a database of 3D plant images and weights for up to 4,800 plants multiple times a day. The HarvestMaster records highly accurate measurements of grain weight and moisture characteristics for development of new varieties.

Besides the case study publication, do take a look at ICRISAT’s work on digital agriculture.

Photo: Crawford Fund

“Smart Food – food that is good for you, the planet and the farmer – can have a major impact on the mega-global issues of malnutrition, poverty and environmental degradation,” said Kane-Potaka, also Executive Director of the Smart Food initiative. Smart Food was on display at the conference in the Mural Hall of Parliament House and the initiative was selected as a top global food innovation in a competition run by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and USAID, according to a media release issued on the occasion.

The Crawford Fund’s annual conference has for close to 30 years drawn focus to issues for attention in Australia and globally on agricultural development and food security. The ‘Reshaping Agriculture for Better Nutrition: The Agriculture, Food, Nutrition, Health Nexus,’ the 2018 annual conference focuses on how we can we feed the world’s increasing population with a nourishing diet that promotes good health and at the same time minimizes further environmental impact? Key speakers at this year’s conference include, Julie Bishop MP, Minister for Foreign Affairs, John Anderson AO, Chair of the Crawford Fund, Alessandro Demaio, CEO, Eat Foundation, Dr Jessica Fanzo, Bloomberg & UN FAO, Prof Andrew Campbell, CEO ACIAR and many key leaders in agriculture and food security.

Julie Bishop, MP Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, speaking on Smart Food at the Crawford Fund’s annual conference. Photo: Crawford Fund

In her speech, Julie Bishop, recommended innovative solutions for better nutrition in the world and specifically referred to the Smart Food initiative of ICRISAT called it an exciting breakthrough and one of the innovations that could really make a difference.

On the role of Australia in promoting Smart Food, Kane-Potaka said the country had the right agroecology to be a leader in spreading this movement to benefit from what could be a new food trend. Explaining that millets and sorghum are traditional foods of many countries across Asia and Africa, they survived well in hot dry marginalized lands and were suitable for Australia’s agroecology, especially in time of minimal rainfall.  She encouraged Australians to consume more millets and sorghum, for their health benefits. Finger millet has three times more calcium than milk, pearl, little and barnyard millet have 2-4 times iron than meat and all millets and sorghum are gluten free with low glycemic index.

“The world needs to reduce the reliance on rice, wheat and maize which provide 50% of the world’s calories and protein but crowd out other nutritious, naturally climate-smart foods. Smart Food when eaten as staples in developing countries can have a major impact on the leading global issues.”

The Smart Food global campaign founded by ICRISAT is a global campaign for foods that ensure well-being of people and the environment along with better incomes for smallholder farmers of Asia and Africa.

Smart Food pitch at Australian Parliament House by Joanna Kane Potaka

In the media:
ABC story: http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2018-08-18/ancient-grain-millet-tackle-obesity-malnourish-drought-farmers/10126348
ABC radio Saturday AM: http://www.abc.net.au/radio/adelaide/programs/am/the-ancient-grain-that-could-help-farmers-in-drought/10135816
Farm on Line: https://www.farmonline.com.au/story/5597143/growing-the-list-of-cropping-staples-to-fuel-the-world/

According to the researchers, although CIS could help smallholders make informed decisions on use of strategies to become resilient to climate change, research on its use and impact among women and men smallholders in Sub-Saharan Africa is limited.

The objective of the study conducted in two districts of Ghana’s Upper West region was to assess the extent to which perceptions of climate change and access to CIS differ among men and women smallholders.

In November 2016, researchers randomly surveyed 900 smallholders, including 51 per cent who accessed climate information through mobile phone voice alerts and text messages delivered by Esoko, an information and communication technology company in Ghana, according to the study published in the journal Climate Change last month (5 July).

The researchers from Ghana and Mali also organised four focused group discussions, with each group having 20 participants and a mix of men and women smallholders to generate comments on perceptions and access to climate information.

“Women’s limited access to farm resources and the telephone device … is a threat to their ability to adapt to climate change risk.”

Robert Zougmoré, CCAFS, Mali

The study found that men and women had similar perceptions about climate change such as increased strong winds, temperatures, drought and flooding.

But according to the findings, those with access to telephones were about 12 times more likely to use CIS compared with those who did not have telephones.

“The higher probability that men will use climate information may be related to their ability to easily access telephone devices,” the researchers note in the paper. “A more significant number of men (about 35 per cent) than women (20 per cent) had access to mobile phones.”

Samuel Partey, study co-author and Mali-based researcher with the Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, tells SciDev.Net that there is a need for exploring various dissemination channels that address the constraints such as lack of credits from the banks, farming tools and seeds experienced by women.

“This will help improve women’s access and use of CIS so that they can play important roles in household climate change adaptation planning,” Partey says.

Robert Zougmoré, a co-author of the study and regional programme leader of CCAFS, Mali, adds, “Women’s limited access to farm resources and the telephone device … is a threat to their ability to adapt to climate change risk.”

Mavis Akuffobea, a research scientist at Ghana’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, agrees with the findings but says that women recognise the threat posed by climate change as a serious problem than men do.

“Government policies addressing climate change should include gender-transformative approaches at all levels to support adaptation options for each unique climate distress event that reduce vulnerability of the different gender groups in times of crisis,” Akuffobea adds.

Calling it a ‘historic’ day, Dr Dalwai said “We need to place some things on a pedestal to gain support. The mission will include focus on resource-poor farmers and the nutrition status of the country. However, we should ensure that the national campaign retains the advantages of millets as climate smart and environment friendly crops. Our decisions can lead to a new Green Revolution” he said.

Announcing plans for seed hubs for all millets millets, with Dr. B Rajender, IAS, Joint Secretary, National Food Security Mission said “The state governments will be involved in a big way, both for nutrition security, not just income security. Also there will be communication plans rolled out at the district and the local level to scale up this campaign.”

Sharing details of the roadmap for the national millet mission, Dr Vilas A Tonapi, Director, Indian Institute of Millets Research (IIMR) shared data on how the productivity of millets has shown a good increase across the country, in spite of pressure on land. The activities through the year would be spearheaded by IIMR in partnership with International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), State Agricultural Universities (SAU), National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) and many other non-governmental, private and international organizations. Dr B Dayakar Rao, Principal Scientist IIMR presented details of the ‘road map’ of activities for India’s Year of Millets.

Dr Kiran K Sharma, Deputy Director General (Research), ICRISAT shared his concern about linking farmers and the markets. “By simply grading, cleaning and packaging, farmers could get double the income for millets. Now, there is a high increase prices of millets in stores; however, is the farmer getting the benefit?”

A number of representatives including from government research institutions, non-governmental organizations, scientists, processors and private companies participated in this day-long consultation.  At the open session in the meeting all participants shared their ideas and inputs for the roadmap for implementation of the millet mission. Ideas range from requirement for high-tech machinery to addressing shelf life of millets to need for more research allocation to add to the campaign.

A book of recipes in Hindi for millet based cuisine was released on the occasion. An MoU that had been signed between Nourish Inc technology and IIMR on licencing of millet value added products was also formally handed over at the program.

The ‘Mission Kakatiya’ of the Government of Telangana aims to improve minor irrigation infrastructure, strengthening community based irrigation management and with a comprehensive program for restoration of tanks. This scheme aims to restore around 46,531 tanks enumerated by the irrigation department. In Phase 1 and 2 of the project over 15,000 tanks have been restored.

An agreement for a scientific assessment of the impact of the first two phases of this initiative, was signed in August 2018, between the Ministry of Irrigation, Government of Telangana and ICRISAT.

Speaking at the formal signing, the Minister for Irrigation, Government of Telangana, T Harish Rao said, “There are a number of reported benefits including reports on in-bound migration following the desilting of water tanks. We look forward to understand also how the change in availability of water has affected reverse migration. We need to look at many parameters including sustainability, more than just in monetary terms.”

The partnership was signed by G Malsur, Commissioner Common Area Development Authority, Ministry of Irrigation and Dr Kiran K Sharma, Deputy Director General, (Acting), ICRISAT. “ICRISAT very much values the partnerships with the Government of Telangana in its development agenda,” said Dr Sharma. “This partnership project has immense significance in enumerating various benefits of the Mission Kakatiya Project, especially in promoting soil fertility and productivity, and the associated benefits on livelihoods of the smallholder farmers of Telangana.”

The two-year project will carry out economic assessment of benefits of ‘Mission Kakatiya’ to smallholder farmers to understand nutrient return to the soil and the productivity and profitability.  Through stratified sampling, nutrient content of silt from across 30 districts will be assessed.  Demonstration trials will be undertaken with different levels of silt along with balanced nutrient management for major crops. Overall 750 sites will be examined for soil and water health, besides crop diversity and impact on livelihood. Dr Girish Chander, Scientist, ICRISAT – IDC, who has been working on towards this initiative will work with the team to also analyse the silt made available for application on its suitability for and impact on farming in this region.

Interviewing parents of adolescents Photo: ICRISAT

Adolescence is a nutritionally crucial period, when dramatic increases in physical growth and development put greater pressure on the need for nutrients. In fact, call it a second opportunity to catch up on growth that will determine the rest of one’s adult life. So what is the level of nutrition knowledge and practices among tribal adolescents and how willing are they to participate in enhancing them?

A baseline survey conducted as part of the “Nutri-Food Basket” project implemented by ICRISAT in partnership mode and funded by the Government of Telangana and National Rural Health Mission, collected information on 16 villages, 79 anganwadi centers (rural mother & child care centres) and 1710 households in Utnoor mandal (administrative unit), where about 70% of the adolescent girls were underweight and 40% were anaemic. Following established protocols, discussions with them revealed that both boys and girls lack basic awareness about food, nutrition health and overall well-being. When asked which foods contained energy, vitamins or proteins, none of the adolescents who participated in the focus group discussions (FGDs) were able to properly categorize the different foods according to their nutrients.

A feedback session on nutrition messaging. Photo: ICRISAT

The discussions also gave us an insight into the changed dietary preferences of people living in the tribal areas of Adilabad district. The supply of subsidized rice through the Public Distribution System (PDS) has led to a shift in consumption from highly nutritious millets to rice, which could also be attributed to a shift in cropping pattern from subsistence to commercial crops. Hardship in hand processing of millets, coupled with the absence of millet processors, and psychological factors such as the status associated with consuming rice over millets have led to a decrease in food diversity. Where a decade ago not much of outside or packaged food was consumed, now they are more commonly eaten by young children and adolescents, especially boys.

The FGDs and individual interviews conducted revealed the lacunae in nutrition knowledge among adolescents, their parents and their anganwadi teachers. The data collected reinforced the fact that lack of knowledge about nutrition was a reason for the prevalence of malnutrition in the area. Affordability also came up many times as a barrier to eating a diverse diet. While nutritional messaging may not directly affect the issue of affordability, creating awareness will make nutrition a priority for families once they are in a position of financial stability.

Interviewing a science teacher at the Lakkaram school in Adilabad. Photo: ICRISAT

A pilot exercise was conducted to explore how nutrition messages on dietary diversity can be conveyed to increase the understanding of nutrition, especially among adolescents. Dietary diversity was selected as the topic since the results of the Nutri-Food basket baseline data had revealed low diet diversity scores, low hemoglobin levels as well as the prevalence of being underweight. The adolescents were given information pamphlets combining text and pictures for ease of visualization by all age groups. Given that folklore and oral traditions are popular in these tribal villages, they got to listen to a folksong with a nutrition message. Feedback was sought on their understanding of the message and the preferred communication method. We suggest the use of a combination of communication materials that include visually appealing posters, pamphlets, songs, folk dances and others to spread the message of good nutrition as well as attention to the placement, timing and frequency of dissemination.

These activities underlined the need to promote nutrition literacy and behavior change campaigns targeted at women, young children and adolescents in the tribal regions. Adolescent girls and boys should be given special emphasis and receive targeted interventions including new knowledge. Then knowledge could truly be power!

This activity is part of the CGIAR Research Program on Grain Legumes and Dryland Cereals (GLDC).

Adolescents with the pamphlet. Photo: ICRISAT

About the authors:

Dr. R Padmaja, Senior Scientist (Gender), International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT)
Hermela Gebremarium, World Food Prize Borlaug Intern
Kavitha Kasala, Senior Scientific Officer, ICRISAT

Dr Lao Hongwu, President of ZAAS, who led the 6-member delegation from China, said, “I am excited to see this upstream science for product development at ICRISAT’s Centre of Excellence in Genomics and Systems Biology (CEGSB) and we look forward to see this happening at our academy as well, in collaboration with ICRISAT. Research at ZAAS focuses mainly on basic agricultural research and applications, high-tech agricultural innovation and service mechanism, covering almost all aspects of agricultural sciences except tea and fishery, to provide service and assistance for rural development of Zhejiang province and beyond. ZAAS will be celebrating its 110^th anniversary this yearend

Dr Peter Carberry, Director General (Acting), ICRISAT, welcomed the collaboration between the two leading research institutes in Asia. On a more curious note, he enquired if the research publications are all in Chinese and was told that the English versions are also available. The host of the event, Dr Rajeev K Varshney, Research Program Director-Genetic Gains, ICRISAT, said, “Our collaboration with ZAAS will be a ‘win-win’ for accelerating product development by utilizing the expertise of both the institutes.”

The delegation comprising of officials from various ZAAS institutes included Dr Dai Jie, Office Director; Dr Li Guojing, Institute Director, Research Fellow, Institute of Vegetables; Dr Wang Jianjun, Deputy Director of Institute, Research Fellow, Institute of Crops and Nuclear Technology Utilization; Dr Xu Pei, Research Fellow, Institute of Vegetables; and Dr Qi Yongbin, Associate Research Fellow, Institute of Crops and Nuclear Technology Utilization. From ICRISAT, Dr Kiran K Sharma, DDG- Research (Acting) and several senior scientists and managers were present during the MoU signing on August 6. During this two-day visit, the ZAAS delegation interacted with Dr Pooran Gaur, Research Program Director – Asia, Dr Anthony Whitbread, Research Program Director – Innovation Systems for the Drylands and Dr Warwick Easdown, Regional Director-South/Central Asia, World Vegetable Center and scientists from their respective Research Programs. This is a step forward from Dr Varshney’s visit to ZAAS last year to explore the possibilities of collaborations, where the ZAAS leadership expressed their interest in interdisciplinary research collaborations with ICRISAT.

Seminar on the role of orphan genes specific to cowpea

Dr Xu Pei, one of the delegates, delivered a seminar titled ‘Orphan genes are involved in drought adaptations and ecoclimatic-oriented selections in domesticated cowpea’.

Orphan Genes (OGs) are genes that are restricted to a single species or a particular taxonomic group. So far, little is known about functions of OGs in domesticated crops. The study on OG-environmental adaptation relationships in cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) identified 578 expressed cowpea OGs, of which 73.2% were predicted to be non-coding. Transcriptomic analyses revealed a strikingly high rate of OGs that were drought-inducible in roots only, as compared with conserved genes. Co-expression analysis further revealed the possible involvement of OGs in known stress response pathways.

Dr Xu Pei’s research finding indicated the orphan genes (OGs) are a valuable resource for identifying new genes related to species-characteristic environmental adaptations, and fosters a new insight that artificial selections on OGs might have contributed to balancing the adaptive and agronomical traits in domesticated crops in various ecoclimatic conditions.

Great interest was expressed in deploying modern genomics-based breeding and low-cost marker technology developed by ICRISAT in their crop breeding programs by Prof Shubo Wan, President of Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences (SAAS) and Shandong Peanut Research Institute (SPRI). A detailed project-planning meeting was also conducted for the recently sanctioned project (on peanut genomics and molecular breeding) between the Biotechnology Research Centre (BRC) of SAAS, Jinan and ICRISAT, funded by the Natural Science Fund (NSF), China.

ICRISAT team at ICRISAT-SAAS Joint Laboratory for Peanut Biotechnology with Dr Hongjun Zhao (middle), Director, SPRI, Qingdao

The visit was mainly to review and strengthen collaborations with the Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences (SAAS) and is a follow-up to the visit of the Chinese team to ICRISAT in 2015. Past successful collaborations include the setting up of ICRISAT-SAAS joint Laboratory for Peanut Research in 2014 at SPRI, Qingdao

The ICRISAT team led by Dr Rajeev K Varshney, Research Program Director-Genetic Gains, comprised of scientists Dr Manish Pandey, Arun K Pandey and Rakesh Kumar. The team visited research institutes such as National Centre for Gene Research, Shanghai (led by Prof Bin Han); Biotechnology Research Centre, Jinan (led by Dr Xingjun Wang); SAAS, Jinan (led by Prof Wan Shubo); SPRI, Qingdao (led by Dr Hongjun Zhao, DrXiaoyuan Chi and Dr Mei Yuan); and BGI- Qingdao (led by Mr Liu Xin). The team visited several field trials of these institutes to gain insights on high-quality research and its applications in the development of new products for the benefit of the farming community. The team also participated in a one-day international workshop.

This work contributes to UN Sustainable Development Goal

Debre Zeyit, Ethiopia; 35 participants; 16-20 July

For data management, a week-long workshop in Ethiopia, focused on hands-on training, preparing germplasm data from existing materials in Breeding Management System (BMS). It was a good opportunity for participants to prepare for the season, especially as they learnt to use electronic hand-held devices and capture field data. Significantly, data related to 38 trials and 4 nurseries  were uploaded in just one week, giving a boost to the work on important crops for the semi-arid tropics – chickpea, groundnut and common bean, specific crops under TL III project and sorghum and finger millet under HOPE II project.

Lilongwe, Malawi; 18 participants; 23-27 July

It was task time at Lilongwe as participants at this workshop spent time migrating data into the BMS and exploring advanced features including field maps, barcode label and electronic data capture using tablet devices.  Staff from ICRISAT breeding programs in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Zimbabwe, besides staff from two Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) institutions – the Indian Institute of Millets Research (ICAR-IIMR), Hyderabad and the Indian Institute of Pulses Research (ICAR-IIPR), Kanpur, participated in the workshop.

Participants at the Hackathon. Photo: ICRISAT

An innovative two-day ‘hackathon’ encouraged ICRISAT staff in Africa, to bring high quality research datasets to open access under FAIR (findability, accessibility, interoperability and reuse) principles, The result – nearly 35 high quality datasets from across Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Zimbabwe were submitted to ICRISAT open data repository with CGIAR core metadata standards. These datasets are now available as global public goods. This is part of a series started at ICRISAT headquarters in India for organizing data and capacity building of the CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture.

The workshops and hackathon were conducted by the Statistics, Bioinformatics and Data Management unit of ICRISAT, led by Dr Abhishek Rathore, Theme Leader.

Nigeria’s National Committee on Variety Naming, Registration and Release on 26 July 2018, approved the registration and release of two medium-maturing sorghum varieties, SAMSORG 47 as ZAUNA-INUWA, SAMSORG 48 as KAURA BORNU, and an early medium-maturing variety, SAMSORG 49 as CF35:5, in Nigeria.

SAMSORG 47 (ZAUNA INUWA) was developed from indigenous sorghum germplasm materials through pure-line head-to-row selection. It has desirable agronomic traits such as medium and uniform height, long and semi-compact panicles with bold testa-free yellow grain and stay green tendencies. It is suitable for the Sudan and Northern Guinea Savanah zone with a yield potential of 4.8 t/ha.

SAMSORG 48 (KAURA BORNU) was developed from sorghum germplasm materials indigenous to North-Eastern Nigeria. Head-to-row selection was carried out in 2012-2014 focusing on grain yield, uniformity in height, panicle type and grain quality. It has been recommended for cultivation in the Sudan and Northern Guinea Savannah.

Farmers standing with the SAMSORG 48 KAURA BORNU variety

SAMSORG 49 (CF35:5) was obtained from an exchange of exortic sorghum breeding lines from ICRISAT Mali and identified through farmer participatory variety selection for its earliness, medium-sized grain, stay-green tendency during the pearl millet and sorghum improvement (PROMISO) project in 2006-2009 and HOPE I (2010-2015) and HOPE II projects at Kebbi, Kano, Sokoto, Jigawa and Zamfara states. Its earliness comes in handy in hunger interventions since it matures when most other sorghum varieties are yet to mature in the field. It has been released for cultivation in the Sudan-Sahel zone and has a yield potential of 2.8 t/ha.

This work was carried out as part of the Harnessing Opportunities for Productivity Enhancement of Sorghum and Millets II (HOPE II) project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation under the CGIAR Research Program on Grain Legumes and Dryland Cereals (GLDC).