With livestock and cropping the backbone of the country, leaders from 11 of the 15 CGIAR centres met with Somali officials last month at ICRAF to map ways that CGIAR dryland agricultural research could accelerate and enhance Somalia’s development. Continue reading
ILRI is working with small-scale women dairy producers who are members of a large women’s dairy cooperative in the semi-arid Telengana state of India—the Mulkanoor Women’s Dairy Cooperative. The are growing sorghum for a cash fodder crop. Continue reading
Findings from a review of a five-year irrigation project in Ethiopia, Ghana, and Tanzania show that all the men and women farmers who had adopted irrigation practices ‘were financially better off, more food secure and had more diverse diets’. Continue reading
The following excerpts are taken from an opinion piece on Brachiaria grass for livestock feed published by An Notenbaert, tropical forages coordinator for Africa at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), and published by Business Daily (Kenya) and the CIAT Blog. Continue reading
A recent study by the Biosciences eastern and central Africa-International Livestock Research Institute Hub (BecA-ILRI Hub) and the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) shows that farmers in semi-arid region of Kenya could stall the adverse effects of climate change on their farms by planting drought-tolerant Brachiaria grass. Continue reading
The government of the state of Odisha, in eastern India, and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) will work together to provide improved feed and fodder to livestock in the state (formerly known as Orissa) in a new three-year project. Continue reading
The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) recently promoted the use of cassava peels as animal feed to senior government officials from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Continue reading
Scaling out research results for wider application and use is a goal of every research for development project in today’s CGIAR. It is also one of the most difficult things to achieve. Scaling out was on the agenda of recent end-of-project workshops of the IFAD-financed MilkIT project. At a recent workshop team members and partners listed out some of the critical success factors such a project needs to be able to scale out its results. Continue reading
Cowpea fodder bundles stacked in Niger for livestock feed (photo credit: ILRI). ‘Of the many virtues of grain legumes, one is little recognized. Visitors to the livestock fodder markets of West Africa are always surprised to see groundnut and cowpea haulms (stalks and stems of legume plants) sold at prices that exceed that of cereal … Continue reading
The forage collection maintained by ILRI, for example, contains germplasm from around 19,000 plant populations representing over 1,400 forage species, including grasses, legumes and fodder trees, many of which are under threat in the wild from land use changes and over-grazing. ILRI’s forage collection is providing scientists with the genetic material to develop climate-smart, high yielding and disease tolerant varieties that will have a key role in Africa’s farming future. Continue reading
ILRI Clippings 