Suchergebnisse

Agro-ecological intensification of farming systems in the East and Central African highlands / Bernard Vanlauwe, Guy Blomme and Piet van Asten -- Agricultural intensification and the food security challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa / Brian A. Keating, Peter S. Carberry and John Dixon -- The agro-ecological solution?! : food security and poverty reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa, with an emphasis on the East African highlands / Henk Breman -- pt. 1. Systems components. CIALCA interventions for productivity increase of cropping system components in the African Great Lakes zone / Pieter Pypers et al. -- Exploring the scope of fertilizer use in the East African region / Lydia Wairegi and Piet van Asten -- The 4R nutrient stewardship in the context of smallholder agriculture in Africa / Shamie Zingore and Adrian Johnston -- Mitigating the impact of biotic constraints to build resilient banana systems in Central and Eastern Africa / Rony Swennen et al. -- Challenges for the improvement of seed systems for vegetatively propagated crops in Eastern Africa / Julian Smith, Daniel Coyne and Elmar Schulte-Geldermann -- pt. 2. System integration. CIALCA's efforts on integrating farming system components and exploring related trade-offs / Piet van Asten et al. -- Towards ecologically intensive smallholder farming systems : design, scales and trade-offs evaluation / Pablo Tittonell -- Using the 'livestock ladder' as a means for poor crop/livestock farmers to exit poverty in Sud-Kivu Province, eastern DR Congo / Brigitte L. Maass et al. -- N2Africa : putting nitrogen fixation to work for smallholder farmers in Africa / Ken E. Giller et al. -- Integrating climate change adaptation and mitigation in East African coffee ecosystems / Henk van Rikxoort et al. -- pt. 3. Drivers for adoption. Agricultural technology diffusion and adoption in banana and legume based systems of Central Africa / Emily Ouma et al. -- Supply and demand drivers of the sustainable intensification of farming systems through grain legumes in Central, Eastern and Southern Africa / Joseph Rusike et al. -- Assessing and improving the nutritional diversity of cropping systems / Roseline Remans et al. -- Disseminating agroforestry innovations in Cameroon : are relay organizations effective? / Ann Degrande et al. -- Participatory re-introduction of Vicia faba beans in resource-poor farming systems : adoption of a farmer-led initiative / Erik Karltun et al. -- pt. 4. Communicating and disseminating complex knowledge. Walking the impact pathway : CIALCA's efforts to mobilize agricultural knowledge for the African Great Lakes region / Boudy van Schagen et al. -- Scalability and farmer heterogeneity : implications for research on sustainable intensification / John Lynam -- Integrated agricultural research for development (IAR4D) : an approach to enhance the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in the Lake Kivu region / Robin Buruchara et al. -- Communication channels used in dissemination of soil fertility management practices in the central highlands of Kenya / Sarah W. Kimaru-Muchai et al. -- Targeting farmers' priorities for effective agricultural intensification in the humid highlands of Eastern Africa / Jeremias Mowo et al.

Plantain is one of the most important sources of food in the African lowlands stretching from the lowlands of Guinea and Liberia to the central basin of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo). Because plantain cultivars do not produce seeds, plantain cultivation is based on vegetatively transplanted lateral shoots/suckers. The way by which plantain reached the African continent is still under speculation. The aim of this study was to shed light on the history of plantain cultivars through a linguistic/synonymy study in northern Democratic Republic of Congo. We report the diversity of plantains in 18 villages across the Bas-Uele province based on a survey. Three villages in which plantain production systems dominated were selected in each territory, and ten households were consulted in each village. In each selected village, a focus group discussion was conducted with a group of at least 30 men, and with a separate group of 30 women to establish a list of plantain cultivars grown and known. A total of 46 cultivars were identified and 294 synonyms detected. The cultivar names are mostly related to animal features and agronomic traits, although there is a need to revisit the list for more specific traditional names. The local differences in cultivar identity, density and distribution are explained partly due to the influence of humid forest versus savanna landscapes, but the main part seems to be due to previous movements of Benza, Boa, Ngbandi, Rambo and Zande ethnic groups with their own set of cultivars. We demonstrate that the recorded synonymy data are useful for a tentative partial reconstruction of the history of some cultivars. This is useful for the genetic improvement of plantain cultivars, which most probably will have to rely for a great deal on the unraveling and management of epigenetic mechanisms. ; Peer Review

Banana bunchy top virus (BBTV; family Nanoviridae, genus Babuvirus) is a multi-component single-stranded DNA virus, which infects banana plants in many regions of the world, often resulting in large-scale crop losses. We analyzed 171 banana leaf samples from fourteen countries and recovered, cloned, and sequenced 855 complete BBTV components including ninety-four full genomes. Importantly, full genomes were determined from eight countries, where previously no full genomes were available (Samoa, Burundi, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Indonesia, the Philippines, and the USA [HI]). Accounting for recombination and genome component reassortment, we examined the geographic structuring of global BBTV populations to reveal that BBTV likely originated in Southeast Asia, that the current global hotspots of BBTV diversity are Southeast Asia/Far East and India, and that BBTV populations circulating elsewhere in the world have all potentially originated from infrequent introductions. Most importantly, we find that rather than the current global BBTV distribution being due to increases in human-mediated movements of bananas over the past few decades, it is more consistent with a pattern of infrequent introductions of the virus to different parts of the world over the past 1,000 years. ; Peer Review