scholarly journals Real time portable genome sequencing for global food security

F1000Research ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 1101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Boykin ◽  
Ammar Ghalab ◽  
Bruno Rossitto De Marchi ◽  
Anders Savill ◽  
James M. Wainaina ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Food Security ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Crop Protection ◽  
Plant Viruses ◽  
Plant Diseases ◽  
Control Measures ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Crop Losses ◽  
Early Action ◽  
Sub Saharan

Crop losses due to viral diseases and pests are major constraints on food security and income for millions of households in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Such losses can be reduced if plant diseases and pests are correctly diagnosed and identified early. Currently, accurate diagnosis for definitive identification of plant viruses and their vectors in SSA mostly relies on standard PCR and next generation sequencing technologies (NGS). However, it can take up to 6 months before results generated using these approaches are available. The long time taken to detect or identify viruses impedes quick, within-season decision-making necessary for early action, crop protection advice and disease control measures by farmers. This ultimately compounds the magnitude of crop losses and food shortages suffered by farmers. The MinION portable pocket DNA sequencer was used, to our knowledge globally for the first time, to sequence whole plant virus genomes. We used this technology to identify the begomoviruses causing the devastating cassava mosaic virus, which is ravaging smallholder farmers’ crops in sub-Saharan Africa.

scholarly journals Dilemma of nitrogen management for future food security in sub-Saharan Africa – a review

Soil Research ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (6) ◽  
pp. 425 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cargele Masso ◽  
Fredrick Baijukya ◽  
Peter Ebanyat ◽  
Sifi Bouaziz ◽  
John Wendt ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Food Security ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Lake Victoria ◽  
Research Capacity ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
N Recovery ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Other World ◽  
N Use

Food security entails having sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet dietary needs. The need to optimise nitrogen (N) use for nutrition security while minimising environmental risks in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is overdue. Challenges related to managing N use in SSA can be associated with both insufficient use and excessive loss, and thus the continent must address the ‘too little’ and ‘too much’ paradox. Too little N is used in food production (80% of countries have N deficiencies), which has led to chronic food insecurity and malnutrition. Conversely, too much N load in water bodies due mainly to soil erosion, leaching, limited N recovery from wastewater, and atmospheric deposition contributes to eutrophication (152 Gg N year–1 in Lake Victoria, East Africa). Limited research has been conducted to improve N use for food production and adoption remains low, mainly because farming is generally practiced by resource-poor smallholder farmers. In addition, little has been done to effectively address the ‘too much’ issues, as a consequence of limited research capacity. This research gap must be addressed, and supportive policies operationalised, to maximise N benefits, while also minimising pollution. Innovation platforms involving key stakeholders are required to address N use efficiency along the food supply chain in SSA, as well as other world regions with similar challenges.

scholarly journals Preferences and crop choice during Zimbabwe’s macroeconomic crisis

2020 ◽  
pp. 260-287
Author(s):  
Anna Josephson ◽  
◽  
Jacob Ricker-Gilbert ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Food Security ◽  
Market Failure ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Risk And Uncertainty ◽  
Crop Choice ◽  
Extreme Stress ◽  
Price Signals ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
The Relationship

Smallholder farmers face considerable risk and uncertainty, particularly when markets are incomplete or missing. We consider household crop diversity and crop choice in Zimbabwe, where output markets are largely absent and price signals are inaccurate. In this setting, considering preferences and tastes provides a deeper understanding of how households ensure food security in environments without robust markets. We use data that straddles the period of hyperinflation in Zimbabwe and the collapse of the country’s currency to study household cropping behaviour in a time of extreme stress. This allows us to better understand the relationship between market failure and crop choice in Sub-Saharan Africa.

scholarly journals Real time portable genome sequencing for global food security

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura M. Boykin ◽  
Ammar Ghalab ◽  
Bruno Rossitto De Marchi ◽  
Anders Savill ◽  
James M. Wainaina ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Crop Production ◽  
High Throughput Sequencing ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Plant Viruses ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Global Food Security ◽  
Detection And Identification ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Zero Hunger

AbstractThe United Nations has listed Zero Hunger as one of the 17 global sustainable development goals to end extreme poverty by 2030. Plant viruses are a major constraint to crop production globally causing an estimated $30 billion in damage 1 leaving millions of people food insecure 2. In Africa, agriculture employs up to 50% of the workforce, yet only contributes 15% to the GDP on average 3, suggesting that there is low productivity and limited value addition. This can be addressed through continued innovation in the fields of science and technology as suggested in the Science Agenda for Agriculture in Africa (S3A) 4. Sustainable management of plant viruses and their associated vectors must include efficient diagnostics for surveillance, detection and identification to inform disease management, including the development and strategic deployment of virus resistant varieties. To date, researchers have been utilizing conventional methods such as; PCR, qPCR, high throughput sequencing (RNA-Seq, DNA-Seq) and Sanger sequencing for pathogen identification. However, these methods are both costly and time consuming, delaying timely control actions. The emergence of new tools for real-time diagnostics, such as the Oxford Nanopore MinION, have recently proven useful for early detection of Ebola 6 and Zika 7,8, even in low resourced laboratories. For the first time globally, the MinION portable pocket DNA sequencer was used to sequence whole plant virus genomes. We used this technology to identify the begomoviruses causing the devastating CMD which is ravaging smallholder farmers’ crops in sub-Saharan Africa. Cassava, a carbohydrate crop from which tapioca originates, is a major source of calories for over eight hundred (800) million people worldwide. With this technology, farmers struggling with diseased crops can take immediate, restorative action to improve their livelihoods based on information about the health of their plants, generated using a portable, real-time DNA sequencing device.

scholarly journals The impact of COVID-19 control measures on social contacts and transmission in Kenyan informal settlements

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Quaife ◽  
Kevin van Zandvoort ◽  
Amy Gimma ◽  
Kashvi Shah ◽  
Nicky McCreesh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Food Security ◽  
Informal Settlements ◽  
Control Measures ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Social Contacts ◽  
Contact Patterns ◽  
Contact Data ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
The Impact

AbstractBackgroundMany low- and middle-income countries have implemented control measures against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, it is not clear to what extent these measures explain the low numbers of recorded COVID-19 cases and deaths in Africa. One of the main aims of control measures is to reduce respiratory pathogen transmission through direct contact with others. In this study we collect contact data from residents of informal settlements around Nairobi, Kenya to assess if control measures have changed contact patterns, and estimate the impact of changes on the basic reproduction number (R0).MethodsWe conducted a social contact survey with 213 residents of five informal settlements around Nairobi in early May 2020, four weeks after the Kenyan government introduced enhanced physical distancing measures and a curfew between 7pm and 5am. Respondents were asked to report all direct physical and non-physical contacts made the previous day, alongside a questionnaire asking about the social and economic impact of COVID-19 and control measures. We examined contact patterns by demographic factors, including socioeconomic status. We described the impact of COVID-19 and control measures on income and food security. We compared contact patterns during control measures to patterns from non-pandemic periods to estimate the change in R0.FindingsWe estimate that control measures reduced physical and non-physical contacts, reducing the R0 from around 2.6 to between 0.5 and 0.7, depending on the pre-COVID-19 comparison matrix used. Masks were worn by at least one person in 92% of contacts. Respondents in the poorest socioeconomic quintile reported 1.5 times more contacts than those in the richest. 86% of respondents reported a total or partial loss of income due to COVID-19, and 74% reported eating less or skipping meals due to having too little money for food.InterpretationCOVID-19 control measures have had a large impact on direct contacts and therefore transmission, but have also caused considerable economic and food insecurity. Reductions in R0 are consistent with the linear epidemic growth in Kenya and other sub-Saharan African countries that implemented similar, early control measures. However, negative and inequitable impacts on economic and food security may mean control measures are not sustainable in the longer term.Research in contextEvidence before this studyWe conducted a PubMed search on 6 June 2020 with no language restrictions for studies published since inception, using the search terms (“social mix*” OR “social cont*” OR “contact pattern*) AND (“covid*”). The search yielded 53 articles, two of which reported changes in social contacts after COVID-19 control measures. The first study reported changes in contact patterns in Wuhan and Shanghai, and the second changes in contact patterns in the UK. We found no studies examining changes in contact patterns due to control measures in sub-Saharan Africa, and no studies disaggregating contacts by socioeconomic status.Added value of this studyThis is the first study to estimate the reproduction number of COVID-19 under control measures in sub-Saharan Africa using primary contact data. This study also moves beyond existing work to i) measure contacts in densely populated informal settlements, ii) explore how social contacts vary across socioeconomic status, and iii) assess the impact of control measures on economic and food security in these areas.Implications of all the evidenceCOVID-19 control measures have substantially reduced social contacts and disease transmission. People of lower socioeconomic status face greater transmission risk as they report more contacts. Control measures have led to considerable economic and food insecurity, and may not be sustainable in the long term without efforts to reduce the burden of control measures on households.

Hyper-resolution hydrological modelling to assess water and food security in Malawi

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Anghileri ◽  
Noemi Vergopolan ◽  
Solomon Gebrechorkos ◽  
Justin Sheffield
Keyword(s):  
Food Security ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Agricultural Landscape ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Smallholder Farming ◽  
Hydrological Variability ◽  
Research Activities ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Water And Food Security

<p>Agriculture is a key sector in fighting hunger in Sub Saharan Africa. Almost 95% of the agriculture in Africa is rain-fed and smallholder farmers play a crucial role as they produce most of the food consumed by local populations. These characteristics make the SSA agricultural landscape very diverse and particularly vulnerable to weather extremes. The ability of forecasting hydrological variability has increased in recent years due to advancements in the understanding of hydro-climatic processes, growing availability of high-resolution remote sensing datasets, and the increase of computational power, which has promoted the development of high-quality computer-based hydrological models. When adopted in data scarce regions, these models provide new insight into the hydrological budget and in characterizing the hydrological variability of these areas. In this work, we combine the hyper-resolution hydrological model HydroBlocks and the river routing model RAPID to simulate the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the land surface processes in Malawi at 30 m resolution. The model simulations show high variability of the hydrological variables, particularly soil moisture, across the country. We use these results to further analyse water and food security indicators in the transboundary catchment of Lake Chilwa shared between Malawi and Mozambique. The start and duration of the maize cropping season and the lake level show a large interannual variability which allow us to quantify the weather-related vulnerability of the local smallholder farming system. This work is part of the research activities of the UKRI-GCRF funded project “Building research capacity for sustainable water and food security in drylands of sub-Saharan Africa” (BRECcIA - http://www.gcrf-breccia.com/).</p>

scholarly journals Curbing Post Harvest Losses for Food Security: A Survey of Smallholder Farmers in Ethiopia

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
Robert Agunga ◽  
Ruth Sleshi
Keyword(s):  
Food Security ◽  
Food Insecurity ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Agricultural Extension ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Great Promise ◽  
Post Harvest ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Grain Farmers

Reducing post harvest losses (PHL) offers great promise for curbing hunger and reducing food insecurity in Africa.A World Bank 2011 report on Missing Food estimated that if African farmers can reduce PHL by even one percentthat will be an annual savings of US$40 million for Sub-Saharan Africa alone. Our survey of 88 smallholderfarmers in the Gondar Region of Ethiopia found that farmers faced serious to most serious losses caused by rodents,birds and the weather. About 46% of the respondents, expressed serious problems with rodents; 54% had seriousproblems with birds and even higher numbers, 55% and 63% had serious problems with the weather and pests,respectively. Another 28.4% of the farmers complained of very serious problems with birds while half of them hadvery serious problems with rodents. Many of the PHL problems seem to emanate from poor storage. The Universityof Purdue, USA, has invented what it calls the “Purdue Improved Crop Storage Bag,” which is advertised as highlyefficient and relatively inexpensive. We urge agricultural extension systems in Africa to test the effectiveness of thisbag before recommending it to their grain farmers as a means of reducing PHL.

Using radio and interactive ICTs to improve food security among smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 670-684 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather E. Hudson ◽  
Mark Leclair ◽  
Bernard Pelletier ◽  
Bartholomew Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Food Security ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Improve Food Security
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document