Our partner, the Climate & Clean Air Coalition (CCAC), has released its April 2018 newsletter. This edition includes information on their 2018 Award for an individual or group’s exceptional contribution to reducing short-lived climate pollutants, including in the area of agriculture.
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Entries and nominations are for projects, programs and policies that demonstrate:
To submit an entry, nominate a group or individual, or learn more about the awards program, visit the website. Entries will be accepted until Monday, 4 June 2018. Winners announced this September. If you have any questions you can contact the Climate & Clean Air Coalition Secretariat at [email protected] or at (+33) 1 44 37 14 73. |
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The first successful candidates of the GRA and CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change (CCAFS) joint CLIFF-GRADS initiative have been announced.
CLIFF-GRADS is a new international doctorate scholarship programme designed to support budding agricultural scientists.
Some 65 applicants from 23 countries applied for the scholarship following its launch at the United Nations climate conference in November last year. The nine successful first-round candidates come from a range of countries including Argentina, Ethiopia, Colombia, Nigeria and Tunisia.
Scholarship recipients will work in a range of research fields including nutrient management, pasture management, soil and rumen microbiology, tropical agriculture, and greenhouse gas measurement.
The awardees are:
- Abubakar Halilu, Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria
- Sebastián Vangeli, National Institute of Agricultural Technology, Argentina
- Ridha Ibidhi, Mediterranean Institute for Agricultural Economics of Zaragoza, Tunisia
- Yohannes Gelan Regassa, Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia
- Isabel Cristina Molina Botero, Universidad Autonoma de Yucatan, Colombia
- Banira Lombardi, National University of the Centre of the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina
- María De Bernardi, National University of the Centre of the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Florencia Garcia, National University of Córdoba, Argentina
- Ofonime Eyo, Pan African University institute of Life and Earth Sciences (University of Ibadan), Nigeria
They will be hosted by research organisations in six countries:
- International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Colombia
- Rothamsted Research and Bangor University, United Kingdom
- Wageningen University and Research, The Netherlands
- International Centre for Maize and Wheat Improvement (CIMMYT), India and Bangladesh
- National Institute of Agricultural Research (INIA), Chile
The latest letter from FACCE-SURPLUS (Sustainable and Resilient Agriculture for Food and Non-Food Systems) is now available. This edition includes information on the upcoming International Conference on Agricultural GHG Emissions and Food Security – Connecting Research to Policy and Practice
The latest newsletter of our Partner, Global Open Data on Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN), is now available. This edition includes information on the Africa Climate Smart Agriculture Congress and an article on how to make agricultural research data more discoverable, reusable and reproducable.
The Global Research Alliance has reached a milestone membership of 50 volunteer member countries from around the world. Our 50th Member, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has joined us as the result of discussions at the Japan Pavilion side event at the COP23 Event in Bonn last year. We would like to thank Japan for hosting this event.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is our seventh African country to have joined the membership of the GRA, and we are looking forward to working together to help grow more food while reducing agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.
Below is a list of all our 50 Member Countries:
- Argentina
- Australia
- Belgium
- Bolivia
- Brazil
- Canada
- Chile
- China
- Colombia
- Costa Rica
- Democratic Republic of Congo
- Denmark
- Dominican Republic
- Ecuador
- Egypt
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Ghana
- Honduras
- Indonesia
- Ireland
- Italy
- Japan
- Lithuania
- Malaysia
- Mexico
- Netherlands
- New Zealand
- Nicaragua
- Norway
- Panama
- Paraguay
- Peru
- Philippines
- Poland
- Senegal
- South Africa
- South Korea
- Spain
- Sri Lanka
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Thailand
- Tunisia
- United Kingdom
- United States of America
- Uruguay
- Vietnam
- Zimbabwe
The Global Research Alliance has updated our website to include a list of all our current Affiliates.
The page can be viewed alongside our Partners on our Community page, and shows the organisations represented by our 49 Member countries and by invited experts who participate in our Networks.
The March issue of the Joint Programming Initiative on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (FACCE-ERA-GAS) newsletter is now available.
This issue mentions the International Conference on Agricultural GHG Emissions and Food Security – Connecting research to policy and practice (September 10-13), which will be held alongside the GRA’s annual Council meeting in Berlin (September 10-11).
Read the newsletter here
Scientists in the LRG’s Rumen Microbial Genomics Network have had their work to develop a global reference set of genome sequences of rumen microbes published in Nature Biotechnology.
The project, called the Hungate1000*, was led by New Zealand scientists Dr Bill Kelly and Dr Sinead Leahy and brought together nearly 60 scientists from 14 research organisations across nine countries**. This global collaboration has generated a reference catalogue of 501 rumen microbial genomes—before Hungate1000, just 15 rumen microbial genomes were available to the scientific community.
Dr Kelly says the project gives a new understanding of what exactly is taking place inside a rumen.
“Hungate1000 means we can now start to reveal the intricacies of how the rumen microbial community functions, and provide a roadmap for where to take the science next,” he says. “This data can be translated into interventions that are globally useful, such as identifying targets for vaccines and inhibitors to reduce methane emissions and improve productivity, among other things.”
Dr Leahy says the project represents a major scientific advancement in the field of rumen microbiology, an area of science that up until recently had largely been unexplored.
“These microbes in the stomachs of ruminants are crucially important—they convert grass and other dietary components into smaller compounds that the sheep or cow uses to make meat and milk,” she says. “The data we’ve made available with Hungate1000 will underpin the development of technologies to target these microbes and aid productivity or reduce greenhouse gas emissions—you need to know what you’re targeting to make a specific impact on the rumen microbiome environment.”
Dr Andy Reisinger, Deputy Director of the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre (NZAGRC) and New Zealand representative in the LRG, says Hungate1000 is central to the work that the LRG and New Zealand are leading.
“Hungate1000 shows what a powerhouse the rumen is in converting digestible plant material to energy, and gives us a much better understanding of how we might be able to use science to influence that process,” he says. “This will help us find ways not only to enhance productivity but also to achieve emissions reductions and deliver solutions to farmers—such as inhibitors and vaccines—that don’t affect their economic baselines.”
In line with the GRA’s philosophy that research should be conducted in a manner that ensures the widest possible benefit, the Hungate1000 data is publicly available as a community resource on the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute website.
The Hungate1000 was funded by the New Zealand Govenrment in support of the GRA. The genome sequencing and analysis component of the project was supported by the US Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute via its Community Science Program.
Dr Harry Clark, NZAGRC Director and Co-chair of the LRG, says Hungate1000 would not have come about without the GRA and the support of the New Zealand Government.
“This project shows the power of international collaboration—we’ve been able to bring scientists together from around the world to create this resource that can benefit all countries,” he says. “We’re already looking at ways that the Hungate1000 data can be exploited in future LRG collaborations.”
One such example is RumenPredict, a European-funded project that will bring together Hungate1000 and the Global Rumen Census (an earlier New Zealand-funded LRG collaboration) to link rumen microbiome information to host genetics and phenotype and develop feed-based mitigation strategies.
Dr Kelly says he and the rest of the Hungate1000 team are delighted to see their work published in Nature Biotechnology.
“It’s the culmination of a long journey and a lot of work, and we have achieved something that I think is really worthwhile,” he says. “The kudos of getting something published in a high-impact journal like Nature Biotechnology is enormous, and highlights the value of this work to a global audience.”
* So named after Bob Hungate, an American scientist who developed the pioneering technique of growing anaerobic bacteria that has been the cornerstone of the project.
** Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Japan, New Zealand, Scotland, USA, Wales
The ‘International Conference on Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Food Security – Connecting Research Policy & Practice’ has opened a call for abstracts.
The conference will focus on agricultural GHG emission reduction in the light of climate change, sustainable agriculture, and food security.
Under the guiding question “What are options, global potentials and visions to the mitigation of greenhouse gases and the enhancement of carbon sinks by agriculture?” we would like to broaden the scope of the scientific conference and focus on holistic, integrative state-of the art research in the light of political and societal challenges relevant for implementing climate action under the Paris agreement.
Abstracts must be submitted by the 30th April using the website: http://www.agrighg-2018.org.
Thursday 8 March was 2018 International Women’s Day. Our Partner, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) posted some short interviews on their website, showing how researchers are pushing for progress in the area of gender equality in agriculture. Dr Leocadio Sebastian, Regional Program Leader of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), addressed the goal of equal access to climate-smart agriculture for hands-on female farmers across the globe:
“Our studies reveal that [women] have less access to climate-smart technologies, training, and information compared to men. Our research focuses on how we can help reduce women’s drudgery in rice production, provide women access to climate information, and engage them in community-based climate-smart technologies and practices. For example, our project, “Using Agro-Climate Information to Enhance the Adaptive Capacity of Women and Ethnic Minority Smallholders” in Vietnam, Cambodia and Lao PDR, has a strong gender-focus and will closely monitor climate information in terms of acceptability to men and women. We also promote climate-smart rice varieties, such as improved salt-tolerant rice varieties, to reduce replanting, a task which is relegated to poor women. We help empower women with technical knowledge through training, demonstration trials, and participatory community-based activities like backyard swine production using local materials for feed ration.”
A position is currently open for a Principal Scientific Officer at the Agri-Food & Bio-Sciences Institute AFBI in Belfast, Ireland. The successful applicant will lead the ‘Sustainable Soil Management & Crop Nutrition’ research programme, which involves some focus on nutrient management and nutrient cycling within livestock-based production systems.
For a job description and to apply, please click here or visit www.nicsrecruitment.org.uk
The application deadline is Friday 23rd March 2018 (UK time).
With support from the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, the Meridian Institute, a new report has been produced which represents a call to action to create sustainable food systems: Climate Change & Food Systems: Assessing Impacts and Opportunities. The report was designed to bring together existing information about climate change impacts and opportunities for climate adaptation and mitigation into a food systems framework. An Author Team developed the report and established an Advisory Committee to guide the process, provide strategic advice, and offer technical input.
A peer reviewed journal article, based on findings in the report, is also available under open access from the Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems journal: “Climate change mitigation beyond agriculture: a review of food system opportunities and implications”.