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Presentation on “Efficiency of Crop–Livestock Production Systems Under Conservation Agriculture: Scope for Sustainable System Transformation in Rain-Fed Drylands of Tunisia” delivered during the International Symposium LESOR'2022 (Djerba-Tunisia, 23-25 November 2022.

Climate change exacerbated droughts by making them more frequent that increased risks of food insecurity faced by rural families in arid areas. Adopting coping mechanisms are necessary to reduce the vulnerability of rural agricultural communities and enhance their resilience to climate change. The main objectives of this paper are i) to assess effectiveness of the adopted coping strategies in rural areas by measuring resilience properties of household livelihoods and ii) to identify their key drivers. we will measure. A cross-sectional survey among 671 sample households was conducted in Kairouan and Zaghouan. To understand the key drivers of each livelihood coping strategy and compare different livelihood strategies we used an updated version of we used and updated the resilience analysis framework. A special attention was given understand how household-level characteristics correspond to household coping strategies towards an identification and assessment of the coping mechanisms adopted by farmers to mitigate the impact of drought on their livelihood and food security. Results showed income and food access, assets possession, access to basic services, adaptive capacity, and social safety nets have positive and significant effect on farm households’ resilience to food insecurity. Climate change and stability have a negative and significant effects. This could be due to the negative effect of the climate change especially drought on the household resilience.

Developing an alternative water-fertilizer-saving management practice for winter wheat-summer maize double cropping system in the North China Plain (NCP) is urgent to address severe water scarcity and adverse envi ronmental impacts. A four-year field experiment in split plot design was conducted to evaluate the effects of supplemental drip irrigation on grain yield, water use efficiency (WUE), nitrogen use efficiency (NUE), nitrogen (N) loss and economic benefits, keeping three supplemental drip irrigation times (DI0, no irrigation after emergence; DI3, irrigation once at wheat jointing, once at maize seedling and once at maize jointing; DI5, irri gation once at wheat jointing, once at wheat anthesis, once at maize seedling, once at maize jointing and once at maize tasseling) in the main plots and three N fertilizer rates (N0, no N fertilizer; N60%, 60% of the localrec ommended N fertilizer rate, 272 kg N ha− 1 yr− 1; N100%, 100% of the local recommended N fertilizer rate, 453 kg N ha− 1 yr− 1) in the sub plots. The traditional surface irrigation regime was also conducted as control (CK) under local recommended N fertilizer at 453 kg N ha− 1 yr− 1. The results showed that DI5N60% achieved the highest WUE in wheat (1.93 kg m− 3) and maize (3.00 kg m− 3) on average, which was 3.0% and 25.3% higher compared to CK, respectively. The highest partial factor productivity from applied N (PEPN) in wheat and maize were also observed in DI5N60% (56.8 kg kg− 1 and 56.3 kg kg− 1, respectively) on average, which was 54.0% and 74.0% higher compared to CK, respectively. For winter wheat-summer maize double cropping system, DI5N60% can generally achieve similar crop yield and net income but reduce irrigation and N fertilizer use and N loss compared to CK. Therefore, DI5N60% was considered as an alternative water-fertilizer-saving management practice for winter wheat-summer maize double cropping system in the NCP. Moreover, the optimized combi nation of irrigation amount and N fertilizer rate corresponding simultaneously to higher crop yield, WUE and net income were determined by using the response surface methodology based on binary quadratic regression analysis, and the optimal irrigation amount were 165 mm and 90 mm, optimal N rates were 186 kg N ha− 1 and 185 kg N ha− 1 for winter wheat and summer maize, respectively.

Reducing the carbon footprint of agro-industry , mainly by Limiting GHG emissions from agriculture and carbon sequestration through agriculture

Faire le tour du monde des légumineuses en 1h chrono : tel était l'objectif de ce deuxième numéro de Transition(s), l'émission dédiée à l'agriculture mondiale : - Faire le panorama mondial des légumineuses et des récoltes à venir, dans un contexte bousculé par la guerre en Ukraine, - Décortiquer, de la fourche à la fourchette, le rôle des légumineuses dans les transitions agricoles et alimentaires, - Dessiner des pistes de coopération entre les pays du sud et du nord pour relever les défis en termes de production, de recherche, de transformation auxquels font face les producteurs.

The presentation was made by the ICARDA Director General and is linked to the role of agrobiodiversity in Tajikistan for the world food security roundtable discussion at COP27

The growing demand for native planting material in ecological restoration and rehabilitation for agro-silvo-pastoral ecosystems has resulted in a major global industry in their sourcing, multiplication, and sale. Plant tissue culture is used for producing high-quality, disease-free, and true-to-type plants at a fast rate. Micropropagation can help to meet the increasing demand for planting material and afforestation programs. However, in vitro plant propagation is an expensive technique compared to conventional methods using suckers, seeds, and cuttings. Therefore, adopting measures to lower production costs without compromising plant quality is essential. This can be achieved by improving the culture media composition. Incorporating organic growth additives can stimulate tissue growth and increase the number of shoots, leaves, and roots in culture media. Organic growth supplementation speeds up the formation and development of cultures and yields vigorous plants. Plant regeneration from meristems (shoot tips and axillary buds) is a reliable way to produce true-to-type plants compared with callus and somatic embryogenesis regeneration, but in vitro culture environments can be mutagenic. Therefore, detecting somaclonal variations at an early stage of development is considered crucial in propagating plants. The genetic stability of in vitro regenerated plants needs to be ascertained by using DNA-based molecular markers. This review aims to provide up-to-date research progress on incorporating organic growth additives to enhance in vitro tissue culture protocols and to emphasize the importance of using PCR-based molecular markers such as RAPD, ISSR, SSR, and SCoT. The review was assessed based on the peer-reviewed works published in scientific databases including Science Direct, Scopus, Springer, JSTOR, onlinelibrary, and Google Scholar.

Breeding programs in developing countries still cannot afford the new genotyping technologies, hindering their research. We aimed to assemble an Association Mapping panel to serve as CGIAR Barley Breeding Toolbox (CBBT), especially for the Developing World. The germplasm had to be representative of the one grown in the Developing World; with high genetic variability and be of public domain. For it, we genotyped with the Infinium iSelect 50K chip, a Global Barley Panel (GBP) of 530 genotypes representing a wide range of row-types, end-uses, growth habits, geographical origins and environments. 40,342 markers were polymorphic with an average polymorphism information content of 0.35 and 66% of them exceeding 0.25. The analysis of the population structure identified 8 subpopulations mostly linked to geographical origin, four of them with significant ICARDA origin. The 16 allele combinations at 4 major flowering genes (HvVRN-H3, HvPPD-H1, HvVRN-H1 and HvCEN) explained 11.07% genetic variation and were linked to the geographic origins of the lines. ICARDA material showed the widest diversity as revealed by the highest number of polymorphic loci (99.76% of all polymorphic SNPs in GBP), number of private alleles and the fact that ICARDA lines were present in all 8 subpopulations and carried all 16 allelic combinations. Due to their genetic diversity and their representativity of the germplasm adapted to the Developing World, ICARDA-derived lines and cultivated landraces were pre-selected to form the CBBT. Using the Mean of Transformed Kinships method, we assembled a panel capturing most of the allelic diversity in the GBP. The CBBT (N=250) preserves good balance between row-types and good representation of both phenology allelic combinations and subpopulations of the GBP. The CBBT and its genotypic data is available to researchers worldwide as a collaborative tool to underpin the genetic mechanisms of traits of interest for barley cultivation.