Knowledge Management Portal

The "Lessons Learned Template" has been produced in the framework of the IFAD funded SKiM Project, through a joint effort of ICARDA, IFAD and Virginia Tech.

This report describes the developments of the “Strengthening Knowledge Management for Greater Development Effectiveness in the Near East, North Africa, Central Asia and Europe” (SKIM) project in its first phase, detailing the progress made and activities implemented across different project components from June 2018 until December 2019. SKIM had an inception phase from June to October 2018 when its Steering Committee met for the first time, and the activities commenced. In addition to the inception phase, the first period of the project also includes the establishment of contacts with partner institutions mentioned in the project proposal, formalizing partner agreements, an introductory mission to Moldova where ICARDA needed to build partnerships in the country, the implementation of activities related to the assessment of Knowledge Management (KM) capacities and gaps in different target countries, the development of strategies and innovation plans, the defining of pathways to implement activities in target institutions and the formation of communities of practice. In addition to these activities, initial knowledge products and an online Knowledge Platform (KP) were developed to facilitate knowledge exchange within and beyond project partners through the coordination of Knowledge Symposia.

Orobanche crenata Forssk., a root holoparasitic weed, represents a major biotic threat of legumes in the Mediterranean region. O. crenata could reduce the yield up to 90%. In this study, the effect of O. crenata on biomass production and partitioning of some faba bean and lentil cultivars were investigated through pot assays. During the first stage of infection, reductions in host biomass were observed on susceptible and resistant faba bean cultivars (53.84 and 27.02%, respectively for Lobab and Misr 3) and on susceptible lentil cultivar (Zaaria). However, during the last stage (host plant maturity), combined biomasses of susceptible faba bean (35.69 g) and lentil (8 g) cultivars were similar to those of non-infested plants (32.45 and 6.62 g, respectively). Considering biomass partitioning over the various host parts, O. crenata parasitism on susceptible faba bean and lentil cultivars greatly increased host root dry mater, but delayed and reduced host reproduction. The relative weight of parasite and host organs were also studied. Thus, a marked decrease of root relative weight was observed during the last developmental stages (up to 63%) accompanied simultaneously with the increase of relative parasitic weight (35.87%). Results suggested that legumes-O. crenata interactions were governed by growth-defense tradeoffs during the early stage of infection, whereas source-sink relationships explained the dry weight diversion from host to parasite during the last phases of the interaction.

The project aims to elaborate the knowledge management (KM) innovation plan as a tool to support the project partners/stakeholders in adopting an approach capable of identifying existing gaps in different knowledge management processes (discovery & detection/(identification), acquisition & creation, storage and sharing/transfer of knowledge) and related feasible solutions in order to act through capacity development actions. The pivotal step will be the identification of the knowledge and resources in the possession of each institution partner, in order to enhance what them and prioritize what they need and what could be done. Each organization will contribute to design a plan of actions for better knowledge management, aiming at improving the knowledge produced and that is in coherence with the institution’s strategy, vision and mission. These “innovation plans” will support the institutions involved in the project to enhance the existing KM framework or its development, outlining a set of activities and interventions tailored for each one of them. The “National Writeshops to Develop Capacity Building and Innovation Plans” for Moldova, Morocco and Sudan were conducted in said countries to gather the information needed to inform the Innovation Plans, together with the Capacity Needs Assessment (CNA). The writeshops were conducted divided into two parts: a) a basic introduction to KM (definition, processes, technologies, role of people, leadership, culture) that could be used as a guideline for partners to complete the b) second part that consists in identifying needs related to the KM processes and the feasible solutions to be proposed at capacity building level.

A presentation given by Professor Alwang at Virginia Tech on estimating the value of knowledge management.

This event took place on the 13th, 14th, and 15th of November 2019 in Rabat, Morocco to draw together key stakeholders and institutions participating in the cross-regional project, “Strengthening Knowledge Management for Greater Development Effectiveness in the Near East, North Africa, Central Asia and Europe,” sponsored by IFAD. The overall objective of the regional workshop was to facilitate and support the development of Knowledge Management best practices and capacities in the project’s three target countries: Morocco, Sudan, and Moldova.

In the early 1980s, disease susceptibility in short-season lentil landraces began to limit productivity in areas where relay cropping took place in Bangladesh. Since then, several improved high-yielding lentil varieties, which are resistant to rust and blight and suitable in the relay cropping system, have been released jointly by national and international research centers. This study used three methods, namely a panel of experts, a survey of 1000 households where the respondents named the variety they used, and DNA fingerprinting of seed samples collected from all lentil plots cultivated by survey households to estimate adoption. Double hurdle and instrumental variables regression methods were applied to the household survey and DNA fingerprinting data to identify determinants of adoption and measure their impacts. Of particular interest was whether estimates of adoption, determinants of adoption and impacts varied by method of variety identification. Results showed that the expert panel overestimated the adoption of more recent varieties while about 89% of the farmer-reported varieties were accurate, as verified by DNA fingerprinting. DNA fingerprinting appears to have little advantage for estimating the level of adoption in this case, where few varieties of lentils are found, local variety names do not exist, and most seed is obtained through a formal system. However, even under these conditions, determinants of adoption vary by identification method, and use of farmer-reported information on the variety can lead to erroneous conclusions about determinants of adoption. Because recent breeding efforts have focused on taste and cooking considerations, yield impacts were not significantly different from zero.

The “Knowledge Platform” (KP) will stimulate the synthesis of knowledge and evidence, the production of information products, and their dissemination to target audiences. Part of the platform will be an online ‘knowledge portal’ which will act as a repository of information and data relevant to financial inclusion of rural women and youth; natural resource management and climate resilience; and productive agricultural technologies (e.g. water management technologies, conservation agriculture, drought-resilient crops). The Open Access “knowledge portal” will be based on the technology developed for the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Platform and deliver practical results, in different types and grades of information for use by key target audiences. Information will be stored using international standards (Dublin Core, FAO AGROVOC, ISO) to facilitate data sharing and interoperable functionalities (API and web-services) to interact with other institutional systems and mobile applications.