Knowledge Management Portal

In February 2020, Stefanie Christmann presented some parts of the IKI-pollinator project and the Farming with Alternative Pollinators (FAP) approach at the World Biodiversity Forum in Davos. Afterwards, the editor of the reputed journal Nature Ecology & Evolution invited her for a World View article to share with a larger audience.

The crop wild relatives (CWR) are an important source of genetic diversity for crop improvement. In the season 2018-2019, the CWR lines of durum wheat, barley and lentil have been tested across different stations in Morocco and Lebanon. The analysis of data for grain yield revealed a high superiority of CWR- elites of durum wheat, barley and lentil across all sites. Several durum wheat elites derived from wild relatives exhibited good resistance to various diseases such as hessian fly and Septoria tritici blotch.

In the first week of March 2020, a team of CARDA visited the station of Fanaye in Senegal river to follow the performance of DIIVA-PR trials. A high adaptation was distinguished for durum wheat, barley and lentil trials under the high-temperature conditions of Fanaye station. The recently released varieties of durum wheat have been evaluated for the first time at farmer field and excellent results were achieved confirming the high stability of durum wheat in Senegal valley conditions.

Come with us and see how pollinator protection can work! Join farmers realizing the diversity of pollinators and beneficial insects in their fields, come to know, which pollinators are efficient for which crop, how to attract these insects and how to encourage them to nest between fields. Hear farmers’ comments on Farming with Alternative Pollinators (FAP). Come to know how pollinator protection can increase your income and how to mainstream it by policy instruments. Meet different stakeholders like the Moroccan CBD-focal point, the national extension service ONCA and scientists from INRA and ICARDA.

Watermelon is a good example. Watermelon is a crop with high pollinator dependency. Without efficient pollinators, productivity can drop down by up to 95%. Therefore, agricultural research teams modelling watermelon production in the course of climate change must calibrate also pollinator availability, otherwise the result can be highly misleading. However, pollinators are not yet in the scope of such models. In the same way pollinator research works mainly in its silo and neglects farmers’ criteria for field management.

Our Monitoring, Evaluation, & Learning (MEL) Team has always collaborated remotely with global partners. We provide a few tips to adapting to this new work setting in social isolation.

Amegilla bees are commonly named banded bees because of their black abdomen with white stripes. They are medium-sized bees (10-12 mm in length) with golden brown hairs on the head and thorax. There are around 260 species worldwide, including 7 species known in Morocco. We describe here the first observation of the banded bee Amegilla mucorea in Morocco.

Lessons learned from the project Impact Evaluation of SLM Options to Achieve Land Degradation Neutrality.