Knowledge Management Portal

AID-CSB Environmental Health for Human Rights provides a unique opportunity to (1) improve digital literacy and inclusion, (2) increase awareness and generate data on the linkages between bee and environmental health, and beekeeper activities, and (3) facilitate adoption of improved hive management practices among a wider group of mostly women beekeepers in light of more frequent adverse climatic events.

The International System for Agricultural Science and Technology (AGRIS), led by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), is one of the most comprehensive search engines in food and agricultural scientific literature. It provides free access to more than 13.5 million bibliographic records in more than 90 languages. AGRIS supports its member countries in making their research outputs visible and accessible. It also facilitates a network worldwide with hundreds of organizations contributing knowledge and data to the AGRIS platform. The overall objective of the project between the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) team at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is to increase the interoperability of data in agricultural and related sciences through the use of AGRIS, therefore increasing the access and exchange of knowledge and information, a critical step to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

One of the biggest challenges currently facing humanity is noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), which are spread on the entire globe, with an increasing trend in low- and middle-income countries. Of the 57.7 million deaths that occurred worldwide in 2017, about 41 million (71%) were due to noncommunicable diseases, principally cardiovascular diseases (43.5%), cancer (22%), chronic respiratory diseases (9.5%) and diabetes (4%). The list of key “behavioral risk factors” in NCDs incidence, reported from WHO, includes, together with harmful use of alcohol, tobacco use and physical inactivity, the dietary behavior. In the last few decades dietary habits of the population have been strongly influenced by an increasing consumption of ready meals (fast food; junk food) rich in sugar and fat and low in essential nutrients, thus contributing to overweight and obesity. In this scenario, it is highly desirable to boost correct diet habits such as the “Mediterranean Diet”, a diet-based lifestyle spread in Mediterranean areas, defined as an “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity” by UNESCO, recognized as useful in the health maintenance and diseases prevention. In this context, MEDWHEALTH proposes to develop durum wheat-derived products typical of Mediterranean Diet with improved nutritional value and new technological properties. Further, the use of durum wheat in the Mediterranean tradition is often done in mixture with different crops. At this regard, MEDWHEALTH will develop new products (pasta, couscous, home-made bread) with barley and lentil mixtures, as such or malted to reduce the main anti-nutritional compounds.

Due to the high diversity in semi-arid drylands, land degradation cannot be addressed through uniform blanket soil and water conservation technologies (SWCT) and related policies. SWCTs are local level activities and practices that maintain or enhance the productive capacity of the land including soil, water and vegetation in areas prone to degradation. These also include practices that contribute to the prevention or reduction of soil erosion, compaction, salinity, etc. In order to be successful, it is required that investments in SWCT options are tailored to the specific and highly variable social and ecological contexts. At the same time, these investments are more profitable when they achieve concrete impact at a large scale. Well-designed, appropriate and structured scaling approaches are a prerequisite to take the impact of such SWCTs to scale. At the same time, appropriate indicators and tools for monitoring the impact of scaling investments are also needed to further enhance the value-for-money of such investments.

AGENT aims to transform genebanks from living archives into bio-digital resources centers, equipped to meet the needs of a changing world

A third phase of the project will build on the results achieved by verifying and fine-tuning recommended technology packages (wheat and food legume cultivars, agronomic and water management technologies), expanding the number of pilot sites to other agro-ecologies thereby out-scaling the technologies to more end-users, and strengthening the capacity of national research and extension systems to promote the technologies for wider adoption.