“NRI's mission is to provide distinctive, high quality and relevant research, consultancy, teaching and advice in support of sustainable development, economic growth and poverty reduction.”
“NRI's mission is to provide distinctive, high quality and relevant research, consultancy, teaching and advice in support of sustainable development, economic growth and poverty reduction.”
Professor Bob Cheke and Sanyi Tang just been awarded a certificate for the top cited article in the Elsevier published journal "Mathematical Bioscience" between 2008 and 2010. The article entitled "Models for integrated pest control and their biological implications"" (doi:10.1016/j.mbs.2008.06.008) examines the use of mathematical models to clarify and predict some of the key factors (including host?parasitoid ratios, starting densities, timings of parasitoid releases, dosages and timings of insecticide applications and levels of host-feeding and parasitism) on the stability of host?parasitoid systems. read full news post.
Like locust?s and other plagues of biblical proportions, local rat populations can sometimes rapidly grow to epidemic proportions, causing untold destruction to people?s livelihoods. NRI?s rodent expert, Dr Steve Belmain, has co-edited a book about these rodent outbreaks that has just been published by the International Rice Research Institute. The book can be freely accessed from IRRI?s online library. Dr Belmain has been carrying out ecological research on rats and their management in Africa and Asia for many years and has been involved in recent research on outbreaks of rats in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh 1. The BBC Earth News website talks about Dr Belmain's research and the problems of rodent outbreaks…read full news post.
Normile D. (2010) Holding back a torrent of rats. Science. 327(5967): 806-807. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.327.5967.806
Singleton, G.R. Belmain, S.R., et al. (2010) Impacts of rodent outbreaks on food security in Asia. Wildlife Research. 37:355-359. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/WR10084
For the last 15 years, Robert Cheke has been conducting research on the infamous pest, the Red-billed Quelea bird Quelea quelea. Known as "Africa's feathered locust" it is renowned for destroying millet, sorghum and rice crops throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Following a succession of DFID-sponsored projects, for the reports), Robert has just concluded work on a major EU-sponsored project as part of the SADC/ICART/CRARF programme on environmental impacts of Quelea control. A major consideration in all this work has been the birds' migration abilities (one ringed bird went from South Africa to the Democratic Republic of the Congo!) and predicting where and when they will breed was one task…read full news post.
NRI is assisting with the process of eliminating obsolete pesticides in Africa through its involvement in projects in Cameroon and Ethiopia. Obsolete pesticides are herbicides, fungicides, rodenticides, nematicides, insecticides, including pesticides for veterinary and public health applications, that can no longer be used because either:
They represent a risk to human health and the environment, and the clock is always ticking. Drums begin to leak, bags burst spilling dust, and the problem becomes more dispersed and ever more expensive to manage.
NRI's Hans Dobson (Agriculture Health and Environment Group) has been contracted by CropLife International (CLI) to manage a project in Cameroon that is bringing together the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Yaoundé Initiative Foundation (a UK/Cameroon not for profit company), CropLife Cameroon and FAO to prepare a full national inventory of obsolete pesticides, safeguard them (repackage, collect and store safely), for eventual disposal by high temperature incineration in accordance with international regulations. The project has already carried out an emergency operation to eliminate several tonnes of dieldrin — a persistent organic pollutant (POP) — from the north of the country and is now beginning a nationwide outreach programme to encourage holders of obsolete stocks to declare and surrender them to the project. On 15 July, the Vice Prime Minister published an announcement in the national press and on TV, outlining the project and indemnifying any holders of obsolete stocks from any legal or financial responsibility for them, provided they are declared within a 3 month period beginning 1 August 2010… read full news post
World-wide agricultural advisory services have a new coordination body called the Global Forum for Rural Advisory Services (GFRAS). NRI was commissioned by GFRAS to carry out one of the first studies by this new organisation. The study was divided into an analysis of 17 extension evaluation case studies and a literature review of evaluation frameworks and methods relevant to agricultural advisory services. These two documents will be used to develop a practical ‘toolbox’ that will provide guidance to evaluation practitioners… read full news post
Sweet potato is a very valuable crop widely consumed in sub-Saharan Africa. Sun drying of sweet potatoes is a traditional practice. There are efforts through the HarvestPlus Challenge Program to promote the use of orange-fleshed varieties with high β-carotene content. The Natural Resources Institute of the University of Greenwich has been leading the product development, processing and marketing component of Reaching End Users Project of HarvestPlus. Food processing, drying and storage have been previously reported to have a major effect on pro-vitamin A retention because of the nature of unsaturated, unstable provitamin A carotenoids that are easily degraded by light, oxygen, ultra-violet and heating leading to significant losses… read full news post
The Royal Entomological Society (RES) has awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Society to Chris Haines, Emeritus Professor of Post-Harvest Technology at NRI. The award is for Chris's long-term contribution to applied entomology during his career at NRI and for his services to the RES, especially in relation to his ongoing inputs to the RES's National Insect Week from 2004… read full news post
Participatory plant breeding (PPB) is an approach, developed over the last few decades, in which farmers and researchers work together closely, usually in the farmers′ environment and each leading in their area of expertise. It is particularly appropriate for developing new crop varieties for marginal agro-ecologies and for poorer farmers. Sweet potato is a crop grown mainly by poorer women farmers in Africa, primarily in their gardens as a food crop but also for minor trading… read full news post
The All Party Parliamentary Group on Agriculture and Food for Development was established in October 2008 in response to the food price spike of 2007/8. Formed by a small group of NGOs and interested Policy makers, NRI was one of the driving forces behind its establishment… read full news post
NRI researcher John Morton has been selected for a key role in the next report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), due to appear in 2014. Together with Dr Purnamita Dasgupta of the Delhi-based Institute of Economic Growth, John will serve as Co-ordinating Lead Author for the chapter on Rural Areas in the second volume, to be entitled ‘Climate Change 2013: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability’… read full news post
David Hall and his team at NRI are part of a consortium that is among the winners of funding in the recent competition for New Approaches to Crop Protection run by the UK Technology Strategy Board. The consortium is lead by Berry Gardens Growers Ltd. with Eden Research PLC, BerryWorld, Sainsbury's, Tozer Seeds Ltd (Plant Solutions), K&S Fumigation Services Ltd and CPM (Retail) Ltd as industrial partners and East Malling Research as the other science partner. The project was one of only 32 selected for funding from several hundred initial applications and was praised for including partners from the whole chain between scientists, growers, marketing bodies and the consumer… read full news post
A recent international scientific meeting in Nairobi “Winning the war against armyworms” on 24-25th May marked the start of a major new DFID-funded Research Into Use initiative to control African armyworm in which NRI staff are playing a key role. The African armyworm (Spodoptera exempta) is a devastating pest of crops in Sub-Saharan Africa. Dense armies of caterpillars, up to 1000 per square metre, of this pest can appear without warning and voraciously attack and consume growing crops of maize, millet, sorghum, wheat, rice and pasture causing disastrous food shortages. In most years, hundreds of thousands of hectares of crops are destroyed mainly in the poorest countries of Sub Saharan Africa where food is already lacking for many people. In severe armyworm outbreak years, farmers and governments can be overwhelmed by the unpredictability and scale of armyworm attacks, and up to 70% of farmers lose crops as they cannot afford pesticides to control the pests… read full news post
The Times Higher Leadership and Management Awards 2010 were designed to celebrate the leadership, management, financial and business skills of the Higher Education Sector whilst showcasing innovation, teamwork and commercial expertise of UK higher education institutions. This year, the University of Greenwich was awarded ‘Outstanding International Strategy’ award, with NRI receiving a specific mention in the submission detailing our 22 researchers working on 19 projects in India, focusing principally on agriculture and sustainable development.
A member of the judging panel said:
Greenwich fulfilled all the judging criteria in what was a strong field. What distinguished Greenwich was the integrated nature of its internationalisation strategy… it also demonstrated the value of focusing on a specific market — India — and developing a holistic approach involving close institutional partnerships.
Research carried out by a team from the Natural Resources Institute has been named as one of the ten most important discoveries to be made in a UK university over the past 60 years. A poll of UK academics released yesterday recognised the Institute's work on controlling tsetse which spreads the fatal disease sleeping sickness in Africa. A team, which included Professors David Hall, Glyn Vale and Steve Torr, invented a novel artificial cow which attracts and kills tsetse. It was voted the eighth most important breakthrough in a list of innovations, theories and technologies pioneered in UK higher education. Read the full press release on the University of Greenwich website.
Few developing countries have managed to overcome the huge cost of successfully eradicating animal borne diseases such as Foot and Mouth Disease. Even if they manage to meet the stringent rules for trade in meat products laid down by the World Animal Health Organisation (the OIE), countries can find that there are no buyers for the meat products because meat importers do not accept some kinds of disease controls as credible… read full news post.
Malaria kills between one and two million people a year. International initiatives such as Roll Back Malaria are committed to halving the burden of malaria through the use of anti-malaria drugs and attacking the mosquitoes that spread the disease. Current efforts against mosquitoes are based largely on the use of insecticide-treated bednets and indoor application of insecticides but there is a pressing need for new strategies which will be applicable in different environments, affordable, and complementary to existing interventions… read full news post.
Pastoralists, often referred to as ‘nomads’, move with the livestock on which they depend, grazing on communally managed pastures. Some development agencies estimate that there are up to 200 million pastoralists in todays world. Pastoralists are among the world's poorest, most vulnerable and most marginalised people, still vulnerable to misunderstanding and stereotyping.
During the 1990s, traditional views of pastoralism were questioned, and we came to understand the essential rationality and sustainability of pastoral livelihoods. But pastoralists are still subject to recurrent drought, conflict and poor policy making. New, more pessimistic discussions focus on population growth and the threats of climate change … read full news post.
Fifty years of curiosity driven research on pheromone-based communication was celebrated in a recent invited review paper co-authored by Prof Alan Cork, NRI, and colleagues Prof Peter Witzgall (SLU, Sweden) and Philip Kirsch (APTIV, USA) (Sex pheromones and their impact on pest management, Journal of Chemical Ecology, 36, 80-100). The review acknowledged the achievements of chemical ecologists in identifying hundreds of pheromones and other semiochemicals that are now routinely used to monitor and protect plants and animals against insect pests. They estimated that the annual commercial production of lures for monitoring and mass trapping is in the order of tens of millions which are used to treat at least 10 million ha of crops worldwide, while other insect populations are controlled by air permeation and attract-and-kill techniques on at least 1 million ha … read full news post.
The Jim Mount Centre is a collaborative venture between NRI and East Malling Research (EMR). It combines EMR?s facilities and expertise on UK horticulture with NRI?s expertise on tropical crops. Neil Hipps the Business Development Manager at EMR said that the partnership between EMR and NRI would create the ?widest ranging post-harvest research with the best facilities in the country?. The NRI offers expertise on vegetables and tropical fruit as well as training, food science and safety, market economics and biochemistry while EMR will bring its storage and field facilities, extensive post-harvest knowledge and fresh produce links to the table. …read full news post.
Global embassy representatives and international agricultural experts gathered in London today (1st April 2010) to mark the launch of a new independent journal on 'World Agriculture', www.world-agriculture.net, a peer-reviewed, completely independent, non-profit, journal, which will explore scientific, economic and social evidence concerning agriculture and its interaction with forestry, climate change, population growth, migration, disease and ecology.
Member of the Editorial Board, Professor Sir John Marsh outlined: "It is the lesson of recent experience that the major issues confronting humanity need an approach which is both world wide and multidisciplinary. For too long we enjoyed the comfort of our own silos paying insufficient attention to policy issues affecting other communities and scientific progress in fields beyond our own. By providing a peer-reviewed forum in which these issues are brought together, World Agriculture will help to ensure a more balanced and realistic approach to the pressing issues of food supply, environmental impacts and climate change [and will] fill a unique role amongst independent, peer-review journals, namely the analysis and assessment of scientific and economic information for decision-makers ? for example farmers, advisors, industrial leaders and policy makers - particularly those in developing countries."…read full news post.
“In view of the current food and financial crises, high priority should now be placed on reducing postharvest losses.” This was the view expressed by the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for Food Security and Nutrition, David Nabarro, at a meeting on this subject held last week in Rome.
NRI has recently completed detailed reports for both the African Development Bank and the World Bank on the prospects and approaches for reducing postharvest losses in Sub-Saharan Africa. The way forward from these reports was the subject of the World Bank/FAO Postharvest Losses in Grain Supply Chains Meeting held in Rome on the 18/19 March. The meeting was attended by a wide range of organisations and gave NRI's Rick Hodges and Ben Bennett the chance to describe the opportunities and challenges of postharvest loss reduction and showcase the African Postharvest Losses Information System (APHLIS), an initiative of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre that was developed by NRI in association with information specialists ISICAD, based in Bonn…read full news post.
On behalf of the United Nations Word Food Programme (WFP), Dr Keith Tomlins, a Food Technologist at NRI has recently studied the feasibility of the local manufacture of fortified blended-foods in Liberia. Liberia is a post-conflict economy and malnutrition remains a serious problem. To alleviate malnutrition, WFP imports Corn Soya Blend (CSB) that is distributed in supplementary feeding programmes for young children, lactating mothers and pregnant women. WFP is seeking to replace imported CSB with a product that has the same nutritional specifications but is comprised of ingredients that are sourced from Liberia or from neighbouring countries. This will contribute to agribusiness development in Liberia while at the same time improve food security…read full news post.
NRI’s Professor of Development Anthropology, John Morton, recently participated in the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an event attended by over 5000 scientists and science educators from around the world. At this year’s meeting, held in San Diego, John presented a paper on “Strengthening Local Agricultural Innovation in the Face of Climate Change”.… read full news post.
International Women’s Day is a day to celebrate the success of women and to raise awareness of the struggles of women around the world. The Natural Resources Institute (NRI) of the University of Greenwich is proud to support this important day and to highlight the challenges women face in developing countries.… read full news post.
The University of Greenwich has announced that it has appointed Professor Andrew Westby to be Director of the Natural Resources Institute (NRI). He will take up his new post on 1 May 2010 and will replace Dr Guy Poulter who will be stepping down after successfully leading the Institute for the past eight years… read full news post.
Jerry Cross, Visiting Professor of Horticultural Entomology, gave his inaugural lecture to an audience of more than 120 in the Pilkington Lecture Theatre on the Medway Campus on Thursday 11 February 2010. Professor Cross is Science Team Leader for Entomology and Plant Pathology at East Malling Research and entitled his lecture “To spray or not to spray: that is the question” (2.8Mb)… read full news post.
Don Reynolds, a member of NRI??s Agriculture, Health and Environment Group, has co-authored a study published in Science*, which sheds new light on the flight behaviours that enable insects to undertake long-distance migrations, and highlights the remarkable abilities of these migrants. Some moths and butterflies avoid cold winters in the UK by migrating south in autumn to overwinter in the Mediterranean Basin; there is a northward migration in spring. The study showed that these insect migrants have a compass sense that enables them to select winds which will take them in their chosen direction, and by flying at the heights where the winds are fastest they can travel at speeds of up to 100 km per hour. The migrants also make subtle adjustments to their headings so that they partially correct for wind-induced drift away from their preferred direction of travel. The study used a Met Office computer model to demonstrate that the observed flight behaviours result in migrants travelling nearly twice as far, and closer to their preferred direction, than an insect just randomly drifting downwind… read full news post.
NRI trainers, Jerry Cooper, Alan Cork and Hans Dobson, have successfully completed a series of well received IPM workshops for young researchers in three focus countries of the Association for Strengthening Capacity in Central and Eastern Africa (ASARECA). The training, funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) under its SCARDA project (Strengthening Capacity in Agricultural Research and Development in Africa) which is implemented by the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA). Around 100 researchers in Rwanda, Burundi and The Sudan participated in the 5 day IPM courses which were designed to develop capacity in Integrated Pest management (IPM) which is a sustainable way to reduce damage from pests, diseases and weeds. The intensive courses used a range of training approaches including interactive participatory sessions, break-outs, presentations and field visits to broaden participants?? understanding and appreciation of the tactics that can be used in IPM and the potential benefits from implementation for farming communities and consumers. Follow the link to a presentation of participants at work during their field visits… read full news post.
In a recent article published in the Journal of Virological Methods (Abarshi et al., 2010, doi:10.1016/j.jviromet.2009.10.023), researchers from NRI have described the most cost-effective and highly reliable diagnostic protocols for detection of Cassava brown streak virus (CBSV) disease.
Cassava brown streak disease used to be confined mainly to coastal areas of eastern and southern Africa, but in the past few years it has become substantially more virulent and begun spreading across the continent. The disease has invaded Uganda, moved around the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya and Tanzania, and now entered DR Congo from where it seems poised to move right across sub-Saharan Africa. It is highly damaging, causing up to 70% loss in root weight of infected plants and rotting of tubers, and thus severely affecting root quality (see picture below) for both domestic use and marketing. The disease is a real threat to the livelihoods of the millions of poor people in sub-Saharan Africa… read full news post.
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Cassava roots affected by CBSV © University of Greenwich 2010 |
The Report of a UK Parliamentary Inquiry into Global Food Security has been published and presented to the UK Parliament on 27 January 2010. Discussants at the launch event, in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Room, included Olivier De Schutter (UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food) and Geoff Tansey (Joseph Rowntree Visionary and Author). The Report brings together – and draws critical conclusions from – the key issues in oral and written evidence presented to the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Agriculture and Food for Development during the Inquiry. The Report was published for the APPG by the Natural Resources Institute of the University of Greenwich, and financial support for the Inquiry was provided by Action Aid, CAZS-NR Bangor University, Christian Aid, Concern Worldwide UK, Farm Africa, Find your Feet, International Agri-Technology Centre, John Innes Centre, Natural Resources Institute at University of Greenwich, Rothamsted Research and the UK Food Group. The Inquiry received some 130 written submissions and took oral evidence directly from 29 of the most experienced and authoritative experts on agricultural development and food security from the UK, developing countries and international organizations… read full news post.
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© University of Greenwich 2010 |
An Inaugural Professorial Lecture entitled “To Spray, or not to Spray: That is the Question – Horticultural Entomology in the 21st Century” will be given by Professor Jerry Cross in the Pilkington Lecture Theatre, University of Greenwich at Medway, Chatham, on Thursday 11 February 2010 at 6 p.m.
Jerry Cross is the University of Greenwich’s Visiting Professor of Horticultural Entomology at NRI. He was awarded the professorship in 2007 for his contribution to horticultural entomology and for his close collaboration with the chemical ecology team at NRI on the identification of sex pheromones and other semiochemicals of UK fruit pests and the development of methods of exploiting them for monitoring and control… read full news post.
