Alliance Bioversity CIAT Book Chapters

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10568/106985

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 165

In situ conservation of forest genetic resources
(Book Chapter, 2025-03) Vinceti, Barbara; Thomas, Evert
For FGR, in situ conservation refers to the genetic conservation of tree and other woody plant species in their natural environments by targeting individual populations of these species(FAO, 2014a) with the aim of maintaining or increasing their evolutionary and adaptive potential using natural selection as a driver. In situ conservation is intrinsically dynamic because the populations maintain ecological interactions with other biota and undergo evolutionary processes such as natural selection, genetic drift, and gene flow and mutation (FAO, 2014a).In situ conservation is also the most efficient option for conserving the gene pools of tree species (Kelleher, 2018) because its cost is lowerper unit of genetic diversity than that of ex situ conservation (Gapare, 2013).The in situ conservation of FGR is carried out typically in protected areas and managed forests(FAO, DFSC and IPGRI, 2001) and in forest reserves or stands designated specifically for the genetic conservation of a given species (FAO, 2014a). An important aspect of in situ conservation is that it does not exclude the use of conserved resources. It maintains the ecological, aesthetic, ethical and cultural values of species and simultaneously allows the genetic conservation of multiple species. SoW-FGR1 found that countries interpreted the concept of in situ conservation in different ways and that only about 1 000 species were conserved in situ for their genetic resources (FAO, 2014a). The Global Plan of Action called for the strengthening of in situ FGR conservation and increasing the number of priority species to be targeted for its application (FAO, 2014b). This chapter examines approaches for the in situ conservation of FGR and presents its present state based on country reports. The chapter also reviews recent scientific and technological advances supporting the in situ conservation of FGR in practice. Organizational aspects of in situ conservation are addressed in Chapter 11.
Extraction and quantification of carotenoid contents in cassava roots, leaves, flour, and derived food products
(Book Chapter, 2025-06-25) Ospina, Maria Alejandra; Londoño, Luis Fernando; Ceballos, Hernan; Dufour, Dominique; Tran, Thierry
What do we know about the future of foresight modeling related to food systems?
(Book Chapter, 2025-07-21) Wiebe, Keith D.; Mosnier, Aline; Mason-D'Croz, Daniel; Petsakos, Athanasios; Svensson, Johannes; Zurek, Monika
“Foresight modeling” is thinking about the future using a simplified representation of reality to inform choices we make today. Quantitative foresight modeling is increasingly used to inform decision-making related to food systems by analytically exploring alternative possible futures in a world that is becoming more complex and uncertain. Foresight modeling is improving in coverage and resolution, but various technical and institutional gaps remain. Artificial intelligence can help gather and synthesize information to improve foresight modeling, but it cannot replace the role of human expertise and foresight in testing assumptions and helping to shape the future. To be most effective, quantitative foresight modeling needs to be better linked with qualitative foresight approaches and complemented by engagement with decision-makers in an ongoing and systematic process.
What do we know about the future of roots, tubers, and bananas in relation to food systems?
(Book Chapter, 2025-07-21) Kihiu, Evelyne; Hareau, Guy; Gbegbelegbe, Sika; Andrade, Robert; Petsakos, Athanasios; Alene, Arega D.
Root, tuber, and banana (RT&B) crops are vital for food and nutrition security, providing quick calories, buffering against food crises, and offering opportunities for gender empowerment, particularly in seed systems. Their resilience to adverse weather and their sustainable integration into diverse farming systems enhance productivity while minimizing environmental impact. Production and consumption of fresh and processed RT&B crops are projected to increase by 17 percent and 9 percent, respectively, by 2050 in developing countries. Total RT&B production could reach almost 1.4 billion tons, with sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) emerging as the world’s leading supplier of RT&B crops. RT&Bs are mostly nontraded crops, although opportunities exist in some areas, such as intraregional exports of bananas from some SSA countries and cross-border trade of fresh potatoes between countries in Africa and Asia. Improving foresight research on biotic and abiotic stresses, trade, labor, and the efficiency of processing capacity and reducing postharvest losses in RT&B crops could contribute to stabilizing their supply in the developing world, lowering import reliance, and creating local economic opportunities.
What do we know about the future of food systems in Latin America and the Caribbean?
(Book Chapter, 2025-07-21) Piñeiro, Valeria; Hareau, Guy; Andrade, Robert
Heterogeneity and inequality: Latin America and the Caribbean’s (LAC) agrifood systems are marked by significant disparities across the region and within countries in production, trade, and access to food, with inequality a central challenge. These disparities not only undermine food security but also hinder the region’s ability to develop sustainable and resilient food systems. Sustainability and climate resilience: The future of LAC’s agrifood systems will be shaped by the region’s ability to balance agricultural growth with environmental sustainability and the conservation of the stock of natural resources in the long run. Role of policies: Closing the gap between the rich and poor, between large and small producers, and between urban and rural populations requires targeted action, including investing in rural infrastructure, facilitating access to appropriate technologies, and encouraging regional cooperation. Specialization and governance: The region’s continued specialization in agricultural exports presents both opportunities and challenges. Strengthening food security governance frameworks and promoting inclusive policies will be essential to ensure that the benefits of agricultural growth are shared more equitably and that agrifood systems are resilient in the face of climate change and other global challenges. Foresight research can help address these challenges, focusing on the consequences of structural transformation, the trade-offs between agricultural productivity and sustainable management of LAC, the long-term effects of climate change, and how disruptors and drivers of agrifood systems transformation can affect the different LAC regions and countries.
What do we know about the future of food systems innovation?
(Book Chapter, 2025-07-21) Mason-D'Croz, Daniel; Herrero, Mario; Kugler, Cody; Remans, Rosaline; Thornton, Philip K.; Zornetzer, Heather
Innovations have been and will continue to be critical drivers of food systems and societal change. Predicting “game-changing” technology ahead of time is not possible, and silver bullets do not exist. Novel innovations can alleviate some challenges, but unintended consequences always arise. Foresight research can help to identify undesirable outcomes early on and align investments and incentives with social and environmental objectives.
What do we know about the future of crop pests and diseases in relation to food systems?
(Book Chapter, 2025-07-21) Petsakos, Athanasios; Montes, Carlo; Pequeno, Diego; Schiek, Benjamin; Sonder, Kai
Crop pests and diseases (P&D) can cause substantial yield losses and pose a threat to global food security. Losses at a regional level can even exceed 40 percent for crops like maize and rice. Most studies show that a warmer climate creates a conducive, albeit spatially variable, environment for P&D spread. However, existing foresight research is largely biophysical in nature and focuses on individual pathosystems, examined mostly at the national level. As such, projections of the magnitude of economic impacts of changing patterns of P&D are missing. Global assessment of model-based historical and future P&D impacts on food systems remains constrained by the small number of available models that can estimate yield losses under contrasting climate and agroecological conditions. Efforts are needed to improve data accessibility, model versatility, and simulation platforms and to establish international observation and modeling networks. Artificial intelligence (AI) and related methods can assist in the development of robust and adaptable models to capture the impacts of P&D on food systems.
What do we know about the future of agrobiodiversity in relation to food systems?
(Book Chapter, 2025-07-21) Cenacchi, Nicola; Gotor, Elisabetta; Petsakos, Athanasios; Schiek, Benjamin
Agrobiodiversity — the diversity of living organisms that underpin agricultural systems — provides numerous critical benefits, from on-farm crop diversity and genetic resources that allow farmers to adapt crops to changing environments to the provision of ecosystem services such as pollination, disease and pest resistance, soil health, and water conservation. These benefits in turn support resilient livelihoods, food security, and diversified, nutritious diets. A number of ex ante theoretical and practical approaches have been used to show how greater agricultural biodiversity is connected to higher production and lower risk exposure, and to assess the role that agrobiodiversity plays in supporting agricultural systems resilience. But little has been done to integrate the measurement of agrobiodiversity into foresight modeling, or to apply foresight tools and methods to study long-term effects of agrobiodiversity on socioeconomic or environmental outcomes. The recent development of the Agrobiodiversity Index and advances in integrated modeling systems provide opportunities for improved scenario analysis focused on agrobiodiversity and informed by agroecology and agricultural economics theory.
What do we know about the future of the environment and biodiversity in relation to food systems?
(Book Chapter, 2025-07-21) Gotor, Elisabetta; Masso, Cargele
The environment’s proper functioning is essential for a better life on Earth, including maintaining, enhancing, and restoring biodiversity and ecosystem services. While the environment is driven by external factors and shocks as well as interventions within the global food system, it simultaneously drives the overall health and stability of the planet. This relationship involves complex interactions and tipping points, which foresight research needs to capture in analyzing alternative future pathways for food system transformation. A sustainable and resilient environment requires holistic approaches, strategies, and policies to address environmental stresses and promote conservation, regeneration, and coexistence with nature. These include practices that respect ecological boundaries, reduce resource consumption and conflict, foster biodiversity, and enhance ecosystem recovery and adaptability. Foresight research is essential to help decision-makers understand synergies and trade-offs between long-term public goods benefits and short-term private costs from resource use and management. Addressing food systems challenges — including root causes of environmental degradation and biodiversity loss — requires sustainable land and soil management, conservation efforts, and food production practices, in addition to economic viability and social inclusion. Foresight analysis can help policymakers, communities, and industries make informed decisions and prioritize and deploy effective and holistic strategies at the biodiversity-climate-society nexus.
What are food systems and what can we know about their future?
(Book Chapter, 2025-07-21) Wiebe, Keith D.; Gotor, Elisabetta
Food systems are made up of the people, resources, and activities involved in the production, processing, distribution, and consumption of food. We cannot know the future of food systems with certainty, but we can make informed projections about alternative possible futures and ways to achieve (or avoid) them. This book provides a mosaic of perspectives from a diverse group of experts on the state of knowledge about different aspects of the future of food systems and how they are interlinked. Pressure on land and water resources is projected to increase, extreme events will become more frequent, and healthy diets will remain out of reach for many, but innovation and improved policies and investments can help address these challenges. Synergies and trade-offs between these different challenges and goals mean that they need to be understood and addressed as integrated parts of dynamic food systems.
Political economy and governance: Agriculture and food policy from local to global
(Book Chapter, 2025-05-28) Kyle, Jordan; Resnick, Danielle; Mockshell, Jonathan
Policymaking is shaped by evidence as well as by political economy and governance factors such as incentives, institutional structures, ideological biases, and power dynamics. Over the past several decades, these factors have intersected with significant trends affecting the international development policy landscape, with important implications for agriculture and food policy. This chapter examines the key areas of decentralization, agriculture and food policy reform processes, political economy of distribution, and state capacity, before looking ahead to the need to build effective and legitimate global institutions for food systems governance.
Implications of climate crisis in Southern Africa
(Book Chapter, 2025-04-11) Maviza, Gracsious; Nzima, Divane; Gadu, Ernest Siyaxola; Ndlovu, Ntobeko
This chapter discusses climate crisis within the framework of climate capitalism. Contrary to the conventional understanding of climate from an anthropocentric perspective, the discussion here emphasises fairness, equity, and inclusivity in crafting solutions that recognise the role of the history of colonialism and imperialism perpetuated by powerful countries and multinational corporations. Chapter concludes that only comprehensive strategies prioritising sustainability and inclusivity, beyond market-driven approaches will help build a more just and resilient future for Africa.
Gendered value chains, market segmentation, and customer profiling for breeding programs
(Book Chapter, 2024-01-01) Katungi, Enid; Tufan, Hale Ann; Isoto, Rosemary
Los servicios climáticos como bienes públicos codiseñados por entidades del sector agroalimentario latinoamericano: caso de estudio en Guatemala
(Book Chapter, 2024-12-01) Zapata-Caldas, Emmanuel; Giraldo, Diana; Bonilla Barillas, Melissa; Navarro Racines, Carlos Eduardo; Orrego, Elmer; Gardeazabal, Andrea; Low, Juan Francisco; Müller, Anna
How to reduce agrifood systems' future hidden costs? A multicountry case study
(Book Chapter, 2024-11-02) Getaneh, Yonas; Nigussie, Yirgalem; Abera, Wuletawu; Mulatu, Kalkidan; Balcha, Yodit; Tibebe, Degefie; Eshete, Meron; Mekonen, Bekele; Tamene, Lulseged
Despite the significant role of agriculture in Ethiopia's economy, the economic damage caused by negative externalities within the agri-food system has been largely unknown due to the intangible nature of these impacts. This research aimed to evaluate the evolution of hidden costs in Ethiopia's agri-food system by leveraging the 2023 FAO-SOFA flagship report through literature review, stakeholder consultation, and FABLE-based modeling. The total hidden costs of Ethiopia's agri-food system were estimated to be 51 billion 2020 PPP dollars per year. The most significant contributor to these hidden costs was the social sector, particularly poverty among agri-food workers, accounting for 24.3 billion 2020 PPP dollars annually. Environmental externalities related to climate change and land-use change were the second-largest contributors, reaching 19 billion 2020 PPP dollars per year. Specific recommendations to reduce hidden costs include a lower population growth path, decreasing livestock numbers, and increasing crop and livestock productivity.
Digitizing development: Enablers and inhibitors of mobile app-based population census adoption
(Book Chapter, 2024-06-04) Ofosu-ampong, Kingsley
Limited understanding exists regarding the involvement of digital technologies in population and housing censuses (PHCs) or national housing survey (NHS) due to the historical dominance of paper-and-pencil interviewing (PAPI). To address this gap, this study investigates the adoption of digital census methods in Ghana's PHC using mixed-methods approach. The qualitative analysis identified challenges related to household surveys, including political interference, inadequate remuneration for census officers, financial constraints, and difficulties with software upgrades and GPS access. These inhibitors can be categorized into individual, technological, environmental and administrative factors. Quantitative findings revealed that performance expectance, social influence, facilitating conditions and organizational influence significantly influence field officers' intention to use digital census tools. Given the nascent research on digital technologies in the NHS, the empirical findings from this study provide a valuable foundation for informing their use in various countries.
Global progress on adaptation implementation
(Book Chapter, 2024-11-07) Leiter, Timo; Njuguna, Lucy Wanjiku; Singh, Chandni; Bours, Dennis
The UNEP Adaptation Gap Report (AGR) series provides an annual science-based assessment of the global progress on adaptation planning, financing, and implementation. It also explores options for enhancing and advancing national and global adaptation efforts and provides an in-depth analysis of selected issues of interest.
Synthesis of the agrifood systems’ hidden costs analysis in the six FABLE country case studies
(Report, 2024) Vittis, Yiorgos; Mosnier, Aline; Smith, Alison; Arguello, Ricardo; Chavarro Diaz, John; Costa, Wanderson; Köberle, Alexandre; Singh, Vartika; Getaneh, Yonas; Nigussie, Yirgalem; Navarro, Javier; Sperling, Frank; Cozza, Davide; Orduña-Cabrera, Fernando; Lord, Steven; Benitez Humanes, Miguel
This chapter summarizes the main findings about hidden costs in agrifood systems across six countries, Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, India, and the United Kingdom building on the results from SOFA 2023, the FABLE Consortium, and the Food System Economic Commission (FSEC) initiative. While the fact that unhealthy diets currently trigger the biggest hidden costs in most countries was a surprise for some stakeholders, there was a consensus that this is an important and growing issue that urgently needs to be addressed. Changing diets and increasing agricultural productivity have the largest impact on reducing the agrifood system’s hidden costs in the future, but implementing an integrated strategy that can also target environmental protection has the largest benefits. Some hidden costs related to undernourishment are covered in the analysis, but they do not accurately reflect the size of the problem, particularly in low-income and lower-middle-income countries. Better local datasets should be used in hidden costs computation for GHG emissions and land cover change, and thresholds for poverty and undernourishment should be aligned with national statistics. There are challenges to communicating the complexity of the hidden costs method, but this topic is gaining momentum for policy planning, and several governments are already either utilizing or planning to develop similar metrics, so this analysis was a timely exercise.
Diversidad genética de cacao en el Ecuador
(Book Chapter, 2024-07-10) Thomas, Evert; Loor, Rey; Argout, Xavier; Fouet, Olivier; Zambrano Flores, Fanny; Zhang, Dapeng
Análisis multinivel: Retos y oportunidades para el estudio de los procesos de innovación en América Latina
(Book Chapter, 2024-06-01) Orjuela Ramirez, Guillermo Alejandro; Zuluaga, Julio Cesar

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