Understanding farmer concerns to improve pest and disease management

Insect pests and diseases are high on the list of concerns for farmers of root, tuber, and banana (RTB) crops across much of sub-Saharan Africa. For every RTB crop grown, there are several pests and d...

New mobile app diagnoses crop diseases in the field and alerts rural farmers

Researchers who developed a new mobile application that uses artificial intelligence to accurately diagnose crop diseases in the field have won a $100,000 award to help expand their project to help mi...

New app diagnoses crop diseases in the field and alerts rural farmers

PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 28 September, 2017 The team behind a new mobile app that uses artificial intelligence to accurately diagnose crop diseases in the field has won a $US100,000 award t...

Revolutionary mobile app for monitoring crop pests and diseases

Just as the late blight epidemic wiped out potato fields in Ireland in the 19th century, crop pests and diseases still have devastating effects on smallholder farmers today – with scenarios proj...

Increasing the resilience of roots, tubers & bananas

Given its focus on the resilience of root, tuber and banana crops, Flagship Project 3 (FP3) aims to incorporate environmental, biological, ecological and economic considerations into the various ‘cl...

A year in review: Highlights from the RTB Annual Meeting 2015

The Annual Review and Planning Meeting of the CGIAR Research Program on Roots, Tubers and Bananas (RTB) took place last week from 8 – 10 December, 2015 in Lima, Peru. The event was hosted by the pro...

Surveying experts in India and Tanzania to fill seed degeneration knowledge gaps

Sara Thomas-Sharma, a post-doctoral researcher at Kansas State University, was hired in 2013 to work on an RTB project to model seed degeneration – the build-up of pathogens in planting material. Sh...