Contributions

1.1 Rationale and scope

Overview

Improved capacity and inclusivity of women, men and youth to innovate in the production, trading, value-addition and consumption of nutritious grain legumes and dryland cereals will be the outcome from the Grain Legumes and Dryland Cereals Agri-food Systems CGIAR Research Program (GLDC). This program supports prioritized integrated research for development (R4D) on six legume (chickpea, cowpea, pigeonpea, groundnut, lentil, soybean) and three cereal (sorghum, pearl millet, finger millet) crops grown in the semi-arid and sub-humid dryland agroecologies of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and South Asia (SA) (Figure 1a). It marries and develops the traditional strengths of crop improvement science, farming systems research and social science in the CGIAR and National Innovation Systems, with R4D that fosters wider market and policy opportunities within the targeted agri-food systems.

It is in these dryland agroecologies where societal grand challenges, specifically targeted in the CGIAR Strategy and Results Framework¹ (SRF), are most acutely evident — malnutrition², climate change³, soil degradation⁴, competition for land⁵, post-harvest losses⁶, ageing and changing workforce⁷. Most of the world’s extreme poor live here and it is on these 90 million hectares of mixed farming systems of the semi-arid and sub-humid drylands where over 300 million poor and malnourished both reside and depend on GLDC crops⁸.

Figure 1a: The semi-arid and sub-humid agroecologies and dryland farming systems of SSA and SA; and 1b: Prevalence of poverty in these agroecologies.

Successful transformation of smallholder agriculture requires not just adapted crop varieties and agronomic management but also the right enabling environment in which these technologies are embedded⁹. Specifically, the right mix of input and output markets, formal and informal institutions and agricultural and trade policies are required to create the incentives for adoption of agricultural innovations such as new and improved varieties, hybrids, management practices and, most importantly, scaling-up models to achieve sought-after impacts. Attracting youth into agriculture through agribusiness entrepreneurship and digital agriculture offers real opportunities for the transformation being sought.

GLDC builds on three Phase I CRPs – Dryland Cereals (CRP-DC)¹⁰, Grain Legumes (CRP-GL)¹¹ and Dryland Systems (CRP-DS)¹². In focal regions in SSA, SA, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Latin America and the Caribbean, between 2012-2016, these programs supported the release of over 370 new varieties of 12 crops and fostered sustainable dryland farming practices; a notable example being the increasing adoption of integrated watershed management programs in India. In phase II, GLDC narrows its focus to SSA and SA, sharpens its research priorities into fewer crops and breeding traits, and targets its system interventions to address poverty and malnutrition in the dryland agroecologies where there is most need^A.