Contributions

FP4.8 Climate Change

Under a four-degree rise in temperature scenario, modelling studies show that arable land reduction (35% for SSA) and reduction in yield of cereals (13–23%) will lead to food insecurity. FP4 will address the climate change threat via three biological domains: (i) investigate effects of temperature rise on shortening of phenological stages; (ii) study the effect of high temperature on reproductive biology; and (iii) investigate the effect of temperature on evaporative demand and plant water status in GLDC crops that are mostly drought-hardy but not necessarily temperature insensitive. Domain (i) focuses on phenotyping methods to measure flowering by remote sensing techniques to pinpoint flowering time and guide breeding and selection processes. Domain (ii) will develop an inventory of methods and approaches needed to compare previous efforts across crops to test the effect of high temperature on phenology and reproductive biology, and then use the inventory to design common methods across GLDC crops. Domain (iii) will receive the most attention because high temperature and low relative humidity, common constraints in GLDC agroecologies, will likely become worse in the future. FP4 will leverage ongoing and past work such as transpiration response to increased vapor pressure deficit (VPD) in pearl millet²⁵⁹, sorghum²⁶⁰, cowpea²⁶¹, lentil and chickpea, and high heat stress responses to seed set in pearl millet, along with high throughput phenotyping²⁶² that will be made available as a service module.

FP4.9 Gender

Women, mothers, children, youth and the elderly from GLDC ecologies are often disadvantaged in accessing technologies and livelihood opportunities. FP4’s value proposition is to increase production, accessibility and consumption of nutrient-dense cereals and legumes for livelihood needs of the target demography. These issues require that gender-compliant implementation based on gender-focused priorities that leverage FPs1-3 and FP4-commissioned gender studies be done. These processes will clarify the emerging gender dynamics in technology, knowledge and information generation, access, utilization, and the power relations critical for success and impacts at scale for FP4 and GLDC CRP. Initially, based on phase I GL CRP gender studies²⁶³, FP4 has prioritized four gender activities: (i) engage women and other community members in participatory variety selection to improve targeting of preferred traits in modern varieties; (ii) support domestic consumption and processing by tackling cooking and processing traits such as increasing shelf-life of pearl millet flour, decortication in sorghum, hard-to-cook qualities in legumes, spinach from legume leaves, and high density of essential nutrients; (iii) improve ease of pre- and post-harvest handling including the use of crop debris to feed livestock and fuel for cooking, saving time for women and other farmers and; (iv) leverage A4NH and other complementary CRPs to mitigate agriculture-related diseases and deliver nutrition outcomes; and (v) leverage the youth demographic dividend of GLDC economies through targeted interventions that deepen engagement in agribusiness using ICT-augmented activities in seed production and related agri-innovations that attract youth to agriculture.