Following the first year of implementation, the Program for Seed System Innovation for Vegetatively-propagated Crops in Africa (PROSSIVA) held its annual review and planning meeting from 12 to 14 December 2023 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.…
Browsing Tag
banana
Digital tools ICT4BXW
Harnessing Digital Innovation: Celebrating the Legacy of the ICT4BXW Project in Banana Agronomy
ICT4BXW held a closing workshop, marking the end of a six-year project that ran from 2018 through 2023. The project focused on developing and deploying digital tools to combat Banana Xanthomonas Wilt (BXW) disease in Rwanda. The end-of-project workshop…
The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and Uganda’s National Agricultural Research Organization (NARO) started a breeding program for the East Africa Highland Bananas (EAHB) in the mid 1990s that has delivered exciting results including the first-ever hybrids, dubbed…
Researchers studying the morphological (structure and form) diversity of plantain in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have developed an innovative way to describe plantain diversity using descriptors based on performance, grouping them into main, secondary, and rare descriptors.…
Central Africa featured Western Africa
IITA and partners conduct first proteomic investigation in plantain and banana
Scientists from IITA and partner institutions have carried out the first known proteomic investigation into plantain. The results of the study are featured in a paper, titled “The plantain proteome, a focus on allele specific proteins obtained from plantain…
Three years after starting its activities, the IITA banana breeding team based in Arusha-Tanzania has planted its first banana hybrids for field evaluation. While this is a major milestone for the program, it also underscores the complexity and slow…
Eastern Africa
Improving agriculture, changing lives: IITA’s 20 years of agriculture research in Tanzania
In 2014, IITA marked its 20th anniversary in Tanzania. This video highlights some of the activities researchers have been involved in and the successes achieved so far from some of the beneficiaries. These include research on tackling the major…
Western Africa
African organizations unite to address the threat of a dangerous form of Fusarium wilt of banana
An African consortium of international researchers and growers, backed by policymakers in regional blocs of eastern and southern Africa has declared “war” against Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense tropical race 4 (Foc TR4), a highly pathogenic form of the…