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ILRI News

ILRI Forage Genebank supports development of improved forage varieties to increase livestock productivity in Ethiopia

Alieu Sartie in the seed storage cold room at the ILRI forage genebank (photo credit:ILRI/Apollo Habtamu) The recent release of the CGIAR Genebank Platform 2019 annual report highlights that, for the third year in a row, germplasm distribution to requesters outside of the CGIAR exceeded that to...

AVCD program blog

Promoting better agricultural practices of drought-tolerant crops in farming communities

Makueni Ventures chairman, John Ndiso in the farm in Emali, Makueni County. Photo Credit AVCD/Muthoni Njiru Makueni Agribusiness Ventures is a 10-member farmer group that participated in an AVCD funded good agricultural practices (GAPs) and modern farming training lead by ICRISAT. The group has a...

ILRI News

Buffelgrass: a drought-tolerant bunchgrass

Buffelgrass growing in a field trial in Bishoftu, Ethiopia (photo credit: Ricardo Sanchez Gutierrez/Ethiopia). Buffelgrass ( Cenchrus ciliaris L.) is a bunchgrass that grows in clumps, it can transform deserts into grasslands. It is one of the most popular forage species and is extensively grown...

ILRI News

Thirty per cent of ILRI genebank collections now safely duplicated at the global seed vault in Norway

Alieu Sartie, ILRI genebank manager (right) and technician Solomon Fikre checking forage seed samples before delivery to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (photo credit:ILRI/Lei Sun). The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) is home to the world’s only genebank dedicated wholly to forages...

ILRI News

German agroecological livestock research investments are benefiting both people and the planet

(Left) ILRI Deputy Director General for Biosciences Dieter Schillinger welcomes to ILRI Parliamentary State Secretary to the German Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) Maria Flachsbarth. (Right) ILRI Assistant Director General Shirley Tarawali welcomes to ILRI BMZ Deputy...

ILRI News

‘Legacy Award’ bestowed on Jean Hanson, ILRI’s forage genebank gatekeeper for the last three decades

Artwork from Australian visual artist Sophie Munns. For the last 31 years, Jean Hanson, a British genetic resources specialist by training, has managed and helped others to manage forage genetic resources research at the International Livestock Research Institute ( ILRI ), in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia...

ILRI News

Award-winning paper establishes links between women’s empowerment and crop seed improvement and governance in pre-war Syria

On 5 Dec 2017 Alessandra Galiè (centre) received the Elsevier Atlas award for publishing a research paper with outstanding potential for impacting people’s lives. She stands here with Elsevier associate publisher Virginia Prada López and Wageningen crop systems professor Paul Struik, one of Galiè’s...