Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT

The Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) delivers research-based solutions that harness agricultural biodiversity and sustainably transform food systems to improve people’s lives in a climate crisis. We work to implement research solutions towards alleviating poverty, malnutrition and providing economic equity from access to agricultural resources, especially in rural areas. The Alliance, therefore works with local, national and multinational partners; and with public and private sectors in Africa and other parts of the world (Latin America and the Caribbean). With these partners, we work to generate evidence and mainstreams innovations to create food systems and landscapes that sustain the planet, drive prosperity and nourish people. Such evidence would then be scaled out through national and multinational partners to achieve impact at scale.

Banana Research Programme

Banana is one of the mandate crops of the Alliance. We do research on banana improvement and genetic diversity, production systems, intensification and contribution to landscape productivity. We research on the possibilities for better landscape-level production and intensification in banana dominated systems including better soil and water utilisation, nutrient cycling and contribution to carbon sequestration a dominant canopy in many landscapes. Banana is also a key food and income security crop in rural areas, and as such a route to sustaining gender and social equity outcomes.

The alliance for BBTD control in Africa

The Learning Alliance for the control of the Banana Bunchy Top disease is a collaborative platform for testing and developing technologies towards the management of the invasive banana disease, BBTD in Africa. It brings together partners from national universities in Benin, Burundi, Congo DRC, Republic of Congo, Malawi, Nigeria and Cameroon; collaborating with CGIAR centres Bioversity-CIAT, IITA and CIRAD on the one hand and University partners from Europe, USA and Australia. Control approaches and technologies are tested in nine pilot sites in Eastern, Central, Southern and West Africa; and results compared and shared with all sites. This enables local socialization of these technologies to integrate with existing life strategies, weather and agroecological conditions. We operate nine pilot sites in the countries above where nascent technologies are tested under real and diverse ecological conditions and small scale production systems.

The learning Alliance is supported through the CGIAR Programme for Root Tubers and Bananas (RTB), Resilient Crops cluster. This course, therefore, outlines the critical components of the BBTD management in smallholder communities. We draw from our experience in nine pilot sites in Africa, some of which has been published. This is a first step in the scaling of these technologies.

The audience

This e-learning course is targeted at extension workers, farmers' group leaders and projects supporting farmers directly, to enable consistent and sustainable disease management.