Assessment of the needs and opportunities in post-harvest systems of non-grain starch staple food crops

A Project titled "Transfer of Needs Assessment Methodologies and Post-Harvest Technologies for Non-Grain Starch Staple Food Crops in Sub-Saharan Africa" was initiated in 1993. The project is funded by the Department for International Development (DFID) and managed by the Natural Resources Institute. The project's purpose is "Capability ofNational Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) improved to identify needs and opportunities accurately and efficiently within NGSS post-harvest systems and respond with appropriate post-harvest handling and processing technologies.

Report on a visit to Bangladesh to initiate a research project entitled improvements in the production of livestock products in peri-urban areas of cities in Asia

This project was established in 1995. It aims to characterise the market for livestock products, examine the outputs and efficiency of livestock production and marketing systems, determine the losses of livestock products in the systems and identify and analyse constraints to and opportunities for the increased supply of livestock products to urban markets

Report on a visit to Bangladesh to supervise the research students undertaking the research project entitled: Improvements in the production of livestock products in peri-urban areas of cities in Asia

D Silverside, J Sherington and N Marsland visited Bangladesh to clean and analyse data collected by research workers during a survey of approximately 100 villages in Sylhet, Mymensingh and Pabna. They assisted with the completion of the first phase of the project, which is to define the urban, peri-urban and rural areas of three study towns. Terms of reference also included the establishment of a work programme for phase 2 and the monitoring of the progress of the research workers. Phase 1 is now complete. The mauzas (small study areas of the towns) have now been defined according to a statistical technique based on census and primary data and may be classified as rural, peri-urban and urban. Phase 1 may now be written up by the researchers into a formal part for their PhD theses. A summary can be found in Appendix 3 of this report. Protocols for Phase 2 have now been established and both questionnaires and checklists of questions have been finalised. These can be found in the Appendix 4 of this report. To conduct the work, enumerators will be required. Their numbers have been established and provision made for them in the budget. A system of data handling has been set up. The researchers have been trained in preparation of forms in Access and this, combined with earlier work on the computers will enable them to enter, manipulate and print out data for the project using up-to-date software packages. Para 25 refers. It was agreed that the researchers will be supervised on a regular basis by their BAU professors. During these supervisory sessions, researchers and professors will discuss project activities, outputs and problems. Communicate by Email with NRI in UK will take place every two weeks. Para 11 refers. A work programme and schedule was left in Bangladesh to be completed before the next NRI team visit. This will take place in October/November 1997. The team will include a socio-economist and computer modeller. Para 27 refers

Conducting surveys on forestry attitudes and practices in Leyte Communities, Philippines: Experiences and lessons learnt

A survey of forestry practices and attitudes was undertaken in four communities in Leyte, the Philippines, to improve understanding of the social and economic factors affecting small-scale forestry development. The survey had three main data collection activities — initial focus group discussions (FGDs), household interviews, and reporting and validation FGDs. A team of enumerators was selected for household interviews which consisted of both males and females, to avoid potential problems of unwillingness of people to talk with those of the opposite gender. The interviewers were also required to be able to speak local dialects (Cebuano and Waray Waray), the survey questionnaires being administered in these dialects. Various methods were used to gain the support and assistance of local government units and barangay captains. Some difficulty was experienced by the survey team in the first community due to barangay elections at the time of the survey, and the requirement by the University of Queensland Ethics Committee that respondents sign a consent form. This requirement was found to be not culturally appropriate for the Leyte smallholder communities. Offering goods at the end of the interview was found to be of limited value for encouraging participation in the survey. Provision of food and drinks were found to encourage FGD participants to express their views, but too much alcohol had a negative effect. The importance of providing comprehensive feedback to respondents and involving them and other stakeholders in development of policy recommendations was apparent. These survey experiences provide valuable insights which are not generally available in textbooks on sample surveys, and provide lessons for planning and conducting smallholder community survey into natural resource management issues

Marketing of Rainy- and Postrainy-season Sorghum in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Maharashtra

Thi s study, an inves t igat ion i n t o the ma r k e t i n g systems for sorghum grain and s tover i n the states of An d h r a Pradesh, Maharasht ra, and Karnataka, aims at descr ibing the cur r ent ma rke t systems and pa r t ly assesses t h e i r pe r formanc e . I t needs t o be v i ewe d i n the cont ext of othe r component s wh i c h address sorghum p r o d u c t i o n , c o n s ump t i o n and indus t r i a l u t i l i z a t i o n . Th e s tudy i s spl i t into" three sections. Wh i l e the f i r s t sect ion gives an idea of the v o l ume of ma r k e t e d grain, and provides an ove rvi ew of the actual f lows , buyer s , sellers and end-uses of sorghum grain t r ade d i n key di s t r i c t s i n these states, the second sect ion provides an indi c a t ion of the producer ' s share i n the sorghum consumer ' s rupee and discusses h o w t h e large projected increases i n indus t r i a l d ema n d for rainy-season sorghum may affect the ma r k e t i n g sys tem. Th e final section draws together the key conclusions f r om the study. © 1999 by the Internat ional Crops Research Ins t i tut e for the S emi -Ar i d Tropics ( ICRI SAT) . Al l rights reserved. Except for quotat ions of short passages for the purposes of c r i t i c i sm and review, no part of thi s publ i c a t ion may be reproduced, s tored in retrieval systems, or t r ansmi t t ed, in any f o r m or by any means, elect ronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwi se, wi t h o u t pr ior permission of ICRISAT. I t is hope d that this copyr ight declarat ion wi l l not dimini s h the bona fide use o f its research findings in agr icul tural research and deve lopment in or for the t ropics . Th e designations emp l o y e d and the presentat ion of the mater ial i n thi s publ i c a t ion do not imp l y the expression of any opinion of the mater ial i n this publ icat ion whatsoever on the part of ICRI SAT concerning the legal status of any country, t e r r i tory, city, or area, or of its author i t ies , or concerning the d e l imi t a t i o n of its f ront ier s or boundaries. Wh e r e t rade names are used this does not cons t i tut e endor sement of or di s c r imina t ion against any produc t by the Ins t i tut e . This publication is an output f rom a research project funded by the Uni t e d Kingdom Depar tment for International Development (DF ID) for the benefit of developing countries. The views expressed are not necessarily those of D F I D [R 6687: Crop Post-Harvest Programme]

A Multi-signal Variant for the GPU-based Parallelization of Growing Self-Organizing Networks

Among the many possible approaches for the parallelization of self-organizing networks, and in particular of growing self-organizing networks, perhaps the most common one is producing an optimized, parallel implementation of the standard sequential algorithms reported in the literature. In this paper we explore an alternative approach, based on a new algorithm variant specifically designed to match the features of the large-scale, fine-grained parallelism of GPUs, in which multiple input signals are processed at once. Comparative tests have been performed, using both parallel and sequential implementations of the new algorithm variant, in particular for a growing self-organizing network that reconstructs surfaces from point clouds. The experimental results show that this approach allows harnessing in a more effective way the intrinsic parallelism that the self-organizing networks algorithms seem intuitively to suggest, obtaining better performances even with networks of smaller size.Comment: 17 page

Coping strategies adopted by small-scale farmers in Tanzania and Kenya to counteract problems caused by storage pests, particularly the Larger Grain Borer

Final Technical Report, Project R 6952 (1 May 1997 - 31 December 1998)

Potential of Equatorial Atlantic Variability to Enhance El Nino Prediction

Extraordinarily strong El Niño events, such as those of 1982/83 and 1997/98, have been poorly predicted by operational seasonal forecasts made before boreal spring, despite significant advances in understanding, improved models, and enhanced observational networks. The Equatorial Atlantic Zonal Mode – a phenomenon similar to El Niño but much weaker and peaking in boreal summer – impacts winds over the Pacific, and hence affects El Niño, and also potentially its predictability. Here we use a climate model to perform a suite of seasonal predictions with and without SST in the Atlantic restored to observations. We show for the first time that knowledge of Equatorial Atlantic sea surface temperature (SST) significantly improves the prediction across boreal spring of major El Niño events and also weaker variability. This is because Atlantic SST acts to modulate El Niño variability, rather than triggering events. Our results suggest that better prediction of major El Niño events might be achieved through model improvement in the Equatorial Atlantic

Ocean circulation and Tropical Variability in the Coupled Model ECHAM5/MPI-OM

This paper describes the mean ocean circulation and the tropical variability simulated by the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) coupled atmosphere–ocean general circulation model (AOGCM). Results are presented from a version of the coupled model that served as a prototype for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) simulations. The model does not require flux adjustment to maintain a stable climate. A control simulation with present-day greenhouse gases is analyzed, and the simulation of key oceanic features, such as sea surface temperatures (SSTs), large-scale circulation, meridional heat and freshwater transports, and sea ice are compared with observations. A parameterization that accounts for the effect of ocean currents on surface wind stress is implemented in the model. The largest impact of this parameterization is in the tropical Pacific, where the mean state is significantly improved: the strength of the trade winds and the associated equatorial upwelling weaken, and there is a reduction of the model’s equatorial cold SST bias by more than 1 K. Equatorial SST variability also becomes more realistic. The strength of the variability is reduced by about 30% in the eastern equatorial Pacific and the extension of SST variability into the warm pool is significantly reduced. The dominant El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) period shifts from 3 to 4 yr. Without the parameterization an unrealistically strong westward propagation of SST anomalies is simulated. The reasons for the changes in variability are linked to changes in both the mean state and to a reduction in atmospheric sensitivity to SST changes and oceanic sensitivity to wind anomalies

CD4+ and CD8+ T cells exhibit differential requirements for CCR7-mediated antigen transport during influenza infection

Upon encounter of viral Ags in an inflammatory environment, dendritic cells up-regulate costimulatory molecules and the chemokine receptor CCR7, with the latter being pivotal for their migration to the lymph node. By utilizing mice deficient in CCR7, we have examined the requirement of dendritic cell-mediated Ag transport from the lung to the draining lymph node for the induction of anti-influenza immune responses in vivo. We found that CCR7-mediated migration of dendritic cells was more crucial for CD8(+) T cell than CD4(+) T cell responses. While no specific CD8(+) T cell response could be detected in the airways or lymphoid tissues during the primary infection, prolonged infection in CCR7-deficient mice did result in a sustained inflammatory chemokine profile, which led to nonspecific CD8(+) T cell recruitment to the airways. The recruitment of influenza-specific CD4(+) T cells to the airways was also below levels of detection in the absence of CCR7 signaling, although a small influenza-specific CD4(+) T cell population was detectable in the draining lymph node, which was sufficient for the generation of class-switched anti-influenza Abs and a normal CD4(+) T cell memory population. Overall, our data show that CCR7-mediated active Ag transport is differentially required for CD4(+) and CD8(+) T cell expansion during influenza infection