Strategic & Applied Research & Coordination in Action: Climate Services for Resilient Development (CSRD) in South Asia

A global partnership that is aligned with the Global Framework for Climate Services, Climate Services for Resilient Development (CSRD) works to link climate science, data streams, decision support tools, and training with decision-makers in developing countries. CSRD is led by the United States Government and is supported by the UK Government Department for International Development (DFID), UK Meteorological Office, ESRI, Google, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the American Red Cross. Led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the CSRD initiative in South Asia works with partners to conduct applied research and facilitate the use of climate information to reduce risk for smallholder farmers. This report details activities of the CSRD project in South Asia during 2018, with emphasis on the second half of 201

Climate Services for Resilient Development in South Asia and Bangladesh: Semi-Annual and Inception Period Report April 2017

Developing countries are at considerable risk from climate variability and climate change, both of which threaten poverty reduction and development efforts. The Climate Services for Resilient Development (CSRD) partnership is led by the United States Government has developed a consortium of global leaders in science, technology and development finance to assist at-risk nations to adapt to these problems. CSRD is aligned with the the Global Framework for Climate Services and works in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Colombia to creating and provide timely and useful climate data, information, tools, and services. Within South Asia, efforts to develop agricultural climate services under CSRD are led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). CSRD in turn works to support Investment Options Paper (IOP) for Climate Services for Resilient Development in Bangladesh, compiled by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in 2016. CSRD’s core objectives are to prepare farmers, extension services, and agricultural policy makers with actionable climate information and crop management advisories to reduce agricultural production risks and to increase the resilience of smallholder farming communities. This report summarizes CSRD activities, achievements, and challenges during the project’s inception phase (from the end of November 2017 through April of 2017)

Climate Services for Resilient Development in South Asia Mid-Term Report, January - June 2018

Aligned with the Global Framework for Climate Services, Climate Services for Resilient Development (CSRD) is a global partnership that works to link climate science, data streams, decision support tools, and training with decision-makers in developing countries. CSRD is led by the United States Government and is supported by the UK Government Department for International Development (DFID), UK Meteorological Office, ESRI, Google, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the American Red Cross. Led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the CSRD initiative in South Asia implements applied research and facilitates an expanding network of partners assure that actionable climate information and crop management advisories can be generated, refined, and delivered to smallholder farmers. This report details activities of the CSRD project in South Asia during the first six months of 2018

Yield-independent variation in grain nitrogen and phosphorus concentration among Ethiopian wheats

New semiDwarf wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cultivars and new land management practices for Vertisols are being introduced in Ethiopia. Our objectives were to (i) determine the variation of N and P contents and concentration in the grain and whether these are related to grain yield, (ii) test cultivar response to different fertility levels, and (iii) assess component traits of N and P yield. Five bread wheat cultivars and three durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) cultivars were sown in Ex1 at three locations in Ethiopia on two dates. In Ex2, seven of these cultivars were grown on a P-deficient soil at four N levels (0, 20.5, 41, 61.5 kg N ha-1) and four P levels (0, 10, 20, 30 kg P ha-1); in Ex3, two cultivars were grown in all possible combinations of the same four N and P levels. Grain yields did not differ among cultivars, but significant variations were found for total shoot N and P, grain N and P yield, and grain N and P concentration. Cultivar differences in these traits were fairly consistent across the treatments and were corroborated by Ex3. The N and P concentrations in the grain were not related to grain yield (r=0.36 NS for N; r=0.28 NS for P). There was a positive association between grain N and P concentrations in Ex1 (r=0.66; P=0.001). However, postanthesis accumulation of N was more closely related to postanthesis dry matter accumulation (r=0.84; P<0.05) than to the postanthesis accumulation of P (r=0.56 NS). Total shoot P varied by as much as 50 percent. Thus, cultivar choice is an important factor determining removal of P from the soil

Effects of variety, altitude, and undersowing with legumes on the nutritive value of wheat straw

Wheat was planted at different altitudes in the Ethiopian highlands. Increased altitude led to a lower neutral detergent fibre (NDF) content and a higher in vitro organic matter digestibility (IVOMD) of the leaf blades, leaf sheaths and stems. The varieties tested did not differ in NDF content, However, because of the improved NDF digestibility of all three straw fractions. The semi-Dwarf varieties had a higher IVOMD than the standard tall wheats. The local durum wheat variety showed a much higher sodium content and a more favourable Na:K ratio. Undersowing with an equal mixture of Trifolium Ruepellianum (Fres.) and Trifolium steudneri (Schwf.) led to a small reduction in straw yield but increased the crude protein content of the crop residues from 2.3 to 7.1 percent and the IVOMD from 44 to 51 percent as compared to the sole wheat stand

DCA++ project: Sustainable and scalable development of a high-performance research code

Scientific discoveries across all fields, from physics to biology, are increasingly driven by computer simulations. At the same time, the computational demand of many problems necessitates large-scale calculations on high-performance supercomputers. Developing and maintaining the underlying codes, however, has become a challenging task due to a combination of factors. Leadership computer systems require massive parallelism, while their architectures are diversifying. New sophisticated algorithms are continuously developed and have to be implemented efficiently for such complex systems. Finally, the multidisciplinary nature of modern science involves large, changing teams to work on a given codebase. Using the example of the DCA++ project, a highly scalable and efficient research code to solve quantum many-body problems, we explore how computational science can overcome these challenges by adopting modern software engineering approaches. We present our principles for scientific software development and describe concrete practices to meet them, adapted from agile software development frameworks.ISSN:1742-6588ISSN:1742-659

DCA++: A software framework to solve correlated electron problems with modern quantum cluster methods

We present the first open release of the DCA++ project, a high-performance research software framework to solve quantum many-body problems with cutting edge quantum cluster algorithms. DCA++ implements the dynamical cluster approximation (DCA) and its DCA+ extension with a continuous self-energy. The algorithms capture nonlocal correlations in strongly correlated electron systems, thereby giving insight into high-Tc superconductivity. The code's scalability allows efficient usage of systems at all scales, from workstations to leadership computers. With regard to the increasing heterogeneity of modern computing machines, DCA++ provides portable performance on conventional and emerging new architectures, such as hybrid CPU–GPU, sustaining multiple petaflops on ORNL's Titan and CSCS’ Piz Daint supercomputers. Moreover, we show how sustainable and scalable development of the code base has been achieved by adopting standard techniques of the software industry. These include employing a distributed version control system, applying test-driven development and following continuous integration.ISSN:0010-4655ISSN:1879-294