Slow, stealthy and steady – capacity development to address land tenure issues in development programmes: experiences of the IFAD/GLTN TSLI-ESA Project

Land and natural resource tenure security is a central yet often neglected area for economic development and poverty reduction in the developing world. Land is fundamental to the lives of poor rural people. It is a source of food, shelter, income and social identity. Secure access to land reduces vulnerability to hunger and poverty. There are some 1.3 billion extremely poor people in the world, struggling to survive on less than US$1.25 a day, and close to a billion continue to suffer from chronic under-nourishment. About 70 per cent of these people live in the rural areas of developing countries. In most rural societies, the poorest people often have weak or unprotected tenure rights. This condition undermines them from using their land resource effectively. They also risk losing land they depend on to more powerful groups including private investors.Women and youth are particularly vulnerable because their land rights may be obtained through kinship relationships with men or families. If those links are severed, women and youth can lose their rights. When insufficient attention is paid to secure access by small-scale producers and to land tenure issues, development programmes can become part of the problem. Most development programmes continue to eschew land tenure issues because they are sticky and difficult issues to be addressed, at least, in the timeframe of a classic programme. As such, the tenure issues linger around and affect the outcome of the programmes. While many other issues are attributed to their failures, again, land tenure issues are swept under the carpet.This paper presents the experiences of implementing capacity development for strengthening tenure security in IFAD supported programmes in Eastern and Southern Africa. Most of the data was gathered during missions and many interactions with communities and staff of the about 20 IFAD supported programmes that TSLI-ESA worked with.In all programmes tenure issues were present, albeit to varying extents – be it those programmes promoting sustainable natural resources management, agricultural productivity, agricultural value chain development, and rural finance. Tenure issues were analysed during design missions, and if they were predicted to have significant impacts, appropriate interventions were designed and integrated in the programme plan documents. The tenure interventions were, however, not the primary objectives of the programmes hence, the scope, budget and detail of implementation tended to be less emphasized relative to the other ‘core’ interventions of the programmes.Furthermore, in some cases, potentially salient tenure issues were not very apparent at the design stage. In such cases land tenure interventions were not explicitly integrated into the programme design, mainly because their impacts on the outputs of the programme were, at least initially, calculated to be insignificant. Such issues were addressed retrospectively during the programme implementation following a programme re-design, an exercise that makes sure the programme bounce back on track.Key lessons, there is need to exhaustively consider implications of potential land tenure issues from the start including their anticipated consequences, and where possible include them in the programme plan. Secondly, there is need to integrate tenure issues in programme monitoring and evaluation system to keep track of tenure issues and their potential impact on programme delivery. There is need to provide evidence-based report to local and national authorities responsible for administration, management and policy for land and natural resources of any salient tenure security issues that are beyond the scope of, but have significant impact on, the programme being implemented. We recommend for establishment of centralized tenure desk at national or local level to attend to tenure issues from the various programmes, both public and private

Identification of SNP and SSR Markers in Finger Millet Using Next Generation Sequencing Technologies

Finger millet is an important cereal crop in eastern Africa and southern India with excellent grain storage quality and unique ability to thrive in extreme environmental conditions. Since negligible attention has been paid to improving this crop to date, the current study used Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies to develop both Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) and Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) markers. Genomic DNA from cultivated finger millet genotypes KNE755 and KNE796 was sequenced using both Roche 454 and Illumina technologies. Non-organelle sequencing reads were assembled into 207 Mbp representing approximately 13% of the finger millet genome. We identified 10,327 SSRs and 23,285 non-homeologous SNPs and tested 101 of each for polymorphism across a diverse set of wild and cultivated finger millet germplasm. For the 49 polymorphic SSRs, the mean polymorphism information content (PIC) was 0.42, ranging from 0.16 to 0.77. We also validated 92 SNP markers, 80 of which were polymorphic with a mean PIC of 0.29 across 30 wild and 59 cultivated accessions. Seventy-six of the 80 SNPs were polymorphic across 30 wild germplasm with a mean PIC of 0.30 while only 22 of the SNP markers showed polymorphism among the 59 cultivated accessions with an average PIC value of 0.15. Genetic diversity analysis using the polymorphic SNP markers revealed two major clusters; one of wild and another of cultivated accessions. Detailed STRUCTURE analysis confirmed this grouping pattern and further revealed 2 sub-populations within wild E. coracana subsp. africana. Both STRUCTURE and genetic diversity analysis assisted with the correct identification of the new germplasm collections. These polymorphic SSR and SNP markers are a significant addition to the existing 82 published SSRs, especially with regard to the previously reported low polymorphism levels in finger millet. Our results also reveal an unexploited finger millet genetic resource that can be included in the regional breeding programs in order to efficiently optimize productivity

SLOW, STEALTHY AND STEADY – CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT TO ADDRESS LAND TENURE ISSUES IN DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMMES: EXPERIENCES OF THE IFAD/GLTN TSLI-ESA PROJECT

Land and natural resource tenure security is a central yet often neglected area for economic development and poverty reduction in the developing world. Land is fundamental to the lives of poor rural people. It is a source of food, shelter, income and social identity. Secure access to land reduces vulnerability to hunger and poverty. There are some 1.3 billion extremely poor people in the world, struggling to survive on less than US$1.25 a day, and close to a billion continue to suffer from chronic under-nourishment. About 70 per cent of these people live in the rural areas of developing countries. In most rural societies, the poorest people often have weak or unprotected tenure rights. This condition undermines them from using their land resource effectively. They also risk losing land they depend on to more powerful groups including private investors. Women and youth are particularly vulnerable because their land rights may be obtained through kinship relationships with men or families. If those links are severed, women and youth can lose their rights. When insufficient attention is paid to secure access by small-scale producers and to land tenure issues, development programmes can become part of the problem. Most development programmes continue to eschew land tenure issues because they are sticky and difficult issues to be addressed, at least, in the timeframe of a classic programme. As such, the tenure issues linger around and affect the outcome of the programmes. While many other issues are attributed to their failures, again, land tenure issues are swept under the carpet. This paper presents the experiences of implementing capacity development for strengthening tenure security in IFAD supported programmes in Eastern and Southern Africa. Most of the data was gathered during missions and many interactions with communities and staff of the about 20 IFAD supported programmes that TSLI-ESA worked with. In all programmes tenure issues were present, albeit to varying extents – be it those programmes promoting sustainable natural resources management, agricultural productivity, agricultural value chain development, and rural finance. Tenure issues were analysed during design missions, and if they were predicted to have significant impacts, appropriate interventions were designed and integrated in the programme plan documents. The tenure interventions were, however, not the primary objectives of the programmes hence, the scope, budget and detail of implementation tended to be less emphasized relative to the other ‘core’ interventions of the programmes. Furthermore, in some cases, potentially salient tenure issues were not very apparent at the design stage. In such cases land tenure interventions were not explicitly integrated into the programme design, mainly because their impacts on the outputs of the programme were, at least initially, calculated to be insignificant. Such issues were addressed retrospectively during the programme implementation following a programme re-design, an exercise that makes sure the programme bounce back on track. Key lessons, there is need to exhaustively consider implications of potential land tenure issues from the start including their anticipated consequences, and where possible include them in the programme plan. Secondly, there is need to integrate tenure issues in programme monitoring and evaluation system to keep track of tenure issues and their potential impact on programme delivery. There is need to provide evidence-based report to local and national authorities responsible for administration, management and policy for land and natural resources of any salient tenure security issues that are beyond the scope of, but have significant impact on, the programme being implemented. We recommend for establishment of centralized tenure desk at national or local level to attend to tenure issues from the various programmes, both public and private

Molecular function categories.

<p>The distribution of SNP-containing putative genes that were assigned GO terms in PANTHER (<a href="http://pantherdb.org/" target="_blank">http://pantherdb.org/</a>). Catalytic activity category was over-represented.</p

A list of polymorphic SNP markers and their characteristics after validation across 89 <i>Eleusine</i> accessions.

<p>A list of polymorphic SNP markers and their characteristics after validation across 89 <i>Eleusine</i> accessions.</p

A summary of identified SSR and SNP markers and their frequency across genotypes KNE796 and KNE755.

<p>A summary of identified SSR and SNP markers and their frequency across genotypes KNE796 and KNE755.</p

A summary of sequencing reads generated for each genotype and the resulting assemblies.

<p>A summary of sequencing reads generated for each genotype and the resulting assemblies.</p

Population structure of 30 “wild” <i>Eleusine</i> accessions.

<p>Output of STRUCTURE analysis done using 76 polymorphic SNP markers across 30 “wild” accessions only. Four sub-populations are shown in red, green, blue and orange. The only genotype appearing under red (MS16) has been confirmed in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0159437#pone.0159437.g002" target="_blank">Fig 2</a> to be cultivated. The 3 genotypes highlighted in green are <i>E</i>. <i>kigeziensis</i> (Lesk10, EDL16 and MD48) while blue and orange represent subsp. <i>africana</i> subpopulations 2 and 1 respectively. The orange sub-population is composed of the same samples clustering in red under <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0159437#pone.0159437.g003" target="_blank">Fig 3</a>. The corresponding accession codes are shown in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0159437#pone.0159437.t001" target="_blank">Table 1</a>.</p

Population structure of 89 <i>Eleusine</i> accessions.

<p>Output of STRUCTURE analysis done using 80 polymorphic markers across 89 <i>Eleusine</i> accessions. Each vertical line represents an individual accession. The corresponding accession codes are provided in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0159437#pone.0159437.t001" target="_blank">Table 1</a>. The y-axis displays % estimated membership of each individual cluster or population. Accessions numbered 1 to 30 are assumed to be “wild”. The rest of the accessions are cultivated and were either collected from farmers’ fields or gene banks. Four sub-populations can be seen here highlighted in red (<i>E</i>. <i>coracana</i> subsp. <i>africana</i> sub-population 1), purple (<i>E</i>. <i>coracana</i> subsp. <i>africana</i> sub-population 2), turquoise (<i>E</i>. <i>kigeziensis)</i> and sky blue (<i>E</i>. <i>coracana</i> subsp. <i>coracana)</i>. Each color indicates the proportion of DNA segments for each individual, represented by a vertical bar, in each group.</p