User participation in watershed management and research:

Many watershed development projects around the world have performed poorly because they failed to take into account the needs, constraints, and practices of local people. Participatory watershed management—in which users help to define problems, set priorities, select technologies and policies, and monitor and evaluate impacts—is expected to improve performance. User participation in watershed management raises new questions for watershed research, including how to design appropriate mechanisms for organizing stakeholders and facilitating collective action. Management of a complex system such as a watershed may also require user participation in the research process itself. An increasing number of watershed research projects are already participatory, however challenges remain to institutionalizing user participation in both watershed management and research.

Reaching more farmers: Innovative approaches to scaling up climate-smart agriculture

The purpose of this working paper is to provide insight into how we can use novel approaches to scale up research findings on climate-smart agriculture (CSA) to meaningfully address the challenges of poverty and climate change. The approaches described include those based on value chains and private sector involvement, policy engagement, and information and communication technologies and agro-advisory services. The paper draws on 11 case studies to exemplify these new approaches to scaling up. These are synthesised using a simple conceptual framework that draws on a review of the most important challenges to scaling up. This provides the material for a discussion around how particular scaling up approaches can help to address some of the challenges of scaling up. The analysis offers insights into scaling approaches, challenges and some opportunities for scaling CSA practices and technologies. We conclude that multi-stakeholder platforms and policy making networks are key to effective upscaling, especially if paired with capacity enhancement, learning, and innovative approaches to support decision making of farmers. Projects that aim to intervene upstream at higher leverage points can be highly efficient and probably offer cost-effective dissemination strategies that reach across scales and include new and more diverse partnerships. However, these novel approaches still face challenges of promoting uptake, which remain contextualized and thus require a certain level of local engagement, while continuously paying attention to farmer’s needs and their own situations

Collective action in ant control:

Leaf-cutting ants (Atta. cephalotes) represents a serious problem to farmers in many parts of Latin America and accounts of ants eating up a whole cassava plot or destroying one or more fruit trees overnight are not uncommon. Ants do not respect farm boundaries. Therefore, farmers who control anthills on their own fields might still face damage on their crops caused by ants coming from neighboring fields where no control measures are taken. In that sense, crop damage caused by leaf-cutting ants constitutes a transboundary natural resource management problem which, in addition to technical interventions, requires organizational interventions to ensure a coordinated effort among farmers to be solved. This paper reports on a research effort initiated by CIAT and implemented jointly between CIAT and farmers in La Laguna - a small community in the Andean Hillsides of Southwestern Colombia. The objective of the research effort was two-fold: i) to identify low cost technical options for ant control, and ii) to analyze and visualize the transboundary nature of the ant control problem and thus identify organizational options to enable collective or coordinated ant control.

Scaling up agricultural interventions: Case studies of climate-smart agriculture

If climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is meaningfully to address the development challenges posed by climate change, effective approaches will be needed to scale up research findings. Here, eleven case studies are used to exemplify scaling-up strategies based on (1) value chains and private sector involvement, (2) information and communication technologies and agro-advisory services, and (3) policy engagement. We evaluated these case studies and the scaling strategies they exemplify, using a simple conceptual framework from the field of scaling up nutrition interventions. Results showed that these different strategies exhibit different characteristics; all offer considerable potential for taking CSA interventions to scale, but there still may be unavoidable trade-offs to consider when choosing one strategy over another, particularly between reaching large numbers of farmers and addressing farmers' specific contexts. The case studies highlighted several challenges: estimating the costs and benefits of different scaling activities, integrating knowledge across multiple levels, and addressing equity issues in scaling up. The case studies outlined here will continue to be monitored and evaluated, thus strengthening the evidence base around effective scaling-up strategies that can contribute to achieving food and nutrition security under climate change in the coming decades

Competencias para la Gestión del Riesgo Climático: Operativizando la Agricultura Sostenible Adaptada al Clima

La Agricultura Sostenible Adaptada al Clima (ASAC) es un enfoque propuesto para gestionar del riesgo climático, pero su implementación requiere la comprensión y el uso sistemático de información y data climática aplicada al contexto local, para seleccionar e implementar prácticas agrícolas más resilientes. La ASAC es intensiva en conocimiento por lo que requiere facilitar el acceso a información climática traducida en recomendaciones accionables y oportunas, y desarrollar nuevos conocimientos y habilidades en los agricultores, y nuevas capacidades y enfoques en los sistemas de extensión agrícola. Este documento describe de manera explícita las capacidades que los agricultores y extensionistas requieren para gestionar el riesgo climático, utilizando el enfoque de modelo de competencias, con énfasis en la información climática necesaria para la toma de decisiones de corto, mediano y largo plazo en los sistemas de producción agrícola. Este modelo de competencias define el marco para el desarrollo de contenidos de formación, las herramientas de evaluación, y el diseño de modelos de extensión efectivos, a la medida y adaptados al contexto

Synergy of retinoic acid and BH3 mimetics in MYC(N)-driven embryonal nervous system tumours

Background Certain paediatric nervous system malignancies have dismal prognoses. Retinoic acid (RA) is used in neuroblastoma treatment, and preclinical data indicate potential benefit in selected paediatric brain tumour entities. However, limited single-agent efficacy necessitates combination treatment approaches. Methods We performed drug sensitivity profiling of 76 clinically relevant drugs in combination with RA in 16 models (including patient-derived tumouroids) of the most common paediatric nervous system tumours. Drug responses were assessed by viability assays, high-content imaging, and apoptosis assays and RA relevant pathways by RNAseq from treated models and patient samples obtained through the precision oncology programme INFORM (n = 2288). Immunoprecipitation detected BCL-2 family interactions, and zebrafish embryo xenografts were used for in vivo efficacy testing. Results Group 3 medulloblastoma (MBG3) and neuroblastoma models were highly sensitive to RA treatment. RA induced differentiation and regulated apoptotic genes. RNAseq analysis revealed high expression of BCL2L1 in MBG3 and BCL2 in neuroblastomas. Co-treatments with RA and BCL-2/XL inhibitor navitoclax synergistically decreased viability at clinically achievable concentrations. The combination of RA with navitoclax disrupted the binding of BIM to BCL-XL in MBG3 and to BCL-2 in neuroblastoma, inducing apoptosis in vitro and in vivo. Conclusions RA treatment primes MBG3 and NB cells for apoptosis, triggered by navitoclax cotreatment

Drug sensitivity profiling of 3D tumor tissue cultures in the pediatric precision oncology program INFORM

The international precision oncology program INFORM enrolls relapsed/refractory pediatric cancer patients for comprehensive molecular analysis. We report a two-year pilot study implementing ex vivo drug sensitivity profiling (DSP) using a library of 75–78 clinically relevant drugs. We included 132 viable tumor samples from 35 pediatric oncology centers in seven countries. DSP was conducted on multicellular fresh tumor tissue spheroid cultures in 384-well plates with an overall mean processing time of three weeks. In 89 cases (67%), sufficient viable tissue was received; 69 (78%) passed internal quality controls. The DSP results matched the identified molecular targets, including BRAF, ALK, MET, and TP53 status. Drug vulnerabilities were identified in 80% of cases lacking actionable (very) high-evidence molecular events, adding value to the molecular data. Striking parallels between clinical courses and the DSP results were observed in selected patients. Overall, DSP in clinical real-time is feasible in international multicenter precision oncology programs