Raising soil fertility and developing community-scale watersheds

• Crop diversification has proved to be an attractive option for restoring soil fertility, increasing farm income, as well as improving the nutrition of farm families in watersheds of India, Vietnam and Malawi.

• ICRISAT’s expertise in participatory watershed management received recognition with private (TATA Foundation) and bilateral (DFID, APRLP) sector funds becoming available to the Asia Project, and additional EU funds made available to support SWMnet in East Africa.

• ICRISAT's focus on micro-dosing to overcome soil fertility constraints in West Africa received recognition.

• ICRISAT’s pioneering work in the desert margins of sub-Saharan Africa received recognition with funds from the Global Environmental Facility becoming available for a nine country initiative.

Integrated pest management

• A participatory strategy of combining a range of high-yielding varieties that are tolerant or moderately resistant to insect pests and disease with improved agronomy, chemical spray protection and botanicals and biological control agents where possible, has been followed in this project to achieve profitable returns.

• Several insect resistant varieties have been developed and released for cultivation by the farmers (sorghum midge - ICSV 197 and ICSV 745 in India, and ICSV 735, ICSV 758, and ICSV 804 in Myanmar; pigeonpea pod borer - ICPL 88039, and ICSL 332 in India; and chickpea pod borer ICCV 7 and ICCV 10 in India). Several pearl millet varieties and hybrids based on materials developed at ICRISAT are resistant to downy mildew.

• Reduction in collar rot, stem rot and bud necrosis in groundnut in India has been achieved by using resistant varieties. Reduction of botrytis gray mold in chickpea in Nepal has been achieved through IPM.

• Sunflower has been identified as an effective trap crop for Spodoptera. When used by farmers in India and Vietnam, savings of US$20 per hectare were achieved. Combinations of resistant cultivars, early sowing, timing and numbers of fungicide sprays can substantially reduce yield losses caused by foliar diseases of groundnut.

• A combination of new technologies, such as biological control using a virus and fungi, and traditional techniques, such as manual shaking and taking advantage of birds, are being used to manage pod borer damage in pigeonpea.

Information and communication technology

• A novel method of sharing information, knowledge, and skills with poor, inaccessible communities is being piloted by ICRISAT in collaboration with the Commonwealth of Learning and other national partners. This method combines the potentials of open distance learning (ODL) and information and communication technology (ICT).

• ICRISAT, in partnership with Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi; M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai; Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi; B R Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad; Y C Maharashtra Open University, Nashik; and Common Wealth of Learning, Vancouver, Canada, has launched the Virtual Academy for the Semi-Arid Tropics (VASAT).

• The VASAT module is delivered in distance mode through an ICT-enabled rural community information hub established in villages. The rural community information hub involves a low cost connection to the Internet via satellite, allowing easy access to graphics and audio on the worldwide web.