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Screening the banana biodiversity for drought tolerance: can an in vitro growth model and proteomics be used as a tool to discover tolerant varieties and understand homeostasis

Diversity of the neglected and underutilized crop species of importance in Benin

Annual Report 2011

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Experts call for action to address the loss of knowledge about plants

Concerned by the alarming loss of plant species, on 1-2 May international experts met in St Louis, USA, calling for a concerted worldwide effort to address the loss of essential knowledge about plants and their uses, especially at the level of local communities.

Zooming in on nutrition-sensitive landscapes

At Nutrition-sensitive landscapes, a CIFOR and ICRAF organized side-event at the Conference on Forests for Food Security and Nutrition, Bioversity International's researcher Céline Termote spoke about putting people at the centre of the landscapes approach: "Food is an expression of their culture, we must not forget that," she said. Photo: CIFOR

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Ren Fujimura

JAPAN-CGIAR Fellowship Program

Country: Japan | Year: 2011

Research Title: Understanding how Kitui farmers of Eastern Kenya use agrobiodiversity and social networks as strategies for coping with adverse effects of climate change

The training was very useful for me while working with my supervisor, Mr. Morimoto. I'd never worked in the field before, so I got a lot of basic skills and experience-based knowledge from him such as making good questionnaires, coordinating local people and so on. I was also impressed by the local people’s wide ecological knowledge on wildlife and how they used it efficiently in their lives.

Ren Fujimura has a profound interest in studying the relationship between local people and their natural resources. His studies vary from considering policy options for collaborative forest governance, to studying different conservation techniques and carrying out environmental assessments using Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

Ren’s research with Bioversity International took place in the region of Kitui in Kenya, a semi-arid landscape prone to drought where farmers mainly depend on subsistence farming and local resources for their livelihoods. Most have a profound knowledge and relationship with the environment, and have adopted agricultural biodiversity to cope with extreme weather fluctuations. Farmers have also formed community groups to exchange seeds, provide labour and establish small commercial enterprises in the region. These different management practices have helped create more resilient agrosystems, and Ren set out to acquire a better understanding of these strategies across households with different socio-economic status and family characteristics. His research was carried out by conducting numerous surveys with local farmers, monitoring their daily activities and GPS mapping the communities to determine village and population sizes. The results from the study are to contribute to a previous Bioversity project: “Managing agricultural biodiversity for better nutrition and health”.

Ren is currently continuing his research as part of his Masters’ in Global Forest Environmental Science at the University of Tokyo, and will present the results from Kenya at the 13th Congress of the International Society of Ethnobiology (CISE 2012) with his supervisor Mr. Yasuki Morimoto.