January 10, 2021
The Millet Head Miner (MHM) is a major chronic insect pest of millet in the Sahel. This project will serve to develop technologies for controlling the MHM, with intentions to significantly decrease the devastating losses that it can inflict (often ranging from 40-85 percent) on millet yields. Improved management of this key pest will result in increased pearl millet productivity and greater income and food security among millet farmers.
January 11, 2021
This multi-disciplinary research project includes entomology, breeding, and agricultural economics to develop, evaluate, and deploy sorghum genotypes resistant to abiotic and biotic stresses and adapted to indigenous production and storage systems in West Africa.
January 12, 2021
The main goal of the pearl millet breeding program at the Kansas State University Agricultural Research Center in Hays, Kansas is to develop parental lines for producing hybrids for grain and forage use. The project focuses on harnessing genetic variability and development of parental lines for new hybrids with high genetic yield potential, yield stability, improved drought and high temperature tolerance, disease resistance, and enhanced nutritional quality especially micronutrient density of the grain.
January 12, 2021
This project aims to tackle the challenges of both human and animal malnutrition by setting the foundation and developing a strategy for farmer-participatory breeding of highly nutritious, dual-purpose pearl millet varieties in the target countries Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
January 3, 2022
This project expands the team’s sorghum crop improvement efforts through targeted research and technology transfer to promote and enhance sorghum production and nutritional value. Researchers have already identified allelic variation in genes that influence grain and forage quality; specifically, grain protein digestibility, modified starches that produce new functional food and nutritional attributes, and improved forage quality.
January 7, 2022
Research collaboration between Texas A&M, INRAN, and ISRA extended to include researchers at nearby Universities in Niger and Senegal will result in the identification or creation of disease-resistant, locally adapted, sorghum cultivars that maintain properties preferred by farmers and consumers alike. Target diseases are anthracnose and long smut in Niger and anthracnose and grain mold in Senegal.
January 8, 2022
The focus of this project is on resilience of the Hub Food Innovation Centers as convergence points for product innovation and drivers of economic and nutritional impacts for Niger and Senegal. Hub Food Innovation Centers are being strengthened to better engage with entrepreneurs, improve their effectiveness as product development centers, and bolster their sustainability.
January 10, 2022
Home to one of the harshest cropping environments in the world, the Sahel region of Africa hosts poor, sandy soils, low and erratic rainfall, and excessive soil surface temperatures. Sahelian farmers also often have limited space for cropping, very low incomes and restricted access to inputs such as fertilizer and pesticides. This combination of limitations makes it difficult for farmers to subsist on their cropping operations or produce enough to sell their crops for income.
March 31, 2022
The Sahel region of Africa is one of the harshest cropping environments in the world. Sahelian farmers have limited resources, income and access to inputs such as fertilizer and water. This makes the region ideal to introduce new technology advancements to help smallholder farmers with planting techniques to increase the pearl millet crop yield rate. The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Sorghum and Millet (SMIL) at Kansas State University began a research project in 2013 to do just that. The project, Seed Balls - Enhancing the Yield Effect in Pearl Millet and Sorghum and Disseminating the Technology in West Africa, has developed seed ball technology to increase yield by up to 40%, provide opportunities for entrepreneurs (especially women) and increase income for smallholder farmers.