Browse Feed the Future Peanut Lab Stories

18 results found for Feed the Future Peanut Lab
Ibrahima Diedhiou of the University of Thies in Senegal talks to Peanut Innovation Lab Director Dave Hoisington. Diedhiou studies how wild shrubs in the arid Sahel region of Western Africa may improve crop yields and remediate degraded soils. Now – with the support of the Peanut Innovation Lab – he’s testing how the shrubs work in Senegalese farmers’ peanut fields. (Photo by Allison Floyd) CAES News
Peanut Innovation Lab
The University of Georgia’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences helps smallholder farmers feed the world through a partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development. The Peanut Innovation Lab — technically, the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut — is a five-year, $14 million program funded through an agreement between USAID and UGA.
Researchers in the US and Senegal are studying why young people leave peanut farming behind and move to the city, an important question for the future of farming in Senegal’s Groundnut Basin. University of Georgia PhD student Pierre Diatta and Virginia Tech’s Brad Mills (far left and left), will present early findings of the study, along with UGA agricultural economist Genti Kostandini (far right), in a webinar next week. The team is working with Katim Toure, a collaborator at ENSA (École Nationale Supérieure d'Agriculture) in Senegal. CAES News
Young Senegalese Farmers
All over the world, farmers are aging and young people are moving to more urban areas for economic opportunities. Leaders wonder what factors push young people to abandon agriculture and whether technology or other tools can make farming a more attractive option for the next generation. Next week, researchers from the University of Georgia and Virginia Tech will present early findings from research exploring those questions in Senegal, where a team surveyed more than 1,000 peanut-growing households to explore challenges among peanut producers and learn the main reasons why young people turn away from agriculture.
Professor David Bertioli and his wife, Soraya Leal-Bertioli, senior research scientist, work together with peanut plants in their greenhouses at the Center for Applied Genetic Technologies. (Photo by Andrew Davis Tucker/UGA) CAES News
Wild Peanut Genes
A decade ago, University of Georgia plant scientists David and Soraya Bertioli were living and working in Brazil when they began to wonder about peanut plants they encountered in different corners of the world with an astounding ability to withstand fungal diseases without the use of fungicides. The Bertiolis wondered if these different plants might all have something in common. Did they owe their natural resistance to a single genetic source?
Professor David Bertioli and senior research scientist Soraya Leal-Bertioli work together with peanut plants in their greenhouses at the Center for Applied Genetic Technologies. CAES News
Best of Both Worlds
The wild relatives of modern peanut plants have the ability to withstand disease in ways that modern peanut plants can’t. The genetic diversity of these wild relatives means that they can shrug off the diseases that kill farmers’ peanut crops, but they also produce tiny nuts that are difficult to harvest because they burrow deep in the soil.
Steve Brown (left), executive director of the Peanut Research Foundation, and Jeff Johnson, a retired Birdsong Peanuts executive who serves on the Peanut Innovation Lab’s External Advisory Panel, discuss project proposals as the lab started a new five-year program in 2018. (Photo by Allison Floyd) CAES News
Peanut school snacks
Because peanut is nutritious, relatively inexpensive and shelf stable, the nut already is the main component in Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food to help children recover from severe malnutrition and in supplementary foods to prevent malnutrition. Numerous studies show cognitive benefits to people who consume nuts; research currently under way through the Peanut Innovation Lab could directly show that eating peanuts can help children succeed in school.
Professor and Head of the Department of Foods and Nutrition in the UGA College of Family and Consumer Sciences Lynn Bailey speaks about the importance of nutritional interventions for maternal and childhood health at the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Global Food Security Summit. CAES News
Food Security Summit
When it comes to the goal of feeding the world’s growing population, the only certainty is that it will take a multipronged approach.
UGA peanut researchers Soraya and David Bertioli were honored at the meeting of the American Peanut Research and Education Society with the American Peanut Council Peanut Research and Education Award. CAES News
Peanut Research
Peanut researchers from the University of Georgia met with hundreds of peanut scientists from around the world earlier this week to discuss the international impact of peanut research and to recognize top researchers.
Peanut Innovation Lab Assistant Director Jamie Rhoads demonstrates a small-scale sheller in Malawi in March 2019 while working with the Malawi Agricultural Diversification Activity. Photo by Dave Hoisington CAES News
Malawi agriculture partnership
The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut at the University of Georgia partners with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Malawi to help farmers diversify their crops.
Peanut harvest will be delayed this year because of Hurricane Michael and the damage to buying points and shellers in South Georgia. CAES News
Georgia Peanuts
National Peanut Day is September 13. Although Georgia is known as the "Peach State," it is also the No. 1 producer of peanuts in the U.S. Last year, American farmers produced almost 2 million tons of peanuts. The U.S. is ranked third in worldwide peanut production, behind China and India.
UGA graduate student Abraham Fulmer shows Haitian agronomists working at the Meds & Food for Kids facility in Cap-Haitian, Haiti, how to identify leaf spot in peanut in December 2016. Fulmer, who recently completed a PhD in plant pathology at the University of Georgia, did research in Haiti with the Feed the Future Peanut & Mycotoxin Innovation Lab, which was at UGA from 2012 to 2017 . The federal government recently awarded UGA another five-year peanut research program to battle global food insecurity. CAES News
Peanut Lab
The University of Georgia has received a $14 million grant from the U.S. Agency of International Development to manage the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut Research, known as the Peanut Lab, a global peanut research program that works to alleviate hunger by helping farmers in developing countries grow healthy crops. The agreement builds on UGA and USAID’s long-standing partnership on global peanut research dating to the 1980s.