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34 results found for Feed the Future Peanut Lab
A Madagascan woman winnows peanuts. The U.S. Agency for International Development has awarded the University of Georgia $2.5 million to work with Kansas State University and scientists in Madagascar to improve food security and resilience to climate change through a rotation of peanuts, sorghum and millet. UGA's College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences already is home to the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut, a 10-year, $29 million program to improve farmers' and consumers' lives through peanuts. Photo by Steve Evans though Creative Commons. CAES News
Madagascar Mission
Madagascar is particularly vulnerable to climate change. To help Madagascan farmers adapt, the U.S. Agency for International Development has awarded the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut at University of Georgia an additional $2.5 million to work in partnership with the Global Collaboration on Sorghum and Millet at Kansas State University on a resilient rotation of peanut, sorghum and millet that will improve soil conditions, make farms more productive, feed people and protect the natural environment.  
Mentorship and access facilitate plant breeding student’s dream to help nourish a continent. CAES News
Danielle Essandoh
At 8 years old, Danielle Essandoh unearthed a fascination with agriculture and never looked back. Her grandfather, a peanut farmer, welcomed her help around the family farm, and Essandoh embraced farm life with enthusiasm. Today, as a doctoral student in the Institute of Plant Breeding, Genetics and Genomics at the University of Georgia, Essandoh remains driven by her desire to help people sustain themselves.
The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut won the Corteva Agriscience Award for Research at the 55th annual meeting of the American Peanut Research and Education Society meeting held in Savannah, Georgia, July 11-13. Pictured here are Kristen McHugh, operations specialist for the lab; Cristiane Pilon, chair of the award selection committee; Dave Hoisington, director of the lab; Allison Floyd, communications coordinator for the lab; and Jamie Rhoads, assistant director for the lab pose at the award ceremony. Not pictured are postdoc and gender specialist Jessica Marter-Kenyon and business administrator Allen Stripling. CAES News
Peanut Lab wins award
The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut has won the Corteva Agriscience Award for Excellence in Research, an honor that recognizes an individual or team for career performance or for outstanding research of significant benefit to the peanut industry. The award is given each year at the American Peanut Research and Education Society meeting, which was held this past week in Savannah.
Danielle Ama Essandoh, a Ghanaian student studying at Makerere University, works in a greenhouse on a research project in Uganda led by UGA’s Soraya Leal-Bertioli in 2021. Essandoh completed a master’s degree and is now working toward a doctorate at UGA. (Submitted photo) CAES News
Peanut Innovation Lab Grant
Farmers around the world grow peanuts because the plant adapts to poor soils and produces a crop even as droughts become more common. Smallholder farmers around the world grow the crop on modest plots and cook the nuts into traditional dishes or sell the crop for money to send their kids to school. On April 12, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the University of Georgia announced a five-year extension of their collaborative research and outreach work in peanut innovation.
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.