The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) will
spend at least US$400 million on nutrition-relevant agricultural research
for the next 3 years, while the United Kingdom and Canadian governments
announced new funding to CGIAR to support this work.

The CGIAR commitment announced today includes ?42 million in new funding
from the UK to support biofortification work that will benefit 4.2 million
farming households, with ?30 million of that earmarked for HarvestPlus to
continue developing six nutritionally-enriched crop varieties for 3 million
households in seven countries in Africa and Asia. Another ?12 million will
go to CGIAR's International Potato Center (CIP) to support similar work.

CGIAR is scaling up its nutrition-related work across other CGIAR Research
Programs as well, including Roots, Tubers and Bananas; Livestock and Fish;
Policy, Institutions and Markets; Grain Legumes; and Aquatic Agricultural
Systems, aiming to increase access to quality animal and fish sourced food,
reduce risk of zoonotic diseases (any vertebrate disease that can be
transmitted to humans or vice-versa) , and increase food safety in value
chains critical to poor households. Innovations by CGIAR's International
Institute of Tropical Agriculture and International Crops Research Institute
for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) are helping to detect and control
aflatoxin, a harmful and potentially deadly poison produced by fungus that
invests various food crops in Africa.



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