IITA has adopted a multipronged strategy to tackle Cassava brown streak disease (CBSD), a serious threat to cassava production, to reduce its effects on cassava in epidemic areas, and prevent its further spread.

Cassava value addition is helping African farmers increase their income, and improve livelihoods and food security through the USAID-funded project Unleashing the Power of Cassava (UPoCA).

Nigeria has released four improved cassava varieties that would strengthen its lead in cassava production, increase farmers’ incomes, and guarantee food security.

A multipartner team of scientists have developed an early warning system that uses cell phones to monitor and track cassava disease outbreaks in Tanzania, and now in Rwanda.

Virologist James Legg discusses how IITA and partners have put in place a rigorous new system called Quality Management Protocol to assure the health of cassava planting material through seed systems.

The cassava brown streak disease continues to threaten the food security and livelihoods of over 200 million people in East Africa. It causes greater economic damage than the mosaic disease as it destroys the more valuable part of the crop—the roots.

The perception of farmers in East Africa that cassava maintains soil fertility was confirmed in a study that looked at the roles and production constraints of cassava using model simulations.

Conserving local varieties ensures a robust gene pool of important traits for crop improvement and helps guarantee food security.

Baba Alphonse is a 60-year-old farmer from Ogoukpate Village, northern Benin. He all but abandoned cassava and maize farming were it not for IITA’s intervention.

IITA scientists are a step closer to making a breakthrough in developing cassava that is resistant to both the cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) and the cassava mosaic disease (CMD) in Eastern and Central Africa.