March 2010: AfricaRice, a member of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), has initiated a project on the relationship between plant disease and climate change called “Mitigating the impact of climate change on rice disease resistance in East Africa.”
The project, which is funded by the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), seeks to identify genes that will help in the development of rice varieties resistant to pathogens that are expected to increase under different climate scenarios, particularly rice blast and bacterial blight. The project will develop models to examine the responses of rice varieties and pathogens to climate change scenarios and will also study farmers’ knowledge of disease and climate change. [AfricaRice Press Release]