Agricultural innovation in low-income tropical countries contributes to a more effective and sustainable use of natural resources and reduces hunger and poverty through economic development in rural areas. Yet, despite numerous recent public and private initiatives to develop capacities for agricultural innovation, such initiatives are often not well aligned with national efforts to revive existing Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS). In an effort to improve coordination and responsiveness of Capacity Development (CD) initiatives, the G20 Agriculture Ministers requested the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to lead the development of a Tropical Agricultural Platform (TAP), which is designed to improve coherence and coordination of CD for agricultural innovation in the tropics. This paper presents a summary of the results obtained from three regional needs assessments undertaken by TAP and its partners. The surveyed tropical regions were Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Central America. The findings reveal a mismatch in all three regions between the external supply of primarily individual CD and the actual demand for institutional CD. The misalignment might be addressed by strengthening south-south and triangular collaboration and by improving the institutional capacities that would render national AIS more demand-oriented and responsive to the needs of smallholders in domestic agriculture. OPEN ACCESSSustainability 2015, 7 832

No abstract

No abstract

SummaryThe potato tuber moth (PTM) represents a dangerous pest on potato crop in Italy, spreading out from southern areas to central and northern areas.Introductions of Solanum berthaultii, S. commersonii, S. pitmatisectum, S. sparsipilum, S. spegazz.ini, S. sucrense. S. tari]ense wild species and S. tuberosum x S. berthaultii hybrids were evaluated for resistance to a PTM population isolated from a field in central Italy, by means of an antibiosis test on tubers in the laboratory and of an antixenosis trial in the field. Sdveral S. sparsipilum and S. pinnatisectum clones showed an antibiosis effect on larval survival and antixcnosis of the aerial and the hypogeal parts of the plant. In the field, the genotypes with leaf glandular trichomes did not reveal the expected antixenosis effect of the aerial part of the plant.