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We compare water availability, water use, water productivity and poverty across the diverse river basins studied by the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food. Water productivity tends to be higher in drier areas and where livestock grazing is integrated with rainfed crop production. We find that links among water, food security and poverty are best understood within a historical perspective. We identify opportunities to reduce poverty through water-related interventions. The way in which waterrelated investments affect poverty is influenced by changes in demography, climate, and rural society. In most basins, these trends involve trade-offs that require good governance at local, regional and basin scales

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Screening methods were devised to select cowpea genotypes with resistance to yield loss oaused by larvae of Maruca testulalis (Lepidoptera, Pyralidae). More emphasis was placed on flower damage than on pod damage. One hundred and forty genotypes of wild and cultivated cowpeas and four of related Vigna speoies were screened in the first year; 25 of these were selected for rescreening in the second year. Resistance to flower damage was assessed by the ratio of number of pods under unsprayed conditions to number of pods under sprayed conditions and resistance to overall post-flowering damage by ratio of seed yield under unsprayed conditions to seed yield under sprayed conditions. The absolute numbers of pods and seed yields from unsprayed plots were also taken into account. Several genotypes of moderate resistance and one of high resistance were located among cultivars of different origins.

Providing the water needed to produce food for more than 9 billion people by 2050 seems simple: agriculture must produce more food with less water. However, three complex issues are involved: First, water, food production and rural development do not have a simple correlation. Second, there are interactions between processes at local, basin and global scales. Third, change involves people in complex networks of institutions. The Challenge Program on Water and Food brings together agriculturalists, hydrologists and development specialists in a global-to-local programme that focuses on change through institutions. We believe that this scale, complexity and involvement are necessary to deliver plausible change