Knowledge Generation

The project intends to identify challenges to accelerate linear growth among infants/children in low-income settings and strategies to overcome them. The study proposes delivery of an integrated package of interventions (nutritional, environmental, WASH and care) during pregnancy and early childhood in a community-based model. Using stratified randomization, the proposal has been designed in a manner that permits the assessment of the impact of these intervention packages when delivered synergistically or independently on the growth and development of the young child.

The study intends to develop an inter-generational intervention to ameliorate neonatal gut microbiota. It is based on the hypothesis that consuming prebiotic starches such as high amylose maize starch (HAMS) by mothers during the third trimester of pregnancy will modify their fecal microbiota and will subsequently lead to a beneficial variation in the fecal microbiota of the newborn infant. This will consequently guide favorable intestinal activity, thus enhancing growth, and intellectual competence of the infant in the intermediate and long term.

In this ICT-based pilot project, Digital Education, tested the impact of a combination of ICT and Participatory Learning Action (PLA) approaches to improve women's knowledge of nutrition in 30 villages. They promoted the dissemination of a series of nutrition-specific participatory videos to address nutrition-specific behaviors, locally feasible solutions as well as expenditure patterns to improve maternal and child diet quality.

This project aims to reduce human Zinc deficiency through biofortification by foliar zinc application. It aims to prove that this traditional and efficient strategy of agronomic biofortification, can be a rapid solution for improving zinc concentration in grain to address the ongoing human zinc deficiency.

The project intends to promote the adoption of an innovative model of farming - the Integrated Farming System (IFS) - in the Chidambaram region. It aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of this model of farming in improving agricultural productivity and create avenues for empowerment of women as well as augment household diet diversity and improve nutritional standards of 150 poor women farmers.

George Lomonossoff of the John Innes Centre in the United Kingdom will investigate the ability of plant symbiotic bacteria to deliver plasmids that express viral coat proteins to crop plant cells and thereby stimulate immunity against new viral infections.

Paul Dyson and colleagues at the Institute of Life Science at Swansea University in the United Kingdom will investigate the potential to exploit the symbiotic gut bacteria of the Western Flower Thrips to deliver interfering RNA that will disable the larvae of this major agricultural pest. Systemic prolonged gene silencing in thrips could be used as an innovative biocontrol strategy and a valuable research tool.

Jeremy Thompson and colleagues at Cornell University in the U.S. are working to uncover genetic targets in plants that interact with specific structures buried within the RNA of viral genomes to allow viruses to replicate and cause disease in food crops. Identifying these host molecules and mechanisms can provide the basis for modifications in plant breeding strategies to combat plant viruses in important crop plants.

Souroush Parsa of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia, along with Fernando E. Vega of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, will research whether fungi that kill insect pests can become endophytic in crop seeds, meaning the fungi can live within resulting plants without harming them. This would allow smallholder farmers to inoculate crop seeds using much smaller quantities of the fungal pathogens than when used in sprays over entire fields, providing a cheaper and more durable biological control method.

Joseph Turner of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in the United Kingdom will develop a small animal model of the parasitic disease onchocerciasis, also called river blindness, which is the second leading infectious cause of blindness. Treatment options for filarial infections are currently limited and lack effectiveness. Thus, small animal models of filarial infections are invaluable for preclinical testing of candidate drugs.