On September 8, the United Nations Development Programme released the 2021/2022 Human Development Report (HDR) — “Uncertain Times, Unsettled Lives: Shaping our The Shaping our Future in a Transforming World”, noting that human development indicators have fallen back for the second consecutive year to 2016 levels, and warned that progress toward achieving the SDGs by 2030 has disappeared.

In conjunction with the UN General Assembly in September, UN agencies, led by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), have released United in Science 2022, a multi-organization high-level compilation of the most recent science related to climate change, impacts and responses. UN Secretary-General Guterres noted the huge gap between the ambitious goals for climate change and the current situation, warned that the world is moving in a catastrophic direction, and called for urgent action to combat climate change

The workshop on the development of sugarcane research in the Asia-Pacific region is coming up tomorrow. Brazil is the world's largest producer of sugarcane, and the top five largest producers include India, Thailand, Pakistan, and China, making Asia's contribution to this crop very significant as well. Before the workshop, please watch the following video to review the cultivation and utilization of sugarcane and its potential.

As global warming progresses, there is concern about the decline in productivity and quality of paddy rice due to heat-induced sterility caused by exposure of the spikelets to high temperatures during flowering. A research group including JIRCAS has established an international open-field rice monitoring network (MINCERnet) covering 11 countries around the world to accumulate and analyze data from paddy fields under various climatic conditions. The research group identified that heat-induced sterility can be uniformly evaluated by using panicle temperature at the time of flowering, rather than ambient air temperature as an indicator. This evaluation method will improve the accuracy of predicting heat-induced sterility around the world and enable appropriate countermeasures to be taken.

The JIRCAS-FFTC Workshop "Innovation and Networking of Sugarcane Research for Future Sugarcane Industry in the Asian and Pacific Region" will be held on September 15, Thursday. In today's Pick Up, we will introduce sugarcane varieties that have been developed by JIRCAS together with collaborating research institutes.
 

In mid-August 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest investment promotion measure in U.S. history for greenhouse gas reduction investments, was passed. As summarized in an editorial in Science magazine on the challenges of climate action in the context of U.S. agriculture, the Act aims to promote investment in forest conservation and climate-friendly agricultural practices. While the causes of greenhouse gas emissions in the agricultural sector in every country and region are different, and therefore there is no one-size-fits-all technical approach to reducing greenhouse gases, a paradigm shift toward sustainable agricultural practices is becoming an inevitable global trend, and learning from each country and region's lessons will be important.

On August 31, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released the report State of the Climate in 2021, suggesting that climate change is accelerating, with atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and sea levels reaching record highs last year. The report pointed out the importance of effective communication to public opinion on the need for risk management based on worst-case scenarios.

The TICAD 8 official side-event “Managing African Soil for Food Security and Environmental Sustainability” was successfully held yesterday, August 30, 2022. A fruitful discussion was held on the role of agronomy in solving low soil fertility and nutrient deficiencies faced by small-scale farmers in Africa. We will report on the details later.

Sub-Saharan Africa is dependent on agricultural imports despite having a growing agricultural sector. One of the reasons for this is the low fertility and diversity of soil types, and overcoming this constraint requires a solid understanding of soil properties and the development of technologies that can both improve crop productivity and soil conservation. Tomorrow's online event, "Managing African Soil for Food Security and Environmental Sustainability”, will discuss the challenges of soil fertility and poor nutrient soil management with private and NGO stakeholders.