Nutritional issues are one of the highest-priority global challenges and have been rapidly drawing international concern in recent years For example, Japan mentioned the importance of nutrition at the TICAD VI meeting in Nairobi last summer, and subsequently, an Initiative for Food and Nutrition Security in Africa (IFNA) and a Nutrition Japan Public-Private Platform (NJPPP) were launched

JIRCAS is a national research and development agency which covers a broad range of issues regarding agiriculture, forestry and fishery in developing regions Until not long ago, the  main approach of JIRCAS was on producers' perspectives such as productivity increase However, in its current fourth medium- to long-term plan that started in 2016, JIRCAS has also focused on the various systems starting from the production side to consumption side, including human nutrition

Malnutrition is complex as it includes not only energy deficiency but also micronutrition deficiency and obesity Despite its complexity and multisectoral characteristics, we have to find an approach to fight against malnutrition Agriculture plays a key role in nutritional supply as it produces food, which is the main source of nutrition In reality food is not always available because of the changes in climate, weather, season, or lack of access In addition, food availability does not automatically translate into adequate nutritional intakes for consumers due to lack of nutritional knowledge, intrahousehold allocation, etc Agricultural and food research is expected to contribute to solving these problems

Out of several nutrition-related projects ongoing in JIRCAS, three projects are introduced in this presentation The first project is an evaluation of global food supply-demand and nutritional balance (J Furuya) Using a global food supply-demand foresight model incorporating the effect of climate  change, he makes a long-term outlook for changes in food supply-demand and corresponding nutritional balance The second project is, in contrast, a regional-level research on local  food  utilization in Lao PDR (K Hasada et al ) They carry out close monitoring to evaluate individual nutritional supply focusing on protein supply throughout the year Combining food processing technology applicable to various local food resources such as fish and soybeans, they aim to propose a way for improving stable nutritional supply in the region The third project is a mixture of macro- and micro- analysis in Madagascar (S Shiratori) From national-level food supply data, she evaluates the excess or deficiency of nutrients and identifies each food category's contribution to the nutrient intake She also collects information on food consumption and anthropometry by conducting household surveys, and seeks for a realistic solution to meet the nutritional requirements of consumers