Agriculture, Health and Environment Department

Current and Recent Research Projects

An enhanced toolkit for Botrytis control in protected cropping | BBSRC PACE Horticulture | PI, £1.1M | 2024 - 2028

Botrytis cinerea is a devastating pathogen of over 1000 plant species and represents the primary postharvest disease of strawberries. Beyond typical fruit rots, recent reports of severe crown-based Botrytis infections highlight an emerging challenge to the industry. An additional threat is presented by the multi-fungicide resistant species Botrytis fragariae, a novel challenge to strawberry production in the EU and USA. Monitoring and control of these three Botrytis diseases is critical, with potential losses up to 80% in the absence of control strategies.

Options for control are limited with tighter legislation on active ingredients for chemical control and due to establishment of fungicide resistance in Botrytis. As such, greater emphasis is required on the use of integrated management strategies combining in-field diagnostics for pathogen surveillance, development of durable disease resistant crops and improved deployment of microbial-biocontrols within protected systems.

Through this project we develop an advanced toolbox for precision monitoring and integrated disease management of Botrytis in protected strawberry. This work is underpinned by the fundamental study of Botrytis host-specificity, genome evolution and genomic exchange.

Understanding microbiome dynamics of crops in controlled light environments | University of Greenwich Vice Chancellor PhD Scholarship | Co-I | 2024-2027

Understanding the true Medicinal value of medicinal mushrooms | Growing Kent and Medway Business Innovation Voucher | PI | 2024-2024

Epidemiology of anthracnose on cashew genotypes and sustainable control strategies in Côte d'Ivoire | RSIF PASET visiting PhD Scholarship | PI | 2024-2024

Striga management using a host-specific fungal pathogen | University of Greenwich, REF funding | PI | 2023-2024

Phenotyping flavour: novel high-throughput assays to assess aroma and bitterness across hop breeding collections | University of Greenwich, HEIF funding | PI | 2023-2024

Distribution characterization of the fungi responsible for post-harvest rots in yams and control with biopesticides in the Cote d’Ivoire | RSIF PASET visiting PhD Scholarship | PI | 2023-2023

Development of in-field tools for early detection of fruit storage rots | BBSRC Horticultural Quality and Food Loss Network | PI | 2022-2023

Breeding better biocontrols – Identifying targets for Clonostachys rosea strain improvement through partitioning genomic regions involved in insect infection from those involved in hyphal parasitism | University of Greenwich REF funding | PI | 2022-2023

Viral diversity and coevolution with Fungal and Oomycete pathogens | University of Greenwich, Vice Chancellor PhD Scholarship | PI | 2021-2024

Developing next generation diagnostics to prevent establishment of fungal pathogens in UK fruit crops | Royal Society of Biology undergraduate studentship | PI | 2021-2021

A One Health approach to managing rodent pests impacting human health and wellbeing in South African townships: OHRatSA

This (£600,000 project (2025-2028) is jointly funded by UK Medical Research Council and the South African Medical Research Council and aims to understand complex problems caused by rodents in South African townships, particularly the threat of rodent borne infections on human health, nutritional security and mental health and wellbeing. The project will innovate methods of uncovering neglected problems and generate unique information on how current rodent management practices may be exacerbating the rodent problem through negatively impacting personal and community agency and wellbeing.  We will take a One Health ecologically-based approach to resolving rodent pest issues through the evaluation of innovative technologies collaborating with community and public authorities to assess social and environmental efficacy and sustainability.

Our research questions are:

1. What is the impact of rats on food and nutrition security in urban environments? This will focus particularly on the disease threats from urine and faecal contamination within household food stores and leftover cooked food, the promotion of aflatoxins, and nutritive losses from rodents selectively eating the seed germ.
2. What is the impact of rats on mental health and wellbeing in South African townships? We argue impacts on mental health and wellbeing are likely to be severe in African contexts, particularly where social stigmas within communities can lead to reduced personal agency and erosion of social capital. Rodent pest issues can be perceived as something to be ashamed of, where often taboos, community pressure and public perceptions may increase mental health problems amongst the most vulnerable members of a community suffering from rodent pest problems.
3. Can new innovations in ecologically based rodent management be safer and more socially accepted than current reliance on poisons for public and environmental health programmes? We will take advantage of new innovations in rodent fertility control to evaluate stakeholder (public, private sector, local authority) acceptability of rodent contraceptives and how contraceptives may reduce risk of disease transmission when compared to using rodenticides. 

One Health approach to tick-borne disease control through manipulation of reservoir host communities at landscape scale

This (£1,250,000 project (2023-2026) is funded by UK Research and Innovation and Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs One Health approach to vector borne diseases programme. The project partners are the Animal and Plant Health Agency, Forest Research, University of York, University of Salford.  The UK's Net Zero 2050 policy contains bold plans to plant millions of trees each year to expand landcover in woodlands and forests, not only helping to sequester carbon but also helping to lower local temperatures as the climate changes. While this is a valid ambition, such changes in land use may have implications for the spread of unwanted non-native species and disease. As such these plans must be evaluated to develop a robust strategy and avoid unintended consequences from our interventions to mitigate climate change and achieve a net zero society. The grey squirrel is an invasive species in the UK, with detrimental impacts on the conservation of the native red squirrel and with bark stripping damage to trees and forests that is estimated to cost the UK economy £37 million per year. Grey squirrels, now distributed through most of Great Britain, are the dominant small mammal in many habitats and important hosts of ticks that feed on them. The ticks that feed on grey squirrels can pick up infections in the squirrel's blood and can transmit these infections to people bitten by infected ticks, notably Lyme disease. The number of people contracting Lyme disease is growing in all parts of the UK, with hotspots in Scotland, the southwest of England and southern England. Efforts to control grey squirrels are under way in many parts of the UK, to help the native red squirrel populations which are under threat by greys. This programme has wide public support and is trying to control grey squirrels humanely using contraceptives. Some experts have argued that the removal of grey squirrels by itself could result in a reduction in Lyme disease risk, but this has not yet been proven. This is because other wild animals can be fed upon by ticks, and it is not clear what will happen when grey squirrels are removed in terms of disease risk.

Our project plans to answer this question by determining what happens when grey squirrel populations are being reduced, and how this affects ticks and diseases. We plan to look at novel ways of controlling or monitoring ticks by determining what attracts and repels them. We also plan to develop predictive models on what would happen as the UK becomes more covered in woodlands and forests in the future where climate is also changing, and what this would mean for grey squirrel populations, and the ticks and diseases they host. Finally we plan to engage with the public, particularly those trying to save the red squirrel, but also the wider public and their attitudes towards squirrels, ticks and infections such as Lyme disease to ensure we understand people's concerns and how best to deal with a changing environment and climate.

Farmer Research Networks for Ecological Pest and Disease Management

This is the fifth project phase of funding ($520,000) (2023-2026) received from the McKnight Foundation, an independent private philanthropic charity established by the McKnight family in the United States to improve the quality of life for present and future generations. See: https://www.ccrp.org/  The foundation has been funding NRI’s collaborative research to develop sustainable pest management options for smallholder farmers since 2009, and this project (2023-2026) builds on 14+ years of previous funding provided by McKnight, providing the continuity to address complex issues related to improving access to high quality ecosystem services for pest management in smallholder crop production. The project involves partners at the Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology in Tanzania, and Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources in Malawi.

The next step in the development of pesticidal plants has farmer researchers at the core of agro-ecological research where we try to develop landscape level research activities that help improve pest regulation.  This involves increasing botanical diversity to help provide habitat and food for natural enemies and pollinators and increasing the adopting of natural products for pest control so that insect diversity can be maintained.

Developing effective rodent control strategies to reduce disease risk in ecologically and culturally diverse rural landscapes

This £2 million research project (2021-2024) is funded by the UKRI MRC Global Challenge Research Fund on global health.  Besides NRI, the project involves partners from the University of Aberdeen, University of St. Andrews, Pasteur Institute Madagascar, Vahatra Association Madagascar, Sokoine University of Agriculture Tanzania and Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences Tanzania. The ultimate aim of the project is to reduce the risk from rodent-borne infections, and improve health and well-being by increasing the capacity to develop rodent-control measures that are applicable, sustainable and resilient given local ecological, epidemiological, agricultural and socio-cultural contexts. The project will focus on rural landscapes in Tanzania and Madagascar, using exemplar case-study host-pathogen systems with contrasting ecological and epidemiological characteristics. We will exploit high quality existing data and conduct new experimental studies, integrating these with state-of-the-art statistical and modelling approaches, as well as ethnographic and social science studies, in order to inform the co-development of effective rodent management strategies with communities and stakeholders. Community co-development and engagement will take place from the start of the project, with community representatives involved in decision making processes, in the implementation and collection of data and interpreting impact.

Future rodent management for pig and poultry health (RodentGate)

This project (2020-2024) is part of a European consortium funded through the ERA-NET International coordination of research on infectious animal diseases https://www.icrad.eu/ The project works across Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom with a total project value of €1,750,000, with UK funding of €500,000 from UKRI BBSRC. The project aims to maintain or improve the health of pigs and poultry with respect to rodent-borne diseases in a situation where rodenticides are no longer accepted as a major tool for rodent management. The specific objectives are 1) to document changes in disease risk for pigs and poultry when classical rodent management around farms is prevented and rodent populations around farms change in abundance or composition and 2) to propose appropriate evidence-based and economically sustainable strategies for the ecologically-based management of rodents and rodent-borne infections around farms.

“FARMS-SAFE” (Future-proofing Antibacterial resistance Risk Management Surveillance and Stewardship in the Argentinian Farming Environment), led by the University of Bristol and Universidad Nacional De La Plata, Argentina.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global threat to health and development. Argentina, has well-established monitoring of medicine use and resistance withing the human health sector, but no equivalent programmes for the veterinary sector, food or environment. This project has created a surveillance structure to measure use and resistance in the dairy and pig industries and is training researchers who can continue to monitor and evaluate interventions to reduce medicine usage and AMR in the future.

“RodentGate” is a project led by the University of Antwerp, investigating the role of rodents in and around pig and poultry farms in the EU and UK as reservoirs of livestock diseases, and projecting what may happen under more stringent control of rodenticides. Ecologically-based rodent management allows controls to be precisely targeted, which requires understanding the rodent demography, life history, space use, dispersal capacities, pathogen presence and transmission patterns in the rodent population.

NRI is leading a workpackage evaluating the presence and diversity of relevant pathogens in wild rodents in and around pig and poultry farms, and has to date detected a variety of bacterial pathogens in rodents, including Leptospira, Brachyspira, Lawsonia and Salmonella,  as well as antibiotic resistant bacterial strains of Enterobacteriaceae.

The RodentGate project has been extended, in collaboration with APHA, to include a postgraduate research student who is exploring the longitudinal genetic diversity of Salmonella in rodents and pigs on a case study farm and evaluating the implications for genomic typing and surveillance.

Dr Bouvaine's current project involves the use of endosymbiotic bacteria as a novel biocontrol agent for crop pests and diseases. The aim is to exploit virulent strains of the endosymbiotic bacteria, Wolbachia, as a novel biocontrol agent for controlling the harmful insect pest, whitefly, in order to protect African cassava from destructive whitefly-transmitted plant viruses. The whitefly, Bemisia tabaci, is one of the most devastating agricultural pests for poor farmers over the last three decades owing to its wide geographic spread, the diverse ways that it damages crops, its capacity to develop resistance to insecticides, and, perhaps most significantly, its ability to transmit over 110 plant viruses that cause devastating crop disease pandemics worldwide. Amongst the most important of these viruses of recent times, cassava brown streak viruses (CBSVs), which cause cassava brown streak disease (CBSD), threaten the food security of over 40 million cassava-dependent poor in eastern Africa because the disease causes complete rotting of infected tubers. The lack of disease-resistant varieties and alternative whitefly control options such as insecticides (either unavailable or too expensive for many African farmers) leaves producers completely vulnerable to the damages caused by whitefly-transmitted CBSV.

Previous Funded Research Projects

• 2012 Volkswagen Stiftung Evolutionary Biology Postdoctoral Fellowship, “Sexual behavior and social constraints in a New World primate”.
• 2011 Leakey Foundation Research Grant, “Female mating strategies in tufted capuchin monkeys (Sapajus nigritus)”.
• 2011 German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Fellowship, “Adaptive function of female sexual calls in tufted capuchin monkeys (Sapajus nigritus)”.

Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of Commodity Production; Identifying Opportunities for Sustainable Productivity Growth Across the Agri-Food Chain.

A comparative LCA exercise that aims to quantify the environmental burden of different commodities. This is important as trade-offs between different commodities occur across different impact types. The results suggest driver of impacts that are relevant for UK food policies such as the trade-off between environmental and welfare objectives and how cycles of seasonal production for commodities consumed year-round may offshore and concentrate important environmental burdens such as water scarcity.

Climate Smart Outcome Methodology

This project developed a simple tool for assessing the relative performance climate smart agriculture (CSA) initiatives. This was undertaken in order to inform portfolio design and assessment as part of process of co-creation. The application of which at workshops demonstrated important trade-offs between profitability and other CSA pillars, notably the challenge in facilitation both adaptation and mitigation at the farm level.

Current research projects

Development of a pheromone-based monitoring system for a newly identified Contarinia midge on the Canadian Prairies (2017-2020) Canadian Agricultural Research Program

Exploitation of Interspecific Signals to Deter Oviposition by Spotted-Wing Drosophila (2019-2022) BBSRC Industrial Partnership Award with NIAB-EMR.

Auto-Dissemination of entomopathogenic fungi for sustainable control of spotted wing drosophila (2018-2021) Innovate UK with NIAB-EMR.

Oviposition behaviour of Aedes aegypti (DTA PhD studentship)

Push-pull against spotted wing drosophila (BBSRC-CTP studentship with NIAB-EMR)

Control of red poultry mite (British Egg Marketing Board PhD studentship)

Previous research projects

Development of a monitoring and mass trapping trap against pepper weevil (2017-2018) Innovate Wales

MIDGETRAP-An innovative semiochemical based tool for monitoring and control of biting midge vectors of bluetongue and Schmallenberg disease. (2014) EU Intra-European Fellowship for career development, SLU Sweden

Reducing the impact of disease on the sustainability of international aquaculture through an innovative odour-based detection system. (2013). Senior visiting fellowship, DAAD, Germany

Field trials of synthetic sex pheromone to reduce visceral leishmaniasis transmission by Lutzomyia longipalpis in Brazil. (2005-2015), PI Gordon Hamilton, Welcome Trust, Keele University.

NIH “Emerging zoonotic malaria in Malaysia: linking human and mosquito surveillance with population genetic tools to evaluate adaptive human-human transmission risk” Role: Co-I (Apr 2022-2026, US$620,386)

Southeast Asia remains a global hotspot for emerging zoonotic infectious diseases with risk elevated in forested tropical regions undergoing intensive anthropogenic land-use change. The recent increase in transmission of the monkey malaria parasite Plasmodium knowlesi, endemic to Southeast Asia, exemplifies how these types of ecological linkage mechanisms can influence disease spill-over to humans. Alongside characterising P. knowlesi population genetic structure to understand transmission networks, this project aims to determine mosquito vector behavioural and landscape ecology factors contributing to increasing transmission of P. knowlesi in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo.

Infrared & AI to diagnose and quantify Onchocerca volvulus in blackflies (Co-I)

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (Nov 2021-Nov 2024, US$2.6 million)

Partners: University of Glasgow, Institute de Recherche en Sciences de la Santé Burkina Faso, Ifakara Health Institute Tanzania, Sightsavers International, Osun State University Nigeria, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture Benin

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation “Improved Simulium capture for onchocerciasis elimination surveillance and the spatial distribution of blackfly biting” Role: PI (Nov 2021-Mar 2026, US$1,425,861)

Entomological surveillance is at the heart of the onchocerciasis elimination framework proposed by the World Health Organization. This project aims to develop suitable methods for the intensive sampling required to verify the interruption of transmission and eventual elimination of the disease by:

1. testing and optimizing Esperanza Window Traps, Host Decoy Traps and oviposition traps for collecting the blackfly vectors of onchocerciasis,
2. increasing entomological capacity in key skills such as blackfly identification, dissection, cytotaxonomy and molecular parasite screening in endemic countries, and
3. determining the spatial distribution and intensity of vector biting, and therefore exposure risk, of different communities within transmission zones, using geostatistical modelling frameworks developed from contemporaneous entomological and serological field data.

MRC GCRF Global Infections Foundation Award “Human Decoy Trap; operational and social acceptability of novel tool to improve surveillance and control of mosquitoes and other disease vectors” Role: Co-I (Feb 2017-Jan 2019, £556,461)

Current tools for sampling malarial mosquitoes are time-consuming, ethically contentious and difficult to standardize. Accordingly, data between countries and regions cannot be reliably compared. This project tested a new, standardized and exposure-free mosquito trap, the Host Decoy Trap, against existing WHO-approved method the human landing catch and other techniques in a wide range of epidemiological and entomological settings in Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Benin, resulting in a commercial prototype trap that can be used for outdoor-biting mosquitoes. Research also included a Participatory Technology Assessment of various sampling methods, highlighting the attributes valued by field staff tasked with mosquito surveillance.

NERC Valuing Nature: Health & Wellbeing “Taking the bite out of wetlands: Managing mosquitoes and the socio-ecological value of wetlands for wellbeing” Role: Researcher Co-I (Aug 2016-Jul 2020, £1,307,532)

The WetlandLIFE project explored the ecological, economic, social and cultural values associated with wetlands in England to better understand how to manage change into the future, alongside an ecological focus on mosquito management now and historically to support the recreational use of wetlands for the health and well-being of local human populations. The project delivered guidance for managing mosquitoes in the context of healthy wetland environments, art-science collaborations and artistic installations that encouraged engagement with mosquito discourses and the wetland environment, as well as sociological and historical scholarship on how English wetlands have shaped contemporary society, and economic valuations of wetlands and how those value may change under pressure from potential future mosquito-influenced futures.

All project outputs can be seen on the WetlandLIFE website: http://www.wetlandlife.org/project-outputs

Current Postgraduate Students

• Rosalia Joseph: Analysing gender disparities in malaria exposure in Sub-Saharan Africa (VC Scholarship; 2024-present).

• Lachlan Keneally: Relational and political ecology perspectives on urban food and commoning in Bristol (UK Food Systems Centre for Doctoral Training; 2023-present).

• Ainhoa Rodriguez-Pereira: The impact of Apicomplexan’s methylerythritol phosphate (MEP) pathway on gene regulation and behaviour of the host (BBSRC London Interdisciplinary Doctoral Programme [LIDo]; 2023-present).

• Monique Shepherd-Gorringe: Development of a novel, long-acting formulation for the treatment and prevention of malaria (Doctoral Training Alliance; 2018-present).

Smart traps for improved surveillance and early detection of plant regulated pests

(2024-2025, funded by Innovate UK)

Bemisia tabaci is a major pest and virus vector affecting economically important crops such as tomato and cucumber. It is a regulated pest in the UK and frequently intercepted on imported plants, particularly poinsettia. Current surveillance relies on visual inspections and sticky traps, which are time-consuming and require expert identification due to similarities with non-quarantine species like Trialeurodes vaporariorum.

This project aims to develop and evaluate a novel smart trap for the automatic, real-time detection of B. tabaci. The prototype combines a suction mechanism with an optical sensor powered by machine learning, enabling passive data collection and remote monitoring. This innovation has the potential to enhance UK biosecurity by improving the efficiency and accuracy of pest surveillance and reducing the burden on inspection services.

Plant virus ecology: the role of parasitic weeds in virus epidemiology and implications for crop production

(2023–2024, funded by the University of Greenwich)

Plant virus ecology seeks to understand the ecological role of viruses and their vectors in managed and natural environments and the reciprocal effects of the ecosystems on virus and vectors distribution and virus evolution.

In this project, we investigated the presence of viruses in parasitic weeds (Cuscuta spp. and Striga spp.) by high-throughput sequencing (HTS) to get an unbiased detection of all DNA and RNA viruses present in these samples. Data from HTS will be used to develop targeted diagnostics to detect vi-ruses in insects to identify potential vectors.

Virus survey in UK vineyards

(2021 – 2023, Consultancy service to NIAB EMR Viticulture consortium)

The UK wine industry has grown markedly in recent years and is an important sector to the UK economy. Viral diseases of grapevine can however jeopardize this growth. This work aims at studying the diversity and distribution of viruses infecting UK vineyards and developing on-site diagnostic tools to rapidly identify infected vines in established vineyards. These tools will help in reducing the costs associated with the delayed removal of infected vines and limit the spread of virus diseases in vineyards.

Using High-Throughput Sequencing indexing to strengthen the yam (Dioscorea spp.) seed systems in Sub-Saharan Africa

(2019 – 2022, Royal Society International Collaboration Award)

This collaborative project will transfer state-of-the-art diagnostic techniques to the Biotechnology Laboratory of the Council for scientific and Industrial Research-Crops Research Institute (CSIR-CRI), Ghana thereby improving capacity for yam disease diagnostics and seed certification in the country. The success of this project will ensure the timely availability of disease-free seed yams on a price-competitive basis as the system is producing planting materials to feed the seed yam commercial farmers in Ghana.

Identification of mealybug vectors involved in the transmission of badnavirus infecting yam in Northern Nigeria

(2019-2020, funded by BBSRC Global Challenges Research Fund: “CONNECTED” - Community network for African vector borne plant diseases award)

Yam productivity is severely compromised by the high impact of yam viruses and their insect vectors. Sap-feeding mealybugs are both direct plant pests and active vectors of badnaviruses, but only little is known about the role they play as vectors of yam badnaviruses. We plan to identify mealybug species infesting yam fields in northern Nigeria and thought to be vectors of Dioscorea bacilliform viruses (DBVs), detect and characterize DBV species in individual mealybugs, and evaluate whether there are potential correlations between certain mealybug- and DBV-species, which could inform vector specificity.

Renewal: Enabling Research Tools for Cassava and Yam Virologists and Breeders

(2016-2024, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation)

This project is a continuation of the ‘Development of On-Farm Robust Diagnostic Toolkits for Yam Virus Diseases’ project (ended September 2016). The reinvestment is to optimize the yam virus diagnostic tests developed to date, as well as make further concerted efforts to generate improved antisera for yam potyviruses and badnaviruses to assist both the development of lateral flow devices for field diagnostics, and rapid concentration of virus particles for nucleic acid tests. The reinvestment will focus on evaluation of the best tests for use in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and technology transfer to West African scientists and laboratories. Transfer of the tests will enable W. African National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) to determine the virus-status of yam breeding lines and certify planting material for distribution to yam smallholders is virus-free.

Building links with the Kent wine industry

(2015–2017, funded by the University of Greenwich)

Grapevine (Vitis vinifera) is a major crop worldwide and produces a valuable agricultural commodity. The UK wine industry is a fast-growing sector and in 2017, an area of c. 2,500 hectares had been planted, a tripling of the area since 2000. Production of wine is projected to increase from the current 6 million bottles of wine per annum to c. 40 million bottles by 2040. This project aims to increase our knowledge about the presence and incidence of viruses in UK vineyards to develop efficient control strategies at this crucial and early stage of vineyard establishment. This project will assist the UK grapevine grower’s network by creating awareness of the presence of economically important viral diseases in UK vineyards and contributing to the sustainability of the UK grapevine industry.

Development of On-Farm Robust Diagnostic Toolkits for Yam Virus Diseases

(2012-2016, funded by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation)

Yams are propagated vegetatively through their tubers, which leads to an accumulation of tuber-borne diseases in farmers' planting material and subsequent serious crop yield losses. The economically important tuber-borne diseases are caused by viruses, and the only effective method of controlling these virus diseases is to use virus-free planting material. The scarcity and associated high expense of such material has been identified as one of the most important critical constraints to increasing yam production and productivity in West Africa. The goal of this project is to develop sensitive and specific cost-effective diagnostic tests for the most important African yam viruses and then adapt these tests to be suitable for on-farm virus-indexing. Due to the presence of integrated pararetrovirus sequences (EPRVs) in some yam breeding line genomes it is also necessary to identify which lines contain activatable EPRV sequences and identify diagnostic procedures for these EPRVs. The diagnostic toolkits and procedures developed will be suitable for use in West African indexing centres and this will lead to the delivery of high-quality virus-free planting material of preferred yam varieties for multiplication and distribution to yam smallholders in West Africa. This will lead to improved food security and income generation for smallholders in West Africa.