Isabel McLaughlin, Angharad Johnston, Charles Spillane.
16th February 2024
During the visit of Dr. Jennie Barron, Affiliate Investigator on the LEG4DEV project from SLU (Sweden), LEG4DEV held a mini-progress meeting in IITA Zambia with Dr. Barron where LEG4DEV funded researchers from Uni of Galway and SLU (based out of IITA) gave updates on their ongoing research to enable scaling of legumes for development outcomes. Dr. Barron travelled with some of the LEG4DEV researchers to field sites across Zambia, where LEG4DEV is investigating the relationship between water availability and legume scaling potential. At the LEG4DEV mini-progress meeting research progress presentations were given by the following LEG4DEV researchers: Theresa Kinkese (policy options and routes for scaling legumes), Mwala Silumesi (legume scaling for water use efficiency), Oliver Remeredzai (labour saving technologies & mechanisation routes for scaling legumes), Emmanuel Ngonga (Water-use efficiency in cereal-legume farming systems in Southern Africa). In addition to the bi-weekly LEG4DEV Activity Team meetings, the IITA mini-progress meeting allowed the researchers to engage in each other’s ongoing LEG4DEV research activities, including to share experiences on research questions, methods and approaches for interdisciplinary research to enable scaling of legumes for development outcomes.