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Peanut Innovation Lab Director Dave Hoisington works with Rachelle Djiboune at CERAAS, where Djiboune is characterizing groundnut seed as high-oleic or not. The handheld NIR device validated by Hoisington has made her work many times faster. CAES News
High oleic testing
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could look inside a peanut kernel and see the nutritional content hiding there? It’s possible. A device calibrated and deployed by the Peanut Innovation Lab is allowing partners to test peanut seed where they are – avoiding time-consuming and expensive off-site lab tests – to see which plants have the desired oil content. The technology is saving money and speeding up the process to develop new high-oleic lines where people need them the most.
Modou Mbaye, a physicist with ISRA in Senegal sets up a drone to fly over a groundnut field. Mbaye plans to use AI to develop predictive models for crop performance based on historic data collected with drones. CAES News
Drones for plant breeding
Plant breeders can’t speed up how fast a plant grows, which limits how quickly they can develop new varieties. But knowing sooner how a plant is responding to its environment can speed up the process of selecting plants with certain traits and make that work more reliable. In earlier research, the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut used hand-held sensors to evaluate peanut plants in the field, and developed vegetation indices (VIs) that could predict disease resistance, water stress tolerance, and yield better than traditional methods of evaluating plants. Now, researchers are working with drones in four African countries, using similar technology to make selections with less time and manpower, and more accuracy, and can be used in connection with digitized methods of analysis and selection decision tools.
Interns traveled from Madagascar to Senegal for an immersive three-month training. Velonarivo, Ranto Navalona Andriamialy, George Randriamampandry, and Nomeniavo Miantsom Rakotoarivony recently returned home with one of their mentors to put their knowledge to work. CAES News
Malagasy interns in Senegal
In an innovative South-to-South training program organized by the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut, Senegalese experts welcomed Malagasy interns to their west African country this year for an immersive learning opportunity that covered topics from the basics of planning research trials to the most high-tech genetics analysis. Eight interns from Madagascar arrived in Senegal in July for training in designing, conducting and assessing breeding trials, specifically in sorghum and peanut.
The Peanut Innovation Lab has worked with Pyxus Agriculture, a private company in Malawi, to answer research questions that will help the company to build a formal peanut sector in the Southern Africa country. CAES News
Peanut Lab partners
The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut and Pyxus Agriculture Limited (Pyxus) has made it official, inking an agreement that formalizes a partnership that pairs university and private sector research efforts to improve outcomes for farmers in Malawi. In a Memorandum of Understanding between the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia and Pyxus, the partners express their mutual interest in performing and disseminating research.
Norah Kaula (left0 and Wills Munthali recently joined the Peanut IL management team, overseeing biological research in Malawi. CAES News
Malawi team adds members
The Feed the Future Innovation Lab is adding two new project managers to the team in Malawi. Norah Titiya Machinjiri Kaula will focus on agronomy and tricot trials, while Wills Mbiriyawaka Munthali will focus on variety trials and seed production. They join Linda Chinangwa, who manages the lab’s social science work in the country.
Momodou Cham of The Gambia takes video of a peanut picker running through the field as part of the Georgia Peanut Tour. (Photo by Allison Floyd) CAES News
Georgia Peanut Tour visitors
Each year, the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut brings partners from other countries to share in the three-day bus tour throughout the southern half of Georgia. This year, the lab hosted three dozen guests from Ghana, Senegal, The Gambia, Malawi, Uganda and Zambia for the three-day tour, as well as two additional days of visits to research sites, a food product innovation center, the U.S. peanut germplasm collection and meetings.
groundnuts CAES News
Groundnut Improvement Network for Africa
More than 4,000 miles separate the capital cities of Senegal in West Africa and Uganda in East Africa. Yet both countries grow peanuts and, like other countries across Africa, farmers there rely on peanuts as a food and cash crop. Five years ago, the researchers who help those farmers – plant breeders from Uganda, Senegal and seven other African countries – formed an organization called the Groundnut Improvement Network for Africa, or GINA, to develop peanut varieties that help African farmers deal with plant diseases and climate change.  
Veronica Guwela oversees biological science projects in Malawi. CAES News
Project manager in Malawi
The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut recently added two team members in Malawi to oversee projects there. While the Peanut Innovation Lab is headquartered at the University of Georgia and involves scientists from two dozen research insitutions in the U.S. and Africa, these Malawi-based team members are part of the management entity, overseeing day-to-day operations in a very hands-on way. Meet Veronica Guwela, project manager for bio-science research.
Linda Chinangwa is the Peanut Innovation Lab's project manager for social science research in Malawi. CAES News
Social science manager in Malawi
The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut recently added two team members in Malawi to oversee projects there. While the Peanut Innovation Lab is headquartered at the University of Georgia and involves scientists from two dozen research insitutions in the U.S. and Africa, these Malawi-based team members are part of the management entity, overseeing day-to-day operations in a very hands-on way. Meet Linda Chinangwa, project manager for social science research.
An employee of Pyxus Agriculture Malawi shows a map explaining the various sites where the Feed the Future Peanut Innovation Lab works with 147 local farmers, Pyxus and the national agriculture program in Malawi. The demonstration was part of the 2024 Groundnut Tour in Malawi, a three-day event modeled after the Georgia Peanut Tour. CAES News
Groundnut Tour
Ten years ago, the Georgia Peanut Tour welcomed its first visitor from the southern African nation of Malawi, where peanuts are part of the local cuisine but are only grown in small gardens or bought in informal markets. Over the next decade, visitors from Malawi attended the tour every year, traveling halfway around the world to see how farmers, shellers, researchers and others work together to get a large crop of peanuts to consumers every year.