Prof. Dr Georg Cadisch visited the SustainSahel project sites in Senegal and Burkina Faso, investigating native shrub legume integration into millet, sorghum and peanut-based cropping systems in September 2022. Georg is involved in WP7: Geo-statistical and scenario modelling of crop, shrubs, livestock systems, and at the same time, is a Principal Investigator in the LEG4DEV project - Legume-based agroecological intensification of maize and cassava cropping systems in Sub-Saharan Africa for water-food-energy nexus sustainability, nutritional security & livelihood resilience in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Zambia & Malawi.
Georg is looking to identify opportunities for sharing experiences between the findings of the EU-SustainSahel project and LEG4DEV project. With both projects having a strong focus on promoting legume-based solutions to enhance productivity and sustainability of local farming systems, the experience of SustainSahel in West Africa shows a high potential to enhance resource use efficiency through better integration of animal components. Additionally, there are first indications that complementing traditional grass/cereal stover-based feeds with native legumes also enhances animal health.
The common interest of both projects in using cereal-legume-based intercropping systems to enhance the resilience of cropping systems towards climate change provides excellent opportunities to create synergies between projects and the transfer of knowledge. In particular, the envisaged improvement of modelling capabilities of existing models to evaluate interactions in intercropping systems under different agroecosystems and climate scenarios, as developed in LEG4DEV, will be a very valuable input for the SustainSahel project.
Further information
Weblinks
leg4dev.org: LEG4DEV project hompage
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