CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report for Year 2013

Transcription

1 CGIAR CONSORTIUM CGIAR Consortium Office 1000 Avenue Agropolis Montpellier, France Tel: Fax: consortium@cgiar.org CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report for Year 2013 Prepared by: The CGIAR Consortium Office Science for a food-secure future Science for a food-secure future

2 CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report for Year 2013 Approved by the Consortium Board on 18 June 2014 For submission to the Fund Council 2 CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year 2013

3 CONTENTS Preamble 5 1. Key messages and portfolio level traffic light analysis 9 2. Synthesis of the most significant results (outputs and outcomes) emerging from the CRP portfolio and bearing on progress towards the SLOs Factors influencing progress towards outcomes and outputs, associated risks and overall effectiveness of partnership strategies Strengths and weaknesses, in terms of resource efficiencies and research synergies, of inter-crp linkages Strengths and weaknesses, in terms of research synergies, of CRPs gender analysis and research Whether the portfolio is on track to deliver on the SLOs and whether it is financially sustainable Lessons learned and implications for the future evolution of the portfolio Risks to portfolio progress and their mitigation 25 Appendix: CGIAR Research Program on Managing and Sustaining Crop Collections 2013 results 27 CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year

4 CGIAR Research Programs Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) Aquatic Agricultural Systems (AAS) Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) Dryland Cereals Dryland Systems Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP) Grain Legumes Integrated Systems for the Humid Tropics (Humidtropics) Livestock and Fish (L&F) Maize (MAIZE) Managing and Sustaining Crop Collections (Genebanks) Policies, Institutions and Markets (PIM) Roots, Tubers and Bananas (RTB) Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) Wheat (WHEAT) CGIAR SYSTEM LEVEL OUTCOMES (SLOs) 1. Reduced rural poverty 2. Improved food security 3. Improved nutrition and health 4. Sustainably managed natural resources 4 CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year 2013

5 Preamble This is the second year that all CGIAR Research Programs (CRPs) submitted annual reports, and submissions were of much higher quality than last year. The Science Team reviewed all reports and provided comments and requests for improving all of them, though five were originally submitted in very satisfactory form. This CRP Portfolio Report thus draws on a richer and more coherent body of evidence than was possible last year. As last year, it qualitatively assesses progress. Indeed, indicators of progress toward the systemlevel outcomes (SLOs), measured in terms of progress toward achieving CRP intermediate development outcomes (IDOs), have not yet been agreed system-wide. However, the Consortium and CGIAR donors are likely to reach agreement on indicators and metrics over the coming 2 years, by the start of the second phase of CRPs. It is hard work to produce a programmatic CRP annual report, synthesizing multiple reports submitted by CRP participants (Centers and key partners outside CGIAR) and reporting results that are significant across the entire CRP, as opposed to simple milestones with limited significance. All CRPs complied with these time-demanding requirements, and the Science Team appreciates the diligence of CRP colleagues and the resulting high quality of the 2013 CRP annual reports. At this stage in the evolution of the CRP portfolio, it is useful to recognize three main types of CRP 1. These categories are used to structure this assessment of portfolio progress toward the SLOs, presented through a traffic light rating system, and the discussion of 2013 outputs and outcomes. The combination of factors influencing progress toward the SLOs differs for each category. The first CRP category includes programs built upon a strong research base initiated decades ago by two or three Centers, each researching one cereal crop. These CRPs have been (i) integrating work across the 2-3 Centers concerned, (ii) developing new approaches to research for development along their impact pathways and (iii) enlarging the scope of their external partnerships to better tackle research and development issues. The CRPs concerned are the Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP), the CRP on Maize (MAIZE) and the CRP on Wheat (WHEAT). They have continued to build upon this significant research momentum, and upon the very substantial databases and germplasm collections built over time. Through their new partnerships, they are accelerating the pre-reform research pace. Despite the lag time inherent in crop breeding, they produced significant research outputs and development outcomes in 2013, many resulting from work begun before the reform (GRiSP s annual report is an excellent illustration). New partnerships facilitate new work on value chains for their crop and improved management of specific aspects of their natural resource base such as soil or water, from the perspective of increases in their crop s productivity. The second CRP category builds upon some dimensions of CGIAR pre-reform research to create new research synergies by enlarging 1 There is in addition a research-support platform, on Managing and Sustaining Crop Collections (Genebanks CRP), designed as a stable funding mechanism for genebank maintenance and germplasm distribution. The Appendix provides an overview of its 2013 results. CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year

6 partnerships and framing the work from a research-for-development perspective. These CRPs are built upon a more fragmented historical base than type 1 CRPs and therefore must overcome obstacles to scientific integration to meet new objectives and demands. This category includes the CRPs on Roots, Tubers and Bananas (RTB); Livestock and Fish (L&F); Grain Legumes; Dryland Cereals; Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA); Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE); and Policies, Institutions and Markets (PIM). These CRPs create new scientific synergies by, for instance, breeding diverse crops in a more integrated manner than before, which facilitates more effective cross-learning; integrating work on policy for forests and trees with work on improving trees for farmers fields and landscapes; and adopting new approaches to value chains, gender research, and the integration of research on ecosystem services with research on land, soil and water management. CRPs in the third category work in areas that have fewer connections to pre-reform research and cut across research domains, requiring new scientific approaches and research partnerships, in addition to formulating a research-for-development perspective. Such partnerships are new to CGIAR engaging as they do the global research communities on climate change research, nutrition and health, and systemic approaches and system ecology but are fundamental to the successful design and implementation of these new conceptual approaches. They aim to resolve particularly difficult research-for-development challenges that more traditional disciplinary approaches have not been able to resolve. The CRPs on Aquatic Agricultural Systems (AAS); Integrated Systems for the Humid Tropics (Humidtropics); Dryland Systems; Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS); and Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) are in this category. These CRPs demand new methods for researching complex system issues, including ways of integrating climate change research with agricultural research, and nutrition research with agricultural research and these new approaches have required new partnerships for effective implementation 2. In addition, AAS, Humidtropics and Dryland Systems are expected to integrate the results produced by all the other CRPs into the options they bring to the innovation platforms through which they work. Systemic research on how improved components of targeted farming systems interact is expected to determine the longer-term implications, and thereby the sustainable intensification consequences of the products delivered by all CRPs and to do so under climate change and other global change conditions. The CRPs started at different times. The 2013 annual reports from the oldest CRPs cover their third full year of operations, while the CRPs created most recently report results only from their first full year. Assessment of progress must take into consideration how long CRPs have existed. 2 Both CCAFS and A4NH have integrated Challenge Programs that date from before CGIAR reform. However, in CCAFS case, the challenge program existed for only a few months before CCAFS was created. In the case of A4NH, the Challenge Program existed for about a decade but concerned only one dimension of A4NH work, biofortification. 6 CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year 2013

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9 CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year Key messages and portfolio level traffic light analysis A significant accomplishment in 2013 that concerns the entire portfolio is the CRPs joint development of a set of 11 common intermediate development outcomes (IDOs). In 2014, the CRPs are finalizing the IDOs and plan to design common indicators of progress toward the common IDOs. These are essential to steering the CRP portfolio toward a much greater results orientation than was ever possible before (see section 2 for details). In addition to this joint work, the CRPs developed strong cross-crp collaboration on specific common issues and in some common geographical locations, which enabled concrete and significant scientific synergies and resource efficiencies (see section 4 for details). Type 1 CRPs produced a very solid set of outputs and outcomes. Building upon decades of previous work, they have produced significant outputs, such as 140 drought-tolerant maize varieties and 400 new rice hybrids. They have generated new knowledge, such as the one resulting from GRiSP s re-sequencing of 3,000 lines of rice. This knowledge will be used to accelerate the future delivery of advanced breeding materials. To address constraints in seed delivery and adoption, type 1 CRPs have created as part of their impact pathways expanded networks with public development partners and private companies: Drought- Tolerant Maize for Africa, the Wheat Yield Consortium, Sustainable Modernization of Traditional Agriculture (for maize and wheat) and the Hybrid Rice Development Consortium. These partnerships facilitate the testing and adoption of novel varieties and improved agronomic practices by more than 1 million smallholders. Type 2 CRPs have produced significant outputs and outcomes, a number of which demonstrate the scientific synergy created by the integrated approaches they are developing. The successful breeding of a grass that provides highly productive forage for cattle and, at the same time, curbs emissions of greenhouse gases is a remarkable example of such synergy and a noteworthy research breakthrough by L&F. These CRPs have developed partnerships with upstream researchers and with downstream development partners to scale up their results. They have created various consortia of public and private partners: RTB and L&F to better respond to and control crop and animal diseases across countries and to work with such large development partners as the project East Africa Dairy Development; and PIM, joined by FTA and CCAFS, to scaleup farmers effective access to knowledge across many countries. PIM, WLE and FTA have helped change policies and institutional mechanisms by leveraging their networks of partners in different regions of the globe to more effectively communicate their results to policy makers. The new partnerships and the new scientific approaches that characterize type 3 CRPs have allowed the effective scaling up of significant results. For instance, new tools and methods developed by CCAFS for predicting and monitoring climate change were used to provide climate change information targeted to the needs of female and male farmers CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year

10 throughout African countries. In Senegal alone, more than 3 million farmers thus obtained climate change information never before within reach. Table 1 is a traffic light assessment of progress by the entire portfolio in It shows how the portfolio progressed in producing outputs and outcomes, mainstreaming gender, managing risks, and positioning itself to implement results-based management 3. A strong point of portfolio performance in 2013 was that it was firmly on track to deliver outputs and outcomes. Regarding the quality and quantity of outputs, two-thirds of the portfolio fully met expectations, and the remaining third was very close to doing so. It is noteworthy that CGIAR s record of publication in refereed, high-impact journals (a research output) is on par with those of comparable disciplines in such organizations such as the National Institute for Agricultural Research and the Agricultural Research Centre for International Development in France, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia, and Cornell University in the United States 4. Regarding outcomes, 73% of the portfolio fully met expectations. For the remaining 27% of the portfolio that did not fully meet outcome expectations, the main reason was the CRPs relatively recent creation. In terms of having a coherent set of results aligned with IDOs, 40% of the portfolio fully met expectations, another 40% was almost there, and 20% did not fully meet expectations. This mainly reflected that IDOs were still under development and that some time is needed to fully align activities and their results with them. In a few cases, there are heritage projects producing results that could not, and should not, be retrofitted to Table 1: Traffic light assessment of 2013 CRP Portfolio performance (in % of CRPs) Effective internal organization for resultsbased management Capacity to adapt to risks, learn lessons Gender research mainstreamed Coherent set of results aligned with IDOs Quality & quantity of outcomes Quality & quantity of outputs 13% 7% 7% 7% 13% 20% 27% 34% 7% 20% 47% 40% 73% 73% 66% 66% 40% 40% Note: Green means results are fully satisfactory, yellowish-green that results are almost fully satisfactory, yellow that results do not fully meet expectations, and orange that results are quite below expectations. 3 The traffic light assessment in the 2012 CRP Portfolio Report focused on process indicators and whether various processes had been completed. It is extremely encouraging that the 2013 CRP annual reports contain far more substance, in general and regarding results, allowing this comment on progress. 4 Elsevier Report, CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year 2013

11 the IDOs. The CRP portfolio is overall making progress in producing more coherent results focused on delivering toward the IDOs. Regarding gender mainstreaming, 86% of the portfolio fully or almost fully met expectations, 7% did not fully meet them and 7% fell below expectations. CRPs are making very good progress toward fully mainstreaming gender research, and remedial steps have been taken for the lower-scoring 14% (recently created CRPs). Last year the Fund Council offered this recommendation regarding the CRP Portfolio Report and the CRP annual reports: The synthesis report [2012 CRP Portfolio Report] has a discussion of risks at an aggregate level, which is very welcome. However, individual CRP reports appear unable to incorporate risks or risk responses. 5 In terms of capacity to adapt to risks and learn lessons, 80% of the portfolio fully or almost met expectations in 2013, and 20% scored lower. This highlights that CRPs are self-critical as a whole, ask themselves strategic existential questions and draw lessons from their experiences, but that room for improvement remains. In terms of effective internal organization for results-based management, 40% of the portfolio was almost fully satisfactory, 47% did not meet expectations, and 13% was below expectations, indicating that improving this dimension requires management attention. More than half of the CRPs still need to put in place a robust internal system of monitoring and evaluation (M&E), an effective performance-evaluation system for scientists from all participating Centers, and/ or a transparent internal process for setting priorities. It must be stressed that CGIAR has struggled over its entire history to establish robust M&E and priority-setting processes, so the system s previous experience offers no recognized models or best practices to emulate. CRPs thus need to develop innovative systems that are tailored to their needs. It is encouraging that many CRPs recognize this and are actively introducing the necessary changes. The CRP portfolio is well placed to deliver results toward the SLOs on food security and poverty alleviation and since last year has been strengthening its capacity to deliver on the nutrition SLO. Some weaknesses remain concerning the SLO on sustainable resource management (which section 6 discusses in detail). A number of lessons drawn in section 7 have a bearing on the second call for proposals. They concern the need for CRPs to have more robust internal M&E systems, agree on some common indicators of progress toward the common IDOs, better relate programs to financial requirements, and strengthen the coordination and harmonization across CRPs of work being implemented in the same geographic areas. Transaction costs for scientists and CRPs currently appear to be high, demanding that action be taken to reduce them over time. The main financial risk to the whole portfolio concerns synchronizing the longer-term funding requirements of the CRPs with the short CGIAR funding cycle (see section 8). There are a few nonfinancial risks, and the second call for proposals and its guidance will provide opportunities to effectively mitigate them. 2. Synthesis of the most significant results (outputs and outcomes) emerging from the CRP portfolio and bearing on progress towards the SLOs CRPs fall into three categories based on the nature of their research, the historical scientific bases upon which the research builds and other factors discussed in the preamble. For each CRP type, the factors influencing progress toward the SLOs differ. The CRPs differ as well by how long they have existed, such that the 2013 annual reports from the oldest CRPs cover their third full year of operations while the CRPs created most recently report results only from their first full year Type 1 CRPs: One crop and a strong historical scientific base (GRiSP, MAIZE and WHEAT) Type 1 CRPs have organized their work internally in a comparable manner, or are in the process of doing so, to articulate their flagship projects at three levels: (i) upstream research such as pre-breeding 5 Fund Council meeting report, November CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year

12 in genomics, bioinformatics and precision phenotyping as a basis for long-term innovations, (ii) downstream research for development for results in the short term (e.g., seed delivery) and medium term (e.g., variety development), and (iii) research on complementary agricultural practices such as postharvest handling to strengthen the sustainability of crop productivity innovations. This combination of activities allows them to deliver a steady stream of innovations through a research pipeline that balances short- and long-term results. This mitigates the risk that short-term results run the pipeline dry, at the expense of discovery science, or that overinvestment in discovery science neglects results in the short-to-medium term that are essential for long-term impact. The submergence trait in rice provides a good illustration of the lag time from trait discovery to release of valuable varieties. More than 20 years elapsed from the discovery and mapping of the Sub1 gene, which confers to the rice plant the ability to survive a significant period of complete immersion, to its transfer into the Swarna-Sub1 rice varieties released in India, the Philippines and Bangladesh in These new, improved varieties are now being disseminated in South Asia to more than 4 million farmers. Similarly, droughttolerant maize for Africa is the product of a decade of maize physiology research at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and an additional decade of promoting the inclusion of selection for drought tolerance in maize-breeding programs for sub-saharan Africa, in combination with the widespread development and regional testing of stress-tolerant varieties through the Southern African Drought and Low Soil Fertility Project (2002). In terms of outputs in 2013, GRiSP continued to identify novel sources of resistance to various rice diseases and pests and of tolerance to abiotic stresses, notably submergence, salinity and phosphorus deficiency, which exist in several wild relatives of rice (Oryza sativa, O. glaberrima and O. barthii). GRiSP created pre-breeding lines and discovered new molecular markers for introducing these new genes into modern elite cultivars. It is re-sequencing 3,000 rice genome in collaboration with the Beijing Genomics Institute and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences to expand the scope and capacity for marker-assisted/genomic selection. More than 1 million unique points of genetic variation have been identified and assembled in a database. These two types of outputs new traits and molecular markers will be integrated into GRiSP s breeding pipeline for new trait discovery and new varieties development. MAIZE and WHEAT characterized 10,000 wheat and 20,000 maize accessions from CIMMYT s genebank through the project Seeds of Discovery (SeeD). This approach is helping to design molecular atlases of genetic diversity in maize and wheat and to identify novel sources of variability. In wheat, SeeD characterized more than 20,000 accessions for morphology and grain-quality traits, 27,000 for resilience under drought and high temperature, and 4,500 for disease resistance. In maize, SeeD is advancing the analysis of the world s most comprehensive mapping panel for new gene discovery and is identifying novel markers potentially of high value to breeders. Several populations have been established for marker-assisted breeding and pre-breeding, and a uniquely comprehensive set of phenotypic and genotypic data on maize genetic resources has been produced. The high value of these outputs has attracted many prestigious advanced research institutes to collaborate with MAIZE, WHEAT and GRiSP, with the aim of mining genetic diversity to deliver new traits and improved crop varieties in the coming years. Type 1 CRPs have enlarged the scope of their partnerships to facilitate outcome delivery. For instance, GRiSP has set up the Hybrid Rice Development Consortium (HRDC) in Asia, which includes 68 organizations, both public and private, and the Hybrid Rice Consortium in Latin America. With a partnering approach that includes the private sector, in particular local small and medium-sized enterprises, MAIZE is implementing the project Drought- Tolerant Maize for Africa. In 2013, over 30,000 tons of drought-tolerant maize seed was produced in 13 African countries (Angola, Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe) by a network involving more than 100 small and medium-sized seed producers and companies. A joint working group was established last year with the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa that supports seed producers and dealers, helping 12 CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year 2013

13 to ensure that they are able to stock enough seed and have good distribution networks able to reach farmers across the continent. To ensure self-sustaining scale-up and technology transfer, GRiSP, MAIZE and WHEAT operate in a coordinated manner through rural innovation hubs in Bangladesh, India and Nepal, through the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia. This collaboration supports the adoption by more than 185,000 farmers in India of sustainable intensification technologies, also helping 750 mechanized service providers with training in technical and business skills, and accelerating work with women farmers on intercropping with maize and forming small enterprises. The initiative has developed information and communication technology tools for site-specific nutrient management that are expected to improve profitability for farmers while decreasing the environmental footprint of fertilizer use in South Asia. In addition, MAIZE and WHEAT work jointly with CCAFS on developing the Nutrient Expert decisionsupport tool for maize and wheat through a competitive grant from the International Plant Nutrition Institute. Type 1 CRPs contributed mainly to the food security SLO by increasing the production of three staple crops and the poverty reduction SLO by contributing to raising the income of resource-poor farmers. They contributed to a lesser extent to the nutrition SLO by developing enriched cereal varieties. These CRPs have started to address the SLO on natural resource management by developing practices that mitigate some of the environmental impacts of cereal production Type 2 CRPs: Integrative, various crops, products and issues, with a more divergent historical scientific base (RTB, L&F, Grain Legumes, Dryland Cereals, FTA, WLE, and PIM) Expected outputs from these CRPs include significant research advances that result from integrating the different scientific approaches that are brought together within each CRP. Such outputs would vindicate bringing together different crops or issues under the umbrella of a single CRP. Such integration is time consuming and difficult to bring to fruition. Not all type 2 CRPs have yet produced such research advances. Most CRPs in this category have produced outputs that were relevant to their IDOs and objectives, but have not yet really demonstrated the added value of working in a more integrated manner. There are some examples, however, of the scientific synergies and potential for impact that is unleashed when integrated approaches are successfully implemented. In what is probably the most outstanding research breakthrough in 2013 across the portfolio, L&F succeeded in breeding hybrids of a tropical forage grass that promise to significantly curb greenhouse gas emissions by increasing nitrogen use efficiency and carbon accumulation while reducing nitrous oxide emissions. Scientists included biological nitrification inhibition as a breeding objective for Brachiaria humidicola. The greenhouse gas benefits of Brachiaria humidicola CIAT 679 were measured in a subsequent maize crop through higher grain yield achieved with less fertilizer. These advances, reported as news in Nature, indicate that it will be possible to boost livestock and crop productivity while reducing greenhouse gas emissions per unit livestock produced. One component of an agroecosystem, grass, can thus be bred and managed to play multiple roles in the system. It can be an effective feed and forage crop and minimize tradeoffs between productivity and environmental greenhouse gas emissions trade-offs. RTB provides another illustration of the power of scientific integration across crops by bringing together scientists working on banana, sweet potato, yam, cassava and potato in South America and Africa to more effectively address the difficult problem of seed degeneration across these crops. In partnership with Kansas State University, these scientists developed a new model that integrates different options for managing seed degeneration, builds upon existing knowledge of virus ecology and evolution, and incorporates variability in environmental and biological systems. Initial results indicate that seed degeneration in all these crops can be successfully managed using both on-farm management and host plant resistance. This integrated approach appears to be far more effective than the usual replacement of planting material. Field studies to confirm preliminary results are now under way in 11 countries: Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, China, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Uganda, Burundi and Cameroon. CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year

14 Dryland Cereals and Grain Legumes are expected to similarly leverage knowledge and approaches across their different crops by the second call for proposals, thereby demonstrating the added value of bringing their respective crops under unified CRPs. The outputs from these two CRPs in 2013 are a number of improved crop varieties. Particularly notable from Dryland Cereals is the addition of nutrition enhancement to crop productivity as a breeding trait. In cooperation with A4NH and HarvestPlus, the biofortification arm of A4NH, Dryland Cereals released in India a pearl millet, Dhanashakti, that offers more zinc and iron in the grain (9% more iron) and 11% higher grain yield. Distribution, processing and marketing to effectively reach consumers will be addressed in collaboration with A4NH. The potential nutritional benefits of Dhanashakti are significant where iron deficiency is prevalent, such as in India, where 52% of women, 80% of pregnant women, and 74% of children under the age of 3 are anemic. In the same vein, FTA produced through collaboration with Unilever new genetic characterization and propagation methods for six high-value indigenous tree species in West Africa that are emerging as major new oil trees for the continent. The crops studied by RTB, Grain Legumes and Dryland Cereals; FTA s tree species; and L&F s fish and livestock contribute importantly to nutritious and balanced diets and so to the nutrition SLO. Tree species and at least one of the dryland cereals, sorghum, can also have very high economic values, depending upon the food or industrial use of the end product. By contributing to balanced, diverse and nutritious diets and to farmers livelihoods, the diverse mandate plants and animals of type 2 CRPs add an important dimension to a coherent research agenda that addresses food security, nutrition enhancement and poverty reduction. In 2013, type 2 CRPs produced an array of knowledge products: databases, improved research methods, and models for managing water and biodiversity, assessing deforestation, planning land use, guiding payments for ecosystem services, and understanding and improving market chains. For example, a Routledge publication Wetland management and sustainable livelihoods in Africa, written by WLE and its partners, demonstrates how sustainable wetland agriculture and fisheries can contribute to livelihoods without threatening wetlands in Africa, as is widely feared. FTA produced in collaboration with Dryland Systems a major synthesis of the roles trees play in building resilient livelihoods in African drylands. It highlights how trees have multiple roles, meeting needs for food, energy and water. Data from Ethiopia and Rwanda show stronger food security in households with higher and more diverse tree cover. In the policy arena, PIM analyzed empirical evidence to better ground the debate on biofuels in the European Parliament and biosafety legislation in Uganda, and FTA analyzed different aspects of United Nations-led work on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) such as conserving forests, enhancing forest carbon stocks and sustainably managing forests. PIM, FTA and WLE have used such outputs to influence policy-making and scale up the adoption of improved technologies, in particular through value chain approaches and innovation platforms. Some of the most striking and significant outcomes thus produced show the capacity of the relevant type 2 CRPs (and at term that of all type 2 CRPs) to leverage their new partnerships to respond more effectively and rapidly to challenges. The first example of effective and rapid response highlights the importance of RTB s global perspective and its ability to bring multiple partners together in a timely way following the discovery on a farm in Africa of a banana fungus previously restricted to Asia. Its lethal impact, persistence in the environment and wide host range ranks Fusarium tropical race 4 (TR4) as a principal threat to banana production. The pathogen s appearance in Africa required a rapid response. RTB and its partners worked with the Mozambique Ministry of Agriculture to officially report the disease, collaborated with Stellenbosch University in South Africa to develop an action plan to contain it, and built the capacity in national organizations and networks needed to do the job an effort that evolved into an African consortium to manage and contain TR4. This collaborative response was strengthened by Bioversity International and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) both RTB members as Bioversity has many years of experience managing TR4 in Asia, and IITA has 14 CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year 2013

15 strong links to African national and regional extension, research, regulatory and trade organizations. The efforts enjoy the support of regional banana networks the Banana Research Network for Eastern and Southern Africa and, in West and Central Africa, Innovate Plantain coordinated by Bioversity. PIM addressed the thorny issue of how farmers actually access new knowledge by showing that volunteer farmer trainers (VFTs) offer a very effective way to expand access to new knowledge for farmers, women and men alike. VFTs have deep knowledge of local conditions, live in the community and instill confidence in other farmers. They train on average 20 other farmers per month, with the backing of trained extension agents and specialists on subject matter. Using the results of PIM s research, East Africa Dairy Development (EADD), a project implemented by Heifer International, is using the VFT approach to reach 315,000 dairy farmers in four countries in East Africa. The proportion of women VFTs in the region was 33% in 2011, when fewer than 10% of professional trainers and extension staff in the project were female. The study showed that female trainers were as effective as their male counterparts. In Rwanda, the Ministry of Agriculture has adopted the VFT approach and taken over the supervision of 64 of EADD s VFTs. This work is now cofinanced by PIM together with FTA, CCAFS, EADD and FoodAfrica, a project funded by the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. L&F formed a consortium led by the International Livestock Research Institute for a new vaccine initiative to tackle East Coast fever, a deadly cattle disease. The consortium builds on earlier collaboration with eight research institutions in Malawi, the United Kingdom, Belgium and the United States. 6 In parallel with this new research consortium, L&F is facilitating a new global public-private partnership for scaling up vaccine production and launching vaccination campaigns. So far, L&F has provided 356,600 additional doses of its vaccine to distributors in Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda. The current vaccine campaign released over 1 million doses in the region, benefiting an estimated 50,000 households who did not lose their herds. Lastly, Grain Legumes reports a multi-partner collaboration for delivering in East and Southern Africa 66,000 tons of high-quality chickpea seed, including breeder, foundation and certified seed, all truthfully labelled. This equals some 15% of total seed production in the region. Assuming a seeding rate of 100 kilograms of seed per hectare, an area of 660,000 hectares could be planted with seed directly attributable to the Grain Legumes partnership. As chickpea fixes more than 50 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare, by conservative calculation, and as the average price of urea that is 50% nitrogen is $340/ ton, 660,000 hectares of chickpea would contribute through nitrogen fixation alone some $23 million in benefits to farmers. The outputs and outcomes produced by type 2 CRPs constitute a solid set of results that contribute to the progress of the entire CRP portfolio toward meeting the four SLOs, including through collaboration among these CRPs and others in the portfolio (see section 4). A significant contribution to the SLO on nutrition is noted above. All these CRPs contributed to poverty alleviation, L&F and PIM through a pro-poor focus, and Grain Legumes, Dryland Cereals, FTA and RTB through attention paid to crops and trees grown by resource-poor farmers. WLE, FTA, PIM, Grain Legumes and L&F contributed to the SLO on natural resource management, and they all contributed to the food security SLO through improved productivity Type 3 CRPs: New integrative and systemic issues with very small historical scientific bases (AAS, Humidtropics, Dryland Systems, CCAFS, and A4NH) As could be expected of type 3 CRPs, 2013 outputs were mainly new methods, databases and tools. They included new models, manuals and maps to better assess different production systems potential for climate change mitigation and adaptation and, from CCAFS, new analyses of national plans for adaptation to better support policy formulation in climate change negotiations. 6 In Belgium, the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp; in Malawi, the Centre for Ticks and Tick-Borne Diseases; in the United Kingdom, GALVmed, the Roslin Institute at University of Edinburgh, and the Royal Veterinary College; and in the United States, the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland, the Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service, and Washington State University. CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year

16 A4NH developed training manuals and new protocols for biofortified food products, and A4NH scientists contributed two of the four papers The Lancet published in its second seminal series on maternal and child nutrition. The papers show the need to simultaneously address the critical underlying determinants of malnutrition: income, food security, women s time, empowerment and access to nutritious food and a high-diet quality. The papers emphasize the interactions among these different determinants and the diverse dimensions of the agriculture-malnutritionnutrition nexus, as well as the critical importance of addressing this nexus from a policy-enabling perspective and simultaneously from the perspectives of agriculture, social protection, education, water and sanitation. Only then can malnutrition be successfully addressed. The three system CRPs implement their work through a network of innovation platforms in Asia, Latin America and Africa. In 2013, they produced methods and manuals for system analysis and system research at innovation platforms and action research sites that were used to generate baseline data and bring together teams to address the priority research issues thus identified. Humidtropics produced methods and tools for action research to link policy, institutions and markets, sustainable systems productivity, and natural resource management. AAS focused on participatory methods that build the capacity of communities to keep innovating and experimenting with new technologies and practices for integrating aquaculture and agriculture including livestock where relevant. Dryland Systems, which is the CRP approved last by the Fund Council, set up its 15 innovation platforms and identified priority entry points for system-level improvements in these locations. These entry points generally include land degradation, crop-livestock integration, maintaining system productivity while shrinking the environmental footprint of agriculture, and improving access to markets. Dryland Systems designed a new methodological approach which it called the integrated agro-ecosystem and livelihoods approach to sustainable intensification for the drylands. The three systems CRPs are thus differently engaged in methods development, and a diversity of methodological approaches is indeed more likely to produce useful results. At this point, concrete breakthroughs and results from these different approaches to systems research have not yet been achieved on the ground. It is important that such results be produced rapidly, given the potential role of the systems CRPs as keystones anchoring the integration of different types of outputs from other CRPs into their systemic approaches to farming and agro-ecosystems at the landscape and community level. Rapid progress toward such integration is needed to establish the scientific credibility of CGIAR s approach to systems research because this is a relatively new area of CGIAR research. Partnerships with outside research institutions such as Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands and the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development have been initiated, and the joint production of results is expected to contribute to rapid progress. The outcomes produced by type 3 CRPs indicate progress toward all four SLOs. CCAFS and A4NH achieved progress in the field with farmers and in the national and international policy arena. Both CRPs produced results that became outcomes thanks to the wideranging partnerships the CRPs leverage. They thus reached significant numbers of farmers and influenced policy-making in numerous countries. CCAFS capacity building and work on improving the management of risk from climate change extended to millions of farmers access to weather forecasts directly relevant to their specific needs in seven African countries, with attention paid to reaching both female and male farmers. In Senegal alone, 3 million farmers were able to obtain up-todate weather forecasts daily. 7 CCAFS work on adaptation strategies and pro-poor mitigation approaches helped train nearly 15,000 female village leaders in Bihar and Nepal on climatesmart agriculture. The national adaptation and mitigation strategies of Nicaragua, Columbia and India now integrate results from CCAFS work. 7 In addition to CCAFS, the partners were the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, University of Reading, World Meteorological Organization, United States Agency for International Development, AGRHYMET Regional Centre, and national meteorological services. The World Meteorological Organisation endorsed the approach and is scaling it up to other countries, and Oxfam, Farm Africa, Practical Action and World Vision have incorporated this approach into their own training materials and activities. 16 CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year 2013

17 A4NH has shown that diet quality depends on more than staple crops, and that fruits and foods derived from animals are essential to nutritious diets. The CRP worked with various governments and the Codex Alimentarius Commission to improve national food safety regulations and nutrition plans. In addition, it achieved significant results in aflatoxin control, a deadly contaminant of stored grain. Research and partnerships for biocontrol endorsed by the Program for Aflatoxin Control in Africa are advancing in nine African countries. Aflatoxin research is becoming coordinated across three CRPs A4NH, Grain Legumes and MAIZE including through a joint workshop to identify research gaps and opportunities. A publication ensued that included 19 policy briefs across the domains of agriculture, markets, health, and policy and regulation. While much of the focus is currently on Africa, a scoping study on public health risk was initiated in South Asia for scheduled completion in early The system CRPs started producing outcomes demonstrating the added value of system approaches. AAS has continued to facilitate and study the process of sustainably scaling up results through its innovation platforms or hubs, often reaching significant numbers of farmers. At its hub in the polder zone of Bangladesh, for example, it worked to improve system productivity by helping households produce vegetables, providing higher-quality fish seed at scale, and training men and women on aquaculture. 8 These improved practices reached half a million farmers, including 48,000 men and 52,000 women trained to manage disease-resistant shrimp. Farmer field days expanded these numbers by fostering learning within and across communities. Humidtropics and Dryland Systems both started recently to be able to claim outcomes from their own work, but they each have integrated pre-crp research that has started generating outcomes, upon which they can build. Humidtropics has taken over the Consortium for Improving Agriculturebased Livelihoods in Central Africa, which aims to improve productivity in the Great Lakes region through mixed cropping systems that include banana and legumes, with the emphasis on using better banana and legume varieties, improving agronomic practices in mixed cropping systems, integrated soil fertility management, and integrated pest management. Recent work demonstrates seasonal gains of $20-30 per farmer from collective marketing and an average of $50 from crop warrantage. Likewise, Dryland Systems can draw lessons from and build upon work by ICARDA on conservation agriculture, which is reaching 5,000 farmers in North Africa and West Asia Collective CRP result in 2013: the common IDOs The Consortium Office (CO) facilitated the formation in October 2012 of the IDO Working Group to support CRPs development of their IDOs. The intent was to produce a set of common IDOs to facilitate CRPs planning and implementation of joint efforts towards the SLOs and to clarify the development of targets and performance management across the CRP portfolio. Eleven common IDOs were designated, and in June 2013 CRPs presented to donors their research plans for the next years, naming their specific IDOs. The possibility of merging some of the common IDOs was discussed, but in the end the consensus was to stay with the original 11 with some modified wording. It was also agreed that CRPs could have their own IDOs in addition to common IDOs selected from this set. It was further agreed that a CRP could restate any common IDO in a way that reflected its specific contribution. Collective work on common IDOs progressed well throughout Work on formulating indicators of progress toward the IDOs, including on common indicators where possible, continues. The IDO Working Group agreed that an important step in developing the new CGIAR performance management system is to identify commonly agreed indicators of progress toward achieving the IDOs. The broad links between IDOs and SLOs are relatively easy to show, but quantified links and defined metrics are still needed. This refinement will be a dimension of the Strategy and Results Framework update and will require considerable work. In 2014, the IDO Working Group is continuing to support 8 This was a partnership with Save the Children, the local nongovernmental organizations Codec and SpeedTrust, selected private sector operators, and the Department of Fisheries. CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year

18 groups of volunteer CRPs that work together on developing indicators, targets and metrics for specific IDOs. The revised common IDOs are as follows: 1 Productivity - Improved productivity in pro-poor food systems 2 Food security - Increased and stable access to food commodities by rural and urban poor 3 Nutrition - Improved diet quality of nutritionally-vulnerable populations, especially women and children 4 Income - Increased and more equitable income from agricultural and natural resources management and environmental services earned by low income value chain actors 5 Gender & Empowerment - Increased control over resources and participation in decision-making by women and other marginalized groups 6 Capacity to Innovate - Increased capacity for innovation within low income and vulnerable rural communities allowing them to improve livelihoods 7 Adaptive capacity - Increased capacity in low income communities to adapt to environmental and economic variability, shocks and longer term changes 8 Policies More effective policies, supporting sustainable, resilient and equitable agricultural and natural resources management developed and adopted by agricultural, conservation and development organizations, national governments and international bodies 9 Environment - Minimized adverse environmental effects of increased production intensification 10 Future Options - Greater resilience of agricultural/forest/water based/mixed crop livestock, aquatic systems for enhanced ecosystem services 11 Climate - Increased carbon sequestration and reduction of greenhouse gases through improved agriculture and natural resources management 3. Factors influencing progress towards outcomes and outputs, associated risks and overall effectiveness of partnership strategies 3.1. Strategic outputs and internal priority-setting Two related factors directly influence progress toward outcomes and outputs: a robust internal priority-setting process and a pipeline of strategic outputs. To produce strategic outputs (rather than outputs diffused over many small issues) a CRP needs to have a robust internal priority-setting process that aligns its activities with its objectives and IDOs. This is particularly so for CRPs that manage a number of heritage projects from before CGIAR reform or bilateral projects never designed with CRP objectives or IDOs as their goals. Naturally, there are heritage and bilateral projects that are aligned with CRP objectives and IDOs and contribute to strategic outputs. GRiSP, for instance, manages a number of such projects. But there are also projects that do not contribute strategic outputs, and a number of CRPs indicate that this is a risk for them, which they manage by further strengthening their internal priority-setting process to transparently decide which projects are not aligned with their priorities and should be removed from CRP funding. The external review of governance and management in the CRPs and the jointly agreed implementation of recommendations from the Centers and the Consortium should provide the institutional changes necessary to empower CRPs to allocate funds from Windows 1 and 2 to participating Centers according to Center and scientist performance, instead of as a function of fixed and predetermined financial allocations. 3.2 Partnership with development actors The discussion of outputs and outcomes in section 2 provides many good examples of the important role and leveraging effects of research partnerships and cross-crp collaboration. The discussion highlights how strategic development partnerships contribute to the successful delivery of substantial outcomes. CRP partnerships are constantly evolving and unevenly developed across the 18 CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year 2013

19 portfolio. The most recently created CRPs, such as Grain Legumes and Dryland Cereals, acknowledge that their strategic partnerships for value chain approaches and innovation platforms need to be strengthened over the coming 2 years to position the CRPs well for responding to the second call for proposals. CRP annual reports provide many examples of outputs and outcomes successfully produced through partnership. The very positive results of the 2014 Elsevier review (footnote 4) support the conclusion that research partnerships are indeed very effective. For partnerships with development actors there is no similarly systematic assessment of the results. Such partnerships are new to CGIAR in the sense that, while they build upon pre-reform partnerships with development actors, they now have much wider scope and range, as they concern the implementation of CRP impact pathways. Monitoring changes along CRP impact pathways will provide the information necessary to determine how effective these types of partnerships are. However, monitoring processes for scaling up is complex and new to CGIAR, and it requires dedicated resources. GRiSP provides an interesting example of the type of monitoring that will be required, as 19 countries in Africa work with it to collect baseline data on their rice production. This will allow GRiSP to set its targets in these countries based on sound baseline data and country objectives, and to monitor the evolution of the domestic rice sector. Such large-scale monitoring takes time to set up and run before it can produce the information desired about the effectiveness of development partnerships Aligning internal structure with results-based management Initially, CRPs were internally organized in their own way, often along disciplinary or thematic lines that did not facilitate resultsbased management. Monitoring the whole CRP portfolio requires CRPs to prepare an annual program of work and budget, the template for which frames the description of planned work by three common levels of internal organization, showing how planned deliverables will contribute to IDOs, based on planned activities and budgets. Internal organization aligned with the needs of performance management is essential to the delivery of high-quality outcomes and outputs that contribute to CRP IDOs. Most of the CRPs fully realize that they need to modify their internal organization to become more effective from both a scientific and a development perspective. CRPs are currently at various stages of internal reorganization, and some now structure in an aligned manner a few flagship projects, themselves made up of clusters of activities. Other CRPs that need more substantial restructuring, such as RTB, Grain Legumes and WLE, have decided to restructure during the 2 years of extension in before the second call for proposals. A catalyst that the CO provided in 2013 toward more aligned structures and strengthened M&E was results-based management pilots from volunteer CRPs. The process of preparing concept notes for the pilots helped these CRPs come to realize the need to (i) develop a more robust internal M&E process, (ii) factor CRP inputs into the performance evaluation of CRP scientists (now done by the Center that contracted them) and (iii) develop robust and strategic targets and metrics to measure progress toward CRP IDOs. The five CRPs piloting results-based management will produce outputs and lessons in 2014 that are expected to further demonstrate to all CRPs the advantages of strengthening functions on these three fronts. 4. Strengths and weaknesses, in terms of resource efficiencies and research synergies, of inter-crp linkages Links among CRPs have been strengthening in a number of important ways over the past couple of years and are likely to develop further in 2014 and 2015, as the CRPs prepare for the second call for proposals. The blossoming of these collaborations in 2013 indicates CRPs recognition of the scientific synergy and resource efficiency that can result from cross-crp strategic collaboration. Examples of outputs produced jointly by some CRPs are provided in the discussion of outputs and outcomes in section 2. In 2013, links strengthened significantly, though they varied in intensity and effectiveness. This was to be expected, as some of the CRPs were still in their first full year of operation, while others were in their third year. CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year

20 Some CRPs have agreed to share a number of research sites, including innovation platforms shared across the world by MAIZE, WHEAT, GRiSP, CCAFS, Grain Legumes, L&F and AAS. The extent of the efficiencies and economies of scale that will result should become evident in time for discussion in next year s CRP Portfolio Report. Various CRPs have some of their key sites co-located with other CRPs main sites in, for example, the central Mekong Basin, Nicaragua and Cameroon, and discussions continue on sharing baseline data and resources for scaling up results. These collaborations are expected to be strengthened and implemented during Collaborations across CRPs on specific research issues have become much more numerous. A most significant one is the partnership between Humidtropics and RTB for systemlevel assessment of the performance of crops improved by RTB. The partnership will allow RTB to learn from Humidtropics how its improved cultivars perform under farmers conditions and in the entire farming system. Some CRPs have forged strategic collaborations to better address common issues in a complementary manner. Among many good examples, the three CRPs working on aflatoxin A4NH, MAIZE and Grain Legumes formed a collaborative agreement in which each CRP carries out a complementary part of the research under the leadership of A4NH and linked with the Biosciences eastern and central Africa Hub at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi. This paves the way for greater scientific synergy and efficiency on aflatoxin, and has the potential for higher scientific quality and greater impact. The scientists from the three CRPs produced a publication that brings together 19 policy briefs addressing agriculture, markets, health, and policy and regulations. Another example is the active engagement of the three systems CRPs Humidtropics, Dryland Systems and AAS in quarterly directors meetings for sharing knowledge and experiences. Other joint activities include discussions on a common IDO capacity to innovate. The Science Team has encouraged other collaboration across CRPs, among the systems CRPs, for example, and among crop-improvement and systems CRPs. Another type of collaboration across CRPs consists of jointly organizing scientific meetings and consultations with stakeholders, as well as jointly attending meetings for greater impact. For instance, Humidtropics and L&F joined RTB in an initiative led by the Global Cassava Partnership for the 21st Century that organized in Ibadan, Nigeria, a high level consultation on Cassava-Based Feed Systems for Africa. 5. Strengths and weaknesses, in terms of research synergies, of CRPs gender analysis and research The mainstreaming of gender research in the CRPs advanced in 2013, and by end of the year all CRPs had completed their gender strategies for approval either in 2013 or early However, the implementation of gender research of a scale and significance required by these strategies has been uneven. The CO therefore commissioned in June 2013 an external appraisal of the status of gender research mainstreaming in the CRPs. It found implementation to be uneven because many CRPs had inadequte capacity for gender research. In response to this assessment, the CO identified remedial actions, which most CRPs undertook within current budgets, to strengthen institutional frameworks and staff capacity for mainstreaming. The Consortium Board approved making the disbursement of Window 1 and 2 funds contingent on the approval of the CRP annual report and its annual program of work and budget. This is a powerful incentive to motivate CRP compliance with gender integration. Most of the CRPs face the lag time required to produce sex-disaggregated data, and in 2013 the CO began to institutionalize such data s collection. The Gender Research Network facilitated two initatives: (i) a study coordinated by PIM to establish minimum standards for the collection of sex-disaggregated data and (ii) a global study involving 11 CRPs on the relationship between changing gender norms and agricultural innovation. In 2013, diagnostic assessments were conducted by all CRPs except PIM, A4HN and FTA, which had done so previously. Most CRPs lacked a critical mass of gender expertise in 2013, notably Humidtropics and 9 Mainstreaming gender refers to the systematic integration of gender equity issues into the CRP research process, from priority-setting to planning, design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation. 20 CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year 2013

21 Dryland Systems, which greatly reoriented their research to incorporate their new gender strategies but not in time for implementation in Existing capacity was mainly dedicated to special projects funding gender analysis before CGIAR reform, and it was seldom straightforward to shift these scientists to a research agenda defined by the CRP gender strategy. By the end of 2013, more than half of the CRPs had recruited additional gender expertise and reallocated staff and budget to rectify the situation. CRPs recognized that their gender research must have a sharp focus on a few common gender research topics with potential for synergy. Thus 2013 was a year of significant change for gender research. At the level of the CRP portfolio, gender research started in earnest, focused in most CRPs on diagnosis and implications for research but starting in other CRPs to produce feedback on CRP priorities. Type 1 CRPs tended to focus on diagnosis, as this had not taken place before. WHEAT and MAIZE conducted comprehensive gender audits and introduced sex-disaggregation in surveys, participatory technology evaluation and germplasm development. GRiSP began a synthesis of gender-related constraints and of the main dimensions of gender balance in its major target domains, as well as studies that provided insights on specific gender-related constraints. Research in Bangladesh, for instance, showed that the expansion of commercial aquaculture in rice fields improved household income and food security but also that this new financial resource was controlled by men, who sold the products directly to traders. Women did not benefit directly from the higher income, and adoption made them more dependent on their husbands for money to buy rice, pulses and vegetables for their families. Other studies in South Asia found that women did not own or otherwise have access to agricultural machinery or equipment. Consequently, although labor-saving technologies reduced drudgery and health risks for women on family farms, it also caused poor women who worked as agricultural wage laborers to lose income. Other programs pursued coherent gender research initiatives that built upon their 2012 accomplishments. PIM continued to roll out training on the Women s Empowerment in Agriculture Index to over 1,000 participants, and its research on gender and assets produced nine papers with findings on strategies that narrow the gender gap in productive assets for agriculture. CCAFS analyzed baseline surveys initiated in 2011 that cover all CCAFS sites to find that women receive significantly less information about climate-smart agriculture than do men but, once informed, are equally likely to adopt climate-smart practices. CCAFS identified institutional and policy constraints that limit the benefits for women from climate-related finance and used this information to guide low-emissions development. AAS integrated gender into the design of all its innovation platforms, identifying cross-cutting gender constraints on the participation of women in income-generating innovations concerned with water management. The CRP used this result to benchmark and identify targets for future work. RTB reviewed all its research for gender relevance and found that seed multiplication training in Malawi disadvantaged women, enabling men to dominate profitable sweet potato vine multiplication, even in communities where sweet potato had previously been produced by women. Results will inform the development of the RTB seed systems framework and projects under development. Dryland Cereals undertook a broad strategic assessment of gender relations in its four target regions, as did Grain Legumes with a focus on groundnuts. Both assessments identified key constraints on gender equality that now provide targets for future research. Similarly, L&F reviewed all projects, analyzing data from value chain assessments to determine key leverage points for implementing its gender strategy. Analysis conducted with A4NH of this assessment of 20 value chains concluded that gender roles were more important determinants of health risk than were biological constraints. WLE undertook gender audits to benchmark and assess for likely gender implications three of nine flagship products, 20% of its tools and one of its technologies. Building upon such developments in gender research in 2013, the CRPs should be positioned to respond to the second call for proposals with a robust agenda that includes properly mainstreamed gender research and outcomes that benefit poor rural women more than was previously possible and at a scale never achieved before. Important progress was made on this task in CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year

22 6. Whether the portfolio is on track to deliver on the SLOs and whether it is financially sustainable The research portfolio has a number of strengths toward achieving the SLOs, but it also has areas that need strengthening Food security and poverty reduction The portfolio is on track and well positioned to deliver on the SLOs on food security and rural poverty reduction from the perspective of cereals, roots, tubers, bananas, native fruits and grain legumes. The research-fordevelopment agenda of the CRP portfolio is scientifically robust in terms of crop breeding; climate change research to better mitigate change and adapt agricultural systems and crops to climate change (not restricted to CCAFS); scaling up work, in particular through value chain approaches (most CRPs); policy and methods development (not restricted to PIM); and research on the agriculturetree nexus. Gender research mainstreaming is clearly taking place and, in a few CRPs, gathering momentum. It is clear from the program of work and budget for 2014 formulated by each CRP that all CRPs plan gender research to vigorously implement their gender strategies, thereby contributing to the research agenda of the entire CRP and strengthening its focus on the circumstances of the poorest and most vulnerable farmers Improved nutrition and health The portfolio s delivery on the SLO for improved nutrition and health has started to gather momentum, very significantly through the work of A4HN on, for example, scaling up biofortified crops and improving the nutritional status of the poorest and most vulnerable; PIM for its work on methods development and policy implications; L&F for milk, meat and fish; and the crop-improvement CRPs, particularly type 2 CRPs. 10 This work is developing rapidly but still needs further expansion concerning, for example, the extremely under-researched human health dimension. Only then can the CRP portfolio deliver progress comparable to that achieved toward the SLOs on food security and poverty reduction Sustainable natural resource management Regarding the SLO on sustainable natural resource management, the portfolio has the potential to deliver more results than it does today. All CRPs, including those that do not pursue IDOs concerning natural resource management, can be expected to undertake work and produce results that contribute to shrinking the environmental footprint of agriculture, forestry, livestock and fisheries, as well as to strengthening their resilience and sustainability. CCAFS, FTA, WLE and other CRPs, including all type 1 CRPs, produced results that contribute to sustainable natural resource management, as discussed in section 2. At the portfolio level, this contribution could be strengthened in the coming years by paying more attention to ecosystem services and their contributions to resilience, sustainability and system productivity, and to in situ biodiversity management as a potential pathway to balancing productivity, profitability and resilience. (By contrast, ex situ biodiversity management in genebanks is well developed in the portfolio, as discussed in the Appendix.) Most existing research on sustainable intensification focuses on one or another dimension of sustainability, such as agronomy, rather than on understanding the tradeoffs between the ecological, social, economic and agronomic dimensions of sustainability in different biophysical and socioeconomic environments. The establishment of the three systems CRPs is expected to contribute interesting results in this respect in 2014, and even more so later when coupled with robust research on ecosystem services and in situ biodiversity management. Across the portfolio, the CRPs are pretty much on track financially, as shown in Table 2. However, as discussed hereafter, sustainability is difficult to assess in a short-term funding environment. At the end of 2013, the CRPs were on track financially. An apparent drop in spending by MAIZE and WHEAT compared with 2012 reflects a major realignment of bilateral 10 Type 2 CRPs contribute to better nutrition and to more balanced diets for the poor through the diverse products on which they work: crops, fruits, legumes, fish, meat and milk. 22 CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year 2013

23 Table 2: CRP spending from inception to the end of 2013 ($ thousands) CRP Name Start Date Initially Approved Budget Spent during 2013 TOTAL spent since start to end 2013 W1/2 W3/Bil Total W1/2 W3/Bil Total W1/2 W3/Bil Total Dryland Systems January ,333 62, ,725 11,711 23,536 35,247 20,814 45,153 65,967 Humidtropics July ,192 75, ,418 11,819 14,053 25,872 18,989 28,896 47,885 AAS July ,273 27,147 59,420 12,810 13,647 26,457 22,904 29,289 52,193 PIM WHEAT January 2012 January , , ,233 27,023 65,851 92,874 42, , ,864 40, , ,549 11,737 20,756 32,493 23,229 50,044 73,273 MAIZE July , , ,816 13,055 42,874 55,929 29, , ,839 GRiSP July , , ,390 34,500 56,712 91, , , ,450 RTB January ,600 47, ,100 29,370 39,629 68,999 51,677 71, ,568 Grain Legumes Dryland Cereals July ,631 77, ,135 19,717 27,870 47,587 27,184 44,707 71,891 July ,834 57,494 84,328 7,835 8,359 16,194 11,050 12,575 23,625 L&F A4NH WLE January 2012 January 2012 January ,183 84, ,708 11,385 13,040 24,425 19,103 22,338 41,441 93,631 97, ,400 26,079 43,951 70,030 35,250 95, , ,781 82, ,253 23,773 34,701 58,474 46,132 67, ,947 FTA July , , ,917 27,208 52,039 79,247 67, , ,283 CCAFS July ,900 68, ,500 42,022 24,288 66, ,076 65, ,024 TOTAL 1,711,826 1,538,065 3,249, , , , ,937 1,089,331 1,729,268 funding at CIMMYT following ongoing discussions on criteria for determining which bilateral funding should be considered to be outside the CRP framework. CIMMYT proposed such criteria and adjusted the bilateral components of the two CRPs it leads accordingly. The oldest CRPs, such as GRiSP, WLE, CCAFS, FTA and AAS, have maintained expenditures in line with The most recently approved CRPs Humidtropics, Dryland Cereals and Grain Legumes show considerable growth as they gain momentum toward full budget deployment. One financial dimension of the portfolio is the percentage of Window 1 and 2 funds allocated to the CRP Lead Center. As reported in the financial tables of the CRP annual reports, this percentage varies hugely among CRPs. In 40% of the CRPs, 20-48% of the funds spent from CRP inception to the end of 2013 were allocated to the Lead Center. For 34% of the CRPs, 48-70% of spent funds were allocated to the Lead Center. In the remaining 27% of the CRPs, the Lead Center received 72-95% of Window 1 and 2 funds. Thus, more than half of the CRPs allocated more than half of Window 1 and 2 funds to their Lead Center. CRP management costs would need to be deducted from these percentages, as would the funds that the Lead Center administers and distributes to partners outside CGIAR. Information on these two categories of costs is currently unavailable in a uniform manner across the CRPs, so it is not possible to arrive at actual percentages for Some implications are drawn in the next section. CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year

24 7. Lessons learned and implications for the future evolution of the portfolio Six main lessons emerge from the 2013 CRP portfolio. First, it is extremely encouraging and positive that a number of CRPs have realized that the internal M&E systems they initially designed need to be strengthened to become effective monitoring mechanisms for performance management. The five CRPs currently piloting results-based management know this, and the discussion in 2014 of preliminary results will reveal further lessons and demonstrations of how essential robust M&E is to successful result-based management. A robust M&E system must allow CRP directors to assess the quality of the outputs and outcomes produced by all partners in the CRP and to assess their relevance to CRP priorities and objectives. The second call for proposals will need to include clear and concrete discussion of what internal M&E needs to be to enable a CRP to undertake results-based management. Second, CRPs ongoing selection of appropriate indicators for the common IDOs and their associated targets has demonstrated how difficult it is to identify indicators that capture the essence of work that can be very different across CRPs, even though CRPs aspire to contribute to similar IDOs. It is nevertheless essential to have some common measures for the common IDOs and to agree on comparable ways of measuring them. Only then can the portfolio credibly focus on performance management. These indicators will of course need to align with the Strategy and Results Framework. Third, many CRPs are active in the same geographical areas, where they compete for time and effort from CGIAR and partner organization staff. It is crucial for the CRPs to harmonize their actions and align them with national and regional priorities. The CRPs have already made clear progress on this count, and further progress is expected, as noted in the discussion of collaboration. Beyond collaboration at specific sites, inter-crp collaboration on strategic topics has progressed rapidly and constitutes an important strength of the portfolio. Such collaboration needs careful nurturing because of the time and effort required from CRPs to further investigate collaboration opportunities in CRP projects. Guidance will be provided in the second call to ensure that efficiencies are achieved at sites where a number of CRPs are active and that collaboration on strategic topics continues to strengthen capacity to deliver results across the portfolio. Fourth, most CRPs realize that they must correlate accurate budgets with programmatic results, outputs, outcomes and IDOs. It will be important in the second call for each CRP to show how much funding from Windows 1 and 2 it requires for each of its flagship projects and clusters of activities, and how it intends to complement these funds with Window 3 and bilateral funds. This will not only clarify links between specific budgets and expected results delivery but also provide a very good indication of a CRP s internal priorities. Until now, financial information obtainable from CRPs has been too coarse to permit clear understanding of CRP programmatic priorities, but this is now changing with the alignment of CRP programs of work and budget and annual reports. The second call will have to provide financial guidelines developed in conjunction with programmatic guidelines to enable CRPs to design proposals that correlate planned programmatic activities, expected results and budgets. To date, linking programmatic and financial requirements remains difficult as financial systems in the Centers were never set up to do this. The difficult and lengthy implementation of One Corporate System has not yet provided the expected solution. The CO will step up discussion of One Corporate System to ensure that a standardized and aligned financial and programmatic monitoring system is in place for the second call. Then the guidance for the second call will be able to require each Lead Center and participating Center to adhere to One Corporate System. A related financial issue is the allocation of Window 1 and 2 funds within a CRP. Section 6 noted that many CRPs appear to allocate a very substantial part of these funds to one Center. With a performance-based management system linking programmatic and financial information, it will be possible to justify internal financial allocations in terms of expected performance and of the work required from each partner to successfully deliver expected outputs and outcomes. The second call for proposals will provide guidance on this issue and clearer definition of CRP 24 CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year 2013

25 management costs, so that the allocation of Window 1 and 2 funds within CRPs fully aligns with results-based management principles. Fifth is a lesson concerning transaction costs. The feeling among some CRPs is that transaction costs for CRP scientists are high. These costs reflect a number of factors, including (i) heavy reporting requirements from multiple bilateral projects that are not aligned with reporting to the Fund Council, (ii) multi-institutional partnerships requiring a high initial investment of time that eases once the rules of engagement are ironed out, and (iii) high demands placed on the time of CRP scientists by the CO. There are currently more than 2,600 bilateral CGIAR projects. Managing the high number of small bilateral grants by phasing out smaller grants in favor of larger ones would trim the transaction costs associated with reporting. A bilateral grant portfolio of, say, 400 larger grants would greatly ease current reporting costs. The transaction costs of working in large multi-institutional partnerships and of working in a consortium mode, in which the CO is learning to facilitate a number of changes within the Centers and the CRPs, should be assessed by an external party to determine where and how to institute improvements. The Consortium and the donors should agree to such an external assessment. The sixth and final lesson is that the portfolio assessment of progress would be more useful if first discussed face to face with the CRPs. This would facilitate a more effective exchange of views among the CRPs and between the CO and CRPs, better clarify criteria and portfolio trends, and engender greater understanding of the realities CRPs face. Next year the CO will facilitate such a face-to-face meeting. 8. Risks to portfolio progress and their mitigation A number of risks and bottlenecks constrain the portfolio s progress toward the IDOs and the SLOs. Some of them are financial, and others concern the portfolio s capacity to deliver on the SLOs. The second call for proposals and the guidance for preparing proposals constitute strategic opportunities to mitigate these risks over the coming years Main risks to portfolio delivery A first risk is that donors expectations for quick results from the CRPs will not be fully met, and further that CRPs will respond to these expectations by prioritizing short-term over longer-term results, unbalancing their research pipelines in the process. This would undermine the capacity of the CRP portfolio over the medium and long term to deliver high-quality outcomes and progress toward the SLOs. The lag time research requires to yield significant outputs and outcomes needs more explicit recognition and explanation. The CO, Centers and CRPs can better manage donors expectations by being much more upfront and clear on this point in all their communications. A second risk is a current weakness in research on targeting. While many CRPs are well informed about the geographic, soil and climatic conditions that influence their target crops, production systems and regions, the portfolio still conducts insufficient analysis of key socioeconomic variables, including poverty and gender, that significantly influence the demands and needs of CRP beneficiaries. Methods by which to arrive at joint socioeconomic and biophysical targeting are well known, and they must be used more fully by a number of CRPs. L&F, for example, found its assessment and targeting of value chains allowed better understanding of why some of the value chains that it initially selected were poor choices. This informed better targeting and paved the way for meaningful outcomes in the future. The CO will discuss with the CRPs how best to arrive at more rigorous joint socioeconomic and biophysical targeting, by individual CRP or using more collective approaches. A third risk is the current low volume of research on the long-term economic, social and ecological consequences, both positive and negative, of CRP innovations. These consequences can be significant and need to be documented and understood to strengthen CGIAR scientific credibility and understanding of the adoption process and its impacts. Obviously, such work requires long-term funding, which is difficult to obtain unless Window 1 and 2 funds can be allocated with longer-term commitments for such use. The Consortium plans to discuss these issues with CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year

26 the Fund Council in the context of the second call for proposals. A fourth risk is that effective and meaningful foresight at the CRP and the portfolio level was recognized as needed in the discussions that led to the approval of the Strategy and Results Framework. CGIAR committed to developing foresight capacity, but this development has been relatively slow except in PIM and a few other CRPs. The CO will collaborate with the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development on strategic foresight and use the second call for proposals and its guidance as opportunities to support CRPs and Centers in this respect. A fifth and final nonfinancial risk is linked to questions of integrity and ethics in research for development. Society is very sensitive to risks associated with technological advances. Old and new areas of research such as gender issues, work at the farm level, on household diets and new research methods all encompass ethical considerations. As these issues have not been widely discussed among the CRPs, approaches vary greatly across CRPs, where they exist at all. The second call and its guidance will provide opportunities to establish a baseline of where the portfolio stands in this respect Financial risks The most important financial risk to the CRP portfolio is that the funding cycle has so far not been well aligned with the needs of the CGIAR research-for-development agenda. Whereas CRPs are expected to achieve IDOs in about years, research outputs and outcomes are achieved more quickly. Outputs and outcomes thus have their own lifecycle, some of which are synchronized, but most lack synchrony. It is difficult to maintain a clear emphasis on delivering IDOs many years ahead, and to keep a balanced pipeline of short to long-term activities, when funding is obtained for a few years at a time from bilateral sources and annually from the three CGIAR windows. To address the disconnect between CRPs need to commit financially over multiple years to multiple partners to effectively plan and implement activities, on the one hand, and the current short CGIAR Fund Council funding cycle on the other, the Consortium will propose to the Fund Council an appropriate extension of commitments from Windows 1, 2 and 3 in the context of the second call for proposals. A second financial risk concerns changes in the allocation mechanisms from Windows 1 and 2 to the CRPs. A number of CRPs describe in their annual reports how changes in the manner in which Window 1 and 2 funds were allocated to CRPs in 2013 hindered the implementation of planned research, and how postponing for a few months some research activities compounded delays across the chains of CRP partners and collaborations. In light of this, if future changes to allocation rules for Window 1 and 2 funds are contemplated at portfolio level, they will first be discussed with the CRPs to anticipate and mitigate any potential problems and ensure that the new criteria are fully transparent. It should be noted that the CO compiled the feedback from Centers and CRPs on the funding allocation mechanism, including feedback concerning inadequacies in the budgeting guidelines provided during CRP development, and put in place at the end of 2013 a new financing plan for that dealt with the concerns expressed by Centers and CRPs to the extent feasible. The primary weakness in funding allocation that could not yet be addressed is the lack of CGIAR-wide priorities to guide funding allocation across the portfolio and of a system for resultsbased management that would allow funding allocation across the portfolio in response to measured performance. 26 CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year 2013

27 Appendix: CGIAR Research Program on Managing and Sustaining Crop Collections 2013 results CGIAR Centers have an obligation to the world to conserve and make available the 35 ex situ collections of crop and tree germplasm under their management according to the provisions of the International Treaty of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. The CGIAR Research Program on Managing and Sustaining Crop Collections (CRP on Genebanks) provides secure funding for the routine operations of the genebanks and works to improve individual performance standards and strengthen quality and risk management systems in all genebanks. Figure A1: 2013 distribution of germplasm samples from CGIAR genebanks Within CGIAR 69% 31% NARS 51% 33% 16% ARIs & Universities Private sector Outside CGIAR CGIAR genebanks provided 154,894 germplasm samples to users in 2013: 67,800 distinct accessions to CRPs and 30,965 accessions sent outside CGIAR to 102 countries, 51% of the latter sent to national agricultural research systems, 33% to advanced research institutes, and 16% to farmers and the private sector. These numbers show 20% higher dissemination than in CGIAR genebanks perform a unique service and are the only source of healthy germplasm available to many researchers, breeders and other users in developing countries. Figure A2: Countries receiving germplasm from CGIAR genebanks in 2013 CGIAR Research Program Portfolio Report For Year