– From Annual Report 2024 –

Selected highlights

• In rooftop garden soils and surface garden soils in urban and peri-urban areas of Dhaka, Bangladesh, a study analyzed microbiome in soils, and found Escherichia coli and other pathogenic strains in vegetable samples, highlighting potential food safety risks in urban gardening systems.
• Baseline data were collected in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh for a study on how home gardening support provided to displaced people improves their diet quality nd income.
• 5 mungbean lines were identified as tolerant of waterlogging in a pot study at the Pulses Research Centre, Bangladesh.
• 44 onion village clusters were established in Odisha, India, to ensure regular marketing of onion by aggregating the produce and marketing through the linkages made between seller and buyer.
• IPM packages for tomato and lablab bean proved effective in five districts in Tamil Nadu, India, including grafted tomato seedlings, bioinoculants, pheromone traps, botanicals and icrobial pesticides. Beneficial insect populations were also notably higher in IPM plots.
• 150 farmers in Madhya Pradesh, India adopted climate-smart regenerative practices for bitter gourd, chili, eggplant, okra and tomato, to be scaled to 1,500 farmers with farmer field  schools. Farmers valued cover, trap, and border crops, fewer pests and weeds, with additional income and nutrition.
• A parallel recurrent selection population for resistance to thrips in India was initiated, based on a diverse panel of resistant lines identified by WorldVeg.
• 300 crosses were made as part of the chili begomovirus recurrent selection program in India for resistance screening in a disease hotspot in Guntur, India.
• 17,070 hectares in three districts of India benefitted from scaling mungbean and urdbean varieties.
• 3 WorldVeg-developed chilli lines in India were found to be highly resistant to Cucumber mosaic virus and 2 were highly resistant to Phytophthora capsici.
• A new WorldVeg mungbean variety was released in India by the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, being a high yielding variety suitable for moderately salt affected soils.
• 4 mungbean lines from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, India, and 1 WorldVeg line, were found to be resistant to dry root rot under controlled conditions.
• 5 urdbean lines from 30 lines tested in Assam, India, are undergoing multilocational trial in 6 agroclimatic zones, with the best 1-2 lines to be selected for released as new varieties.
• 11 vegetable soybean lines were evaluated for color, texture, taste, and overall acceptability in India.
• 135 bitter gourd lines resistant to Tomato leaf curl New Delhi virus were developed with resistance confirmed during trials in virus hotspots in India.
• 111 vegetable soybean accessions screened  in Dharwad, India for rust disease, with 2 accessions identified as moderately resistant.
• Trichoderma viride was piloted and promoted for onion seed treatment and field application in India as part of IPM strategies to enhance plant health and reduce disease incidence.
• Two new F1 hybrids derived from WorldVeg lines evaluated in 50 farmer field trials in Sri Lanka were found to be high yielding, disease resistant, and preferred by farmers as compared to local checks.