The global research consortium CGIAR is restructuring itself to build a more integrated global organization (“One CGIAR”) that fully leverages its strengths and refocuses its research strategy through 2030 in service of a renewed mission: End hunger—through science to transform food, land, and water systems in a climate crisis. The CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture led strategic research in support of this effort, looking into digital trends that have the potential to transform global agriculture in the coming years, the roles public-interest organizations should play in the digital agriculture landscape, and the capabilities CGIAR must have if it is to use data and digital technology to their full potential in the service of its mission. | Non-PR | IFPRI1; CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture; 1 Fostering Climate-Resilient and Sustainable Food Supply; | EPTD | CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture (Big Data)

The circular economy concept can enhance sustainability through restructuring consumption and production patterns using innovative designs and business models. This core premise is highly relevant for the interlinked water and food supply sectors in arid regions, which are threatened by natural scarcity and resource overuse. This paper transfers the idea of the circular economy into the practice of the water and food sectors using the example of the region of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). It develops a framework for identifying circular economy strategies and issues applicable to basic supply sectors. In analyzing the value chain and circular strategies of the water and food sectors, the circular economy idea has resulted in numerous industrial applications. The range of applications is illustrated in the key industries of wastewater and local food production. Expanding the reuse options for municipal wastewater and valorizing organic waste represent important circular economy directions for the basic supply sector of the GCC. Incorporating these ideas is positive, but a more comprehensive set of measures is needed to generate low-carbon and low-metabolism economic development in the region. In addition to the current sporadic supply-side initiatives, there is a need for non-technical circular economy strategies related to demand management and waste reduction.

Although a strong connection between the environmental fluoride contamination and the fluorosis disease is nowadays worldwide well documented, the knowledge on the fluoride contamination levels of cultivated crops at the basis of the human food-chain is limited and fragmented. Adopting a systematic approach, this study reviews the available literature concerning the impacts of soil and water fluoride pollution on the safety and productivity of food and feed crops at a global scale, with the aim to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of the art. The analyses of literature highlighted that food and feed crops exposed to soil and water fluoride pollution may reach concentrations of fluoride potentially harmful to human health. Nevertheless, despite the efforts already made to assess the crop fluoride accumulation in contaminated areas of India and China, the present study brings to light the lack of knowledge still existing on this issue for some regions strongly affected by environmental fluoride contamination such as the East African Rift Valley. Concerning the impacts of fluoride on cultivated crops, many authors observed that fluoride can produce toxic effects on plants leading to oxidative stress, reduction in chlorophyll content, alterations in the levels of proline, betaine, soluble sugars, nitrogen and macro and micronutrients. However, the appearance of symptoms such as visible injuries, reduced root and shoot length and yield decline was not always observed, also at high levels of fluoride exposure, and in some cases, the biomass production was even stimulated by increasing fluoride doses.

Curcumin was extracted from Curcuma Longa employing a green, bio-based, and food-agreed surfactant-free microemulsion (SFME) consisting of water, ethanol, and triacetin. Concerning the high solubility of curcumin in the examined ternary mixtures, it was attempted to produce highly concentrated tinctures of up to a total of ~130 mg/mL curcuminoids in the solvent by repeatedly extracting fresh rhizomes in the same extraction mixture. The amount of water had a significant influence on the number of cycles that could be performed as well as on the extraction of the different curcuminoids. In addition, the purity of single extracts was enhanced to 94% by investigating several purification steps, e.g. vacuum distillation and lyophilization. Through purification before extraction, the water insoluble curcumin extract could be solubilized indefinitely in an aqueous environment. Additional stability tests showed that solutions of curcumin can be stable up to five months when concealed from natural light.

The circular economy concept can enhance sustainability through restructuring consumption and production patterns using innovative designs and business models. This core premise is highly relevant for the interlinked water and food supply sectors in arid regions, which are threatened by natural scarcity and resource overuse. This paper transfers the idea of the circular economy into the practice of the water and food sectors using the example of the region of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). It develops a framework for identifying circular economy strategies and issues applicable to basic supply sectors. In analyzing the value chain and circular strategies of the water and food sectors, the circular economy idea has resulted in numerous industrial applications. The range of applications is illustrated in the key industries of wastewater and local food production. Expanding the reuse options for municipal wastewater and valorizing organic waste represent important circular economy directions for the basic supply sector of the GCC. Incorporating these ideas is positive, but a more comprehensive set of measures is needed to generate low-carbon and low-metabolism economic development in the region. In addition to the current sporadic supply-side initiatives, there is a need for non-technical circular economy strategies related to demand management and waste reduction.

The global research consortium CGIAR is restructuring itself to build a more integrated global organization that fully leverages its strengths and refocuses its research strategy through 2030 in service of a renewed mission: End hunger—through science to transform food, land, and water systems in a climate crisis. The CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture led strategic research in support of this effort, looking into digital trends that have the potential to transform global agriculture in the coming years, the roles public-interest organizations should play in the digital agriculture landscape, and the capabilities CGIAR must have if it is to use data and digital technology to their full potential in the service of its mission. The team conducted 165 surveys with researchers and an array of stakeholders in the agricultural research-for-development ecosystem; 80 semi-structured interviews with experts in agribusiness, food companies, development funding and finance organizations, large information technology firms, consultancies, life sciences organizations and start-up firms; and 10 internal CGIAR focus group workshops. These were complemented with literature research. There is unprecedented innovation at the intersection of digital technologies and life sciences that—if harnessed and applied—can provide the tools humanity needs to adapt to or mitigate some of its most pressing food security challenges. The research points to four broad intervention areas where CGIAR can play a key role in achieving this: advancing responsible data sharing, standards, and intermediation; applying artificial intelligence responsibly; partnering to expand digital services to reach the most vulnerable populations; and developing digital trust and digitally-enabled collective action. An action plan is suggested for building a more unified, digitally-enabled CGIAR that will be able to fully develop this role in the sector, noting key capabilities in digital leadership and governance, data management and use, digital skills, engagement with a wider digital ecosystem, unified information infrastructure, and digital innovation strategy and management in support of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. | 109 pages

The global research consortium CGIAR is restructuring itself to build a more integrated global organization (“One CGIAR”) that fully leverages its strengths and refocuses its research strategy through 2030 in service of a renewed mission: End hunger—through science to transform food, land, and water systems in a climate crisis. The CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture led strategic research in support of this effort, looking into digital trends that have the potential to transform global agriculture in the coming years, the roles public-interest organizations should play in the digital agriculture landscape, and the capabilities CGIAR must have if it is to use data and digital technology to their full potential in the service of its mission.

The urban food garden is an interesting natural solution to the need to develop sponge cities structured and designed to absorb and capture rain water for reducing flooding, worldwide. This study applied a storm water management model and field experiments to investigate properties of the garden substrates. Taipei City was taken as a case study as the Taiwan government has promoted urban food garden projects since 2015. The urban food garden in Taipei has established a cultivable area of 197,168 m², 64,026 m² (32.5%) of which is designated as green-roof gardens and the rest as domestic gardens. Four substrate mixtures were found to have infiltration rates positively related to their soil water content. Substrate 1 had the highest infiltration rate (6.47 × 10⁻⁵ m/s) and soil water content (281%) when vegetation grows in limited containers. In 2019, the total water retention capacity of the urban food garden in Taipei City was 50,550.7 m³. This means that 1 m² of the urban food garden in Taipei retained 256.4 kg of water. Considering climatic conditions, the water retention capacity of the green-roof gardens in Taipei ranges from 28.2% to 41.0%. During short-term high-density rainfall events, the green-roof gardens were found to be more efficient in reducing the runoff volume, whereas during long-term high-density rainfall events, they were found to be more efficient in reducing the runoff peak flow duration (~20 mins) compared with concrete surfaces. This study proved that establishing the urban food garden contributes to increasing the water retention capacity and reducing the volume of surface runoff and the duration of runoff peak flow in prevention of flood disasters.

Here we demonstrate a facile, two step formation of silver core - gold shell (Ag–Au) nanostructures using microelectrodes and assess their performance as surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates to detect and quantify toxicants. Ag nanostructures, serving as the scaffolds for the bimetallic structures, were grown first by using electrochemical deposition on the edges of microelectrodes functionalized with the alkanethiol, 11-mercaptoundecanoic acid. Subsequently, different concentrations of HAuCl₄ were used to perform a galvanic reaction on the surfaces of the Ag nanostructures with aqueous droplets being placed on the microelectrodes for 10 min before the substrate was rinsed and dried. Lower HAuCl₄ concentrations were found to better preserve the fractal morphology of the formed Ag–Au nanostructures, while higher concentrations resulted in Ag–Au fragments. The SERS enhancement factor for the Ag–Au nanostructures was estimated to have a max value of 6.51 x 10⁵. Combining a data reduction technique with a linear classifier, both identification and quantification were demonstrated with 100% success. The toxicants thiram, thiabendazole, malachite green and biphenyl-4-thiol were all detected and identified at 1 ppm. Lastly, as a proof of concept, the Ag–Au nanostructures were transferred to a PDMS film resulting in a flexible SERS substrate capable of direct detection of thiram on an apple peel without any additional sample pre-treatment.

The Food-Energy-Water (FEW) nexus for urban sustainability needs to be analyzed via an integrative rather than a sectoral or silo approach, reflecting the ongoing transition from separate infrastructure systems to an integrated social-ecological-infrastructure system. As technology hubs can provide food, energy, water resources via decentralized and/or centralized facilities, there is an acute need to optimize FEW infrastructures by considering cost-benefit-risk tradeoffs with respect to multiple sustainability indicators. This paper identifies, categorizes, and analyzes global trends with respect to contemporary FEW technology metrics that highlights the possible optimal integration of a broad spectrum of technology hubs for possible cost-benefit-risk tradeoffs. The challenges related to multiscale and multiagent modeling processes for the simulation of urban FEW systems were discussed with respect to the aspects of scaling-up, optimization process, and risk assessment. Our review reveals that this field is growing at a rapid pace and the previous selection of analytical methodologies, nexus criteria, and sustainability indicators largely depended on individual FEW nexus conditions disparately, and full-scale cost-benefit-risk tradeoffs were very rare. Therefore, the potential full-scale technology integration in three ongoing cases of urban FEW systems in Miami (the United States), Marseille (France), and Amsterdam (the Netherlands) were demonstrated in due purpose finally.