Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

The need for concerted action to prevent the COVID-19 international health emergency from triggering a catastrophic world food crisis received a welcome new tool today as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations formally launched the Food Coalition.

A "network of networks", the Food Coalition is a voluntary multi-stakeholder and multi-sectoral alliance set up to support innovative initiatives to ensure global food access, increase the resilience of agri-food systems and put them on a more sustainable course.

First suggested by the Government of Italy and with more than 30 countries having already expressed interest in joining, it will support existing and future efforts to overcome the pandemic's disruptive impacts and help countries get back on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, particularly those of ending hunger and poverty.

FAO signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in July 2018 with the Italian Research Institutions: the National Research Council (CNR); the Council for Agricultural Research and Economics (CREA); the National Agency for New Technologies, Renewable Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA); and the Italian Institute for Environmental Research and Protection (ISPRA). The overarching objective of the cooperation between FAO and CNR, CREA, ENEA and ISPRA is the promotion of sustainability at large in the context of joint efforts for achieving Agenda 2030.

This cooperation also promoted the secondment of staff and researchers from the developing countries to work with Italian Research Institutes. As part of the joint work plan, there were number of activities successfully completed including the research work of the visiting scientists to ENEA from Burkina Faso, Republic of the Congo and Cameroon. To promote communication initiatives aimed at enhancing the impact and visibility of the activities undertaken in the context of MoU, FAO’s Research and Extension Unit (AGDR) and the National Agency for New Technologies, Renewable Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) are jointly organizing a webinar on “Promoting collaborative research for sustainable agri-food systems for achieving Agenda 2030”.

This webinar will focus on the results of the research work carried out by the visiting scientists from Africa to ENEA in the field of microbiome application for sustainable agri-food systems.

The webinar will be an opportunity for all partners of the MoU to briefly share their reflections and to promote interactive discussion on the topics of presentations.

Presentations:

• The ENEA Initiatives in supporting the Sustainable Agri-food systems: ENEA–TWAS Research Training Fellowships Programme 2018-2020 (Massimo Iannetta, ENEA)
• Antifungal activity of local plants extracts against seed-borne fungi in Burkina Faso (Leon W. Nitiema, Institut de l’Environnement et de Recherches Agricoles (INERA), Burkina Faso)
• Soil organic matter, C and P dynamics in the mixed-species plantations of Acacia and Eucalypts in the Congolese coastal plains (Stella-Koutika, Research Center on Sustainability and Productivity of Industrial Plantations (CRDPI), Republic of the Congo)
• Optimization of the antimicrobial efficiency of low thermal treatment of fruit juices in combination with natural aroma compounds (Alex Dimitri Tchuenchieu Kamgain, Centre for Food and Nutrition Research, IMPM, Cameroon)
• Microbiome application for sustainable food system: from field to food quality and safety (Annamaria Bevivino, ENEA)

Target audience:

Researchers and development practitioners interested and engaged in agricultural research on agri-food systems and related topics.

Registration:

The webinar has limited number of participants, thus we invite your early registration here. It will also help us to stay in touch and keep you informed on our next webinars of the partnership between FAO and the Italian Research Institutions! The webinar will be in English, for duration of 100 minutes.