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This study was undertaken to assess the potential impacts of climate change on agriculture in the Sikasso region of southern Mali, as part of an effort by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to integrate climate change adaptation considerations into their development projects. The region is considered to be the breadbasket of Mali, providing a substantial amount of the country's food supplies as well as cotton for exchange earnings. The project had two components: modeling how climate change could affect production of cereal and cash crops in southern Mali; and conducting a stakeholder-driven vulnerability and adaptation assessment to identify potential options for addressing current and projected risks to agriculture from climate change. Projected changes in crop yields were based on a previous analysis that was extended for the purposes of this study. The projections suggested that the sensitivity of maize to changing weather conditions is relatively small (generally less than 10% change) under both dry and wet scenarios in 2030 and 2060. White (Irish) potatoes, the primary cash crop, are the most sensitive to changing weather conditions, with yields decreasing under both dry and wet conditions; yields could decrease by about 25%

We investigated the antagonistic activities of endophytic and rhizosphere fungi, isolated from three different rice cropping areas in Vietnam, against the rice root-knot nematode Meloidogyne graminicola. Amongst the three types of soils (alluvial, acid sulphate and gleyic acrisol), the alluvial soils contained the highest number of fungal strains that were able endophytically to colonise rice roots, and also showed a high biological control potential against the rice root-knot nematode. The gleyic acrisol contained fewer fungi with intermediate biological control levels while the acid sulphate soil hosted the lowest number of endophytic fungi. By inoculating roots of rice seedlings with conidia of endophytic and rhizosphere Fusarium isolates, root-galling severity was reduced by 29-42% and root weight was increased by up to 33%. Trichoderma species, which were recovered only from the rhizosphere of the rice plants grown in the three sampled soils, showed similar biological control effects on nematode galling and on plant growth by reducing galling severity by up to 38%. We conclude that Fusarium and Trichoderma isolates are potential biological control agents against M. graminicola in rice in that fungal treatments reduced root-knot levels significantly and that depending on initial nematode density in the soil, these reductions would have an economic impact on rice production.

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