The Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change Project set out to improve the diversity, quantity, and accessibility of germplasm collections of crop wild relatives (CWR). Between 2013 and 2018, partners in 25 countries, heirs to the globetrotting legacy of Nikolai Vavilov, undertook seed collecting expeditions targeting CWR of 28 crops of global significance for agriculture. Here, we describe the implementation of the 25 national collecting programs and present the key results. A total of 4587 unique seed samples from at least 355 CWR taxa were collected, conserved ex situ, safety duplicated in national and international genebanks, and made available through the Multilateral System (MLS) of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (Plant Treaty). Collections of CWR were made for all 28 targeted crops. Potato and eggplant were the most collected genepools, although the greatest number of primary genepool collections were made for rice. Overall, alfalfa, Bambara groundnut, grass pea and wheat were the genepools for which targets were best achieved. Several of the newly collected samples have already been used in pre-breeding programs to adapt crops to future challenges.

Nepal is a part of the world’s biodiversity hotspot and ranks the 49th in the world for biodiversity. Agrobiodiversity and its conservation status were studied through literature review, field survey, key informant survey and focus group discussion. Results of field implementation of some good practices and action research were also documented. Among 24,300 total species in the country, 28% are agricultural genetic resources (AGRs), termed as agrobiodiversity. Agrobiodiversity has six components (crops, forages, livestock, aquatic, insects and microorganisms) and four sub-components (domesticated, semi-domesticated, wild relatives and wild edible) in Nepal. Agrobiodiversity on each component exists at agroecosystem, species, variety/breed/biotype/race/strain, genotype and allele levels, within an altitude range from 60 to 5,000 masl. There are 12 agroecosystems supporting 1026 species under crop component, 510 under forage, 35 under livestock, 250 under the aquatic animal, 17 under aquatic plant, 3,500 under insect and 800 under microorganism. An estimated loss of agrobiodiversity is 40%, however, farmers have reported up to 100% loss of AGRs in some areas for a particular species. Conservation of agrobiodiversity has been initiated since 1986. Four strategies namely ex-situ, on-farm, in-situ and breeding have been adopted for conservation and sustainable utilization of AGRs. Eighty good practices including process, methods and actions for managing agrobiodiversity have been in practice and these practices come under five conservation components (sensitization, method and approach, accelerator, value and enabling environment). Within the country, 18,765 accessions of AGRs have been conserved in different kinds of banks. A total of 24,683 accessions of Nepalese crops, forages and microbes have been conserved in different international and foreign genebanks. Some collections are conserved as safety duplication and safety backup in different CGIARs’ banks and World Seed Vault, Korea. Two global databases (GENESYS and EURISCO) have maintained 19,200 Nepalese accessions. Geographical Information System, Climate Analog Tool and biotechnological tools have been applied for better managing AGRs. Many stakeholders need to further concentrate on the conservation and utilization of AGRs. Global marketing of some native AGRs is necessary for sustaining agriculture and attracting young generations as well as conserving them through use.

Humanity has been threatened by pandemics since several decades with devastating effects on all human activities including the economy, and environment. Currently, the world is reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has been a major threat to the livelihood of billions of people worldwide. Nepal is not an exception to this and has been seriously threatened by the COVID-19 pandemic. The thousands of the peoples who depend on daily wages to join hand to mouth has been under the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic because of job loss, disruption in the food supply chain. Also, the COVID-19 pandemic has thwarted Nepal's targets to achieve UN Sustainable Development Goals including an unprecedented state of vulnerability to hunger and poverty in the country. Though some informal shreds of evidence have reported the negative impacts of COVID-19 on Sustainable Development Goals, none of the scientific literature has been available regarding such impacts in Nepal yet. This review aims to synthesize extant literature that reports the effects of COVID-19 on the Nepalese economy and implications for achieving UN Sustainable Development Goals.We found that the COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented challenges to achieve the country's committed United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals for Nepal. Further, the COVID-19 pandemic has created a unique “income shock” that is supposed to precipitate household food insecurity in developing economy like Nepal. Our review indicated that the percentage of populations below poverty could rise even more than the present national reported value of 18% in the post-pandemic era. We emphasized generating employment and income-earning opportunities to build a resilient food system. Further, we urged to build international consensus to reset and rethink the course of sustainable development goals.

Eggplant (Solanum melongena Linnaeus) is one of the most economically important vegetable of tropics having hot-wet climate. The key pest, eggplant fruit and shoot borer, Leucinodes orbonalis Guenee found to be most destructive and first ranked threat especially in South Asia, hence become hot issue for research in this region. It inflicts sizeable damage up to 80 percent in terms of fruit and content of vitamin-C. This situation refrained the farmers growing eggplant, hence relevant literature were gleaned and overviews regarding biology and management of borer with supportive facts and figure for safe and healthy eggplant production. As integrated approaches of pest management have been gaining popularity nowadays, this article outlines all the components of IPM including use of resistant varieties, sex pheromones, cultural methods, physical and mechanical barriers, bio-pesticides and bio-control agents, botanical and chemical means of management including basic biological parameters associated with management.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/ijasbt.v2i1.10001Int J Appl Sci Biotechnol, Vol. 2(1): 18-28

Eggplant fruit and shoot borer (EFSB), Leucinodes orbonalis Guenee (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) is a key insect pest of eggplant in all eggplant growing areas of Nepal. A field experiment was carried out in Khumaltar, Lalitpur during summer season of 2014 using eight treatments as, i) Abamectin 1.9 EC @ 1.5 ml/lit; ii) Spinosad 45 SL @ 0.25 ml/lit; iii) Emamectin Benzoate 5 SG @ 0.3 gm/lit; iv) Tozen @ 0.33 ml/lit; v) Karanjin 2 EC @ 2ml/lit; vi) Borer Gourd (Bacillus thuringiensis var. Kurstaki 10⁸ CFU/ml + Beauveria bassiana 10⁸ CFU/ml + Verticillium lecanii 10⁸ CFU/ml + Metarhizium anisopliae 10⁸ CFU/ml) @ 2 ml/lit; vii) Chlorantraniliprole 18.5 EC @ 0.25 ml/lit and viii) Untreated check to test efficacy of newer bio-rational insecticides against L. orbonalis. The treatments were arranged in randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications. The result showed that the fruit infestation percent on number and weight basis was significantly the lowest in Chlorantraniliprole (6.57 and 6.31) and Spinosad (12.08 and 11.15) treated plots as compared to other treatments. The Chlorantraniliprole treated plot recorded the maximum marketable yield (32.03 mt/ha) followed by Spinosad (30.93 mt/ha) with 34.39 percent and 29.77 percent increase in marketable fruit yield over untreated check, respectively. Hence, the use of Chlorantraniliprole and Spinosad could be one of the better options for effective management of L. orbonalis. Int J Appl Sci Biotechnol, Vol 3(4): 727-730

This article describes the agrobiodiversity fair aided exploration and collection expedition of native plant genetic resources in southern Lalitpur, jointly organized by the National Agriculture Genetic Resources Centre (NAGRC) and Group of Helping Hands (SAHAS) Nepal. In-district one-day agrobiodiversity fairs were organized in February and December month of 2019, altogether two times, and these agrobiodiversity fairs were used as a tool to explore plant genetic resources found in Bagmati and Mahankal Rural Municipalities of Lalitpur district. To collect these explored genetic resources during agrobiodiversity fairs, the joint field expedition, key informant survey, diversity rich farmers discussion was used as a collection tool. The present study explored, inventoried, collected and conserved 148 accessions of 44 crop species, the highest number (18 accessions) was of chayote followed by 10 accessions each of soybean, cowpea and maize and 9 accessions of common bean. Collections are generally new and unique. Many landraces, mostly from rice (13 landraces) were identified as extinct from the surveyed areas and few are under extinction mainly due to attraction of farmers to new high yielding varieties. The collected species with orthodox seeds were tested for germination ability and those that passed a minimum of 85% germination, were preserved in seedbank of NAGRC. NAGRC plans to characterize these accessions in the coming seasons depending upon the season of crop growing. The current expedition collected eight species for which mode of propagation is vegetative or those for which seed storage behavior falls under intermediate mode. NAGRC has been started expanding field genebank coverage using these accessions.