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BULLETIN 1
Eight innovation teams win CGIAR’s 2025 Scaling Fund support
Eight innovation teams win CGIAR’s 2025 Scaling Fund support
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CGIAR Nov 2025
Engaging the real-world elements of scaling agrifood solutions
Written by Esther Kihoro
‘Scaling’ an innovation refers to increasing its readiness and use, which in turn increases the benefits the innovation generates. Scaling is needed now more than ever if we are to effect the unprecedented changes needed to transform the global food systems now under increasing multiple threats—e.g., from climate change, gender inequality, unsustainable practices, and growing poverty levels among the smallholder farmers who continue to feed most of the world’s population.
But the truth is that most innovations (agricultural and otherwise) never reach scale. This is due to such oversights as employing too-simplistic ‘copy and paste’ approaches, focusing on pilot projects (‘Pilots never fail, pilots never scale’), ignoring the incentives that would help an innovation to scale and/or the bottlenecks that would impede it, focusing on reaching big numbers rather than generating the system changes needed for an innovation to scale, and not understanding that the people and skills needed to design innovations differ from those needed to scale them.
Furthermore, scaling an innovation is most successful if it includes not just scaling out, by spreading to new users or geographies, but also by scaling up, to influence institutions or policies; scaling deep, to generate changes in behaviors, norms, or systems; and scaling down, to support local adaptations. In addition, responsible scaling ensures that innovation teams not only pursue broader reach and impact but also anticipate, monitor, and mitigate any potential unintended environmental or social consequences that may arise as innovations are adopted at scale.
The CGIAR Scaling Challenge
An annual CGIAR Scaling Challenge, initiated in 2025 by CGIAR’s Scaling for Impact science program, is helping to address these issues. This competition provides the winning innovation teams with scaling grants of USD40,000 each as well as hands-on tailored technical support, expert guidance, and peer learning from the Scaling for Impact program.
In 2025, 32 CGIAR innovation teams applied for support from the Scaling Challenge. Five teams working across Africa, Asia, and Latin America won the competition and are now receiving financial and technical support to help catalyze their ready-to-scale innovations.
These novel projects are addressing five big challenges: (1) protecting people from toxins (aflatoxins) in mold-contaminated grain crops, (2) supporting remote African women farmers to become profitable chicken entrepreneurs, (3) protecting scarce groundwater from over-extraction and other unsustainable uses in South Asia, (4) enabling governments to reliably measure levels of empowerment among men and women in their populations, and (5) providing actionable and contextualized climate information helping farmers to make climate-smart decisions.
The following are this year’s five winning innovation teams.
See: https://www.cgiar.org/news-events/news/eight-innovation-teams-win-cgiars-2025-scaling-fund-support/
Written by Esther Kihoro
‘Scaling’ an innovation refers to increasing its readiness and use, which in turn increases the benefits the innovation generates. Scaling is needed now more than ever if we are to effect the unprecedented changes needed to transform the global food systems now under increasing multiple threats—e.g., from climate change, gender inequality, unsustainable practices, and growing poverty levels among the smallholder farmers who continue to feed most of the world’s population.
But the truth is that most innovations (agricultural and otherwise) never reach scale. This is due to such oversights as employing too-simplistic ‘copy and paste’ approaches, focusing on pilot projects (‘Pilots never fail, pilots never scale’), ignoring the incentives that would help an innovation to scale and/or the bottlenecks that would impede it, focusing on reaching big numbers rather than generating the system changes needed for an innovation to scale, and not understanding that the people and skills needed to design innovations differ from those needed to scale them.
Furthermore, scaling an innovation is most successful if it includes not just scaling out, by spreading to new users or geographies, but also by scaling up, to influence institutions or policies; scaling deep, to generate changes in behaviors, norms, or systems; and scaling down, to support local adaptations. In addition, responsible scaling ensures that innovation teams not only pursue broader reach and impact but also anticipate, monitor, and mitigate any potential unintended environmental or social consequences that may arise as innovations are adopted at scale.
The CGIAR Scaling Challenge
An annual CGIAR Scaling Challenge, initiated in 2025 by CGIAR’s Scaling for Impact science program, is helping to address these issues. This competition provides the winning innovation teams with scaling grants of USD40,000 each as well as hands-on tailored technical support, expert guidance, and peer learning from the Scaling for Impact program.
In 2025, 32 CGIAR innovation teams applied for support from the Scaling Challenge. Five teams working across Africa, Asia, and Latin America won the competition and are now receiving financial and technical support to help catalyze their ready-to-scale innovations.
These novel projects are addressing five big challenges: (1) protecting people from toxins (aflatoxins) in mold-contaminated grain crops, (2) supporting remote African women farmers to become profitable chicken entrepreneurs, (3) protecting scarce groundwater from over-extraction and other unsustainable uses in South Asia, (4) enabling governments to reliably measure levels of empowerment among men and women in their populations, and (5) providing actionable and contextualized climate information helping farmers to make climate-smart decisions.
The following are this year’s five winning innovation teams.
See: https://www.cgiar.org/news-events/news/eight-innovation-teams-win-cgiars-2025-scaling-fund-support/
BULLETIN 2
EFSA GMO Panel Releases Scientific Assessment of GM Oilseed Rape LBFLFK
EFSA GMO Panel Releases Scientific Assessment of GM Oilseed Rape LBFLFK
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ISAAA November 12 2025: The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) GMO Panel has released its Scientific Opinion on the safety of genetically modified (GM) herbicide tolerant oilseed rape (Brassica napus AACC) LBFLFK according to Regulation (EU) No 503/2013, for import, processing, and food and feed uses, within the EU.
According to the Scientific Opinion, none of the identified differences in the agronomic/phenotypic and compositional characteristics between oilseed rape LBFLFK and the non-GM comparator needed further assessment, except for germination of harvested seeds, which underwent additional evaluation and was found not to raise environmental concerns.
The GMO Panel could not conclude on the overall safety of oilseed rape LBFLFK because the safety of its newly expressed proteins and its use in animal feed and aquaculture could not be established. However, the panel determined that the refined, bleached, and deodorized (RBD) oil is safe for human consumption, provided it is not used in high-temperature applications and is subject to post-market monitoring. While no risks were identified for the terrestrial environment, the panel could not conclude on the safety of LBFLFK to aquatic organisms, rendering the post-market environmental monitoring plan inadequate.
For more information, read the Scientific Opinion in the EFSA Journal.
See https://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/article/default.asp?ID=21593
According to the Scientific Opinion, none of the identified differences in the agronomic/phenotypic and compositional characteristics between oilseed rape LBFLFK and the non-GM comparator needed further assessment, except for germination of harvested seeds, which underwent additional evaluation and was found not to raise environmental concerns.
The GMO Panel could not conclude on the overall safety of oilseed rape LBFLFK because the safety of its newly expressed proteins and its use in animal feed and aquaculture could not be established. However, the panel determined that the refined, bleached, and deodorized (RBD) oil is safe for human consumption, provided it is not used in high-temperature applications and is subject to post-market monitoring. While no risks were identified for the terrestrial environment, the panel could not conclude on the safety of LBFLFK to aquatic organisms, rendering the post-market environmental monitoring plan inadequate.
For more information, read the Scientific Opinion in the EFSA Journal.
See https://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/article/default.asp?ID=21593
SCIENTIFIC NEWS
A synthetic transcription cascade enables direct in planta shoot regeneration for transgenesis and gene editing in multiple plants
Arjun Ojha Kshetry, Kaushik Ghose, Anshu Alok, Vikas Devkar, Vidhyavathi Raman, Robert M. Stupar, Luis Herrera-Estrella, Feng Zhang and Gunvant B. Patil.
Molecular Plant; November 6 2025; 18: 1-16
A synthetic transcription cascade enables direct in planta shoot regeneration for transgenesis and gene editing in multiple plants
Arjun Ojha Kshetry, Kaushik Ghose, Anshu Alok, Vikas Devkar, Vidhyavathi Raman, Robert M. Stupar, Luis Herrera-Estrella, Feng Zhang and Gunvant B. Patil.
Molecular Plant; November 6 2025; 18: 1-16
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Abstract
Developing transgenic and/or gene-edited plants largely depends on tedious, lengthy, and costly in vitro regeneration protocols. While plants have remarkable regeneration ability, not all species, genotypes, or even explants exhibit the same transformation and regeneration potential under in vitro conditions. To tackle this bottleneck, we have developed a seamless and user-friendly system to induce transgenic and gene-edited de novo meristems via a synthetic cascade comprising a wound-induced regeneration pathway, plant developmental regulators (DRs), and gene-editing reagents. WOUND INDUCED DEDIFFERENTIATION 1 (WIND1) was used as a transcriptional regulator to control the expression of various DR genes driven by ENHANCER OF SHOOT REGENERATION 1 (ESR1) promoter. This cascade was strategically applied in planta to the non-meristematic internode of Nicotiana benthamiana to induce meristematic activity and regenerate de novo shoots with knockout mutations of the phytoene desaturase (PDS) gene. Among the DR genes tested, the strategic expression of isopentenyl transferase (ipt) driven by the ESR1 promoter under the control of WIND1 proved most effective for efficient regeneration in tobacco. Subsequently, this synthetic toolkit was successfully applied to both tomato and soybean. WIND1 served as a key cellular reprogramming factor, initiating differentiation, while ipt complemented this process by promoting organogenesis through cytokinin biosynthesis. This methodology offers a transformative approach to overcome barriers in plant biotechnology, potentially accelerating the generation of transgenic and gene-edited plants without reliance, or with minimal reliance, on conventional tissue-culture intermediates.
See https://www.cell.com/molecular-plant/fulltext/S1674-2052(25)00322-3
Developing transgenic and/or gene-edited plants largely depends on tedious, lengthy, and costly in vitro regeneration protocols. While plants have remarkable regeneration ability, not all species, genotypes, or even explants exhibit the same transformation and regeneration potential under in vitro conditions. To tackle this bottleneck, we have developed a seamless and user-friendly system to induce transgenic and gene-edited de novo meristems via a synthetic cascade comprising a wound-induced regeneration pathway, plant developmental regulators (DRs), and gene-editing reagents. WOUND INDUCED DEDIFFERENTIATION 1 (WIND1) was used as a transcriptional regulator to control the expression of various DR genes driven by ENHANCER OF SHOOT REGENERATION 1 (ESR1) promoter. This cascade was strategically applied in planta to the non-meristematic internode of Nicotiana benthamiana to induce meristematic activity and regenerate de novo shoots with knockout mutations of the phytoene desaturase (PDS) gene. Among the DR genes tested, the strategic expression of isopentenyl transferase (ipt) driven by the ESR1 promoter under the control of WIND1 proved most effective for efficient regeneration in tobacco. Subsequently, this synthetic toolkit was successfully applied to both tomato and soybean. WIND1 served as a key cellular reprogramming factor, initiating differentiation, while ipt complemented this process by promoting organogenesis through cytokinin biosynthesis. This methodology offers a transformative approach to overcome barriers in plant biotechnology, potentially accelerating the generation of transgenic and gene-edited plants without reliance, or with minimal reliance, on conventional tissue-culture intermediates.
See https://www.cell.com/molecular-plant/fulltext/S1674-2052(25)00322-3
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Figure: Experimental validation of gene constructs designed to assess proAtESR1-driven gene activation in response to AtWIND1 expression.
