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BULLETIN 1
What fuels the stove, fires the change: rethinking cooking for health, empowerment and climate
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Figure: Women spend up to five hours a day collecting woodfuel and cooking.©FAO/Luis Tato
FAO; MICHELA MORESE - 21/08/2025
Five hours. That's how long women in energy-poor households spend each day on cooking-related tasks—time not spent in school, earning income, or caring for themselves. Multiply that by 2.1 billion people still cooking with traditional fuels, this represents a significant barrier to progress that gets far less attention than it deserves.
It isn’t just a matter of convenience. Household air pollution from traditional cooking methods causes 3.7 million premature deaths each year. Cooking with unsustainable, polluting fuels costs the world trillions in damage to the environment and local economies, but it’s women who pay the heftiest price.
Women often spend around two hours a day collecting fuel and another three hours tending to the fire and cooking. This unpaid, invisible labour limits girls’ education and exposes them to gender-based violence.
In some communities, women are responsible for up to 91 percent of the time and effort spent collecting fuel and water for their household. On average, their workday lasts 11 to 14 hours, compared to about 10 hours for men.
The situation is critical in sub-Saharan Africa, where four in five people still cook with traditional woodfuel.
Clean cooking systems—efficient stoves powered by biogas or other clean-burning energy sources—offer a practical shift in how food is prepared, especially in regions where wood and charcoal remain the norm. These technologies reduce health risks from indoor air pollution, ease pressure on natural resources, and open up time and income opportunities for households. Yet despite their clear benefits, clean cooking solutions receive limited attention and support, leaving billions without access to something as fundamental as a safe way to cook.
FAO has documented how clean cooking systems like biogas cookstoves are making women’s lives easier, reducing the impact on forests and minimizing polluting emissions that harm both people and the planet.
Organic waste, such as animal manure or crop residues, can be fermented in a biodigester, producing biogas for cooking and leaving behind nutrient-rich fertilizer. It’s a clean, cost-effective, and climate-friendly solution.
In some countries, innovations such as converting sustainably collected crop and livestock waste into pellets and biogas have the potential to significantly expand access to clean cooking. In Rwanda, for instance, they could increase access to clean cooking fuels by up to 33 percent, while in Zambia they could meet up to the 12 percent of the country’s clean cooking fuel target.
Some studies show that switching to clean cooking solutions can save a person nearly 29 days each year in time spent collecting fuel and cooking.
FAO is working to expand access to clean cooking solutions for all, choosing fuels and technologies that fit the local needs—whether in rural areas, cities, or humanitarian settings. This includes supporting the installation of biogas systems, providing cleaner and more efficient cookstoves, piloting alternative sustainable fuels, and building local capacity for stove production and maintenance.
At the policy level, FAO is promoting key enabling practices to promote this access. A 2025 FAO study on bioethanol for clean cooking in Africa highlights some of these, including eliminating VAT and import duties on clean fuels and stoves, adopting international fuel standards, and embedding clean cooking into national food security, health and climate strategies. Results-based financing schemes and microloans have also boosted women entrepreneurs’ role in the clean cooking value chain.
Clean cooking is not just an energy or climate issue: it’s interlinked with equality, health, and opportunity. Clean cooking technologies help families prepare a wider range of meals by cutting down on cooking time, reducing fuel limitations, and minimizing harmful smoke exposure. They support better food safety and free up household budgets, enabling families to buy a greater variety of nutritious ingredients. The result is healthier, more balanced diets.
Momentum is slowly building, but clean cooking still doesn’t get the spotlight it deserves, despite being profoundly transformative.
Rural women from India shared how a humble biogas stove, running on even humbler cow manure, had allowed them to breathe easier, send their daughters to school, start kitchen gardens. Biogas cooking systems freed their time from the chore of collecting firewood, their yards from unhygienic waste, and their homes from smoke, all the while providing free fuel and fertilizer. They became climate advocates, supporting others to shift to clean energy.
Clean cooking is more than a household improvement—it’s a stepping stone toward safer, more stable livelihoods.
To make real progress, clean cooking must be included in broader conversations—about health, food security, energy access, and long-term investment in communities. The opportunity is clear. What’s needed now is the commitment to act.
Because what lights the stove, fires the change.
See https://www.fao.org/newsroom/fao-blog/detail/fao-blog/2025/08/21/what-fuels-the-stove--fires-the-change--rethinking-cooking-for-health--empowerment-and-climate/en
BULLETIN 2
It isn’t just a matter of convenience. Household air pollution from traditional cooking methods causes 3.7 million premature deaths each year. Cooking with unsustainable, polluting fuels costs the world trillions in damage to the environment and local economies, but it’s women who pay the heftiest price.
Women often spend around two hours a day collecting fuel and another three hours tending to the fire and cooking. This unpaid, invisible labour limits girls’ education and exposes them to gender-based violence.
In some communities, women are responsible for up to 91 percent of the time and effort spent collecting fuel and water for their household. On average, their workday lasts 11 to 14 hours, compared to about 10 hours for men.
The situation is critical in sub-Saharan Africa, where four in five people still cook with traditional woodfuel.
Clean cooking systems—efficient stoves powered by biogas or other clean-burning energy sources—offer a practical shift in how food is prepared, especially in regions where wood and charcoal remain the norm. These technologies reduce health risks from indoor air pollution, ease pressure on natural resources, and open up time and income opportunities for households. Yet despite their clear benefits, clean cooking solutions receive limited attention and support, leaving billions without access to something as fundamental as a safe way to cook.
FAO has documented how clean cooking systems like biogas cookstoves are making women’s lives easier, reducing the impact on forests and minimizing polluting emissions that harm both people and the planet.
Organic waste, such as animal manure or crop residues, can be fermented in a biodigester, producing biogas for cooking and leaving behind nutrient-rich fertilizer. It’s a clean, cost-effective, and climate-friendly solution.
In some countries, innovations such as converting sustainably collected crop and livestock waste into pellets and biogas have the potential to significantly expand access to clean cooking. In Rwanda, for instance, they could increase access to clean cooking fuels by up to 33 percent, while in Zambia they could meet up to the 12 percent of the country’s clean cooking fuel target.
Some studies show that switching to clean cooking solutions can save a person nearly 29 days each year in time spent collecting fuel and cooking.
FAO is working to expand access to clean cooking solutions for all, choosing fuels and technologies that fit the local needs—whether in rural areas, cities, or humanitarian settings. This includes supporting the installation of biogas systems, providing cleaner and more efficient cookstoves, piloting alternative sustainable fuels, and building local capacity for stove production and maintenance.
At the policy level, FAO is promoting key enabling practices to promote this access. A 2025 FAO study on bioethanol for clean cooking in Africa highlights some of these, including eliminating VAT and import duties on clean fuels and stoves, adopting international fuel standards, and embedding clean cooking into national food security, health and climate strategies. Results-based financing schemes and microloans have also boosted women entrepreneurs’ role in the clean cooking value chain.
Clean cooking is not just an energy or climate issue: it’s interlinked with equality, health, and opportunity. Clean cooking technologies help families prepare a wider range of meals by cutting down on cooking time, reducing fuel limitations, and minimizing harmful smoke exposure. They support better food safety and free up household budgets, enabling families to buy a greater variety of nutritious ingredients. The result is healthier, more balanced diets.
Momentum is slowly building, but clean cooking still doesn’t get the spotlight it deserves, despite being profoundly transformative.
Rural women from India shared how a humble biogas stove, running on even humbler cow manure, had allowed them to breathe easier, send their daughters to school, start kitchen gardens. Biogas cooking systems freed their time from the chore of collecting firewood, their yards from unhygienic waste, and their homes from smoke, all the while providing free fuel and fertilizer. They became climate advocates, supporting others to shift to clean energy.
Clean cooking is more than a household improvement—it’s a stepping stone toward safer, more stable livelihoods.
To make real progress, clean cooking must be included in broader conversations—about health, food security, energy access, and long-term investment in communities. The opportunity is clear. What’s needed now is the commitment to act.
Because what lights the stove, fires the change.
See https://www.fao.org/newsroom/fao-blog/detail/fao-blog/2025/08/21/what-fuels-the-stove--fires-the-change--rethinking-cooking-for-health--empowerment-and-climate/en
BULLETIN 2
BT Eggplant Production in the Philippines
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Eggplant is one of the world’s most important vegetables and a staple in some South and Southeast Asian countries. In the Philippines, eggplant or talong is the leading vegetable crop in terms of volume (248,000 metric tons) and area of production (14,000 hectares) based on the 2022 Philippine Statistics Authority report. Eggplant farming also offers huge income potential for resource-poor farmers in many provinces in the country.
For years, eggplant production in the Philippines suffered huge losses of up to 73% annually due to its most devastating insect pest, the eggplant fruit and shoot borer (EFSB).
The female moths of EFSB usually deposit eggs on the underside of the leaves which then develop into larvae. These larvae feed on soft leaf tissues and tunnels through emerging shoots and immature fruits.
To prevent severe losses due to EFSB infestation and damage, farmers spray their eggplant crops with cocktails of chemical insecticides at least 4 times a week, or up to 80 times per cropping season. According to studies, eggplant farmers spend 20-40% of the total production cost for chemical insecticides alone. This practice is costly, unsustainable, and harmful to farmers and their communities, consumers, and the environment.
The Bt Eggplant Project of UPLB
At present, no existing commercial eggplant varieties with high resistance to EFSB are available in the Philippines, and EFSB resistance is difficult to develop using conventional plant breeding.
To help farmers in fighting EFSB and to address insecticide misuse and overuse for EFSB management, researchers from the Institute of Plant Breeding at the College of Agriculture and Food Science in the University of the Philippines Los Baños (IPB-CAFS-UPLB) used modern biotechnology to develop an eggplant variety resistant the feeding damage of EFSB.
FSB-resistant (FSBR) eggplant is an insect-resistant eggplant developed through genetic engineering. Also called Bt eggplant or Bt talong, it contains a natural protein from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) that makes it resistant to EFSB. The Bt protein in Bt eggplant only affects EFSB and is proven safe for humans, farm animals, and non-target insects. By using biotechnology to introduce FSB resistance in eggplant, farmers will benefit from high yields of good quality fruits. Reduction in pesticide use will also translate to higher net profits for eggplant farmers.
For more information about Bt eggplant, download and read the Questions and Answers about the Fruit and Shoot Borer Resistant Eggplant.
For more information about Bt eggplant, visit the Frequently Asked Questions tab, refer to the Bt Eggplant Resources, or Contact Us through our various communication lines.
See https://cafs.uplb.edu.ph/bt-eggplant/
SCIENTIFIC NEWS
A genome-wide association analysis identifies a key candidate gene controlling plant growth habit in chickpea
Rajib Kumbhakar, Mayulika Mondal, Virevol Thakro, Yashwant K. Yadava, Uday Chand Jha, Shailesh Tripathi & Swarup K. Parida
TAG; January 3 2026; vol. 139; article 22
Rajib Kumbhakar, Mayulika Mondal, Virevol Thakro, Yashwant K. Yadava, Uday Chand Jha, Shailesh Tripathi & Swarup K. Parida
TAG; January 3 2026; vol. 139; article 22
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Key message
Integrated genome-wide and haplotype-based association analyses identified a key genomic locus governing plant growth habit (PGH) traits in chickpea.
Abstract
Identification of molecular markers governing plant growth habit (PGH) traits that enable mechanical harvestability is pivotal for boosting production efficiency of crops under changing climates and increasing global food demand. With a combinatorial integrated genomics-assisted breeding strategy comprising of association mapping, haplotype-based association, molecular haplotyping and gene expression analysis in a 286 association panel of chickpea (Cicer arietinum), we dissected the genetic basis of PGH traits. This study employed 382,171 genome-wide SNPs (single-nucleotide polymorphisms) obtained from whole-genome sequencing (WGS) of 286 desi and kabuli chickpea accessions and delineated a major genomic locus associated with PGH traits variation, particularly between erect (E)/semi-erect (SE) versus spreading (S)/semi-spreading (SS) types. Within this genomic loci, CaPAR1 (Cicer arietinum PAR1) and its derived natural alleles/haplotypes was identified as the candidate gene. These findings can facilitate generation of high-yielding, erect/semi-erect, mechanically harvestable cultivars through translational genomics and molecular breeding for genetic enhancement of chickpea.
See https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00122-025-05121-5
