{"id":13601,"date":"2026-06-20T12:29:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T12:29:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.iita.org\/news-item\/iita-launches-international-year-of-plant-health-iyph-2020-at-r4d-week\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T21:37:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T21:37:31","slug":"iita-launches-international-year-of-plant-health-iyph-2020-at-r4d-week","status":"publish","type":"news-item","link":"https:\/\/iita.org\/fr\/news-item\/iita-launches-international-year-of-plant-health-iyph-2020-at-r4d-week\/","title":{"rendered":"IITA launches International Year of Plant Health (IYPH) 2020 at R4D Week"},"content":{"rendered":"With decades of research contributing to the improvement of plant health globally and across Africa in particular, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) joined the plant science community on 22 November to launch the International Year of Plant Health (IYPH) 2020. The IYPH 2020 is a year-long observance with the theme, \u201cProtecting Plant Health in a Changing World\u201d and aims to raise global awareness on how plant health can help end hunger, reduce poverty, and protect biodiversity and the environment.\n\nThe launch took place as part of the Institute\u2019s Research for Development (R4D) Week, and took into account the landmark contributions of the Institute in the area of plant health and agriculture in its over 50 years of research work in Africa.\n\n\"IITA<\/a>\n\nThe United Nations General Assembly declared 2020 as the Year of Plant Health recognizing the importance of healthy plants in addressing food security and sustaining life on Earth. The UN sees plant health as key to the sustainable development of agriculture to feed the growing global population by 2050. In line with this, the Institute is taking stock of the immense progress in the area of breeding resistant crop varieties as part of efforts to improve crop productivity, tackle food security and plant health research.\n\nThe International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) began in 1967 with the founders\u2014Ford and Rockefeller Foundations\u2014targeting increased crop yields to meet the level of production required to supply the food demand in Africa. So in the earlier days, research focused on increasing productivity until nature played a nasty trick three years later.\n\nIn 1970, faced with the outbreak of the Maize Streak Virus (MSV) disease that could have entirely wiped out the maize crop, IITA\u2019s research focus turned to plant health without abandoning the yield objective. IITA and partners worked tirelessly to combat MSV and by 1985 high yielding cultivars and hybrids with different maturity classes, grain colors, and textures for different zones in Africa were released.\n\nTo breed these MSV resistant varieties, IITA together with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and 36 national partners, got germplasm from Thailand, Central and South America. Because of this concerted effort to overcome MSV, in 1986, IITA got its first award in plant health\u2014the CGIAR King Baudouin Award.\n\nAccording to IITA Entomologist Georg Goergen, \u201cAgriculture in tropical Africa is widely prevailing in a smallholder situation. In this context, biodiversity is often comparatively high and biotic stress such as insect pests and plant diseases are frequently challenging,\u201d hence the need to continuously research into ways to address these challenges.\n\nOver the years, IITA recorded more successes in plant breeding research in Africa with numerous awards that have strengthened the Institute\u2019s commitment to plant health. The research from the Institute has cut across different crops culminating in multiple awards including the 2006 CGIAR Outstanding Senior Scientist Award to IITA Breeder Bahdur Singh, for breeding fast maturing \u201c60-day\u201d cowpea cultivars for the tropics as well as cultivars with resistance to more than 10 pathogens and drought and heat tolerance in other cultivars.\n\nBiological control, which is the use of natural enemies to fight crop pests, was also adopted alongside resistance breeding. Biocontrol was first used in combating the cassava mealybug and cassava green mite using Apoanagyrus lopezi, a predator wasp. This wasp, from South America, is a natural enemy to the mealybug and green mite. It controlled the cassava mealybug wherever it was released. This was the first of many successes in biocontrol, this research breakthrough won the CGIAR King Baudouin Award in 1990, along with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) team.\n\nWith the recorded success in the use of the biocontrol, IITA opened a Biological Control Center for Africa in Cotonou, Benin, in the 1980s. This center has grown to become Africa\u2019s leading biocontrol research hub. Scientists from Cotonou have put their expertise to many pest challenges and surmounting them.\n\nAccording to the UN resolution affirming this international year, the global science community is hoping that the celebration of the year would \u201cencourage actions to promote and implement activities in favor of preserving and sustaining global plant resources and raise awareness of the importance of plant health in addressing issues of global concern, including hunger, poverty, and threats to the environment.\u201d\n\n