Partnerships are central to the outcomes and impact achieved by the CRPs and Platforms. CRPs and Platforms engage in partnerships with a range of organizations and individuals, including academic institutions, policymakers and government agencies at various levels, international agencies, public and private sector companies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). A database of the full list of CGIAR partnerships is available at the CGIAR Results Dashboard and information on external partnerships is available in Annex 4.
Taking the CRPs and Platforms as a whole, the main area of external partnerships in 2018 was research, which accounted for 37% of external partnerships. Other partnerships for all CRPs and Platforms related to capacity development (23%), policy (19%), delivery (16%) and other (5%).
For the agri-food system (AFS) CRPs, 40% of partnerships were related to research, 22% were related to capacity development, 21% were related to policy, 14% were related to delivery and 3% of partnerships were designated as “other”.
The integrating CRPs’ partnerships were also mostly linked to research (34%). Following this, 26% were related to capacity development, 19% were associated with delivery, 15% were related to policy, and the remaining 6% were designated as “other”.
For Platforms, the main area of partnership in 2018 was delivery, which constituted 37% of their total external partnerships.
Figure 2 presents the main areas of external partnerships.
Table 10 highlights the external partnerships related to research collaboration. It shows the top 25 research institutes that co-published peer-reviewed articles with CRPs and Platforms in 2018. The top three institutes were Wageningen University in the Netherlands, which collaborated on 144 publications; the French Agricultural Research Center for International Development (CIRAD), which co-authored 80 publications; and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China, which co-published 56 publications with CRPs or Platforms.
Partnerships which led to large numbers of publications were between CIRAD and RICE, the University of Montpellier and RICE, SupAgro and GLDC, and Wageningen University and CCAFS. The figures in this table demonstrate the importance of well-designed strategies for engagement with CGIAR, as, for example, the Netherlands’ engagement strategy is evident in the level of Wageningen University’s collaboration with CRPs.
Public-private partnership to improve rice production systems in Asia
RICE 2018 annual report
The lead center for RICE, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), established the Direct Seeded Rice Consortium (DSRC) – a public-private multi-stakeholder research for development platform with the overall goal of improving the environmental and economic sustainability of rice production systems in Asia.
The DSRC seeks to develop, refine and catalyze widespread adoption of improved mechanized and precise direct seeding practices. Private companies that have partnered with IRRI in the DSRC include Bayer and BASF. The DSRC aims to make direct seeded rice (DSR) accessible and widely available to rice farmers in Asia, thus enhancing the economic and ecological sustainability of rice production.
DSR has been widely practiced in many Asian countries such as Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines, and many other countries including those in South Asia are going through the transition from manual transplanting to mechanized DSR. DSR has emerged as an efficient and economically viable alternative to manual puddled transplanted rice as it saves scarce and expensive resources such as labor and water, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
Source: RICE, AR 2018.
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