Progress in partnerships:

N2Africa-Mozambique signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with The USAID AgriFUTURO (AgriFUTURO). This MoU facilitates an effective partnership between AgriFUTURO and N2Africa towards the shared objective of providing expertise on agronomy and rhizobiology to increase the use of inoculants among smallholder producers producing soyabean.

The country coordinator participated in a series of meetings:

Welcome to a rather thick issue of the Podcaster. We have a lot of news! The first item highlights a workshop held in Wageningen in late August to develop the detailed plans for Monitoring and Evaluation within N2Africa as well as the Master Plans for project activities. Considerable effort is being put into standardization of data collection and establishment of a database structure that will make all of our data openly accessible to all partners within N2Africa, and soon to everybody.

Bio-prospecting was conducted in Kenya to identify elite isolates of rhizobia capable of effectively nodulating promising soybean varieties. One hundred isolates were recovered from nodules of wild and cultivated legume hosts. These isolates were authenticated and tested for effectiveness on soybean (Glycine max) var. SB 19 in sterile vermiculite, and the twenty-four most promising isolates screened in potted soil to assess their competitive abilities on two varieties ("promiscuously nodulating" SB 19 and specific SC Safari).

During the 3^rd week of August, N2Africa project leadership team, core country coordinators and selected partners gathered for Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) workshop and finalization of other Master Plans of the project.