Characterization of GLDC Mega-environments

Abstract

South Asia (SA) and sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are characterized by two major agroecologies of interest to the Grain Legume and Dryland Cereal (GLDC) CRP proposal: the semi-arid and sub-humid drylands. SSA can be further subdivided into West Africa (WA), East Africa (EA) and Southern Africa (SA). Even though the SSA regions may not have common dependencies or cultural heritage (Figure 1), they do come together to form developmental cooperation organizations such as the African Union and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to tackle common issues and resourcing. In the context of GLDC, the two continents and their subregions share similarities in terms of climate, agroecologies and pressing ‘grand challenges’ . All the dryland GLDC crops are grown on these two continents and, consequently, characterization of mega-environments can be based on the critical commonalities which makes these regions a focus for sustainable development. This write-up focuses on the relevant regions covering the semi-arid and sub-humid agroecologies of SSA and SA.