Building the technological and socio-economic foundations for the design, manufacture, and field evaluation of electric and smart two-wheel tractors with precision agriculture capability to evaluate its potential to enhance the sustainability and productivity of Cambodian agriculture.

Improving farming systems resilience in the Pacific Islands and Countries and Territories through improved soil management.

Consolidating the knowledge and outputs from projects SMCN/2014/049 and LPS/2015/037 to support the transfer and ownership of information to the next users to support scaling and impact.

A baseline exploration of Samoan home and community garden nutrient pathways, from soil to crop, to household consumption, to enhance the supply of nutritious produce.

Assessing capacity and issues related to delivery of analytical services across the agricultural chemistry (ag-chem) laboratories in the Pacific.

Developing and integrating the revitalised PNGRIS2 to demonstrate its value proposition to the PNG Government, the agriculture sector, and international agencies in PNG.

Understand the impacts of upland crops on soil microbiological processes in the presence of salinity intrusion associated with climate change.

Developing a Theory of Change for economically and environmentally sustainable and climate change resilient sloping land agricultural systems in northern Laos and northwest Vietnam with stakeholders that represent the agricultures chains, research, extension and development in the region.

Barriers to data utility in the ACIAR investment portfolio and opportunities to address them, including specific ways to improve its grant-making processes.

Providing soil and agronomic management knowledge to farmers that will enable practice change to improve the productivity and sustainability of cocoa production and their farming systems.

Arrangements for joint agricultural research and development investments in partner countries, between in-country organisations and Australia, occasionally need to adapt to rapidly changing governance arrangements. This project aimed to provide guidance on possible partners and commissioned organisations that can effectively and appropriately be engaged to work within ACIAR research projects focused primarily on upland agricultural issues in Myanmar, and to explore potential research and development pathways with non-government agencies. 

►This project aimed to reduce uncertainties in emissions estimates from peat fires for Indonesian Government reporting to the UNFCCC.

This project aimed to empower local communities and government agencies to monitor and evaluate the success of peatland restoration. Peatland restoration has become a high priority in Indonesia, due to the devastating effects of peat fires on local and regional public health and economies. The Indonesian Peatland Restoration Agency (BRG) is mandated to restore 2 million hectares of degraded peatlands by 2020. This ambitious initial target will trial a range of methods in a variety of peatland sites.

This project aimed to refine a standardised methodology for response assessment for the sustainable management of land, water, and soils in the Philippines. The recent ACIAR project, SLAM/2020/138, brought together Australian expertise to develop the Comprehensive Framework of Response Assessment. This framework aligns with the 2021 FAO decadal report on the State of Land and Water (SOLAW), and is expected to act as a central component in SOLAW-Live, an initiative being led by FAO.

Empowering communities and government to monitor and evaluate peatland restoration by integrating environmental data on peatland water and carbon fluxes with local decision-making structures.

Contributing to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) led SOLAW21 report by providing a strong comprehensive response framework for better understanding the effectiveness of technical, Institutional and policy responses to mitigate and adapt to land, soil and water degradation.

Insights from ACIAR investments at the program and cross program level, related to sustainable intensification of agriculture in Cambodia.

Addressing challenges linked with safe, sustainable production and intensification of high-value vegetable cropping in coastal agroecosystems.

Improving sustainability and productivity of farming systems and value chains of coffee and black pepper in Gia Lai, Dak Nong and Dak Lak provinces.

Production and profitability of saline affected crop production systems in the Mekong Delta and enabling these systems to adapt to ongoing climate change.

The project aimed to investigate whether Myanmar's cropping systems could include diversified crops (such as sorghum, millet and wheat), and how to manage nutrients including fertilisers. It did so in the context of a perceived climate change in the Central Dry Zone.

A growing concern on the deleterious effects of chemical inputs to the environment has been on the rise from the excessive use of chemical inputs leading to soil and water pollution, destruction to fauna and microbial communities, reduced soil fertility and increased crop disease susceptibility. In the Great Mekong Region (GMR), a large majority of the population relies on agriculture and faces severe challenges including decline of soil fertility and sustainability, increases of occurrence of pests and diseases, thus leading to lower ecosystem productivity and income.

Inadequate soil knowledge is constraining the sustainable intensification of agriculture in the Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs). Management practices in traditional gardening systems are intensifying and this is depleting the soil’s nutrient capital. Comprehensive nutrient budgeting is essential for improving farm productivity and agricultural resilience on volcanic islands and sand atolls. At present, extension officers are unable to reliably ascertain which nutrients (or other factors such as diseases) are limiting production let alone recommend optimal nutrient inputs.

This SRA follows two previous ACIAR projects in south central coastal Vietnam (SCC VN); SMCN 2003/035 and SMCN 2007/109. Recommendations emerging from both projects highlighted a need to evaluate the sustainability of groundwater utilisation for agriculture in the region. ACIAR commissioned this SRA with the purpose of scoping opportunities for new water, soil and crop management projects in SCC VN. The objectives for this scoping study were to:

The agricultural production environment in Cambodia and southern/ central Laos is, in general, harsher than the fertile lowlands of other countries in the region. Soils are generally low in fertility with significant water limitations, and three-quarters of the agriculture is rainfed. The predominance of rice-based farming systems on infertile, poorly structured soils means that current agriculture has rather low productivity on both a labour and a land area basis.