News

Since 2014, the Center has collaborated with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Sustainable Agroecosystems Group to offer a three-​day course for ETH Zurich Master’s students at the FAO headquarters in Rome.

Plants with multiple sets of chromosomes have advantages over their relatives with a double set. But why they often start out infertile was only partially understood. Biologists at ETH Zurich have now discovered a new reason for the initial difficulties.

Natural forest regeneration is hailed as a cost-effective way to restore biodiversity and sequester carbon. However, the fragmentation of tropical forests has restricted the movement of large birds limiting their capacity to disperse seeds and restore healthy forests.

Our 45 members are full of ideas on how to drive change towards food and nutrition security, environmental health and social well-being for all in our world food system.

We are pleased to share our Annual Report 2023, which highlights our many research, education, and outreach activities focused on food system transformation.

Alumni Stories: Benjamin Gräub shares struggles and insights from his learning journey while developing a new app for farmers in Kenya in times of Covid, a project supported by a Center Ambassador Grant.

Over a week in March, NICE country teams and representatives from six cities in Rwanda, Kenya, and Bangladesh joined in peer-learning visits to Zurich and Geneva in Switzerland. The public was able to join in discussions with the consortium at the seminar ‘How do we build sustainable urban food systems?’

Researchers at ETH Zurich led by Robert Boes are developing specific solutions to optimise electricity production from Swiss hydropower plants. This will ensure that hydropower remains the backbone of Switzerland’s electricity supply in the future.

Environmental scientist Alice Pradel cultivates ice cores in the lab to investigate the transport and accumulation of micro- and nanoplastics. Her aim in doing so is to better understand material flows in the Arctic ice.