Christel Weller-Molongua Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) Gmbh, Germany "No need for rocket efforts to implement the accumulated knowledge”, Christel Weller-Monongua opens the keynote presentation session of Tropentag 2014 with her cogent statement. Christel has worked in the development cooperation field for over 25 years now and she is convinced that there is no need for the research, if the results don't reach the farmers. 50 years There has been intense work done by different leading countries over the last 50 years helping the poor. Only the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) alone - home organization to Christel - traits its history back to mid 1960th, when first 1000 development workers begun to work in developing countries like Tanzania, Libya, Afghanistan and India under the head of German Development Service (DED). So, why do we still have 850 million undernourished people despite the 50 years of development work? Successful example As it turns out, not all the development programs are doing well. As an example of successful development work, Christel offers us to look at the projects of one of their main partners - CGIAR. Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is a network of 15 research institutions working on rural development. They follow the ideas of Norman Borlaug, commonly known as a father of green revolution. To the word, one of the CGIAR institutions is celebrating 40th anniversary this year, which proves they have an experience in their field. The attention of the audience was stressed on the success of CGIAR in implementing participatory approach in developing local solutions and bringing the research from the bigger scale to a lower level, cooperating with local NGOs, development agencies and national research institutions. As the results of such work, Christel presents us information about stress tolerant varieties of rice that were developed in Vietnam, and about improved management of buffalo farming in Egypt that also helped to address the gender issues. Additionally, Christel would come back in her speech and in the interview to a question of gender issue frequently. As it was mentioned by her, many problems are interconnected of the problem of empowering women of developing world. Find out more about her thoughts on this point in the interview below.