Systematic portfolio assessment requires multiple lenses to capture the gap between strategic intent, documented activity, research outputs, and practitioner experience. The framework integrates four methods: discourse analysis, publication reviews, key informant interviews, and stakeholder mapping. In the following sub-sections, the methods are detailed with the correspondent IITA specific findings in the Results section. The Discussion section offers five transferable lessons and perspectives on how the research findings relate to agricultural research institutions beyond IITA.

The results yield five broader lessons relevant to other agricultural research institutes. First, the gap between climate adaptation and mitigation is expected to extend across the sector, as institutions underdocument climate mitigation efforts as a research focus, even as practices or projects often contribute to both mitigation and adaptation at the same time. A common example is the promotion of climate-smart agriculture practices for smallholders. These practices have been shown to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases released (e.g., through low/no tillage, perennial crops) as well as support farmers to be more resilient to climate shocks and stresses. By not highlighting work (e.g., mitigation or gender), there are missed opportunities to promote success stories or learn from failures and to better engage donors who may be looking for key findings and results in these sectors. Second, gaps between formally documented work (i.e., in the form of project documentation and research publications) and actual practice limit policy influence and funding opportunities for agricultural research institutes. Embedding climate change not solely as a framing device but as an analytical variable opens up new possibilities to engage both donors and policymakers. Third, the lack of deeper integration of gender and youth is expected to reflect the wider challenge in development practice of fulfilling donor requirements without targeting more resources toward addressing their unique climate challenges. To successfully address climate change, a more explicit participatory engagement of these groups at the beginning stages of research and funding proposal development is essential. Fourth, while projects and research hold clear policy relevance, limited capacity for policy engagement undermines agricultural research institutes’ excellence in technical work. To translate practice and research into policy, institutes should invest in additional staffing capacity, dedicating additional resources (including time) or better leverage existing synergies with other partners (e.g., IFPRI, civil society, national government, think tanks etc.). Fifth, research institutes should proactively articulate and provide evidence for their comparative advantages in funding narratives. This is not a single event, but rather should be a continuous process of engaging with other national and international institutions to refine the messaging and strategy and ensure that the advantages are well understood. Building on the earlier point, cross-institutional collaborations create stronger funding proposals and better address climate change’s multidimensionality. Taken together, these five lessons represent interconnected components of a broader systems transition for agricultural research institutions. They illustrate how changes in framing, organizational structures and incentives, and partnership models can collectively shift institutions from siloed, project-based approaches toward integrated, learning-oriented climate resilience strategies. Rather than discrete recommendations, the lessons function as mutually reinforcing dimensions of a system that link research, policy, partnerships and practice.

Taking advantage of the insights gained from the portfolio analysis, the following four main points emerge for empowering agricultural research institutes to better address the climate crisis from a systems perspective in general, and IITA’s work to achieve their new strategies in particular:

First, given their stronger emphasis on activities in areas related to climate adaptation and productivity, it is recommended that institutions expand their research and project portfolios to include explicit climate mitigation and resilience-building strategies. Traditionally, research organizations hire experts in specific fields of science. Only recently have universities started offering interdisciplinary PhDs from which research organizations can hire. Neither nature nor farming exists in silos and the climate challenge requires interdisciplinary research and implementation. By creating incentives to break down silos, one can foster inclusion of climate change into dominant research domains (e.g., breeding, gene banks, biotechnology) and better plan for future climate scenarios. Embedding climate change from the research design phase will improve integration, develop synergies, and encourage systems thinking can cascade these interdisciplinary approaches through implementation and measurement. In regard to incentives, donors are increasingly looking for holistic solutions to problems, and institutions should adapt to mobilize new resources to effectively address the climate crisis. As an immediate step, they could build staff capacities to better engage in the complementary domains of climate mitigation and resilience building aligned with local, national and regional priorities.

Second, agricultural research institutes exhibit strong bilateral relationships with national governments and regional actors (including donors). Successfully tackling the global challenge of climate change at scale requires expanding engagement to multilateral institutions (e.g., the World Bank Group), global initiatives (e.g., UNFCCC’s Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture), and climate finance mechanisms (e.g., the Green Climate Fund). Beyond securing additional funding, such engagement offers pathways for knowledge exchange, agenda setting and capacity building beyond traditional research networks. They also offer further opportunities to elevate the profile of local knowledge and actors that are too frequently missing from the regional and global stages.

Third, research institutes should make their existing work more accessible. With communication too frequently limited to (open access) journal publications, annual reporting, or the occasional conference presentation, more accessible and adaptable products—such as briefs, websites, mobile-friendly toolkits, or digital climate advisory apps—are needed. Research institutes tend to protect and subsequently silo their existing innovations. Collaborating with other institutions and the private sector, offers opportunities to increase the visibility of what already works for scaling and combining solutions to address the climate crisis. For example, the umbrella term of climate-smart agriculture captures diverse aligned efforts and enables packaging of synergetic solutions for policymakers and funders. Integrating communication and policy engagement from the outset—not as an afterthought—would go a long way toward empowering change for both stakeholders at local to global levels. This could form part of the work under the cross CGIAR—Climate Action Science Program (CGIAR, 2025b). Creating institutional learning systems, such as producing annual climate portfolio reviews and cross-project synthesis briefs assessing progress to integrating climate change across the organization, would help ensure that insights from individual projects systematically inform strategic planning.

Fourth, adopting a systems perspective reveals root causes of the fragmentation, and their relationships, as well as openings for more transformative actions. Short time frames for developing funding proposals, as well as short durations of project implementation, are detrimental for achieving more participatory, collaborative efforts and impactful interventions. Widespread funding cuts across agricultural development, and the increased political polarization of climate change further undermines efforts at breaking down silos. To counteract these root causes, institutional support is needed to overcome the fragmentation challenges. Beyond dedicated core funding, investing in staffing is crucial. Meinke et al. (2023, 6) for example note how greater capacity for inclusivity can fuel “systems innovation among marginalized populations and agricultural systems.” Donors play an important role in redirecting their funding toward more collaborative efforts that demand integrated approaches and influence policymaking and agenda setting. Another example from the donors’ perspective is efforts to foster knowledge sharing and adaptive capacity through communities of practice that move beyond the traditional project cycle (Nicklin et al., 2021). Schut et al. (2015) also developed a helpful diagnostic tool used in a multi-stakeholder context to unlock complex challenges through agricultural innovation systems.

In conclusion, climate impacts do not wait for institutional readiness nor are they moved by printed words in new strategies. A shift in the directionality of programming within agricultural research institutes – similar to steering a large container ship - will take time to translate into a change in course to address climate change, and even longer to translate into improved impacts. The portfolio analysis framework presented here offers agricultural research institutes a systematic method to get us there. Steps include diagnosing strategic alignment, articulating comparative advantages, and redirecting resources toward comprehensive climate action. As development and climate finance flows are changing, the ability to assess and articulate one’s climate portfolio becomes not only an analytical exercise, but essential toward strengthening one’s organization to achieve its stated mission and better respond to the climate crisis. The five lessons identified provide actionable entry points along this transition pathway, illustrating how research, partnerships, institutional structures and policy engagement should evolve together to mainstream climate resilience in research organizations.