Jan 122015
 
James profile

James Gethi and one of the crops closest to his heart – maize. He also has a soft spot for hardy crop varieties that survive harsh and unforgiving drylands, such as Machakos, Kenya, where this June 2011 photo of him with drought-tolerant KARI maize was taken.

As we tell our closing stories on our Sunset Blog, in parallel, we’re also catching up on the backlog of stories still in our store from the time GCP was a going concern. Our next stop is Kenya, and the narrative below is from 2012, but don’t go away as it is an evergreen – a tale that can be told at any time, as it remains fresh as ever. At that time, and for the duration of the partnership with GCP, the Food Crops Research Institute of the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation (KALRO) was then known as the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), and we shall therefore stay with this previous name in the story. KARI was also the the name of the Kenyan institute at the time when James Gethi (pictured) left for a sabbatical at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT by its Spanish acronym). On to the story then, and please remember we’re travelling back in time to the year 2012. 

“I got into science by chance, for the fun of it,” muses James, maize breeder and former GCP scientist “With agricultural school promising a flight to overfly the country’s agricultural areas– this was an interesting prospect for a village guy. ‘This could be fun’, I thought!”

And it turned out to be a chance well worth taking.  His first step was getting the requisite education. And so he armed himself with a BSc in Agriculture from the University of Nairobi, Kenya, topped with a Master’s and PhD in Plant Breeding from the University of Alberta (Canada) and Cornell University (USA), respectively. Beyond academics, in the course of his crop science career, James has developed 13 crop varieties, that included maize and cassava, published papers in numerous peer-reviewed papers (including the 2003 prize for Best paper in the field of crop science in the prestigious Crop Science journal. And in leadership, James headed the national maize research programme in his native Kenya. These are just a few of the achievements James has garnered in the course of his career, traversing  and transcending not only the geographical frontiers initially in his sights, but also scientific ones, reaching professional heights that perhaps his younger self might never have dreamt possible.

As a Research Officer at KARI, a typical day sees James juggling his time between hands-on research (developing maize varieties resistant to drought, field and storage pests) and project administration, coordinating public–private partnerships and the maize research programme at both institutional and country level. What motivates the man shouldering much of the responsibility for the buoyancy of his nation’s staple crop? James explains, “Making a difference by providing solutions to farmers. That’s my passion and that’s what makes me get up in the morning and go to work. It’s hugely satisfying!”

Without GCP, I would not be where I am today as a scientist… [it] gave me a chance to work with the best of the best worldwide… You develop bonds and understanding that last well beyond the life of the projects.”

Rapid transitions: trainee to trainer to leader
It was this passion and unequivocal dedication to his vocation – not to mention a healthy dollop of talent – that GCP was quick to recognise back in 2004, when James first climbed aboard the GCP ship. Like a duck to water, he proceeded to engage in all manner of GCP projects and related activities, steadily climbing the ranks from project collaborator to co-Principal Investigator and, finally, Principal Investigator in his own right, leading a maize drought phenotyping project. Along the way, he also secured GCP Capacity building à la carte and Genotyping Support Service grants to further the maize research he and his team were conducting.

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FLASHBACK: At a GCP drought phenotyping course in mid-2006 at Montpellier, France. (1) James (left) pays keen attention during one of the practical sessions. (2) In the spirit of “All work and no play, etc”, taking a break from the course to take in some of the sights with colleagues. Clearly, James, “the guy from the village” is anything but a dull boy! Next to James, second left, is BM Prasanna, currently leader of CIMMYT’s maize programme.

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From trainee to trainer and knowledge-sharer: James (behind the camera) training KARI staff on drought phenotyping in June 2009 at Machakos, in Kenya’s drylands.

The GCP experience, James reveals, has been immensely rewarding: “Without GCP, I would not be where I am today as a scientist,” he asserts. And on the opportunity to work with a capable crew beyond national borders, as opposed to operating as a solo traveller, he says: “GCP gave me a chance to work with the best of the best worldwide, and has opened up new opportunities and avenues for collaboration between developing-country researchers and advanced research institutes, creating and cementing links that were not so concrete before. This has shown that we don’t have to compete with one another; we can work together as partners to derive mutual benefits, finding solutions to problems much faster than we would have done working alone and apart from each other.”

The links James has in mind are not only tangible but also sustainable: “You develop bonds and understanding that last well beyond the life of the projects,” James enthuses, citing additional professional engagements (the African Centre for Crop Improvement in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and the West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement, have both welcomed James and his team into their fold), as well as firm friendships with former GCP project colleagues as two key take-home benefits of his interaction with the Programme. These new personal and professional circles have fostered a happy home for dynamic debates on the latest news and views from the crop-science world, and the resultant healthy cross-fertilisation of ideas, James affirms.

Reflecting on what he describes as a ‘mentor’ role of GCP, and on the vital importance of capacity building in general, he continues: “By enhancing the ability of a scientist to collect germplasm, or to analyse that germplasm, or by providing training and tips on how to write a winning project proposal to get that far in the first place, you’re empowering scientists to make decisions on their own – decisions which make a difference in the lives of farmers. This is tremendous empowerment.”

Another potent tool, says James, is the software made available to him through GCP’s Integrated Breeding Platform (IBP), which is a handy resource package to dip into for – among other things – analysing data and selecting the right varieties at the right time. The next step for IBP, he feels, should be scaling up and aiming for outreach to the wider scientific community, forecasting that such a step could bring nothing but success: “The impacts could be enormous!” he projects, with a palpable and infectious enthusiasm.

People… don’t eat publications, they eat food… I’m not belittling knowledge, but we can do both”

Fast but not loose on the R&D continuum: double agent about?
For James, outreach and impacts are not limited to science alone. In parallel with his activities in upstream genetic science, James’ efforts are equally devoted to the needs of his other client base-–the development community and farmers. For this group, James’ focus is on putting tangible products on the table that will translate into higher crop yields and incomes for farmers. Yet whilst products from any highly complex scientific research project worth its salt are typically late bloomers, often years in the making on a slow burner as demanded by the classic linear R&D view that research must always precede development, adaptation and final adoption, James has been quick to recognise that actors in the world of development and the vulnerable communities they serve do not necessarily have this luxury of time.

 August 2008: a huge handful, and more where that came from in Kwale, Kenya. This farmer's healthy harvest came from KARI hybrids.

August 2008: a huge handful, and more where that came from in Kwale, Kenya. This farmer’s healthy harvest came from KARI hybrids.

His solution for this challenge? “Sitting where I sit, I realised from very early on that if I followed the traditional linear scientific approach, my development clients would not take it kindly if I still had no products for them within the three-year lifespan of the project. The challenge then was to deliver results for farmers without compromising or jeopardising their integrity or the science behind the product,” he recalls. In the project he refers to – a GCP-funded project to combat drought and disease in maize and rice – James applied a novel double-pronged approach to get around this seeming conundrum of the need for sound science on the one hand, and the need for rapid results for development on the other hand. Essentially, he simultaneously walked on both tracks of the research–development continuum.

The project – led by Rebecca Nelson of Cornell University and with collaborators including James’ team at KARI (leading the maize component), the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), researchers in Asia, as well as other universities in USA – initially set out with the long-term goal of dissecting quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for rice and maize with a view to combating drought and disease in these crops. Once QTLs were dissected and gene crosses done, James and his team went about backcrossing these new lines to local parental lines, generating useful products in the short term. The results, particularly given the limited resources and time invested, have been impressive, with seven hybrid varieties developed for drylands and coastal regions having been released in Kenya by 2009, and commercialised from 2010.

James and his colleagues have applied the same innovative approach to other GCP projects, grappling to get a good grasp of the genetic basis of drought tolerance, whilst also generating intermediate products for practical use by farmers along the way. James believes this dual approach paves the way for a win-win situation: “People on the ground don’t eat publications, they eat food,” he says. “As we speak now, there are people out there who don’t know where their next meal will come from. I’m not belittling knowledge, but we can do both – boiled maize on the cob and publications on the boil. But let’s not stop at crop science  and knowledge dissemination – let’s move it to the next level, which means products,” he challenges, adding: “With GCP support, we were able do this, and reach our intended beneficiaries.”

It is perhaps this kind of vision and inherent instinct to play the long game that has taken James this far professionally, and that will no doubt also serve him well in the future.

As our conversation comes to a close, we ask James for a few pearls of wisdom for other young budding crop researchers eager to carve out an equally successful career path for themselves, James offers “Form positive links and collaborations with colleagues and peers. Never give up; never let challenges discourage you. Look for organisations where you can explore the limits of your imagination. Stay focused and aim high, and you’ll reach your goal.”

Upon completion of his ongoing sabbatical at CIMMYT in Zimbabwe, where he is currently working on seed systems, James plans to return to KARI, armed with fresh knowledge and ready to seize – with both hands – any promising collaborative opportunities that may come his way .

Certainly, prospects look plentiful for this ‘village lad’ in full flight, and who doesn’t look set to land any time soon!

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In full flight – Montpellier, Brazil, Benoni, Bangkok, Bamako, Hyderabad… our boy voyaged from the village to Brazil and back, and far beyond that. Sporting the t-shirt from GCP’s Annual Research Meeting in Brazil in 2006, which James attended, he also attended the same meeting the following year, in Benoni, South Africa, in 2007, when this photo was taken. James is a regular at these meetings which are the pinnacle on  GCP’s calendar (http://bit.ly/I9VfP4). But he always sings for his supper and is practically part of the ‘kitchen crew’, but just as comfortable in high company. For example, he was one of the keynote speakers at the 2011 General Research Meeting (see below).

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Jan 072015
 

Beyond chickpeas to embrace beans, chickpeas, groundnuts and pigeonpeas

Paul_w2As a scientist who comes from the dessicated drylands of the unforgiving Kerio Valley, where severe drought can mean loss of life through loss of food and animals, what comes first is food security… I could start to give something back to the community… It’s been a dream finally coming true.” – Paul Kimurto, Senior Lecturer and Professor in Crop Physiology and Breeding, Egerton University, Kenya

As a son of peasant farmers growing up in a humble home in the Rift Valley of Kenya, agriculture was, for Paul Kimurto (pictured above), not merely a vocation but a way of life: “Coming from a pastoral community, I used to take care of the cattle and other animals for my father. In my community livestock is key, as is farming of food crops such as maize, beans and finger millet.”

Covering some six kilometres each day by foot to bolster this invaluable home education with rural school, an affiliation and ever-blossoming passion for agriculture soon led him to Kenya’s Egerton University.

There, Paul excelled throughout his undergraduate course in Agricultural Sciences, and was thus hand-picked by his professors to proceed to a Master’s degree in Crop Sciences at the self-same university, before going on to obtain a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) scholarship to undertake a ‘sandwich’ PhD in Plant Physiology and Crop Breeding at Egerton University and the Leibniz Institute for AgriculturalEngineering (ATB) in Berlin, Germany.

… what comes first is food security… offering alternative drought-tolerant crops… is a dream finally coming true!…  GCP turned out to be one of the best and biggest relationships and collaborations we’ve had.”

Local action, global interaction
With his freshly minted PhD, Paul returned to Egerton’s faculty staff and steadily climbed the ranks to his current position as Professor and Senior Lecturer in Crop Physiology and Breeding at Egerton’s Crop Sciences Department. Yet for Paul, motivating this professional ascent throughout has been one fundamental factor:  “As a scientist who comes from a dryland area of Kerio valley, where severe drought can mean loss of food and animals, what comes first is food security,” Paul explains. “Throughout the course of my time at Egerton, as I began to understand how to develop and evaluate core crop varieties, I could start to give something back to the community, by offering alternative drought-tolerant crops like chickpeas, pigeonpeas, groundnuts and finger millet that provide farmers and their families with food security. It’s been a dream finally coming true.”

And thus one of academia’s true young-guns was forged: with an insatiable thirst for moving his discipline forward by seeking out innovative solutions to real problems on the ground, Paul focused on casting his net wide and enhancing manpower through effective collaborations, having already established fruitful working relationships with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the (then) Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in earlier collaborative projects on dryland crops in Kenya. It was this strategy that paved the way towards teaming up with GCP, when, in 2008, Paul and his team were commissioned to lead the chickpea work in Kenya for the GCP Tropical Legumes I project (TLI), with local efforts being supported by colleagues at ICRISAT, and friends down the road at KARI undertaking the bean work of the project. Climbing aboard the GCP ship, Paul reveals, was a move worth making: “Our initial engagement with GCP started out as a small idea, but in fact, GCP turned out to be one of the best and biggest relationships and collaborations we’ve had.”

…GCP is people-oriented, and people-driven” 

Power to the people!
The success behind this happy marriage, Paul believes, is really quite simple: “The big difference with GCP is that it is people-oriented, and people-driven,” Paul observes, continuing: “GCP is building individuals: people with ideas become equipped to develop professionally.” Paul elaborates further: “I wasn’t very good at molecular breeding before, but now, my colleagues and I have been trained in molecular tools, genotyping, data management, and in the application of molecular tools in the improvement of chickpeas through GCP’s Integrated Breeding Multiyear Course. This has opened up opportunities for our local chickpea research community and beyond, which, without GCP’s support, would not have been possible for us as a developing-country institution.”

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Inspecting pod maturity with farmers at Koibatek Farmers Training Centre in Eldama Ravine Division, Baringo County, Kenya, in September 2012. Paul is on the extreme right.

Passionate about his teaching and research work, it’s a journey of discovery Paul is excited to have shares with others: “My co-workers and PhD students have all benefitted. Technicians have been trained abroad. All my colleagues have a story to tell,” he says. And whilst these stories may range from examples of access to training, infrastructure or genomic resources, the common thread throughout is one of self-empowerment and the new-found ability to move forward as a team: “Thanks to our involvement with the GCP’s Genotyping Support Service, we now know how to send plant DNA to the some of the world’s best labs and to analyse the results, as well as to plan for the costs. With training in how to prepare the fields, and infrastructure such as irrigation systems and resources such as tablets, which help us to take data in the field more precisely, we are now generating accurate research results leading to high-quality data.”

The links we’ve established have been tremendous, and we think many of them should be long-lasting too: even without GCP

Teamwork, international connections and science with a strong sense of mission
Teaming up with other like-minded colleagues from crème de la crème institutions worldwide has also been vital, he explains: “The links we’ve established have been tremendous, and we think many of them should be long-lasting too: even without GCP, we should be able to sustain collaboration with KBioscience [now LGC Genomics] or ICRISAT for example, for genotyping or analysing our data.” He holds similar views towards GCP’s Integrated Breeding Platform (IBP): “IBP is one of the ideas which we think, even after GCP’s exit in December 2014, will continue to support our breeding programmes. My colleagues and I consult IBP regularly for a range of aspects, from markers to protocols to germplasm and the helpdesk, as well as for contacts and content available via the IBP Communities of Practice.” Paul’s colleagues are Richard Mulwa, Alice Kosgei, Serah Songok, Moses Oyier, Paul Korir, Bernard Towett, Nancy Njogu and Lilian Samoei. Paul continues: “We’ve also been encouraging our regional partners to register on IBP – I believe colleagues across Eastern and Central Africa could benefit from this one-stop shop.”

Yet whilst talking animatedly about the greater sophistication and accuracy in his work granted as a result of new infrastructure and the wealth of molecular tools and techniques now available to him and his team, at no point do Paul’s attentions stray from the all-important bigger picture of food security and sustainable livelihoods for his local community: “When we started in 2008, chickpeas were known as a minor crop, with little economic value, and in the unfavoured cluster termed ‘orphan crops’ in research. Since intensifying our work on the crop through TLI, we have gradually seen chickpeas become, thanks to their relative resilience against drought, an important rotational crop after maize and wheat during the short rains in dry highlands of Rift valley and also in the harsh environments of the Kerio Valley and swathes of Eastern Kenya.”

This GCP-funded weather station is at Koibatek Farmers Training Centre, Longisa Division, Bomet County.

This GCP-funded weather station is at Koibatek Farmers Training Centre.

Having such a back-up in place can prove a vital lifeline to farmers, Paul explains, particularly during moments of crisis, citing the 2011–2012 outbreak of the maize lethal necrosis (MLN) disease which wiped out all the maize throughout Kenya’s  Bomet County, where Paul, Richard, Bernard and their team had been working on the chickpea reference set. Those farmers who had planted chickpeas – Paul recalls Toroto and Absalom as two such fortunate souls – were food-secure. Moreover, GCP support for infrastructure such as a weather station have helped farmers in Koibatek County to predict weather patterns and anticipate rainfall, whilst an irrigation system in the area is being used by the Kenyan Ministry of Agriculture to develop improved seed varieties and pasture for farmers.

The science behind the scenes and the resultant products are of course not to be underestimated: in collaboration with ICRISAT, Paul and his team released four drought-resistant chickpea varieties in Kenya in 2012, with the self-same collaboration leading to the integration of at least four varieties of the crop using marker-assisted backcrossing, one of which is in the final stages and soon to be released for field testing. With GCP having contributed to the recent sequencing of the chickpea genome, Paul and his colleagues are now looking to up their game by possibly moving into work on biotic stresses in the crop such as diseases, an ambitious step which Paul feels confident can be realised through effective collaboration, with potential contenders for the mission including ICRISAT (for molecular markers), Ethiopia and Spain (for germplasm) and researchers at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) for germplasm. Paul first established contact with all of these partners during GCP meetings.

By coming together, pooling skills from biotechnology, agronomy, breeding, statistics and other disciplines, we are stronger as a unit and better equipped to offer solutions to African agriculture and to the current challenges we face.”

Links that flower, a roving eye, and the heat is on!
In the meantime, the fruits of other links established since joining the GCP family are already starting to blossom. For example, TLI products such as certified seeds of chickpea varieties being released in Kenya – and in particular the yet-to-be-released marker-assisted breeding chickpea lines which are currently under evaluation – caught the eye of George Birigwa, Senior Programme Officer at the Program for Africa’s Seed Systems (PASS) initiative of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), which is now supporting the work being undertaken by Paul and his team through the Egerton Seed Unit and Variety Development Centre (of which Paul is currently Director) at the Agro-Based Science Park.

Yet whilst Paul’s love affair with chickpeas has evidently been going from strength to strength, he has also enjoyed a healthy courtship with research in other legumes: by engaging in a Pan-African Bean Research Alliance (PABRA) bean project coordinated by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Paul and his team were able to release and commercialise three bean varieties which are currently in farmers’ fields in Kenya.

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Paul (left) in the field. The crop is chickpeas of course!

With so many pots on the boil, the heat is certainly on in Paul’s research kitchen, yet he continues to navigate such daily challenges with characteristic aplomb. As a proven leader of change in his community and a ‘ can-do, make-it-happen’ kind of guy, he is driving research forward to ensure that both his school and discipline remain fresh and relevant – and he’s taking his colleagues, students and local community along with him every step of  the way.

Indeed, rallying the troops for the greater good is an achievement he values dearly: “By coming together, pooling skills from biotechnology, agronomy, breeding, statistics and other disciplines, we are stronger as a unit and better equipped to offer solutions to African agriculture and to the current challenges we face,” he affirms. This is a crusade he has no plans to abandon any time soon, as revealed when quizzed on his future aspirations and career plans: “My aim is to continue nurturing my current achievements, and to work harder to improve my abilities and provide opportunities for my institution, colleagues, students, friends and people within the region.”

With the chickpea research community thriving, resulting in concrete food-security alternatives, we raise a toast to Paul Kimurto and his chickpea champions!

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Oct 152014
 

In recognition of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, October 17th, we are reflecting on what poverty means, how crop breeding helps eradicate poverty and transform lives, and how we have tried to maximise and measure those impacts.

In the early days of GCP, we were largely on uncharted seas and needed to chart a course to where our efforts would have the greatest impact, a process documented in our Pathways to impact brief No 1: Where in the world do we start? Instead of using a monetary definition of poverty, since this varies so widely between places and contexts, we took a different approach. As an indicator of true poverty, we used data on the number of stunted – ie, severely malnourished – children, overlaying this on maps showing where drought was most likely to occur. Our thinking was clear and simple: poverty + drought = where GCP needed to be.

Whatever else you may think they may lack, these children in Sibi village, Burkina Faso, definitely have verve, and look full of the energy they need to play!

Whatever else you may think they may lack, these children in Sibi village, Burkina Faso, definitely have verve, and look full of the energy they need to play!

A boy plays with an improvised hoop in Lukolela, Democratic Republic of Congo.

A boy plays with an improvised hoop in Lukolela, Democratic Republic of Congo.

Drought routinely reduces harvests, and can be catastrophic. For example, nearly half (40 percent) of Africa’s maize-lands face occasional drought, reducing yields by between 10 and 25 percent, while a quarter suffers frequent drought, with overall losses of up to half the harvest – and total losses for some individual farmers. With climate change making droughts ever more common, drought was a natural priority for GCP from its inception.

Drought-tolerant crops are therefore the most important focus for the breeders of the GCP family, though not an exclusive one. Other key traits our breeders consider include resistance to pests and diseases and nutritional fortification, depending on the crop and location – and of course all varieties should yield well in good years too. Resilient improved varieties are particularly important for the poorest farmers, as they do not usually have access to measures such as irrigation or pesticides to combat environmental menaces. Typically, the poorest farmers also live in the most drought-prone drylands. Helping poor farmers to reap consistently abundant nutritious harvests means more food for their families and often a surplus to sell –reducing child malnourishment, and poverty in general.

A little girl eats fresh roti at home in the district of Dinajpur, Bangladesh.

A little girl eats fresh roti at home in the district of Dinajpur, Bangladesh.

A girl eats rice with her family in the Philippines.

A girl eats rice with her family in the Philippines.

Together we stand

The theme of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty 2014 is Leave no one behind: think, decide and act together against extreme poverty, and it is one that echoes beautifully with the ethos of GCP. Collaboration and partnership have always been hallmarks of our approach, particularly in terms of empowering researchers in developing countries to implement – and lead – cutting-edge science. You can find a wealth of posts on our blog about our partnerships and the ‘GCP spirit’.

Collaboration is particularly important in crop breeding because one crop is often faced by all kinds of threats at once – a selection from the world’s least tasty smorgasbord of drought, heat, waterlogging pests, diseases, soil infertility, and much more. It is likely to be of no use breeding a super-crop that goes untouched by disease if it turns up its toes after a few dry days, or if no one likes the taste. That means researchers with different areas of expertise need to work together – and with farmers and extensionists too. Read the case for collective action in our Pathways to impact brief No 2: A call for collective action in agricultural research.

Girls help in the fields in Luang Prabang, Laos.

Girls help in the fields in Luang Prabang, Laos.

Eyes dancing with past, present or future mischief, two cheeky young chappies from Mozambique enjoy the sweet taste of orange sweet potato enriched with pro-vitamin A.

Eyes dancing with past, present or future mischief, two cheeky young chappies from Mozambique enjoy the sweet taste of orange sweet potato enriched with pro-vitamin A.

Impact by the numbers

GCP believes that using marker-assisted breeding (a range of efficient crop-breeding approaches that use genetic information to work out which plants have useful traits) to create improved varieties faster and more effectively is worth its extra cost, and has a real impact on farmers’ incomes. This cannot be taken for granted however, so get an introduction to the numerical approach in our Pathways to impact brief No 3: Molecular and conventional breeding through an economic lens. Our study found that women in Nigeria reported increased household incomes from growing improved cassava varieties, but also more time spent on cassava-related tasks – emphasising the need for researchers to be aware of the characteristics farmers – in this case predominantly women – value.

Hard at work, a boy helps to peel a mountain of cassava in Nigeria.

Hard at work, a boy helps to peel a mountain of cassava in Nigeria.

As we mark this year’s International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, we at GCP are proud to be contributing to the eradication of poverty by creating partnerships, expertise, and ultimately crop varieties that promise abundant harvests for the world’s poorest farmers and their families – helping their children grow up big, strong and free from poverty.

At play: children of the Sao Felix community in the Brazilian Amazon.

At play: children of the Sao Felix community in the Brazilian Amazon.

Enjoy the game, but keep off the plants! Boys play football next to maize fields in Khulungira, central Malawi.

Enjoy the game, but keep off the plants! Boys play football next to maize fields in Khulungira, central Malawi.

Sep 012014
 

Scouring the planet for breeding solutions

Bindiganavile Vivek

Bindiganavile Vivek

Bindiganavile Vivek (pictured) is a maize breeder working at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), based in Hyderabad, India. For the past five years, Vivek and his team have been developing drought-tolerant germplasm for Asia using relatively new molecular-breeding approaches – marker-assisted recurrent selection (MARS), applied in a genomewide selection (GWS) mode. Their work in the Asian Maize Drought-Tolerance (AMDROUT) project is implemented through GCP’s Maize Research Initiative, with Vivek as the AMDROUT Principal Investigator.

Driven by consumer demand for drought-tolerant maize varieties in Asia, the AMDROUT research team has focussed on finding suitable drought-tolerant donors from Africa and Mexico. Most of these donors are white-seeded, yet in Asia, market and consumer preferences predominantly favour yellow-seeded maize. Moreover, maize varieties are very site-specific and this poses yet another challenge. Clearly, breeding is needed for any new target environments, all the while also with an eye on pronounced market and consumer preferences.

(1) Amazing maize and its maze of colour. Maize comes in many colours, hues and shapes. (2) Steeped in saffron: from this marvellous maize mix and mosaic, the Asian market favours yellow maize.

(1) Amazing maize and its maze of colour. Maize comes in many colours and hues. (2) Steeped in saffron: from this marvellous maize mix and mosaic, the flavour in Asia favours yellow maize.

Stalked by drought, tough to catch, but still the next big thing

Around 80 per cent of the 19 million hectares of maize in South and Southeast Asia is grown under rainfed conditions, and is therefore susceptible to drought, when rains fail. Tackling drought can therefore provide excellent returns to rainfed maize research and development investments. As we shall see later, Vivek and his team have already made significant progress in developing drought-tolerant maize.

Drough in Asia_Vivek slide_GRM 2013_w

The stark reality of drought is illustrated in this warning sign on a desiccated drought-scorched landscape, showing the severity of drought in Asia

But they are after a tough target: drought tolerance is dodgy since it is a highly polygenic trait, making it difficult for plant scientists to pinpoint genes for the trait (see this video with an example from rice in Africa). In other words, to make a plant drought-tolerant, many genes have to be incorporated into a new variety. As one would expect, the degree of difficulty is directly proportional to the number of genes involved. In the private-sector seed industry, MARS  (PDF) has been successfully used in achieving rapid progress towards high grain yield under optimal growth conditions. Therefore, a similar approach could be used to speed up the process of introducing drought tolerance into Asian crops – the reason why the technique is now being used by this project.

AMDROUT Meeting Penang Dec2010_w

More than India: the AMDROUT project also comprises research teams in China, Indonesia, Thailand, The Philippines and Vietnam. In this photo taken during the December 2010 annual project meeting in Penang, Malaysia, the AMDROUT team assessed the progress made by each country team, and  team members were trained in data management and drought phenotyping. They also realised that there was a need for more training in genomic selection, and did something about it, as we shall see in the next photo. Pictured here, left to right: Luo Liming, Tan jing Li, Villamor Ladia, V Vengadessan, Muhammad Adnan, Le Quy Kha, Pichet Grudloyma, Vivek, IS Singh, Dan Jeffers (back), Eureka Ocampo (front), Amara Traisiri and Van Vuong.

The rise of maize: clear chicken-and-egg sequence…

Vivek says that the area used for growing maize in India has expanded rapidly in recent years. In some areas, maize is in fact displacing sorghum and rice. And the maize juggernaut rolls beyond India to South and Southeast Asia. In Vietnam, for example, the government is actively promoting the expansion of  maize acreage, again displacing rice. Other countries involved in the push for maize include China, Indonesia and The Philippines.

So what’s driving this shift in cropping to modern drought-tolerant maize? The curious answer to this question lies in food-chain dynamics. According to Vivek, the dramatic increase in demand for meat – particularly poultry – is the driver, with 70 percent of maize produced going to animal feed, and 70 percent of that going into the poultry sector alone.

GCP gave us a good start… the AMDROUT project laid the foundation for other CIMMYT projects”

 Show and tell: posting and sharing dividends

As GCP approaches its sunset in December 2014, Vivek reports that all the AMDROUT milestones have been achieved. Good progress has been made in developing early-generation yellow drought-tolerant inbred lines. The use of MARS by the team – something of a first in the public sector – has proved to be useful. In addition, regional scientists have benefitted from broad training from experts on breeding trial evaluation and genomic selection (photo-story on continuous capacity-building). “GCP gave us a good start. We now need to expand and build on this,” says Vivek.

AMDROUT trainees at Cambridge_w

AMDROUT calls in on Cambridge for capacity building. AMDROUT country partners were at Cambridge University, UK, in March 2013, for training in quantitative genetics, genomic selection and association mapping. This was a second training session for the team, the first having been September 2012 in India.
Pictured here, left to right – front row: Sri Sunarti, Neni Iriany, Hongmei Chen;
middle row: Ian Mackay (Cambridge), Muhammad Azrai, Le Quy Kha, Artemio Salazar;
back row: Roy Efendy, Alison Bentley (who helped organise, run and teach on the course, alongside Ian) and Suriphat Thaitad.AMDROUT country partners are from China’s Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences (YAAS); the Indonesian Cereals Research Institute (ICERI); the Institute of Plant Breeding at the Unversity of Philppines at Los Baños (UPLB); Thailand’s Nakhon Sawan Field Crops Research Center (NSFCRC); Vietnam’s National Maize Research Institute (NMRI); and private-sector seed companies in India, such as Krishidhan Seeds.Curious on who proposed to whom for this AMDROUT–Cambridge get-together? We have the answer: a Cambridge callout announced the training, and AMDROUT answered by calling in, since course topics were directly relevant to AMDROUT’s research approach. 

 

 

According to Vivek, the AMDROUT project laid the foundation for other CIMMYT projects  such as the Affordable, Accessible, Asian (AAA) Drought-Tolerant Maize (popularly known as the ‘Triple-A project’) funded by the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture. This Triple-A project is building on the success of AMDROUT, developing yet more germplasm for drought tolerance, and going further down the road to develop hybrids.

 

Outputs from the AMDROUT project will be further refined, tested and deployed through other projects”

Increasing connections, and further into the future

Partly through GCP’s Integrated Breeding Platform (IBP), another area of success has been in informatics. Several systems such as the Integrated Breeding FieldBook, the database Maize Finder and the International Maize Information System (IMIS) now complement each other, and allow for an integrated data system.

There is now also an International Maize Consortium for Asia (IMIC–Asia), coordinated by CIMMYT, comprising a group of 30 commercial companies (ranging from small to large; local to transnational). Through this consortium, CIMMYT is developing maize hybrids for specific environmental conditions, including drought. IMIC–Asia will channel and deploy the germplasms produced by AMDROUT and other projects, with a view to assuring impact in farmers’ fields.

Overall, Vivek’s experience with GCP has been very positive, with the funding allowing him to focus on the agreed milestones, but with adaptations along the way when need arose: Vivek says that GCP was open and flexible regarding necessary mid-course corrections that the team needed to make in their research.

But what next with GCP coming to a close? Outputs from the AMDROUT project will be further refined, tested and deployed through other projects such as Triple A, thus assuring product  sustainability and delivery after GCP winds up.

Links

As our Maize Research Initiative does not have a Product Delivery Coordinator, Vivek graciously stepped in to coordinate the maize research group at our General Research Meeting in 2013, for which we thank him yet again. Below are slides summing up the products from this research, and the status of the projects then.

Aug 302014
 

In ancient Europe, Timbuktu, in Northern Mali, gained fame as a fabled city of knowledge and learning at a far end of the world – snuggled in the Sahara Desert, and almost impossible to get to. And so, then as in our times, the phrase ‘As far as Timbuktu’ came to mean a place that is unimaginably far away, is completely foreign, or is unreachable – at the other end of the earth. Sitting on the left bank of the River Niger on the southern edge of the Sahara, it was not only a seat of learning in the ancient world, but also an important trade and travel stop for merchants as they sought refuge from the desert.

Niaba Teme

Niaba Témé

Timbuktu ticks on today. And if you strike out south and travel 450km from Timbuktu, you would come to the village of Yendouma-Sogol. This is where Niaba Témé, a plant breeder at Mali’s L’Institut d’économie rurale (IER), was born and grew up on the family farm, and where his saga with sorghum began.

“We grew dryland crops like millet, sorghum, cowpeas, groundnuts, Bambara nuts, sesame and dah,” says Niaba. “I used to love harvesting the millet and helping my mother with her groundnut crops.”

Niaba describes the geography and climate of the region as being very harsh. Sandstone cliffs soar from the dusty sun-scorched lower plains where temperatures are only slightly lower than the plateaus, which bake in the intense heat – the daily temperature rarely falls below 30oC. As there is no major river, every single drop of the 500 millimetres of rainfall received each wet season is used for drinking, cropping and livestock husbandry.

“The rains during July and August make farming possible for our people,” says Niaba.“If we did not receive those rains, our crops would suffer and in some years, we were not able to harvest anything.”

Niaba says these crop failures contributed in part to his choosing a career where he could help farmers, like his parents and siblings, protect themselves from the risks of drought and extreme temperatures.

With molecular markers, you can easily see if the plant you’ve bred has the gene related to drought tolerance without having to grow the plant and or risk missing the trait through visual inspection.”

Breeding more sorghum with less water
For the past four years, Niaba and his team at IER have been collaborating with Jean-François Rami and his team at France’s Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement (CIRAD), with support from Syngenta complemented by other GCP funding on a project to improve sorghum grain yield and quality for West African farmers.

A sorghum farmer in Mali.

A sorghum farmer in Mali.

Sorghum is an important staple crop for Mali. It is used to make to (a thick porridge), couscous, as well as malted and local beer beverages. “Anytime I talk with farmers, they are always asking for higher-yielding lines and lines that can produce sustainable yields during drought, or do so with less water,” says Niaba. “Since 2008, with the help of CIRAD and Syngenta, we have been learning how to use molecular markers to identify parental lines which are more tolerant and better adapted to the arable and volatile environment of Mali and surrounding areas which receive between 600 and 800 millimetres of rainfall per year. Using molecular markers is new and exciting for us as it will speed up the breeding process. With molecular markers, you can easily see if the plant you’ve bred has the gene related to drought tolerance without having to grow the plant and or risk missing the trait through visual inspection.”

In 2010, Niaba obtained GCP funding to carry out similar research with CIRAD and collaborators at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Africa. “In this project, we are trying to enhance sorghum grain yield and quality for the Sudano-Sahelian zone of West Africa using the backcross nested association mapping [BCNAM] approach. This involves using an elite recurrent parent that is already adapted to local drought conditions, then crossing it with several different specific or donor parents to build up larger breeding populations. The benefit of this approach is it can lead to detecting elite varieties much faster.”

AB_Mali 2009 (3) 243_w

Niaba (foreground) examining a sorghum panicle at trials in Mali in 2009.

I spent eight months in Hyderabad. It was the first time I had to speak English every day… I spent almost 11 years at the University of Texas Tech, and enjoyed every moment… We have been collaborating with researchers…  in Australia “

Traversing the world seeking knowledge
But to backtrack a bit and find out how Niaba got to where he is today, let’s return to the family farm where he grew up, and where his career inspiration was forged and fired.

With a family background in farming now coupled with a keen interest in science, young Niaba enrolled at L’Institut Polytechnique Rural de Formation et de Recherche Appliquée (IPR/IFRA) at Katiboutou, in Eastern Bamako, Mali to study agronomy. He then went to IER, where, after two years there, he was offered a scholarship to study plant breeding in India.

“I spent eight months in Hyderabad. It was the first time I had to speak English every day so I was enrolled for an intensive English course at the University of Ousmania, Hyderabad, India, for the first two months. I then went on to do six months intensive training in the ICRISAT labs, learning how to set up experiments and collect and analyse data.”

His zest for plant breeding research and knowledge still unquenched, Niaba sought yet another intensive training course, this time in USA. During his time there, he made an impression on local researchers and it wasn’t long before he returned to complete his Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD in Agronomy at the University of Texas Tech, Texas. “I spent almost 11 years at the University of Texas Tech, and enjoyed every moment. I love the opportunities and freedom that USA offers.”

Despite this attraction, Niaba remained true to Timbuktu and Mali. He left Texas and returned to Mali in January 2007 , where he was rapidly recruited by IER to take charge of their new biotechnology lab at Le Centre Regional de Recherche Agromique (CRRA). Shortly after, he became involved with GCP, working on three projects, one of which would take this native from near (or as far away as?) Timbuktu to yet another far-away place at the opposite end of the world known as Down Under – Australia.

“We have been collaborating with researchers at the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry in Queensland, and the University of Queensland, Australia, since 2009, to introduce the stay-green drought-resistant gene into our local sorghum varieties.” says Niaba.

 

Left to right: Niaba Teme (Mali), David Jordan (Australia), Sidi Coulibaly (Mali) and Andrew Borrell (Australia) visiting an experiment at Hermitage Research Facility in Queensland, Australia.

Left to right: Niaba Témé (Mali), David Jordan (Australia), Sidi Coulibaly (Mali) and Andrew Borrell (Australia) visiting an experiment at Hermitage Research Facility in Queensland, Australia.

Sorghum staying-greener with less water
Stay-green is a post-flowering drought adaptation trait that has contributed significantly to sorghum yield stability in northeastern Australia and southern USA for the last two decades. The project has three objectives:

  • To evaluate the stay-green drought resistance mechanism in plant architectures and genetic backgrounds appropriate to Mali
  • To develop sorghum germplasm populations enriched for stay-green genes that also carry genes for adaptation to cropping environments in Mali.
  • To improve capacity of Mali researchers by carrying out training activities for African sorghum researchers in drought physiology and selection for drought adaptation in sorghum.

“In 2012 a colleague and myself were invited to Australia to take this training by Andrew Borrell and David Jordan,” says Niaba. “We learnt about association mapping, population genetics and diversity, molecular breeding, crop modelling using climate forecasts and sorghum physiology, plus a lot more! It was intense but rewarding, more so the fact that we have developed these new drought-tolerant crops which will enhance food security for my country.”

Thus ends today’s chapter in Niaba’s saga with sorghum. We expect to hear more on the latest from Niaba at the GCP General Research Meeting  (GRM) in October, so watch this space!

Meantime, see his slides from GRM 2013 below.

Links

 

 

Aug 292014
 
One of the greatest challenges of our time is growing more crops to feed more people, but using less water

Sorghum is one of the most ‘efficient’ crops in terms of needing less water and nutrients to grow. And although it is naturally well-adapted to sun-scorched drylands, there is still a need to improve its yield and broad adaptability in these harsh environments. In West Africa, for example, while sorghum production has doubled in the last 20 years, its yield has remained stagnant – and low.

The GCP Sorghum Research Initiative comprises several projects, which are exploring ways to use molecular-breeding techniques to improve sorghum yields, particularly in drylands. All projects are interdisciplinary international collaborations with an original focus on Mali, where sorghum-growing areas are large and rainfall is getting more erratic and variable. Through the stay-green project, the research has since broadened to also cover Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Niger and Sudan.

Using molecular markers is new and exciting for us as it will speed up the breeding process. With molecular markers, you can easily see if the plant you’ve bred has the desired characteristics without having to grow the plant and or risk missing the trait through visual inspection.”

What’s MARS got to do with it?

Niaba Témé is a local plant breeder and researcher at Mali’s L’Institut d’économie rurale (IER). He grew up in a farming community on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, where crops would constantly fail during drier-than-normal seasons.

Niaba Teme

Niaba Témé

Niaba says these crop failures were in part his inspiration for a career where he could help farmers like his parents and siblings protect themselves from the risks of drought and extreme temperatures.

For the past four years, Niaba and his team at IER have been collaborating with Jean-François Rami and his team at France’s Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement (CIRAD), to improve sorghum grain yield and quality for West African farmers. The work is funded by the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture.

“With the help of CIRAD and Syngenta, we have been learning how to use molecular markers to improve breeding efficiency of sorghum varieties more adapted to the variable environment of Mali and surrounding areas which receive less than 600 millimetres of rainfall per year,” he says.

Jean-François Rami

Jean-François Rami

“Using molecular markers is new and exciting for us as it will speed up the breeding process. With molecular markers, you can easily see if the plant you’ve bred has the desired characteristics without having to grow the plant and or risk missing the trait through visual inspection.”

Jean-François Rami, who is the project’s Principal Investigator, has been impressed by the progress made so far. Jean-François is also GCP’s Product Delivery Coordinator for sorghum.

“Since its inception, the project has progressed very well,” says Jean-François. “With the help of the IER team, we’ve been able to develop two bi-parental populations from elite local varieties, targeting two different environments of sorghum cropping areas in Mali. We’ve then been able to use molecular markers through a process called marker-assisted recurrent selection [MARS] to identify and monitor key regions of the genome in consecutive breeding generations.”

The collaboration with Syngenta came from a common perspective and understanding of what approach could be effectively deployed to rapidly deliver varieties with the desired characteristics.

“Syngenta came with their long experience in implementing MARS in maize. They advised on how to execute the programme and avoid critical pitfalls. They offered to us the software they have developed for the analysis of data which allowed the project team to start the programme immediately,” says Jean-François.

Like all GCP projects, capacity building is a large part of the MARS project. Jean-François says GCP has invested a lot to strengthen IER’s infrastructure and train field technicians, researchers and young scientists. But GCP is not the only player in this: “CIRAD has had a long collaboration in sorghum research in Mali and training young scientists has always been part of our mission. We’ve hosted several IER students here in France and we are interacting with our colleagues in Mali either over the phone or travelling to Mali to give technical workshops in molecular breeding. The Integrated Breeding Platform [IBP] has also been a breakthrough for the project, providing to the project team breeding services, data management tools, and a training programme – the Integrated Breeding Multiyear Course [IB–MYC].”

We don’t have these types of molecular-breeding resources available in Mali, so it’s really exciting to be a part of this project… the approach has the potential to halve the time it takes to develop local sorghum varieties with improved yield and adaptability to drought… one of the great successes of the project has been to bring together sorghum research groups in Mali in a common effort to develop new genetic resources for sorghum breeding.”

Back-to-back: more for Mali’s national breeding programme

On the back of the MARS project, Niaba successfully obtained GCP funding in 2010 to carry out similar research with CIRAD and collaborators in Africa at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT).

“In this project, we are trying to enhance sorghum grain yield and quality for the Sudano-Sahelian zone of West Africa using the backcross nested association mapping (BCNAM) approach,” explains Niaba, who is the Principal Investigator of the BCNAM project. “This involves using an elite recurrent parent that is already adapted to local drought conditions. The benefit of this approach is that it can lead to detecting elite varieties much faster.”

Kirsten Vom Brocke (CIRAD) Michel Vaksmann (CIRAD) Mamoutou Kouressy (IER) Eva Weltzien (ICRISAT) Jean-Francois Rami (CIRAD) Denis Lespinasse (Syngenta) Niaba Teme (IER) Ndeye Ndack Diop (GCP) Ibrahima Sissoko (Icrisat) Fred Rattunde (Icrisat)

A ‘sample’ of the rich mix of international partners in sorghum research: Left to right – Kirsten Vom Brocke (CIRAD), Michel Vaksmann (CIRAD), Mamoutou Kouressy (IER), Eva Weltzien (ICRISAT), Jean-François Rami (CIRAD), Denis Lespinasse (Syngenta), Niaba Teme (IER), Ndeye Ndack Diop (GCP Capacity Building Leader), Ibrahima Sissoko and Fred Rattunde (both from ICRISAT).

Eva Weltzien has been the Principal Scientist for ICRISAT’s sorghum breeding programme in Mali since 1998. She says the project aligned with much of the work her team had been doing, so it made sense to collaborate considering the new range of sorghum genetic diversity that this approach aims to use.

“We’ve been working with Niaba’s team to develop 100 lines for 50 populations from backcrosses carried out with 30 recurrent parents,” explains Eva. “These lines are being genotyped by CIRAD. We will then be able to use molecular markers to determine if any of these lines have the traits we want. We don’t have these types of molecular-breeding resources available in Mali, so it’s really exciting to be a part of this project.”

Eva Weltzien (holding sheet of paper) presenting to Mali's Minister of Agriculture (in white cap) a graph on the superiority of new guinea race hybrids. Also on display are panicles and seed of the huybrids and released varieties of sorghum in Mali. The occasion was an annual field day at ICRISAT's research station at Samanko, Mali.

An annual field day at ICRISAT’s research station at Samanko, Mali. Eva Weltzien (holding sheet of paper) showing Mali’s Minister of Agriculture, Tiemoko Sangare, (in white cap) a graph on the superiority of new guinea race hybrids. Also on display are panicles and seed of the hybrids and released varieties of sorghum in Mali.

Eva says that the approach has the potential to halve the time it takes to develop local sorghum varieties with improved yield and adaptability to drought.

For Jean-François, one of the great successes of the project has been to bring together sorghum research groups in Mali in a common effort to develop new genetic resources for sorghum breeding.

“This project has strengthened the IER and ICRISAT partnerships around a common resource. The large multiparent population that has been developed is analysed collectively to decipher the genetic control of important traits for sorghum breeding in Mali,” says Jean-François.

 Plants with this ‘stay-green’ trait keep their leaves and stems green during the grain-filling period. Typically, these plants have stronger stems, higher grain yield and larger grain.”

Sorghum staying green and strong, with less water

In February 2012, Niaba and his colleague, Sidi B Coulibaly, were invited to Australia as part of another Sorghum Research Initiative project they had been collaborating on with CIRAD, Australia’s University of Queensland and the Queensland Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (QDAFF).

“We were invited to Australia for training by Andrew Borrell and David Jordan, who are co-Principal Investigators of the GCP stay-green sorghum project,” says Niaba.

Left to right: Niaba Teme (Mali), David Jordan (Australia), Sidi Coulibaly (Mali) and Andrew Borrell (Australia) visiting an experiment at Hermitage Research Facility in Queensland, Australia.

Left to right: Niaba Témé (Mali), David Jordan (Australia), Sidi Coulibaly (Mali) and Andrew Borrell (Australia) visiting an experiment at Hermitage Research Facility in Queensland, Australia.

“We learnt about association mapping, population genetics and diversity, molecular breeding, crop modelling using climate forecasts, and sorghum physiology, plus a lot more. It was intense but rewarding – more so the fact that we understood the mechanics of these new stay-green crops we were evaluating back in Mali.”

It wasn't all work and there was clearly also time to play, as we can see her., Sidi Coulibaly and Niaba Teme visiting with the Borrell family in Queensland, Australia.

It wasn’t all work and there was clearly also time to play, as we can see here., where Sidi Coulibaly and Niaba Témé are visiting the Borrell family in Queensland, Australia.

Stay-green is a post-flowering drought adaptation trait that has contributed significantly to sorghum yield stability in northeastern Australia and southern USA over the last two decades.

Andrew has been researching how the drought-resistant trait functions for almost 20 years, including gene discovery. In 2010, he and his colleague, David Jordan, successfully obtained funding from GCP to collaborate with IER and CIRAD to develop and evaluate drought-adapted stay-green sorghum germplasm for Africa and Australia.

“Stay-green sorghum grows a canopy that is about 10 per cent smaller than other lines. So it uses less water before flowering,” explains Andrew. “More water is then available during the grain-filling period. Plants with this ‘stay-green’ trait keep their leaves and stems green during the grain-filling period. Typically, these plants have stronger stems, higher grain yield and larger grain.”

Andrew says the project is not about introducing stay-green into African germplasm, but rather, enriching the pre-breeding material in Mali for this drought-adaptive trait.

The project has three objectives:

  1. To evaluate the stay-green drought-resistance mechanism in plant architecture and genetic backgrounds appropriate to Mali.
  2. To develop sorghum germplasm populations enriched for stay-green genes that also carry genes for adaptation to cropping environments in Mali.
  3. To improve the capacity of Malian researchers by carrying out training activities for African sorghum researchers in drought physiology and selection for drought adaptation in sorghum.

…we have found that the stay-green trait can improve yields by up to 30 percent in drought conditions with very little downside during a good year, so we are hoping that these new lines will display similar characteristics”

Expansion and extension:  beyond Mali to the world

Andrew explains that there are two phases to the stay-green project. The project team first focused on Mali. During this phase, the Australian team enriched Malian germplasm with stay-green, developing introgression lines, recombinant inbred lines and hybrids. Some of this material was field-tested by Sidi and his team in Mali.

“In the past, we have found that the stay-green trait can improve yields by up to 30 percent in drought conditions with very little downside during a good year, so we are hoping that these new lines will display similar characteristics,” says Andrew. “During the second phase we are also collaborating with ICRISAT in India and now expanding to five other African countries – Niger and Burkina Faso in West Africa; and Kenya, Sudan and Ethiopia in East Africa. During 2013, we grew our stay-green enriched germplasm at two sites in all these countries. We also hosted scientists from Burkina Faso, Sudan and Kenya to undertake training in Queensland in February 2014.”

 

A sampling of some of stay-green sorghum partnerships in Africa. (1)  Asfaw Adugna assessing the genetic diversity of  sorghum panicles produced from the GCP collaboration at Melkassa, Ethiopia. (2)  Clarisse Barro-Kondombo (Burkina Faso) and Andrew Borrell (Australia) visiting a lysimeter facility in Hyderabad, India, as part of GCP training. (3) Clement Kamau (Kenya, left) and  Andrew Borrell (Australia, right) visiting the seed store at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) in Katumani, Kenya.

A sampling of some of stay-green sorghum partnerships in Africa. (1) Asfaw Adugna of the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR)  assessing the genetic diversity of sorghum panicles produced from the GCP collaboration at Melkassa, Ethiopia. (2) Clarisse Barro-Kondombo (left, INERA – Institut de l’environnement et de recherches agricoles , Burkina Faso) and Andrew Borrell (right) visiting a lysimetre facility at ICRISAT’s headquarters in Hyderabad, India, as part of GCP training, in February 2013. (3) Clement Kamau (left, Kenya Agricultural Research Institute [KARI] ) and Andrew Borrell (right) visiting the seed store at KARI, Katumani, Kenya.

Andrew says that the collaboration with international researchers has given them a better understanding of how stay-green works in different genetic backgrounds and in different environments, and the applicability is broad. Using these trial data will help provide farmers with better information on growing sorghum, not just in Africa and Australia, but also all over the world.

“Both David and I consider it a privilege to work in this area with these international institutes. We love our science and we are really passionate to make a difference in the world with the science we are doing. GCP gives us the opportunity to expand on what we do in Australia and to have much more of a global impact.”

We’ll likely be hearing more from Andrew on the future of this work at GCP’s General Research Meeting (GRM) in October this year, so watch this space! Meantime, see slides below from GRM 2013 by the Sorghum Research Initiative team. We also invite you to visit the links below the slides for more information.

Links

Aug 292014
 

“…I wanted to contribute in a similar way” – Eva Weltzien

 

Eva Weltzien

Eva Weltzien

Learning about the work of Nobel laureate, Norman Borlaug, in high school inspired Eva Weltzien to become a plant breeder so she too could contribute to improving the living conditions in the developing world. Today, Eva is a Principal Scientist in sorghum breeding and genetic resources at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Mali.

“Not only did Norman Borlaug revolutionise agriculture by breeding high-yielding wheat varieties, he then selflessly distributed these to the countries in the world that most needed them, saving hundreds of millions from starvation,” Eva recollects passionately, as she speaks about her scientific hero. “I remember being inspired when he won his Nobel Prize in 1970, mainly for the fact that agricultural research was actually being seen as contributing to world peace,” says Eva. “I knew then that I wanted to contribute in a similar way.”

I…wanted to take a break from… theory and instead gain an appreciation for plant breeding by working in the field”

The path to plant breeding, and pearls along the way
Eva was raised in her native Germany, as well as in Beirut, Lebanon, where she spent six years when her parents were stationed at the local university there. She credits her parents; both plant pathologists, for instilling in her a scientific mind-set from a tender age.

“They taught me to think outside the box and apply my knowledge and understanding to how I made sense of the world,” Eva recalls. “Being plant pathologists, they also encouraged me to observe the environment carefully and treat the earth with respect.”

Upon graduating from high school, Eva deferred going to university and instead worked as a seed technician for a private company in Germany. “I just wanted to take a break from studying theory and instead gain an appreciation for plant breeding by working in the field,” says Eva.

After one year with the company, Eva was ready to start university. During the decade that followed, she completed a Diploma in Agricultural Biology (University of Hohenheim, 1981) and a PhD in Agriculture (Munich University, 1986).

A year after completing her PhD, Eva accepted a postdoc position at Iowa State University, USA, where she met her future husband Fred Rattunde. After a few years, both Eva and Fred moved to India to work with ICRISAT. “I’ve been working for ICRISAT for almost 27 years now,” says Eva. “When I first started, I was working in pearl millet breeding.”

The key challenges have been improving the infrastructure of the national research facilities… as well as increasing the technical training for local researchers…this has slowly improved, particularly in the last four years with the funding and help through the GCP Sorghum Research Initiative.…we can see our work making an impact on people’s lives…”

Off to Africa, and bearing fruit
In 1998, ICRISAT offered Eva and Fred positions in Mali where they would take responsibility for the Institute’s sorghum-breeding programme in West Africa.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Evaluating Eva: In Dioila district, Mali, evaluating the panicles of a new sorghum line after harvest.

“It was a great challenge that we both wanted to explore,” says Eva. “The key challenges have been improving the infrastructure of the national research facilities to do the research as well as increasing the technical training for local agronomists and researchers. Over the past 15 years, this has slowly improved, particularly in the last four years, with the funding and facilitation through the GCP Sorghum Research Initiative. Now we can see our work making an impact on people’s lives in West Africa.” (see GCP’s work on infrastructure improvement)

…we are closer to delivering more robust sorghum varieties which will help farmers and feed the ever-growing population in West Africa.”

Improving drought tolerance in sorghum for Africa
The second phase of GCP’s Sorghum Research Initiative focuses on Mali, where sorghum-growing areas are large, and distributed over a wide range of rainfall regimes.

Eva and her team are currently collaborating with local researchers at L’Institut d’économie rurale (IER), Mali and France’s Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement (CIRAD) on a project to test a novel molecular-breeding approach – backcross nested association mapping (BCNAM). Eva says the approach has the potential to halve the time it takes to develop local sorghum varieties with improved yield and adaptability to poor soil fertility conditions.

“We don’t have these type of molecular-breeding resources available in Mali, so it’s really exciting to be a part of this project.”  Still, Eva and her colleagues continue to press forwards in this new frontier in plant science, making good advances in another parallel but closely related project that Eva leads in the GCP Comparative Genomics Research Initiative.

Eva continues, “We’ve had good results in terms of field trials, despite the political situation. Overall, we feel the experience is enhancing our capacity here in Mali, and that we are closer to delivering more robust sorghum varieties which will help farmers and feed the ever-growing population in West Africa.”

Slides (with more links after the slides)

Links

Aug 272014
 
Leon Kochian

Leon Kochian

“By being involved with GCP, I’ve had more opportunities to travel to the developing world and witness the problems that local farmers in these countries are facing, as well as to meet with the local researchers who are trying to overcome these problems. It has made me appreciate that these  researchers also need the capacity to sustainably deal with agricultural problems once the project money starts to dry up.” – Leon Kochian (pictured), Professor, Cornell University, USA; and Director of Robert W Holley Center for Agriculture and Health, United States Department of Agriculture – Agricultural Research Service. Also Product Delivery Leader for GCP’s Comparative Genomics Research Initiative.

Bright and early beginnings in biology
For as long as Leon Kochian can remember, he’d always wanted to be a biologist.

“I remember my second-grade teacher reading a story to us about the white cliffs of Dover and thinking to myself ‘They’re white because they’re covered in the prehistoric remains of dead protozoan’,”’ says Leon with a chuckle. “Yes, I was a weird kid and that sort of stuff [biology] has always interested me.”

Having completed a Bachelor’s Degree in Botany at the University of California, Berkeley, and a PhD in Plant Physiology at the University of California, Davis (both in USA), Leon joined the United States Department of Agriculture based at Cornell University.

For 30 years, he has combined lecturing and supervising duties at Cornell, with his quest to understand the genetic and physiological mechanisms that allow some cereals to tolerate acidic soils.

The GCP model has always attracted me, particularly its focus on making an impact on farmers’ lives… I had already been a successful researcher having published more than 250 papers, but I felt little of that had made any real impact on the world.”

Identifying genes and breeding tolerant crops for African farmers
Leon and Cornell University have been involved with GCP since the Programme’s inception in 2004, playing a lead role in GCP’s Comparative Genomics Research Initiative, of which Leon is the Product Delivery Coordinator. Cornell University is a member of the GCP Consortium, with Leon as Cornell’s representative in the GCP Consortium Committee.

“The GCP model has always attracted me, particularly its focus on making an impact on farmers’ lives,” says Leon, who has been a Principal Investigator for several Comparative Genomics Research Initiative projects. “I had already been a successful researcher having published more than 250 papers, but I felt little of that had made any real impact on the world.”

During the first phase of the project, Leon led a team comprising of researchers from Cornell, EMBRAPA in Brazil and Moi University in Kenya.

In the foreground, left to right, Leon, Jura and Sam in a maize field in Kenya.

Leon (left) with project colleagues, Jurandir Magalhães (EMBRAPA) and Sam Gudu (Moi University) in a maize field in Kenya in May 2010.

“We had been working for many years with both EMBRAPA and Moi University to identify the genes associated with aluminium tolerance in sorghum and maize and saw the potential to apply our research and expand it to explore other cereals such as rice and wheat,” explains Leon.

During GCP Phase I (2004–2008), the team successfully identified and cloned the major sorghum aluminium tolerance gene (AltSB). In Phase II (2009–2014), they are working towards breeding aluminium-tolerant sorghum lines for sub-Saharan Africa as well as applying what they have learnt to discover similar genes in rice and maize.

“Aluminium toxicity is a problem all over the world, but more so in Africa, as most farmers don’t have the money to manage it,” says Leon “These new aluminium-tolerant crops will improve African farmers’ yields, and, in turn, improve their quality of life.”

It’s like match.com for collaborative research and will hopefully foster greater collaboration between the two continents.”

Insights, connections and matchmaking
According to Leon, the funding from GCP has been very beneficial in making significant research progress on the projects he’s been involved with so far, and he is also quick to note the unexpected and very welcome non-monetary benefits from being involved with GCP.

“By being involved with GCP, I’ve had more opportunities to travel to the developing world and witness the problems that local farmers in these countries are facing, as well as to meet with the local researchers who are trying to overcome these problems. It has made me appreciate that these  researchers also need the capacity to sustainably deal with agricultural problems once the project money starts to dry up.”

Working with GCP, Leon has designed and run workshops to train African scientists on molecular breeding techniques and hosted several postgraduate researchers at Cornell. He is now working with GCP collaborators to develop a database that will help African scientists find potential collaborators in USA and the rest of the Americas. “It’s like match.com for collaborative research and will hopefully foster greater collaboration between the two continents,” says Leon.

Research is such a fun and social experience! … I still love getting into the lab and discovering new things. I’ve also learnt to enjoy being the old guy in the lab!”

Growing greyer, growing wiser
Leon says his passion for biology and research is steadfast and has not waned through the years. Although he doesn’t get to do much of the hands-on work these days, it still remains the most enjoyable part of his job. “Research is such a fun and social experience! I still love getting into the lab and discovering new things. I’ve also learnt to enjoy being the old guy in the lab! Just watching and helping young researchers grow and develop their skills is really rewarding. Each of the 13 PhD students I’ve supervised is like one of my kids and I still keep in touch with all of them, as I do with my own PhD supervisor, 30 years on!”

Having recently celebrated his 60th birthday, Leon has no plans on slowing down anytime soon. “I’m currently Director of the Robert W Holley Center for Agriculture and Health, lecturing undergraduate and postgraduate students, supervising two PhD students and sitting on several boards, all the while trying to find time to write papers and do some research. It’s hard work but I enjoy it.”

The three faces of Leon: (1) in the lab in Cornell; (2) in the field courtesy of USDA-ARS; and, (3) delivering opening remarks as Director of the Robert W Holley Center

The three faces of Leon: (1) in the lab in Cornell; (2) in the field, courtesy of USDA–ARS; and, (3) delivering opening remarks as Director of the Robert W Holley Center.

Leon tries to impart this philosophy to his students, believing scientists need to enjoy what they are doing, work hard at it, be flexible and creative, and, most importantly, not have ‘fear of failure’. “I don’t care how smart you are. If you’re not willing to work really hard and learn to improve yourself, then you’re not going to succeed.”

With regard to his GCP projects soon coming to a close when GCP sunsets in December 2014, Leon hopes he and team will succeed in meeting all their goals, but even if they don’t, he’s sure they’ll continue the research and try to discover more about aluminium tolerance. More power to them!

Leon’s slides, with links to more supplementary material after the slides

Links

Aug 152014
 

 

Samuel Gudu

Samuel Gudu

Having funding to support PhD students and provide them with the resources they need to complete their research is very fulfilling and will go a long way to enhance the long-term success of our goal: to provide Kenyan farmers with cereal varieties that will improve their yields and make their livelihood more secure and sustainable.” – Samuel Gudu, Professor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Planning & Development) at Moi University, and now Principal, Rongo University College: a Constituent College of Moi University, Kenya.

Growing up, and getting dirty
Learner, teacher and leader. Sam Gudu has been all these, but this doesn’t mean he doesn’t like to get his hands dirty.

Growing up in a small fishing village on the banks of Lake Victoria, in Western Kenya, Sam was always helping his parents to fish and garden, or his grandparents to muster cattle.

“I remember spending long hours before and after school either on the lake or in the field helping to catch, harvest and produce enough food to eat and support our family,” reminisces Sam.

He attributes this “hard and honest” work to why he still enjoys being in the field.

“Even though I now spend most of my days doing administration work, I’m always trying to get out into the field to get my hands dirty and see how our research is helping to make the lives of Kenyan farmers a lot more profitable and sustainable,” he says.

Sam in a maize field in Kenya.

Doing what he likes to do best: Sam in a maize field in Kenya.

I was… captivated by the study of genetics as it focused on what controlled life.”

Taking control: bonded to genetics, at home and away
Sam says his love for the land transferred to an interest and then passion in the classroom during high school. “I became very interested in Biology as I wanted to know how nature worked,” says Sam. “I was particularly captivated by the study of genetics as it focused on what controlled life.”

This interest grew during his undergraduate years at the University of Nairobi where he completed a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture and a Master’s of Science in Agriculture, focusing on genetics and plant breeding.

“I fondly remember a lecturer during my master’s degree studies who would continually give us challenges to test in the field and in the lab. If you had a viable idea he supported you to design an experiment to test your theory. I like to use the same method in teaching my students. I discuss quite a lot with my students and I encourage them to disagree if they use scientific process.”

Driven by an ever-growing passion and enthusiasm, Sam secured a scholarship to travel to Canada to undertake a PhD in Plant Genetics and Biotechnology at the University of Guelph.

[There has been an] influx of young Kenyans who are choosing degrees in science. The Kenyan Government has recently increased its funding for science and research…”

Nurturing the next breed of geneticists
After graduating from Guelph in 1993, Sam returned to Kenya to lecture at Moi University where he initiated and helped expand teaching and research in the disciplines of Genetic Engineering, Biotechnology and Molecular Biology.

In the past two decades, he has recruited young talented graduates in genetics and helped acquire advanced laboratory equipment that has enabled practical teaching and research in molecular biology.

“I wouldn’t be where I am now were it not for all the assistance I received from my teachers, lecturers and supervisors; notably my PhD supervisor – Prof Ken Kasha of the University of Guelph. So I’ve always tried my best to give the same assistance to my students. It’s been hard work but very rewarding, especially when you see your students graduate to become peers and colleagues.” (Meet some of Sam’s students)

Sam (2nd right), with some of his young charges: Thomas Matonyei (far left) , Edward Saina (2nd left) and Evans Ouma (far right)

Sam (2nd right), with some of his young charges: Thomas Matonyei (far left), Edward Saina (2nd left) and Evans Ouma (far right).

Sam is particularly buoyed by the influx of young Kenyans who are choosing degrees in science.

“The Kenyan Government has recently increased its funding for science and research to two percent of GDP,” explains Sam. “This has not only helped us compete in the world of research but has helped raise the profile of science as a career.”

Knowing which genes are responsible for aluminium tolerance will allow us to more precisely select for aluminium tolerance in our breeding programmes, reducing the time it takes for us to breed varieties that will have improved yields in acidic soils without the use of costly inputs such as lime or fertiliser.” (See the work that Sam does in this area with other partners outside Kenya)

So far we have produced 10 inbred lines that are outstanding for phosphorus efficiency, and two that were outstanding for aluminium toxicity. We are now testing unique verities developed for acid soils of Kenya.”

Slashing costs, increasing yields and resilience: genes to the rescue
Currently, Sam and his team of young researchers at Moi University are working with several other research facilities around the world (Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, EMBRAPA; Cornell University, USA; the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI); Japan’s International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences, JIRCAS; and the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, KARI–Kitale) to develop high-yielding maize varieties adapted to acid soils in East Africa, using molecular and conventional breeding approaches.

Can you spot Sam? It’s a dual life. Here, he sheds his field clothes in this 2011 suit-and-tie moment with Moi University and other colleagues involved in the projects he leads. Left to right: P Kisinyo, J Agalo, V Mugalavai, B Were, D Ligeyo, S Gudu, R Okalebo and A Onkware.

Acid soils cover almost 13 per cent of arable land in Kenya, and most of the maize-growing areas in Kenya. In most of these areas, maize yields are reduced by almost 60 per cent. Aluminium toxicity is partly responsible for the low and declining yields.

“We found that most local maize varieties and landraces grown in acid soils are sensitive to aluminium toxicity. The aluminium reduces root growth and as such the plant cannot efficiently tap into native soil phosphorus, or even added phosphorus fertiliser. However, there are some varieties of maize that are suited to the conditions even if you don’t use lime to improve the soil’s pH. So far we have produced 10 inbred lines that are outstanding for phosphorus efficiency, and two that were outstanding for aluminium toxicity. We are now testing unique varieties developed for acid soils of Kenya.”

Sam (left)   a group of farmers and alking to farmers and researchers at Sega, Western Kenya, in June 2009

Sam (left) addressing a mixed group of farmers and researchers at Sega, Western Kenya, in June 2009.

In a related project, Sam is working with the same partners to understand the molecular and genetic basis for aluminium tolerance.

“Knowing which genes are responsible for aluminium tolerance will allow us to more precisely select for aluminium tolerance in our breeding programmes, reducing the time it takes for us to breed varieties that will have improved yields in acidic soils without the use of costly inputs such as lime or fertiliser.”

 … my greatest achievements thus far have been those which have benefited farmers and my students.”

 Summing up success
For Sam, the greatest two successes in his career have not been personal.

“If I’m honest, I have to say my greatest achievements thus far have been those which have benefited farmers and my students. Having funding to support PhD students and provide them with the resources they need to complete their research is very fulfilling and will go a long way to enhance the long-term success of our goal: to provide Kenyan farmers with cereal varieties that will improve their yields and make their livelihoods more secure and sustainable.”

With a dozen aluminium-tolerant and phosphorus-efficient breeding lines under their belt already, and two lines submitted for National Variety Trials (a pre-requisite step to registration and release to farmers), Sam and his team seem well on their way towards their goal, and we wish them well in their quest and labour.

Links:

 

Jul 242014
 

Read how this cocktail blends in a comparative genomics crucible, where both family genes and crop genes come into play in Brazil. Nothing whatsoever to do with the World Cup. It’s all about a passionate love affair with plant science – specifically a quest for aluminium-resilient maize – spanning a decade-and-a-half, and still counting…

Claudia

Claudia Guimarães

 

“I love the whole process of science; from identifying a problem, developing a method, conducting the experiments, analysing the data and evaluating the findings.” – Claudia Guimarães (pictured), Researcher at EMBRAPA Milho e Sorgo, Sete Lagoas, Brazil

I always enjoyed looking after the cattle and horses as well as planting and harvesting different crops.”

Forged on family farm, federal institute and foreign land
Claudia Guimarães is a plant molecular geneticist, with a pronounced passion for science. At the Federal University of Viçosa, Claudia studied agronomy because it provided a wide range of possibilities career-wise. She also believes her family’s farming background too had a part to play in her study and career choice. “My father has a farm in a small village 200 km north of Sete Lagoas. My whole family used to go there during our school holidays. I always enjoyed looking after the cattle and horses as well as planting and harvesting different crops.”

During her bachelor’s degrees, Claudia was increasingly drawn to plant genetics. She decided to pursue this field further and completed a Master’s degree in Genetics and Breeding, focusing on maize. She then completed a PhD in Comparative Genomics where she split her time between California and Brazil. “For my PhD, I got a scholarship from the Brazilian Council for Scientific and Technological Development which included international training in San Diego, California. During my PhD, I focused on comparative genomics for sugarcane, maize and sorghum, which involved genetic mapping and markers,” Claudia reveals.

Returning to Brazil after two years in California, Claudia joined the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, commonly referred to as EMBRAPA (Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária), where she has worked for the last 15 years, since 1999.

bCIMMYTmaizeField_w

Preparing to put her shoulder to the wheel, literally? Claudia in a maize field at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Tlaltizapan, Mexico, in January 2010.

dNutrientSolutionEmbrapa_w

Maize plantlets cultivated in nutrient solution, the methodology Claudia and her team use to evaluate aluminium tolerance.

Our next challenge is to develop specific markers for a wider marker-assisted selection of aluminium tolerance in maize.”

Long-term allies in aluminium tolerance
EMBRAPA first became involved with GCP through one of its foundation programmes headed by Leon Kochian and his former PhD student Jurandir Magalhães. “Jura has been a really close friend for a long time,” explains Claudia. “We went to university together and have ended up working together here at EMBRAPA. I was involved in Jura’s project, which sought to clone a sorghum aluminium-tolerance gene.”

This gene is called SbMATE. Claudia continues, “EMBRAPA had a long-term aluminium-tolerance programme on maize and sorghum, within which there was a QTL mapping project for aluminium tolerance in maize, in which we started to look for a similar gene as the sorghum team.”

[Editor’s note: QTL stands for quantitative trait locus or loci – gene loci where allelic variation is associated with variation in a quantitative trait. An allele is a variant (different version) of a gene, that leads to variation in a trait, eg different colour for hair and eyes in human beings.]

Working with Leon Kochian at Cornell University, USA, Claudia and her team were able to find an important aluminium-tolerance gene homologue (loosely meaning a relative or counterpart) to the sorghum SbMATE, which they named ZmMATE. This gene is responsible for a major aluminium tolerance QTL that improves yield in acidic soil in maize breeding lines and hybrids. (see why scientists work jointly on closely related cereals)

“Identifying and then validating ZmMATE as the primary aluminium tolerance QTL in maize was a great project,” says Claudia. “Our next challenge is to develop specific markers for a wider marker-assisted selection of aluminium tolerance in maize.”

1: Rhyzobox containing two layers of Cerrado soil – a corrected top-soil and lower soils with 15 percent of aluminium saturation. We can see that near-isogenic lines (NILs) introgressed with the Al tolerance QTL (qALT6) that encompasses ZmMATE1 show deeper roots and longer secondary roots in acid soils, whereas the roots of L53 are mainly confined in the corrected top soil.  2: Maize ears, representing the improved yield stability in acid soils of a NIL per se and crossed with L3. NILs have the genetic background of L53 introgressed with qALT6, the major aluminium-tolerance QTL.

March 2014. Photo 1: Rhyzobox containing two layers of Cerrado soil – a corrected top-soil and lower soils with 15 percent aluminium saturation. We can see that near-isogenic lines (NILs) introgressed with the aluminium-tolerance QTL (qALT6) that encompasses ZmMATE1 show deeper roots and longer secondary roots in acidic soils, whereas the roots of L53 are mainly confined in the corrected top soil. Photo 2: Maize ears, representing the improved yield stability in acidic soils of a NIL per se and crossed with L3. NILs have the genetic background of L53 introgressed with qALT6, the major aluminium-tolerance QTL.

 

 …the students have really become my arms…  helping me a lot with the experiments…

Giving and receiving: students step in, partners in print
Supervising students has become a larger part of Claudia’s life since becoming a member of the Genetics Graduate Programme at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, in 2004. Because of this, she credits the students for helping her with her research. “I don’t have as much time as I used to in the lab, so the students have really become my arms in that area, helping me a lot with the experiments,” Claudia reveals. “This isn’t to say that they don’t have to think about what they are doing. I encourage them to always be thinking about why they are doing an experiment and what the result means. At the end of the day, they need to know more about what they are doing than I do, so they can identify indiscretions and successes.”

Claudia says she is always preaching three simple instructions to her students – work hard, always continue to learn and like what you do. “The last instruction is particularly important because as a scientist you need to dedicate a lot of time to what you do, so it helps if you like it. If you don’t like it then it becomes frustrating and no fun at all. I don’t think of my work as a job, rather as a passion. I just enjoy it so much!”

Claudia’s passion is not just a matter of the heart but also of the head, expressing itself in print. Her latest publication reflects the most current results on maize aluminium tolerance, highlighting GCP support, partnerships within and beyond EMBRAPA embracing Cornell University and the Agricultural Research Services of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA–ARS) , as well as the strong presence of students. Check it out

Links:

SLIDES

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