Nov 302012
 
Photo: IRRI

Sigrid Heuer

Meet Sigrid Heuer (pictured), a Molecular Biologist and Senior Scientist at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). Her lively and riveting story will take us from Africa through her native Europe and on to Asia, and finally Down Under to Australia.

Origins – the African chapter
Africa holds a special and soft spot in Sigrid’s love affair with science: it was while on this continent that she realised her calling in life as a scientist – linking people doing pure research on plant genes to help plants survive and even thrive in harsh environments, with people who want to apply that knowledge to breed crops that can change the lives of millions of farmers who constantly compromise with nature to make a living.

Photo: IRRI

Fieldwork: Sigrid at a field trial for rice phosphorus uptake.

“Working as a postdoc at the Africa Rice Center in Senegal was a real life-changing experience,” Sigrid recollects with great fondness. “It’s where I found my niche, using my background in theoretical science and applying it to developing crops that could overcome abiotic stresses, and in doing so, make a real impact on people’s lives.”

Rowing further down the river: from upstream to downstream science
Sigrid was born and raised in Hamburg, Germany. She remembers wanting to be a psychologist and didn’t consider science until a few years after finishing school. After completing a biology undergraduate at Phillips University, Marburg, Germany, she returned to her home city of Hamburg to complete a Masters and PhD in plant physiology and molecular biology respectively.

“Back then, I was really involved in upstream science, fascinated in the fine details without much consideration of how such research could benefit society,” says Sigrid. “I still enjoy this form of science and really do value its purpose, but putting it into practice and focusing on the impact that it can have is what really motivates me now.”

Moving to IRRI, and meeting Pup1 and GCP
After three years in Senegal, Sigrid moved to the Philippines to join IRRI in 2003, first as a consultant then as a part-time scientist. In these early years, she was working on several projects, one of which was the GCP-funded Pup1 (rice phosphorus uptake) project.

“The project sought to identify the genes associated with phosphorus uptake in rice lines that could tolerate phosphorus-deficient soils,” says Sigrid. “It was an interesting project in which I was able to use my background in molecular biology. Little by little, I got more and more involved in the Pup1 project and after a year I was asked by Matthias Wissuwa, who was leading the project at the time, if I wanted to take it over. It was a great opportunity which I jumped at, not knowing then how challenging it would prove.”

Pup1 was the first major project I had managed. It was a playground of sorts that allowed me to learn what I needed to know about managing a project – writing proposals and reports, managing budgets and people’s time, and everything else that comes with leading a team.

The ‘root’ and  ‘command post’ where it all happens: Sigrid in the office. For the benefit of our readers, we would have credited the young artist whose colourful work graces the background below the bookshelf, but we were too polite to pry and prise out the young talent’s name, having hogged too much of Sigrid’s time already!

Learning to lead – both work and play

Over the last seven years, Sigrid has been a Principal Investigator and joint leader of the project, which has given her latitude to mature professionally, and not just in science alone. “It’s been tough but personally fulfilling,” Sigrid says, with just a touch of exhaustion.

Pup1 was the first major project I had managed. It was a playground of sorts that allowed me to learn what I needed to know about managing a project – writing proposals and reports, managing budgets and people’s time, and everything else that comes with leading a team. I was really lucky to have Matthias’ help as well as the other experienced collaborators and networks. However, the main factor that made my job a lot less stressful, was the benefit of long-term funding and support from GCP. GCP was always there, supporting us and giving us confidence even when we weren’t sure we were going to succeed.”

Persistence pays: tangible products, plus publication in Nature
In August 2012, Sigrid and her team achieved what they had set out to do seven years ago, through what Sigrid puts down to sheer persistence: their discovery of the Pup1 gene was recognised by their scientific peers and published in the highly renowned journal,  Nature.

Sigrid (3rd left) at the lab with other colleagues in the phosphorus uptake team.

“Having our paper published is really something special and personally my greatest achievement to date,” says Sigrid, but she is also quick to add that it was a team achievement, and that the achievement was in itself humbling.

“It was a double reward for persisting with the research, and with getting it into Nature. We wanted it in Nature for several reasons. To raise awareness on phosphorus deficiency and phosphorus being a limited resource, especially in poorer countries; and to draw attention to how we do molecular breeding these days, which is a speedier, easier and cost-effective approach to developing crops that have the potential to alleviate such problems.”

Sigrid hopes the article will have a lasting impression on readers, and encourage funders to continue to support projects that have such impact on the lives of end-users.

What next? Technology transfer, transitions and torch smoothly passing on…
With the Pup1 gene now found, IRRI researchers are working with breeders from country-based breeding programmes around the world to help them understand the techniques to breed local varieties of rice that can grow in phosphorus-deficient soils. They are also collaborating with other projects that wish to use the Pup1 project as a case study for phosphorous deficiency tolerance in other crops like maize, sorghum, and wheat (see an example here, that includes partners from Africa and Latin America).

Sigrid sees this next stage as a perfect time to step down from the project: she plans to move to Adelaide, Australia at the end of 2012 to lead a new project that is looking at drought and nitrogen deficiency tolerance in wheat.

“Matthias passed the baton on to me, and now I get to pass the baton on to someone else, so it’s nice. And I’ll be sure to always be around to help them too.”

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Sigrid’s presentation at the GCP General Research Meeting 2011

 

 

Nov 292012
 

By Gillian Summers

The TLI project lets us know about molecular breeding, so it’s exposed us to new developments in science, especially in the application of molecular techniques and plant breeding.”  Asrat Asfaw Amele, Southern Agricultural Research Institute, Ethiopia

Many a tale about Ethiopia will regale the reader with details of its contrasting landscape, numerous rivers, searing regional temperatures, the multicultural makeup of its society, its world-famous, unbeatable long-distance and high-altitude runners, its rich history and culture; a sweet producer of honey, the home of coffee, and origin of all mankind…

Seeing red… but no blood
…I found a land of incurably hospitable and kind people, proud of their country and culture; infectiously good music, incredibly strong coffee, where they love both bloody raw meat and protein-rich red beans, dubbed ‘bloodless meat’ in this part of the world.

Cool early morning departure

Cool early morning departure

Out & about
My first real taste of Ethiopia was out in the countryside where I visited the work of GCP’s Tropical Legumes I (TLI) project in the field, on a trip to the bean fields at the Southern Agricultural Research Institute’s (SARI) research stations at Areka and Hawassa, which took us on a 600-km round tour, out of the capital Addis Ababa and into the Great Rift Valley beyond.

We set off early that cool morning, and as we headed into the countryside, I glimpsed many a local taking their first breath of morning air as they stepped outside from their decoratively-painted, round, thatched-roof homes, and shook the night’s sleep from their shoulders.

Traditional thatched living rooms

Traditional thatched living rooms

So their day began – already there was smoke coming from the chimneys, and I imagined the lady of the house beginning to prepare for the first coffee ceremony of the day. Coffee is often accompanied by a dish of boiled red beans. Or maybe she was warming the pan for the morning injera – a kind of ‘teff tortilla’: a sour-dough thin pancake made of the local cereal, teff. Injera is an iconic ubiquitous component of Ethiopian cuisine, with which diners take all manner of wat, or stew made from a rich variety of ingredients – from legumes to raw meat, carefully rolling the spongy crepe around the filling twice, making sure no food falls onto the fingers, for dining etiquette strictly dictates against the licking of fingers.

Ensete plantations

Ensete plantations

Living landscape

We pass score upon score of the gently-smoking thatched round huts – the traditional ‘living rooms’ in these parts; most dwellings are accompanied by modest smallholdings, with maybe a grazing goat or two, and many more with plantations of ensete – a banana-like plant, which, in spite of its inedible fruit, has long been a staple in Ethiopia. It is used for its root, which is mashed to make a tasty, stodgy, bread-like food called kocho, used to accompany meals, a denser cousin of the favourite injera. These smallholdings would also be the perfect size for cultivating beans, as they are not an acre-hungry crop, but grow happily on small plots of land, and in some areas are intercropped with ensete to maximise the space.

Dromedaries, drought and beans

Our common legume: the bean, Phaseolus vulgaris L

Our common legume: the bean, Phaseolus vulgaris L

Into this landscape we pass the incongruous addition of a herd or two of camels with their owners…significantly peculiar as these aren’t desert lands, but the edge of the Ethiopian highlands, gradually and graciously giving way to the majestic Great Rift Valley below. I ask my guide about the addition of camel hands to this highland scenery: he explains their strange presence is due to a growing food shortage which has forced these nomadic peoples further afield to find their fare. The appearance of these dromedaries and their human partners brings harshly to mind Ethiopia’s most notorious claim to fame – especially for anyone who recalls the mid-1980s – for whom Ethiopia will always be indelibly synonymous with famine. It also throws the work of GCP, and specifically TLI, sharply into the spotlight, for the over-arching objective of this project is to improve legume productivity in environments considered marginal for agriculture, due to heat and other stresses. Somehow, it seems that more of the world’s environment is becoming ‘stressed’ by the day, though luckily the giant beanstalk of our story is a hardy crop which can be grown on the poor soils and fragmented plots of these challenged lands.

L–R: Asrat Asfaw Amele (SARI), Bodo Raatz (CIAT), Daniel A Demissie

L–R: Asrat Asfaw Amele (SARI), Bodo Raatz (CIAT) and Daniel A Demissie (Areka Research Station) discuss the A–Z of beans at Areka Research Station.

So the legume of choice for this most uncommon road trip is the common bean, Phaseolus vulgaris L, and our Ethiopian bean breeding expert is Asrat Asfaw Amele of the Southern Agricultural Research Institute (SARI), who is the Lead Scientist of the TLI beans component in Ethiopia. Asrat is our friendly guide and fount of knowledge of all things Ethiopian throughout this impassioned passage into the ‘bean valley’, and we are accompanied by Bodo Raatz of the Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT), recently appointed Principal Investigator of TLI’s bean research. At Areka research station we are joined on our journey by Daniel A Demissie, who, along the way, shares his many insights on beans, diseases such as bean stem maggot (BSM), and on drought . We are chaperoned throughout by our courageous driver, Mr Abebe, who at times resembles a pilot as we seem to fly over the bumpy terrain in the plucky pick-up that is our steed for the day.

Courageous steeds

Courageous steeds: our driver, Mr Abebe (foreground and far right) and the intrepid pickup are joined by workers from Areka station

Impact

Asrat Afaw Amele

Asrat Afaw Amele

Against the scenic backdrop of the Ethiopian landscape racing by, with background music courtesy of Teddy Afro (whose politically charged songs, sweet voice and infectious rhythm have made him nothing short of a legend in his homeland), I take advantage of this long and winding road trip to interview Asrat, where his answers echo the whirlwind tour rushing by outside – from a description of the landscape he knows so well, and toils in every day – to the impact that this project has had on national scientists, the impacts on farmers’ lives, as well as impacts that are likely to come in the not-too-distant future.

We consider farmers our partners. We try to understand what farmers are looking for, what they like, and we try to include their interests in our breeding materials so that the breeding materials released by our institution start to get wider adoption.” – Asrat Asfaw Amele (pictured).

The rich Ethiopian landscape

The rich Ethiopian landscape

Revolution, alliances & partnerships

Ethiopia’s rich history, as varied as its topographical landscape, has known its fair share of extreme rulers. Now it seems the new ‘regime’ calling the shots is climate change, whose ravaging effects are seen worldwide, and no less in the bean fields of Ethiopia. Asrat even pinpoints climate change as the greatest challenge for the next generation of bean researchers, saying, “The farmers’ growing environment may be modified or a new environment may be created. That could also be a challenge – a new pest population or new disease may come; so the challenge in the future may be to breed or develop varieties which adapt to the changing environment.”

Beans line up

Beans line up at Awassa Research Station

The revolutionaries needed to overthrow this ‘tyrant’, it seems, are those of the ‘triple alliance’ partnership, comprising: Ethiopia’s national scientists, researchers from the international science community including CGIAR Centres, and farmers. Firstly, with this approach, the science sector can understand farmers’ needs, which also has a reciprocal effect, as Asrat explains, “We consider farmers our partners. We try to understand what farmers are looking for, what they like, and we try to include their interests in our breeding materials so that the breeding materials released by our institution start are widely adopted.” Secondly, national and international science systems come together to work for a common goal – in Asrat’s words: “Now we’ve got the knowledge and we can speak a common language with people from advanced laboratories. It’s also brought us closer to international institutes like CIAT and other CG Centres – we work together, so they understand our system better and we understand how they function.” He adds, “We are getting technical backstopping from CGIAR Centres, so as a national partner we are doing work, and they are supplying germplasm. That’s the partnership that will continue in the future.”

The weapon used by this ‘revolutionary army’ is GCP’s double-barrelled approach which combines both traditional and molecular breeding practices and is proving to be effective in developing new, more productive bean varieties to combat drought and disease. Specifically of the TLI project, Asrat says, “It lets us know about molecular breeding, so it’s exposed us to new developments in science, especially in the application of molecular techniques and plant breeding.”

Daniel A Demissie

Daniel A Demissie contemplates looming rain clouds across the parched terrain

The ‘monster’, climate change, rears its ugly head only to be shot down expertly by Asrat and the mighty beans as he reveals, “A lot of farmers are growing our varieties, and, because of changing weather or instability, many people are starting to grow beans; beans are now becoming a major crop, especially in our mandate area.”

Capacity building …
At this stage, the major impact of the TLI beans component in Ethiopia has been on capacity building – both in terms of human resources and physical infrastructure, as Asrat illustrates, “In our breeding programme, capacity building has been an important aspect: scientists in our national system are being exposed to new technology, information, and training; we also have a full irrigation system in about 10 hectares of land, which will revolutionise our work.”

Photo: N Palmer/CIAT

Magical bean diversity

… and on to farmers
By building on lessons learnt throughout this project, current impacts for the national science system will be translated into ‘real impacts’ in farmers’ fields in the near future. Indeed, Asrat hopes his future work will involve “getting the material into the hands of farmers, to see some impact or change, and to modernise and speed up breeding processes using markers developed by this project.”

Beanstalks. Photo: N Palmer/CIAT

Beanstalks: giant potential in Ethiopia

So the ‘magic beans’ of our story tell of a rich brew brimming with such potent ingredients as molecular breeding, capacity building, partnerships spanning continents and research systems, true teamwork with the farmers in the fields, and the drive to conquer the new challenge of a changing climate.

The impacts from the TLI project are the pot of gold at this rainbow’s end, showing that fairy tales do come true, where ‘magic beans’ put down roots and grow real shoots, and are not just ‘castles in the air’.

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Nov 132012
 

Bean breeding in his bones: Asrat A Amele

For our bean team, we already see the benefits of being in the Tropical Legumes I  project. We now understand molecular breeding, and we are able to apply molecular breeding techniques.” – Asrat A Amele (pictured)

Asrat is a bean breeder at Ethiopia’s South Agricultural Research Institute (SARI) at the Awassa Research Centre.

Besides breeding beans that will better battle drought, Asrat’s team combines drought tolerance with resistance to the bean stem maggot (BSM) – a pest that afflicts all bean-growing zones in Ethiopia.

Connections, continuity and capacity building
The Tropical Legumes I (TLI) was not an entirely new connection, as Asrat’s involvement with GCP predates this particular project. He started off as a GCP-funded fellow in 2007, investigating bean genetics for drought tolerance. The fellowship would also seem him do a stint in Colombia at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture  (CIAT, by its Spanish acronym). His work at the time on root phenotyping and quantitative trait loci (QTL) analysis has since been published.

At that time, Asrat remarked:

The GCP fellowships programme is great for a person like me, working in a developing-country research institute. I can say it potentially provides researchers with up-to-date scientific knowledge in areas of specialisation. It provides better contact with scientists in other parts of the world and opens a wider window to think on problems and deliver better research products.”

Thorugh GCP, Asrat also attended a molecular breeding course at Wageningen University and Research Centre in The Netherlands. Wageningen is a GCP Consortium member.

The ravages wrought by bean stem maggot.

Having passed through that door of opportunity and looking back now, what does Asrat say? “Through TLI, we were able to access new parental sources of germplasm recommended for release and use for breeding. For instance, we’ve received more than 200 lines from CIAT, from which 10 have been selected to be used as parents. We plan to do crosses with these parents to develop a marker-assisted recurrent selection [MARS] population, based on the problems plaguing beans in Africa.”

And it’s not all about material but also matters cerebral (and matters manual, as we shall see further on): “From the science meetings we attend, we’ve also gained valuable new contacts and acquired new knowledge.” Asrat reveals.

Two…and two

Fitsum Alemayehu

Daniel Ambachew

The next step is to validate the workability of MARS, and SARI has a GCP-funded PhD student, Fistum Alemayehu (pictured right), registered at the South Africa’s Free State University and conducting his phenotyping in Ethiopia, alongside other well-trained staff that SARI now has. Fistum is working on marker-assisted recurrent selection for drought tolerance in beans, while Daniel Ambachew (pictured left), another GCP-funded MSc student enrolled at Haramaya University, Ethiopia, is evaluating recombinant inbred line populations and varieties for combined dual tolerance of drought and bean stem maggot.

Both students are using molecular breeding: “For this work, we’ll be using SNP* markers. It is probably the first use of bean SNPs in sub-Saharan Africa. We will now do QTL analysis with the bean population we have from CIAT,” reveals Asrat.

* SNP: (pronounced ‘snips’) is a technical term, and the abbreviation is derived from ‘single nucleotide polymorphism’ – an advanced molecular-marker system widely used in genetic science. You can read more about SNPs in this press release.

Of humans and machines

A training session on maintaining farm machinery.

Moving on to matters manual and mechanical, besides enhanced human resources, SARI has benefited from infrastructure support as part of GCP’s comprehensive capacity-building package: the Institute now has an irrigation system to enable them conduct drought trials, and SARI technicians from more than 20 different SARI stations have been trained in proper use and routine maintenance of farm machinery. SARI also received two automatic weather stations from GCP for high-precision climatic data capture, with automated data loading and sharing with other partners in the network.

Through this project, SARI is now well tuned into the international arena of bean research and development, and profiting in new ways from this exposure to growing international connections.

Water drilling to install irrigation equipment at SARI.

Institutional revolution and rebirth
The engagement with GCP has revolutionised bean breeding at SARI and institutionalised marker-assisted selection. As a result, SARI will soon have a small molecular breeding laboratory funded by another agency. This lab will support one more PhD student and an additional MSc student, both registered in Ethiopian universities and working on marker-assisted selection for beans.

Thus, in this southern corner of Ethiopia, bean breeders conversant in molecular methods will continue to be ‘born’, better-prepared and well-equipped to meet the challenges facing bean breeding today.

 

 

 

Asrat on video

Links

SLIDES: Phenotyping common beans for tolerance of drought and bean stem maggots in Ethiopia

 

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