Generation Challenge Programme
GCP website		Integrated Breeding
IBP website		Sunset Blog
Sunset blog		   Connect with us GCP on Facebook GCP on Twitter GCP on LinkedIn Subscribe to GCP Newsletter Subscribe to GCP RSS feeds

An evergreen saga on stay-green sorghum: Africa meets Australia

 Africa, Crop breeding, Drought, Genetics, Genomics, Sorghum  No Responses »
Jan 022015
 

Friendship and trust at the heart of sorghum research

…benefits to humanity are the real driver of the work.”

Andy1_wAndrew Borrell (pictured) is a man who loves his work – a search for a holy grail of sorts for the grain of his choice – sorghum.

Based at the University of Queensland, Australia, Andrew is co-Principal Investigator with David Jordan for a GCP-funded project developing drought-adapted sorghum for Africa and Australia. And Andrew is passionate not just about the potential of sorghum, but also about the cross-continental relationships that underpin his research team. These friendships, says Andrew, are the glue that hold his team together and make it work better.

The year 2013 was particularly exciting. After almost five years working with African plant breeders to improve genetic material, field trials were up and running at 12 sites across East and West Africa.  Fastforward to 2015 and  glad tidings for the New Year! Andrew and his team now have preliminary evidence that the drought-tolerant ‘stay-green’ trait enhances grain size and yield  in some of the target countries in  Africa for which data have already been analysed.

What Andrew hopes to see is more genetic diversity, not just for diversity’s sake but put to use in farmers’ fields  to enhance yield during drought. This means more food, fodder and other sorghum by-products such as stems for construction. These benefits to humanity are, he says, the real driver of the work his team does.

So what are the wonders of ‘stay-green’? Waxing lyrical…

The sought-after  ‘stay-green’ trait that Andrew and his team are so interested in describes the phenotype – what the plant looks like. It simply means that when drought strikes, sorghum plants with this trait remain leafy and green during the grain-filling period – a critical time when the plant’s water is channelled to developing healthy panicles of grain.

So, what makes these plants remain healthy when others are losing their leaves? Why do they wax while others wane? The answer, says Andrew, is twofold, and is all to do with water supply and demand, and more and less. Firstly, there is some evidence that the roots of the stay-green plants penetrate deeper into the soil, tapping into more water supply. Secondly, plants with the stay-green trait have a smaller leaf canopy which means less water demand by the plant before flowering, leaving more water for grain-filling after flowering.

Staying power and stover are also part of the story. According to Andrew, “Plants with the stay-green trait produce more grain in dry conditions, have stronger stems so they don’t fall over, and often have larger grains. And it’s not just about grain alone: stay-green also improves the quality of the stover left in the field after harvest, which serves as animal feed.”

Another key feature of the stay-green trait in sorghum is that it is not just a fair-weather friend: it works well in wet as well as dry conditions. “All the evidence we’ve got suggests that you get a benefit under tough conditions but very little penalty under good conditions,” says Andrew.

…the process is synergistic and we do something that’s better than any of us could do alone.”

Safari from Down Under to Africa: East and West, and home are all best

For Andrew and his co-Principal Investigator, David Jordan, the GCP project is the first time they have been involved in improving sorghum in Africa. The two scientists work with sorghum improvement teams in six African countries: Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger in the west, and, Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan in the east. By crossing African and Australian sorghum, the teams have developed the lines now being field-tested  in all the six countries.

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 (Ethiopian Agricultural Research Institute) assessing the genetic diversity of sorghum panicles produced from the GCP collaboration at Melkassa, Ethiopia. (2) Clarisse Barro-Kondombo (Institut de l’environnement et de recherches agricoles, Burkina Faso) and Andrew Borrell (Australia) visiting a lysimeter facility at ICRISAT 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.

According to Andrew, the collaboration with African scientists is “a bit like a group of friends using science to combat hunger. That’s probably been the biggest advantage of GCP,” adds Andrew. “Bringing people together for something we are all passionate about.”

There’s another collaborative element to the project too. As well as improving and testing plant material, the Australian contingent hosts African scientists on three-week training sessions. “We span a whole range of research topics and techniques,” explains Andrew. “We learn a lot from them too – their local expertise on soil, crops and climate. Hopefully the process is synergistic and we do something that’s better than any of us could do alone.”

Andrew says that working personally with plant breeders from Africa has made all the difference to the project. “Once colleagues from overseas come into your country, you develop real friendships. They know your families, they know what you do, and that’s very important in building relationships and trust that make the whole thing work.”

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, Sidi Coulibaly and Niaba Teme from Mali visit the Borrell family in Queensland, Australia.

Golden sunsets, iridescent rainbows and perpetual evergreen partnerships

As Andrew and his team wait to see how their field experiments in Africa turn out, they know that this is not the end of the story. In fact, it is only the beginning. Once tested, the germplasm will provide genetic diversity for future breeding programmes in Africa.

And the research collaboration between Australia and Africa won’t end when GCP funding runs out and GCP sunsets. For example, in addition to the GCP project, David Jordan has secured significant funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for another four years’ sorghum research in Ethiopia. Plus, Andrew and Kassahun Banttea, a colleague from Jimma University, have also just been awarded a PEARL grant from the Foundation to assess the sorghum germplasm collection in Ethiopia for drought-adaptation traits.

We wish this ‘stay-evergreen’ team well in their current and future ventures. More sorghum ‘stickability’ and staying power to them! May they find the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

This enchanted rainbow-rings-and-sorghum photo is from Andy Borrell, and, contrary to the magical song, please continue under the rainbow for links to more information.

Sorghum rainbow_A Borrello

Links

 

 

 

The curious case of cassava’s quirks, narrated in Nigeria

 Africa, Cassava  4 Responses »
Jun 242014
 

Triumphs and tragedies, pitfalls and potential of the ‘camel crop’Cassava leaf. Photo: N Palmer/CIAT

We travel through space and time, with a pair of researchers who have a pronounced passion for a plant brought to Africa by seafaring Portuguese traders in the 16th century. Fastforwarding to today, half a millennium later, the plant is widespread and deep inland, and is the staple food for Africa’s most populous nation – Nigeria.

Meet cassava, the survivor. After rice and maize, cassava is the third-largest source of carbohydrate in the tropics. Surviving, nay thriving, in poor soils and shaking off the vagaries of weather – including an exceptionally high threshold for drought – little wonder that cassava, the ‘camel’ of crops is naturally the main staple in Nigeria. And with that, it has propelled Nigeria to the very top of the cassava totem pole as the world’s leading cassava producer, and consumer: most Nigerians eat cassava in one form or another practically every day.

Great, huh? But there’s also a darker side to cassava, as we will soon find out from our two cassava experts. For starters, the undisputed global cassava giant, Nigeria, produces just enough to feed herself. Even if there were a surplus for the external demand, farming families, which make up 70 percent of the Nigerian population, have limited access to these lucrative external markets. Secondly, cassava mosaic disease (CMD) and cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) are deadly in Africa. Plus, cassava is a late bloomer (up to two years growth cycle, typically one year), so breeding and testing improved varieties takes time. Finally, cassava is most definitely not à la mode at all in modern crop breeding: the crop is an unfashionably late entrant into the world of molecular breeding, owing to its complex genetics which denied cassava the molecular tools that open the door to this glamour world of ‘crop supermodels’.

Emmanuel Okogbenin (left) and Chiedozie Egesi (right) in a cassava field.

Emmanuel Okogbenin (left) and Chiedozie Egesi (right) in a cassava field.

But all is not doom and gloom, which inexorably dissolve in the face of dogged determination. All the above notwithstanding, cassava’s green revolution seems to be decidedly on the way in Nigeria, ably led by born-and-bred sons of the soil: Chiedozie Egesi and Emmanuel Okogbenin (pictured right) are plant breeders and geneticists at the National Root Crops Research Institute (NRCRI). With 36 years’ collective cassava research experience between them, the two men are passionate about getting the best out of Nigeria’s main staple crop, and getting their hands into the sod while about it: “I’m a plant breeder,” says Chiedozie, with pride. “I don’t just work in a laboratory. I am also in the field to experience the realities.”

Hitting two birds with one stone…two stones are even better!
As Principal Investigators (PIs) leading three different projects in the GCP-funded Cassava Research Initiative, Chiedozie and Emmanuel, together with other colleagues from across Africa, form a formidable team. They also share a vision to enable farmers increase cassava production for cash, beyond subsistence. This means ensuring farmers have new varieties of cassava that guarantee high starch-rich yields in the face of evolving diseases and capricious weather.

Chiedozie is one of cassava’s biggest fans. His affection for, and connection to, cassava is almost personal and definitely paternal. He is determined to deploy the best plant-breeding techniques to not only enhance cassava’s commercial value, but to also protect the crop against future disease outbreaks, including ‘defensive‘ breading. But more on that later…

Emmanuel is equally committed to the cassava cause. As part of his brief, Emmanuel liaises with the Nigerian government, to develop for – and promote to – farmers high-starch cassava varieties. This ensures a carefully crafted multi-pronged strategy to revolutionise cassava: NRCRI develops and releases improved varieties, buttressed by financial incentives and marketing opportunities that encourage farmers to grow and sell more cassava, which spurs production, thereby simultaneously boosting food security while also improving livelihoods.

erect cass1_LS 4 web

Standing tall. Disease resistance and high starch and yield aside, farmers also prefer an upright architecture, which not only significantly increases the number of plants per unit, but also favours intercropping, a perennial favourite   for cassava farmers.

Cross-continental crosses and cousins, magic for making time, and clocking a first for cassava

No one has been able to manufacture time yet, so how can breeders get around cassava’s notoriously long breeding cycle? MAS (marker-assisted selection) is crop breeding’s magic key for making time. And just as humans can benefit from healthy donor organ replacement, so too does cassava, with cross-continental cousins donating genes to rescue the cousin in need. Latin American cassava is nutrient-rich, while African cassava is hardier, being more resilient to pests, disease and harsh environments.

Thanks to marker-assisted breeding, CMD resistance from African cassava can now be rapidly ‘injected’ much faster into Latin American cassava for release in Africa. Consequently, in just a three-year span (2010–2012), Chiedozie, Emmanuel, Martin Fregene of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center (USA) and the NRCRI team, released two new cassava varieties from Latin American genetic backgrounds (CR41-10 and CR36-5). These varieties, developed with GCP funding, are the first molecular-bred cassava ever to be released, meaning they are a momentous milestone in cassava’s belated but steady march towards its own green revolution.

Marker-assisted selection is much cheaper, and more focused.” 

On the cusp of a collaborative cassava revolution: on your marks…
With GCP funding, Chiedozie and Emmanuel have been able to use the latest molecular-breeding techniques to speed up CMD resistance. Using marker-assisted selection (MAS) which is much more efficient, the scientists identified plants combining CMD resistance with desirable genetic traits.

“MAS for CMD resistance from Latin American germplasm is much cheaper, and more focused,” explains Emmanuel. “There is no longer any need to ship in tonnes of plant material to Africa. We can narrow down our search at an early stage by selecting only material that displays markers for the genetic traits we’re looking for.” Using markers, combining traits (known as ‘gene pyramiding’) for CMD resistance is faster and more efficient, as it is difficult to distinguish phenotypes with multiple resistance in the field by just observing with the naked eye. This is what makes marker-assisted breeding so effective and desirable in Africa.

GCP’s mode of doing business coupled with its community spirit has spurred the NRCRI scientists to cast their eyes further out to the wider horizon beyond their own borders.

By collaborating with research centres in other parts of the world, Emmanuel and Chiedozie have made remarkable strides in cassava breeding. According to Emmanuel, “GCP helped us make links with advanced laboratories and service providers like LGC Genomics. The outsourcing of genotyping activities for molecular breeding initiatives is very significant, as it enables us to carry out analyses not otherwise possible.”

We can’t afford to sit idle until it comes – we need to be armed and on the ready.”

‘Defensive’ breeding: partnerships to pre-empt catastrophe and combat disease
Closer home in Africa, as PI of the corollary African breeders community of practice (CoP) project, Emmanuel co-organises regular workshops with plant breeders from a dozen other countries (Côte d’Ivoire, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya,  Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and South Sudan). These events are an opportunity to share knowledge on molecular breeding and compare notes.

Of the diseases that afflict cassava, CBSD is the most devastating. Mercifully, in Nigeria, the disease is non-existent, but Chiedozie is emphatic that this is by no means cause for complacency. “If CBSD gets to Nigeria, it would be a monumental catastrophe!” he cautions. “We can’t afford to sit idle until it comes – we need to be armed and on the ready.”

Putting words to action, though this work on CBSD resistance is still in its early stages, more than 1,000 cassava genotypes (different genetic combinations) have already have been screened in the course of just one year. Chiedozie hopes that the team will be able to identify key genetic markers, and validate these in field trials in Tanzania, where CBSD is widespread. This East African stopover, Chiedozie emphasises, is a crucial checkpoint in the West African process. So the cassava CoP not only provides moral but also material support.

And Africa is not the limit. GCP-funded work on CMD resistance is more advanced than the CBSD work, though the real breakthrough in CMD only happened recently, on the international arena within which the African breeders now operate. According to Chiedozie, two entire decades of screening cassava genotypes from Latin America yielded no resistance to CMD. The reason for this is that although it is widespread in Africa, CMD is non-existent in Latin America.

Through international collaborative efforts, cassava scientists, led by Martin Fregene (now based in USA), screened plants from Nigeria and discovered markers for the CMD2 gene, indicating resistance to CMD. Once they had found these markers, the scientists were off and away! By taking the best of the Latin American material and crossing it with Nigerian genotypes that have CMD resistance, promising lines were developed from which the Nigerian team produced two new varieties. These varieties, CR41-10 and CR36-5, have already been released to farmers, and that is not all. More varieties bred using these two as parents are in the pipeline.

“GCP funding has given us the opportunity to show that a national organisation can do the job and deliver.” 

 

Delivery attracts
The success of the CGP-funded cassava research in Nigeria lies in its in-country leadership. Chiedozie, Emmanuel and Martin are native Nigerian scientists and as such are – in many ways – best placed to drive a research collaboration to benefit the country’s farmers and boost food security. “GCP funding has given us the opportunity to show that a national organisation can do the job and deliver,” says Chiedozie.

This proven expertise has helped NRCRI forge other partnerships and attract more financial support, for example from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for a project on genomic selection. GCP support has also bolstered communications with the Nigerian government, which has launched financial instruments, such as a wheat tariff,* to boost cassava production and use.

[Editors note: * wheat tariff: The Nigerian government is trying to reduce wheat import bills and also boost cassava commercialisation by promoting 20 percent wheat substitution in bread-making. Tariffs are being imposed on wheat to dissuade heavy imports and encourage utilisation of high-quality cassava flour for bread.]

“The government feels that to quickly change the fortunes of farmers, cassava is the way to go,” explains Emmanuel. He clarifies, “The tariff from wheat is expected to be ploughed back to support agricultural development – especially the cassava sector – as the government seeks to increase cassava production to support flour mills. Cassava offers a huge opportunity to transform the agricultural economy and stimulate rural development, including rapid creation of employment for youth.”

The Nigerian government is right in step aiding cassava’s march towards the crop’s own green revolution, as is evident in the the Minister of Agriculture’s tweet earlier this year, and in his video interview below. See also related media story, ‘Long wait for cassava bread’.

Clearly, the ‘camel’ crop – once considered an ‘orphan’ in research  –  has travelled as far in science as in geography, and it is a precious asset to deploy for food production in a climate-change-prone world. As Emmanuel observes, cassava’s future can only be brighter!

Slides by Chiedozie and Emmanuel

 

More links

 

Tanzanian groundnut researchers breaking new ground…and carrying their own crosses!

 Africa, Capacity building, Groundnuts, Legumes  No Responses »
May 122014
 

 

Omari Mponda

Omari Mponda

After getting a good grounding on the realities of groundnut research from Vincent, our next stop is East Africa, Tanzania, where we meet Omari Mponda (pictured). Omari is a Principal Agricultural Officer and plant breeder at Tanzania’s Agricultural Research Institute (ARI), Naliendele, and country groundnut research leader for the Tropical Legumes I (TLI) project, implemented through our Legumes Research Initiative.  Groundnut production in Tanzania is hampered by drought in the central region and by rosette and other foliar diseases in all regions. But all is not bleak, and there is a ray of hope: “We’ve been able to identify good groundnut-breeding material for Tanzania for both drought tolerance as well as disease resistance,” says Omari. Omari’s team are also now carrying their own crosses, and happy about it. Read on to find out why they are not labouring under the weight of the crosses they carry…

…we have already released five varieties…TLI’s major investment in Tanzania’s groundnut breeding has been the irrigation system… Frankly, we were not used to being so well-equipped!”

Q: How  did you go about identifying appropriate groundnut-breeding material for Tanzania?
A: We received 300 reference-set lines from ICRISAT [International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics], which we then genotyped over three years [2008– 2010] for both drought tolerance and disease resistance. After we identified the best varieties, these were advanced to TLII [TLI’s sister project] for participatory variety selection with farmers in 2011–2012, followed by seed multiplication. From our work with ICRISAT, we have already released five varieties.

Harvesting ref set collection at Naliendele_w

Harvesting the groundnut reference-set collection at Naliendele. A ‘reference set’ is a sub-sample of existing germplasm collections that facilitates and enables access to existing crop diversity for desired traits, such as drought tolerance or resistance to disease or pests.

ARI–Naliendele has also benefitted from both human and infrastructure capacity building. Our scientists and technicians were trained in drought phenotyping at ICRISAT Headquarters in India. One of our research assistants, Mashamba Philipo, benefitted from six-month training, following which he advanced to an MSc specialising in drought phenotpying using molecular breeding. In his work, he is now using drought germplasm received from ICRISAT. In terms of laboratory and field infrastructure, the station got irrigation equipment to optimise drought-phenotyping trials. Precision phenotyping and accurate phenotypic data are indispensable for effective molecular breeding. To facilitate this, ARI–Naliendele benefitted from computers, measuring scales, laboratory ware and a portable weather station, all in a bid to assure good information on phenotyping. But by far, TLI’s major investment in Tanzania’s groundnut breeding has been the irrigation system which is about to be completed. This will be very useful as we enter TLIII for drought phenotyping.

 

For us, this is a big achievement to be able to do national crosses. Previously, we relied on ICRISAT…we are advancing to a functional breeding programme in Tanzania… gains made are not only sustainable, but also give us independence and autonomy to operate..We developing-country scientists are used to applied research and conventional breeding, but we now see the value and the need for adjusting ourselves to understand the use of molecular markers in groundnut breeding.”

Omari (right), with Hannibal Muhtar (left), who was contracted by GCP to implement infrastructure improvement for ARI Naliendele. See http://bit.ly/1hriGRp

Flashback to 2010: Omari (right), with Hannibal Muhtar (left), who was contracted by GCP to implement infrastructure improvement for ARI Naliendele, and other institutes. See http://bit.ly/1hriGRp

Q: What difference has participating in TLI made?
A: Frankly, we were not used to being so well-equipped, neither with dealing with such a large volume as 300 lines! But we filtered down and selected the well-performing lines which had the desired traits, and we built on these good lines. The equipment purchased through the project not only helped us with the actual phenotyping and being able to accurately confirm selected lines, but also made it possible for us to conduct off-season trials.

We’re learning hybridisation skills so that we can use TLI donors to improve local varieties, and our technicians have been specifically trained in this area. For us, this is a big achievement to be able to do national crosses. Previously, we relied on ICRISAT doing the crosses for us, but we can now do our own crosses. The difference this makes is that we are advancing to a functional breeding programme in Tanzania, meaning the gains made are not only sustainable, but also give us independence and autonomy to operate. Consequently, we are coming up with other segregating material from what we’ve already obtained, depending on the trait of interest we are after.

Another big benefit is directly interacting with world-class scientists in the international arena through the GCP community and connections – top-rated experts not just from ICRISAT, but also from IITA, CIAT, EMBRAPA [Brazil], and China’s DNA Research Institute. We have learnt a lot from them, especially during our annual review meetings. We developing-country scientists are used to applied research and conventional breeding, but we now see the value and the need for adjusting ourselves to understand the use of molecular markers in groundnut breeding. We now look forward to TLIII where we expect to make impact by practically applying our knowledge to groundnut production in Tanzania.

Interesting! And this gets us squarely back to capacity building. What are your goals or aspirations in this area?
A: Let us not forget that TLI is implemented by the national programmes. In Africa, capacity building is critical, and people want to be trained. I would love to see fulltime scientists advance to PhD level in these areas which are a new way of doing business for us. I would love for us to have the capacity to adapt to our own environment for QTLs [quantitative trait loci], QTL mapping, and marker-assisted selection. Such capacity at national level would be very welcome. We also hope to link with advanced labs such as BecA [Biosciences eastern and southern Africa] for TLI activities, and to go beyond service provision with them so that our scientists can go to these labs and learn.

There should also be exchange visits between scientists for learning and sharing, to get up to date on the latest methods and technologies out there. For GCP’s Integrated Breeding Platform [IBP], this would help IBP developers to design reality-based tools, and also to benefit from user input in refining the tools.

Links

SLIDES by Omari on groundnut research and research data management in Tanzania

 

Cowpeas – uncowed and unbowed: believing that what could be can be, in breeding

 Africa, Cowpeas, Legumes  No Responses »
Apr 042014
 

 

Phil Roberts

Phil Roberts

Like its legume relatives, cowpeas belong to a cluster of crops that are still referred to in some spheres of the crop-breeding world as ‘orphan crops’. This, because they have largely been bypassed by the unprecedented advances that have propelled ‘bigger’ crops into the world of molecular breeding, endowed as they are with the genomic resources necessary. But as we shall hear from Phil Roberts (pictured), of the University of California–Riverside, USA, and also the cowpea research leader for the Tropical Legumes I Project (TLI), despite the prefix in the  name, this ‘little kid’ in the ‘breeding block’ called cowpeas is uncowed and unbowed, confidently striding into the world of modern crop breeding, right alongside the ‘big boys’! What more on this new kid on the block of modern molecular breeding? Phil’s at hand to fill us in…

Vigna the VIP that shrinks with the violets
But is no shrinking violet, by any means, as we shall see. Also known  as niébé in francophone Africa, and in USA as black-eyed peas (no relation to the musical group, however, hence no capitals!), this drought-tolerant ancient crop (Vigna unguiculata [L] Walp) originated in West Africa. It is highly efficient in fixing nitrogen in the unforgiving and dry sandy soils of the drier tropics. And that is not all. This modest VIP is not addicted to the limelight and is in fact outright lowly and ultra-social: like their fetching African counterpart in the flower family, the African violet, cowpeas will contentedly thrive under the canopy of others, blooming in the shade and growing alongside various cereal and root crops, without going suicidal for lack of limelight and being in the crowd. With such an easy-going personality, added to their adaptability, cowpeas have sprinted ahead to become the most important grain legume in sub-Saharan Africa for both subsistence and cash. But – as always – there are two sides to every story, and sadly, not all about cowpeas is stellar…

Improved varieties are urgently needed to narrow the gap between actual and potential yields… modern breeding techniques… can play a vital role”

A cowpea experimental plot at IITA.

A cowpea experimental plot at IITA.

What could be, and what molecular breeding has to do with it
Yields are low, only reaching a mere 10 to 30 percent of their potential, primarily because of insect- and disease-attack, sometimes further compounded by chronic drought in the desiccated drylands cowpeas generally call home. “Improved varieties are urgently needed to narrow the gap between actual and potential yields,” says Phil. The cowpea project he leads in TLI is implemented through GCP’s Legume Research Initiative. Phil adds, “Such varieties are particularly valuable on small farms, where costly agricultural inputs are not an option. Modern breeding techniques, resulting from the genomics revolution, can play a vital role in improving cowpea materials.”

He and his research team are therefore developing genomic resources that country-based breeding programmes can use. Target-country partners are Institut de l’Environnement et de Recherches Agricoles (INERA) in Burkina Faso; Universidade Eduardo Mondlane in Mozambique; and Institut Sénégalais de Recherches Agricoles (ISRA) in Senegal. Other partners are the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) headquartered in Nigeria and USA’s Feed the Future Innovation Labs for Collaborative Research on Grain Legumes and for Climate Resilient Cowpeas.

It’s a lot easier and quicker, and certainly less hit-or-miss than traditional methods!… By eliminating some phenotyping steps and identifying plants carrying positive-trait alleles for use in crossing, they will also shorten the time needed to breed better-adapted cowpea varieties preferred by farmers and markets.”

Cowpea seller at Bodija Market, Ibadan, Nigeria.

Cowpea seller at Bodija Market, Ibadan, Nigeria.

 

On target, and multiplying the score
[First, a rapid lesson on plant-genetics jargon so we can continue our story uninterrupted: ‘QTLs’ stands for quantitative trait loci, a technical term in quantitative genetics to describe the locations where genetic variation is associated with variation in a quantitative trait. QTL analysis estimates how many genes control a particular trait. ‘Allele’ means an alternative form of a the same gene. Continuing with the story…]

The curved shape means that these cowpea pods are mature and ready for harvesting.

Culinary curves and curls: the curved shape means that these cowpea pods are mature and ripe for harvesting.

“We first verified 30 cowpea lines as sources of drought tolerance and pest resistance,” Phil recalls. “Using molecular markers, we can identify the genomic regions of the QTLs that are responsible for the desired target phenotype, and stack those QTLs to improve germplasm resistance to drought or pests. It’s a lot easier and quicker, and certainly less hit-or-miss than traditional methods! However, standing alone, QTLs are not the silver bullet in plant breeding. What happens is that QTL information complements visual selection. Moreover, QTL discovery must be based on accurate phenotyping information, which is the starting point, providing pointers on where to look within the cowpea genome. Molecular breeding can improve varieties for several traits in tandem,” suggests Phil. “Hence, farmers can expect a more rapid delivery of cowpea varieties that are not only higher-yielding, but also resistant to several stresses at once.”

And what are Phil and team doing to contribute to making this happen?

“The genomic resources from Phase I – especially genotyping platforms and QTL knowledge – are being used in Phase II of the TLI Project to establish breeding paradigms, using molecular breeding approaches,” Phil reveals. He adds that these approaches include marker-assisted recurrent selection (MARS) and marker assisted back-crossing (MABC). “These paradigms were tested in the cowpea target countries in Africa,” Phil continues. “By eliminating some phenotyping steps and identifying plants carrying positive-trait alleles for use in crossing, they will also shorten the time needed to breed better-adapted cowpea varieties preferred by farmers and markets.”

… best-yielding lines will be released as improved varieties… others will be used…as elite parents…”

Future work
What of the future? Phil fills us in: “The advanced breeding lines developed in TLI Phase II are now entering multi-location performance testing in the target African countries. It is expected that best-yielding lines will be released as improved varieties, while others will be used in the breeding programmes as elite parents for generating new breeding lines for cowpeas.”

Clearly then, the job is not yet done, as the ultimate goal is to deliver better cowpeas to farmers. But while this goal is yet to be attained and – realistically – can only be some more years down the road, it is also equally clear that Phil and his team have already chalked up remarkable achievements in the quest to improve cowpeas. They hope to continue pressing onwards and upwards in the proposed Tropical Legumes III Project, the anticipated successor to TLI and its twin project TLII – Tropical Legumes II.

Links

A grounding in the reality of groundnut research in Africa, and why blood is thicker than water

 Africa, Genetics, Genomics, Groundnuts, Legumes  2 Responses »
Mar 312014
 
Vincent Vadez

Vincent Vadez

Today, we travel to yet another sun-kissed spot, leaving California behind but keeping it legumes. We land in Africa for some ground truths on groundnuts with Vincent Vadez (pictured), groundnut research leader for the Tropical Legumes I (TLI) Project. Vincent fills us in on facts and figures on groundnuts and Africa – a tale of ups and downs, triumphs and trials, but also of  ‘family’ alliances not feuds, and of problems, yes,  but also their present or potential solutions. On to the story then! Read on to find out why groundnuts are…

….A very mixed bag in Africa
Groundnuts (Arachis hypogaea L), also called peanuts, are a significant subsistence and food crop in sub-Saharan Africa. There, groundnuts are grown in practically every country, with the continent accounting for roughly a quarter of the world’s production. Despite this rosy African statistic, problems abound: for example, nearly half (40 percent) of the of the world’s total acreage for groundnuts is in Africa, which dramatically dims the 25 percent global production quota.

In Africa, groundnuts are typically cultivated in moderate rainfall areas across the continent, usually by women.

In Africa, groundnuts are typically cultivated in moderate rainfall areas across the continent, usually by women. (See editorial note* at the end of the story)

Clearly then, Africa’s yields are low, borne out by telling statistics which show African production at 950 kilos per hectare, in acute contrast to 1.8 tonnes per hectare in Asia.

…every year, yields worth about USD 500 million are lost”

What ails Africa’s production?
The main constraints hampering higher yields and quality in Africa are intermittent drought due to erratic rainfall, as well as terminal drought during maturation. And that is not all, because foliar (leaf) diseases such as the late leaf spot (LLS) or groundnut rosette are also taking their toll.  Economically speaking, every year, yields worth about USD 500 million are lost to drought, diseases and pests. Plus, the seeding rates for predominantly bushy groundnut types are low, and therefore insufficient to achieve optimal ground cover. Thus, genetic limitations meet and mingle with major agronomic shortcomings in the cultivation of groundnuts, making it…

…. A tough nut to crack
Groundnuts are mostly cultivated by impoverished farmers living in the semi-arid tropics where rainfall is both low and erratic.

Tough it may be for crop scientists, but clearly not too tough for these two youngsters shelling groundnuts at Mhperembe Market, Malawi.

. Tough it may be for crop scientists, but clearly not too tough for these two youngsters shelling groundnuts at Mhperembe Market, Malawi.

“To help double the productivity of this crop over the next 10 years, we need to improve groundnuts’ ability to resist drought and diseases without farmers needing to purchase costly agricultural inputs,” says Vincent.

But the crop’s genetic structure is complex, plus, for resistance to these stresses, its genetic diversity is narrow. “Groundnuts are therefore difficult and slow to breed using conventional methods,” says Vincent. And yet, as we shall see later, groundnuts are distinctly disadvantaged when it comes to molecular breeding. But first, the good news!

…wild relatives have genes for resisting the stresses… molecular markers can play a critical role”

Why blood is thicker than water, and family black sheep are valued
Kith and kin are key in groundnut science. Vincent points out that groundnuts have several wild relatives that carry the necessary genes for resisting the stresses – especially leaf diseases – to which the crop is susceptible. These genes can be transferred from the wild cousins to the cultivated crop by blending conventional and molecular breeding techniques. But that is easier said than done, because cultivated groundnuts can’t cross naturally with their wild relatives owing to chromosomic differences.

Groundnut flower

Groundnut flower

“In modern breeding, molecular markers can play a critical role,” says Vincent. “Using markers, one can know the locations of genes of interest from an agronomic perspective, and we can then transfer these genes from the wild relatives into the groundnut varieties preferred by farmers and their markets.”

[The] ‘variegated’ partnership has been essential for unlocking wild groundnut diversity…”

Partnerships in and out of Africa, core capacities
“Partners are key to this work,” says Vincent. The groundnut work is led by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), with collaborators in the target countries, which are Malawi (Chitedze Agricultural Research Centre), Senegal (Institut sénégalais de recherches agricoles ‒ ISRA) and Tanzania (Agricultural Research Institute, Naliendele), Moving forward together, continuous capacity building for partners in Africa is part and parcel of the project. To this end, there have been several training workshops in core areas such as molecular breeding and phenotyping, farmer field days in the context of participatory varietal selection, as well as longer-term training on more complex topics such as drought, in addition to equipping the partners with the critical infrastructure needed for effective phenotyping.

Freshly dug-up groundnuts.

Freshly dug-up groundnuts.

Further afield out of Africa, Vincent’s team also collaborates with the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA), France’s Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement ‒ CIRAD, and USA’s University of Georgia.

This ‘variegated’ partnership has been essential for unlocking the wild groundnut diversity when about 12 years ago the EMBRAPA team successfully generated a number of ‘synthetic’ groundnuts from their wild relatives. Unlike the wild groundnuts, these synthetic groundnuts can be crossed to the cultivated type, bringing with them treasure troves of beneficial genes pertaining to the wild that would be otherwise unreachable for the cultivated varieties. Taking this one step further, the CIRAD‒ISRA team, in a close North‒South partnership, has used one of the synthetics from the Brazilian programme to generate new genetic diversity in the groundnut cultivar Fleur11. They are using additional synthetics from ICRISAT to further enlarge this genetic diversity in cultivated groundnuts.

These techniques and tools provide signposts on the genome of varieties for characteristics of importance”

A world first for an ‘orphan’, goals achieved, and what next
Among other goals, the team notably achieved a world first: “To produce the first SSR-based genetic linkage map for cultivated groundnuts!” declares Vincent. SSR stands for simple sequence repeat. The map was published in 2009,  followed later on by a groundnut consensus map in 2012.

Youngster bearing fresh groundnuts along River Gambia in Senegal.

Youngster bearing fresh groundnuts along River Gambia in Senegal.

But what do these maps and their publication mean for groundnut production? Vincent explains: “These techniques and tools provide signposts on the genome of varieties for characteristics of importance ‒ for instance, resistance to a disease ‒ and these are used in combination to speed up the development of groundnut varieties that are more resistant to the stresses found in the harsh environments where most of the tropical world’s poor farmers live. Accelerating development means quicker delivery to farmers who are at high risk of going hungry. TLI Phase I produced synthetic groundnuts with new genes for disease resistance.”

In Phase II of the TLI Project which terminates in mid-2014, the team has continued to identify new genetic and genomic resources, for instance new sources of drought resistance from the germplasm and which are currently being used in the development of new breeding stocks. What is significant about this is that groundnuts ‒ like most other members of the legume family ‒ do not have much in the way of genomic and molecular-genetic resources, and are in fact consequently referred to in some circles as ‘orphans’ of the genome revolution. The focus has also been on resistance to rust, early and late leaf spot, and rosette – all economically critical diseases – by tapping the resilience of GBPD4, a cultivar resistant to rust and leaf spot, and introducing its dual resistance to fortify the most popular varieties against these diseases. The team also hopes to scale up these promising examples.

We believe this team is firmly on the way to fulfilling their two-fold project objectives which were: (1) to develop genomic resources and produce the first molecular-breeding products of the crop by injecting  disease resistance (from TLI Phase I work) into farmer- and market-preferred varieties; and, (2)  to lay the foundation for future marker-assisted recurrent selection (MARS) breeding by tapping on newly identified sources of drought tolerance.

 the genetic stocks that hold the most promise to overcome leaf disease are found in the wild relatives… A thorough reflection is needed to combine good genetics with sound agronomic management”

The future
But the team is not resting on their laurels, as the work will not stop with the fulfillment of project objectives. In many ways, their achievements are in fact just the beginning. The new breeding stocks developed during TLI Phase II need to be evaluated further for their drought tolerance and disease resistance prior to their deployment in breeding programmes, and this activity ‒ among others ‒ is included for the next phase of the work in the proposed Tropical Legumes III project. In particular, the genetic stocks that hold the most promise to overcome leaf disease are found in the wild relatives. Thus, the existing materials need to be fully exploited and more need to be produced to cover the full breadth of potential stresses. Vincent adds “Of course an increasing part of the efforts will be about assuring quality evaluation data, meaning we must continue to significantly enhance the capacity ‒ both human and physical ‒ of our partners in target countries. Last but not least, the good wheat and rice cultivars that directly arose from the green revolution would have been nothing without nitrogen fertiliser and irrigation.” Vincent adds that the same applies to groundnuts: they are cultivated in infertile soil, at seeding rates that are unlikely to optimise productivity.

Groundnut drawing

Groundnut drawing

For this reason, and others explained above, “A thorough reflection is needed to combine good genetics with sound agronomic management,” Vincent concludes, stressing the importance of what he terms as ‘looking beyond  the fence’. Vincent’s parting shot, as our conversation draws to close: “In fact, I have grown increasingly convinced over the past year that we probably overlook those agronomic aspects in our genetic improvements at our peril, and we clearly need a re-think of how to better combine genetic improvement with the  most suitable and farmer-acceptable agronomic management of the crop.”

Much food for thought there! And probably the beginnings of an animated conversation to which a groundnut crop model, on which Vincent and team are currently working, could soon yield some interesting answers on the most suitable genetic-by-management packages, and therefore guide the most adequate targets for crop improvement.

Links

*Editorial note: Erratum – Photo changed on April 8 2014, as the previous one depicted chickpeas, not groundnuts. We  apologise to our readers for the error.

Cassava on the catwalk: Ghanaian ‘make-over’ for crop-science underdog

 Africa, Cassava, Crop breeding, Women in science  No Responses »
Mar 042014
 
‘Made (up) in Ghana’

In the world of crop research as in the fashion industry, there are super-models, mere models, spectators and rank outsiders. Make no bones about it, trusty old cassava (Manihot esculenta) is a crop of very modest beginnings, but now finally strutting the research catwalk alongside the biggest and the best.

Elizabeth Parkes

Elizabeth Parkes

An ancient crop thought to have been first domesticated in Latin America more than 10,000 years ago, it was exported by Portuguese slave traders from Brazil to Africa in the 16th century as a cheap source of carbohydrates. From there, today we travel half a millennium forward in time – and in space, on to Ghana – to catch up with the latest on cassava in the 21st century.

Come on a guided tour with Elizabeth Parkes (pictured), of Ghana’s Crops Research Institute (CRI, of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, CSIR), currently on leave of absence at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA).

A hard-knock life, but still going strong
In keeping with its humble heritage, cassava is a crop which has long been reputed for being more than a little worn through at the elbows, commonly known as a “poor man’s crop” according to GCP cassava breeder and researcher, Elizabeth Parkes. However, much like a dishevelled duffle coat, what the crop lacks in shimmer and shine, it makes up for in sturdiness and dependability, rising to the occasion time and again by filling a critical gap – that of putting food in bellies – with a readiness and ease that its more sophisticated crop relatives have often struggled to keep up with. Elizabeth explains:  “It has kept people alive over the years.” By the same token, the crop – now one of Africa’s most important staples – is fondly known in Ghana as bankye, meaning a ‘gift from the government’, thanks to its reliability and capacity to meet needs that other crops cannot. There is even a popular song in the country which pays homage to the crop as an indefatigable evergreen, conquering even the most willful and wily of weeds!

However, as cassava experts such as Elizabeth know only too well, behind this well-intentioned lyrical window dressing is the poignant story of a crop badly in need of a pressing pick-me-up. Hardy as it may seem on the surface, cassava is riddled with myriad problems of a political, physiological, environmental and socioeconomic nature, further compounded by the interactions between these. For starters, while it may be a timeless classic and a must-have item at the family table for a good part of Africa, à la mode it is not, or at least not for short-sighted policy-makers looking first and foremost to tighten their purse strings in straitened times, or for quick-fix, rapid-impact,  silver-bullet solutions: “African governments don’t invest many resources in research. Money is so meager, and funds have mostly come from external agencies looking to develop major cereals such as rice. Cassava has been ignored and has suffered a handicap as a result – it’s more or less an orphan crop now,” Elizabeth laments. Besides having to bear witness to their favourite outfit being left on the funding shelf, cassava breeders such as Elizabeth are also faced with a hotchpotch of hurdles in the field: “In addition to factors such as pests and disease, cassava is a long-season and very labour-intensive crop. It can take a whole year before you can expect to reap any rewards, and if you don’t have a strong team who can step in at different points throughout the breeding  process, you can often find unexpected results at the end of it, and then you have to start all over again,” Elizabeth reveals. Robust as it may be, then, cassava is no easy customer in the field: “After making crosses, you don’t have many seeds to move you to the next level, simply because with cassava, you just don’t get the numbers: some are not compatible, some are not flowering; it’s a real bottleneck that needs to be overcome,” she affirms.

No time for skirting the issue
And at the ready to flex their research muscles and rise to these considerable challenges was Elizabeth and her Ghanaian CRI  team, who – with GCP support and in unison with colleagues from across Africa and the wider GCP cassava community – have been working flat out to put cassava firmly back on the research runway.

Thanks to funders such as GCP, who recognised that we couldn’t afford to turn a blind eye to the plight of this struggling crop, cassava has been given a voice…cassava is no longer just a poor man’s staple” 

A cassava farmer in Northern Ghana.

A  cassava farmer in Northern Ghana.

Elizabeth walks us through the team’s game plan: “GCP socioeconomist Glenn Hyman and team undertook a study to identify the best area in Ghana for supporting cassava flowering [Editor’s note: Glenn works at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, CIAT]. Armed with that information, we have been applying grafting techniques, using hormones to induce flowering in Ghana and beyond.” The initiative is starting to bear fruit: “At the IITA–Nigeria Ubiaja site, for example, flowering is underway at factory-like efficiency – it’s a great asset. The soil has also greatly improved – we haven’t been able to pinpoint the exact cause yet, but what we’ve seen is that all cultivars there will now flower,” she reveals. Elizabeth’s team has been making steady progress in biotechnological techniques such as DNA extraction: thanks to work led by then GCP cassava comrade Martin Fregene (then with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, CIAT, and now with the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center) and colleagues, focusing on the development of more reliable and robust simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers, Elizabeth was able to carry out genetic diversity diagnosis work on cassava, collecting germplasm from all over Ghana for the global GCP cassava reference set. [Editor’s note: A ‘reference set’ is a sub-sample of existing germplasm collections that facilitates and enables access to existing crop diversity for desired traits, such as drought tolerance or resistance to disease or pests]

Similar work was also conducted in Nigeria and Guatemala. So has this tremendous and tenacious teamwork proved strong enough to drag cassava out of the doldrums? Elizabeth certainly seems to think so: “Thanks to funders such as GCP, who recognised that we couldn’t afford to turn a blind eye to the plight of this struggling crop, cassava has been given a voice. Having worked together to understand the peculiarities of this crop, cassava is no longer just a poor man’s staple: beyond subsistence, it is becoming a crop of high starch quality, and of real use for industry, confectionary and even biofuels,” she enthuses.

Thankfully, it’s a most welcome change of tide that shows no sign of abating any time soon.  Human capacity, Elizabeth says, is going from strength to strength, with three GCP-funded Ghanaian postgraduate students advancing well, two of them working on PhDs in what would normally be considered, according to Elizabeth, a ‘no-go area’ of cassava research – that is, cassava drought tolerance and post-harvest physiological deterioration (PPD), as well as bio-fortification. Efforts by the CRI team have resulted in the release of some 14–15 new drought-tolerant and PPD-resistant varieties in Ghana to date; all are anticipated to have a long shelf-life, and other varieties are also in the pipeline. Biofortified seeds are in the making, with a view to soon mainstream biofortification in the team’s breeding activities. The biofortification work is in collaboration with a sister CGIAR Challenge Programme, HarvestPlus.

The impact of our GCP-supported research on cassava has been remarkable. Above all, it’s been the community spirit which has moved things forward so effectively; in this respect, I think researchers working on other crops might want to borrow a leaf from the cassava book!”

Molecular masterstrokes, a leaf to lend despite cold shoulder, and a ‘challenge crop’ befitting Challenge Programmes
Forthcoming plans for Elizabeth and her cassava companions in Ghana include a GCP Cassava Challenge Initiative project which will seek to unearth new marker populations and materials which are drought-tolerant and resistant to cassava mosaic virus and cassava bacterial blight. The team has successfully introgressed materials from CIAT into their landraces, and the next step will be to gauge how best the new genes will react to these traits of interest. In terms of people power, the CRI biotechnology laboratory built with GCP support – and now a regionally accredited ‘Centre of Excellence’ – is a hive of activity for local and international scientists alike, and is consequently bolstering cassava research efforts in the wider subregion. “The impact of our GCP-supported research on cassava has been remarkable. Above all, it’s been the community spirit which has moved things forward so effectively; in this respect, I think researchers working on other crops might want to borrow a leaf from the cassava book!” Elizabeth ventures.

Reflecting back on the conspicuous cocktail of constraints which mired the crop in the early days of her research career – challenges which often resulted in a cold shoulder from many of her research peers over the years – Elizabeth recalls affectionately: “At first, people didn’t want to work on cassava since it’s truly a challenge crop: the genetics of cassava are really tricky. Colleagues from around the globe often asked me: ‘Why not go for a smooth crop which is friendly and easy?’” Her commitment, however, has been unfaltering throughout: “I’ve stuck with cassava because that’s my destiny! And now I see SNPs being developed, as well as numerous other resources. Once you clean something up it becomes more attractive, and my thanks go out to all those who’ve remained dedicated and helped us to achieve this.”

Thus, dusted down and  ‘marked-up’ with a molecular make-over well underway, all evidence now suggests that this once old-hat subsistence crop is en route to becoming the next season’s big research hit, with shiny new cassava varieties soon to be released at a field station near you! Go, Ghana, go!

Links

 

Beans: Sidestepping variety… to create varieties to combat drought, disease and pests

 Africa, Beans, Crop breeding, Genetics, Genomics, Legumes  No Responses »
Oct 302012
 

BREAK-TIME AND BRAKE-TIME from beans for a bit: Steve Beebe takes a pause to strike a pose in a bean field.

“These [molecular breeding] techniques, combined with conventional methods, shorten the time it takes to breed improved varieties  that simultaneoulsy combine several traits.

And this means that we also get them out to farmers more quickly compared to phenotypic selection alone.”
– Steve Beebe

THE NEAR-PERFECT FOOD: Common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L) comprise the world’s most important food legume, feeding about 200 million people in sub-Saharan Africa alone. Their nutritional value is so high, they have been termed ‘a near-perfect food’. They are also easy to grow, adapting readily to different cropping systems and maturing quickly.

That said, this otherwise versatile, adaptable and dapper dicotyledon does have some inherent drawbacks and ailments that crop science seeks to cure….

Rains are rapidly retreating, and drought doggedly advancing
Despite the crop’s widespread cultivation in Africa, “yields are low, stagnating at between 20 and 30 percent of their potential,” remarks Steve Beebe, GCP’s Product Delivery Coordinator for beans, and a researcher at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT, by its Spanish acronym).

“The main problem is drought, brought about by climate change,” he says. “And it’s spreading – it already affects 70 percent of Africa’s major bean-producing regions.”  Drought decimates bean harvests in most of Eastern Africa, but is particularly severe in the mid-altitudes of Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and Zimbabwe, as well as in southern Africa as a whole.

A myriad of forms and hues: bean diversity eloquently speaks for itself in this riot of colours.

Drought, doubt and duality − Diversity a double-edged sword
“Common beans can tolerate drought to some extent, using various mechanisms that differ from variety to variety,” explains Steve. But breeding for drought resistance is complicated by the thousands of bean varieties that are available. They differ considerably according to growth habit, seed colour, shape, size and cooking qualities, and cultivation characteristics.

“A variety might be fantastic in resisting drought,” says Steve, ‘but if its plant type demands extra work, the farmers won’t grow it,” he explains. “Likewise, if consumers don’t like the seed colour, or the beans take too long to cook, then they won’t buy.”

Molecular breeding deals a hand, waves a wand, and weaves a band
This is where molecular breeding techniques come in handy, deftly dealing with the complexities of breeding drought-resistant beans that also meet farmer and consumer preferences. No guesswork about it: molecular breeding rapidly and precisely gets to the heart of the matter, and helps weave all these different ‘strands’ together.

The bean research team has developed ‘genetic stocks’, or strains of beans that are crossed with the varieties favoured by farmers and consumers. The ‘crosses’ are made so that the gene or genes with the desired trait are incorporated into the preferred varieties.

The resulting new varieties are then evaluated for their performance in different environments throughout eastern and southern Africa, with particular focus on Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi and Zimbabwe which are the target countries of the Tropical Legumes I (TLI) project.

Propping up the plant protein: a veritable tapestry of terraces of climbing beans.

GCP supported this foundation work to develop these molecular markers. This type of breeding – known in breeder parlance as marker-assisted selection (MAS) – was also successfully used to combine and aggregate resistance to drought; to pests such as bean stem maggot (BSM); and to diseases such as bean common mosaic necrosis potyvirus (BCNMV) and to bruchid or common bacterial blight (CBB). The resulting ‘combinations’ laden with all this good stuff were then bred into commercial-type bean lines.

“These techniques, combined with conventional methods, shorten the time it takes to breed improved varieties that simultaneoulsy combine several traits,” comments Steve. “This means that we also get them out to farmers more quickly compared to phenotypic selection alone.”

Informed by history and reality
Breeding new useful varieties is greatly aided by first understanding the crop’s genetic diversity, and by always staying connected with the reality on the ground: earlier foundation work facilitated by GCP surfaced the diversity in the bean varieties that farmers grow, and how that diversity could then be broadened with genes to resist drought, pests and disease.

What next?
Over the remaining two years of Phase II of the Tropical Legumes I (TLI) project, the bean team will use the genetic tools and breeding populations to incorporate drought tolerance into farmer- and market-preferred varieties. “Hence, productivity levels on smallholder farms are expected to increase significantly,” says Steve.

Partnerships
The work on beans is led by CIAT, working in partnership with Ethiopia’s South Agricultural Research Institute (SARI),  the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI),  Malawi’s Department of Agricultural Research and Technical Services (DARTS) and  Zimbabwe’s Crop Breeding Institute (CBI) of the Department of Research and Specialist Services (DR&SS).

Other close collaborators include the eastern, central and southern Africa regional bean research networks (ECABREN and SABRN, their acronyms) which are components of the Pan-African Bean Research Alliance (PABRA). Cornell University (USA) is also involved.

VIDEO: Steve talks about what has been achieved so far in bean research, and what remains to be done

Links

 

Banana genetics: (not-so-)Easy as ♫ABC, 123♫

 Bananas, Genetics, Genomics  No Responses »
Sep 202012
 

Getting to the core of a world-favourite dessert by unravelling banana’s origin and genealogy

GCP has enabled us to lay a credible foundation, which gave us a leg-up in the intense competition that typifies the genome sequencing arena” – Angélique D’Hont, CIRAD researcher

‘A’ is also for Angélique, as you will see once you read on…

An ‘A’ to our banana team for ushering in a new era in banana genetics. But let soup precede dessert, and don’t let this worry you: stay with us because we’re still very much on the topic and focused on bananas, which offer the whole range from soup and starters, to main course and dessert, plus everything else in between, being central for the food security of more than 400 million people in the tropics: around a third each is produced in Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America, and the Caribbean. About 87  percent of all the bananas produced worldwide are grown by small-scale farmers.

Moving back then to soup for starters, we’re serving up our own unique blend of alphanumeric banana ‘soup’, spiced with ABCs, a pinch of 123s, plus a dash of alpha and omega. Curious about the ABCs? Look no further:‘C’ for getting to the core of ‘B’ for bananas, and an ‘A’ score for our ace genomics team that did it.

Read how GCP seeded … and succeeded, in helping open a new era in banana genetics. An achievement by itself, and an important milestone on the road to unlocking genetic diversity for the resource-poor, which is GCP’s raison d’être.

So get your travelling gear please, for time travel with a ‘midspace checkpoint’ in Malaysia.

We start in 2004, when GCP commissioned a survey of diversity with microsatellites (or SSRs, simple sequence repeats) for all mandate food crops in the CGIAR crop research Centres. The objective of that study was to make new genetic diversity from genebank accessions available to breeders.

The endpoint is opening new research avenues to incorporate genes for disease resistance, with the added bonus of an article published in Nature online on July 11 2012, entitled The banana (Musa acuminata) genome and the evolution of monocotyledonous plants.

It may not be quite as easy as the ABC and 123 that The Jacksons promise in song, but we promise you that the science is just as exciting, with practical implications for breeding hardy disease-resistant bananas. Onwards then to the first leg of this three-step journey!

(Prefer a shorter version of this story in pictures? We’ve got it! Choose your medium between Flickr and Facebook)

1) Let’s go Greek: the alpha and omega of it

Rewinding to the beginning

The proof of the pudding is in the eating: we imagine that Jean Christophe Glaszmann just has to be saying “Yummy!” as he samples this banana.

Start point, 2004: “At that time, several research groups had developed SSR markers for bananas, but there was no coordination and only sketchy germplasm studies,” recalls Jean Christophe Glaszmann (pictured), then the leader of what was GCP’s Subprogramme 1 (SP1) on Genetic Diversity on a joint appointment with CIRAD. He stepped down as SP1 Leader in March 2010, and is currently the Director of a multi-institutional research unit Genetic improvement and adaptation of Mediterranean and tropical plants (AGAP, by its French acronym) at France’s Centre de ccoopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement (CIRAD) in Montpellier.

Jean Christophe continues, “The reference studies had been conducted with RFLP* markers, a very useful tool but far too cumbersome for undertaking large surveys. We mobilised Bioversity International, CIRAD and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture for the project. The process took time, but delivered critical products.” [*RFLP stands for restriction fragmented length polymorphism]

Fastforward to 2012, and gets just a little geeky…

Eight years down the road in 2012, the list of achievements is impressive, as evidenced by a suite of published papers which provide the details of the analysis of SSR diversity and describe how the data enabled the researchers to unravel the origin and genealogy of the most important dessert bananas. The origin of the predominant variety – Cavendish – suggested by the markers, involves two rounds of spontaneous hybridisation between three markedly differentiated subspecies. This scheme has been marvellously corroborated by linguistic patterns found in banana variety names as revealed in a paper published in 2011 in the proceedings of USA’s National Academy of Sciences.

But what else happened in between the start- and end-point? We now get to the really ‘sweet’ part of this bonanza for banana breeding!

It is now possible to conduct research to identify and incorporate genes for disease resistance within fertile populations that are close to the early progenitors, and then inter-cross them to re-establish sterility and obtain vigorous, disease-resistant and seedless progenies.

 2) Of bits, bananas, breeding and breadcrumbs

Threading all these bits together for breeding better bananas is akin to following a trail of breadcrumbs, in which GCP played an important facilitating role: where in the germplasm to undertake genetic recombination is one key; and then, how to expedite incorporation of disease resistance and how to control sterility – so as to first suppress it, then re-establish it – is another set of keys that are necessary for proficient breeding.

Hei Leung in the lab at IRRI.

In 2005, Hei Leung (pictured), then Leader of GCP’s Subprogramme 2 on Comparative Genomics (until June 2007) on a dual appointment with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), recognised that with GCP’s main focus being drought tolerance in crops, Musa (the banana and plantain botanical genus) was somewhat on the fringe. However, it was still important that GCP support the emergence of banana genomics.

Hei is currently Programme Leader of Genetic Diversity and Gene Discovery at IRRI. He remembers, “We had a highly motivated group of researchers willing to devote their efforts to Musa. Nicolas Roux at Bioversity was a passionate advocate for the partnership. The GCP community could offer a framework for novel interactions among banana-related actors and players working on other crops, such as rice. The team led by Takuji Sasaki of Japan’s National Institute of Agrobiological Science, which had vast experience in rice genome sequencing, added the scientific power. So, living up to its name as a Challenge Programme, GCP decided to take the gamble on banana genomics and help it fly.”

Angélique D’Hont, CIRAD researcher and lead author of the article published in ‘Nature’.

Through several projects, GCP helped consolidate Musa genomic resources, contributed to the establishment of medium-throughput DArT markers as well as the construction of the first saturated genetic map. Additional contributions included the first round of sequencing of large chromosome segments (BAC clones) and its comparison with the rice sequence and a detailed analysis of resistance gene analogues. All these findings have now been published in peer-reviewed journals. And while publication takes time, it still remains a high-premium benchmark for quality and validation of results, and for efficient sharing of information. It reinforces the value of collaboration, builds capacity and gives visibility to all partners, thereby providing potential new avenues for funding.

Such was the case with bananas: using a collaborative partnership framework established with the Global Musa Genomics Consortium, animated by Nicolas Roux and now chaired by Chris Town, the community developed a case for sequencing the genome. With the mentorship of Francis Quétier, contacts were made with various major players in genomics, which in the end formalised a project between France’s CIRAD and CEA–Genoscope, funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche and led by Angélique D’Hont (pictured) and Patrick Wincker.

GCP contributed DArT analysis for anchoring the sequence to the genetic map. But, as stressed by Angélique, CIRAD researcher and lead author of the Nature paper: “Above all, GCP has enabled us to lay a credible foundation, which gave us a leg-up in the intense competition that typifies the genome sequencing arena. We were delighted that France rolled the dice in our favour by funding this work.”

3) Musa musings on the road to and from Malaysia checkpoint

Three years down the road, the team published a description of the genome of a wild banana from Malaysia.

Jean Christophe communes with a Musa plant, perhaps musing “What’s your family history and when will you be fully grown?”

Let’s drill down to some technical facts and figures here: the Musa genome has some 520 million nucleotides distributed across 11 chromosomes, revealing traces of past duplications and bearing some 36,000 genes. While most genes derived from duplication tend to lose their function, some develop novel functions that are essential for evolution; bananas seem to have an outstanding range of transcription factors that could be involved in fruit maturity.

And while the road ahead remains long, we now have a good understanding of banana’s genetic diversity, we have genomic templates for functional studies (a whole-gene repertoire) as well as for structural studies (the chromosome arrangement in one subspecies) aimed at unraveling the genomic translocations that could control sterility in the species complex.

It is now possible to conduct research to identify and incorporate genes for disease resistance within fertile populations that are close to the early progenitors, and then inter-cross them to re-establish sterility and obtain vigorous, disease-resistant and seedless progenies.

This is undoubtedly an inspiring challenge towards unlocking the genetic diversity in this crop, which is central to food security for more than 400 million people in the tropics.

Links

 

A chat with the Chief

 Closing GCP, GCP, History  No Responses »
Jul 082012
 

Inside GCP today

Do a deep dive with Jean-Marcel into GCP’s ‘engine room’. What makes the Programme work? How is it structured and governed? For a geographically dispersed Programme with multi-institutional teams, what’s the trick that keeps the different parts moving and well-oiled to maintain forward motion and minimise friction? Get acquainted (and hopefully ‘infected’) with the ‘GCP Spirit’…

Jean-Marcel Ribaut (pictured) is the GCP Director. His work involves coordinating the research activities and overseeing finances, ensuring that at the end of the day that the overall Programme objectives are met. This means much multitasking, a great asset in running a multi-institutional partnership-based Programme. Jean-Marcel comes from a research background, although the research team he led while at CIMMYT was nothing the size of GCP…

…we’ve moved from exploration to application…underpinned by services and capacity building. To make a difference in rural development, to truly contribute to improved food security through crop improvement and incomes for poor farmers, we knew that building capacity had to be a cornerstone in our strategy.”

How long have you been GCP Director?
Since 2005. My first two years were a steep learning curve!

The GCP tagline – ‘Partnerships in modern crop breeding for food security’  – what does this mean for you?
GCP is a very dynamic Programme. The kind of research that we were doing in 2005 is quite different from what we are doing today. As we implement our strategy, we’ve moved from exploration to application. We therefore revised our tagline to match this evolution, with the Programme now focussing much more on modern crop breeding and related aspects. We had naturally started by looking for diversity in the alleles, then evolved to gene discovery and developing supporting tools and markers alongside capacity building. Now, our focus is on application – using this diversity, markers and tools to progress to the next level, and boost the genetic gains for our nine key crops in challenging environments.

This application is underpinned by a service component through our Integrated Breeding Platform, as well as a strong capacity-building component for both human resources and infrastructure.

To make a difference in rural development, to truly contribute to improved food security through crop improvement and incomes for poor farmers, we knew that building capacity had to be a cornerstone in our strategy.

We take an integrated approach … exploring new avenues but exercising due caution …we are not promoting molecular breeding as the magic bullet and only solution – it’s an additional useful tool for arriving at educated breeding decisions.

One of our objectives was to bridge the gap between upstream and downstream research in the teams we brought together. While we did have some failures where groups worked together for the project duration alone and didn’t continue their collaboration, we have had other cases where the teams we forged then have not only grown but also continued to work together – with or without us.”

Why is GCP’s work important?
Through our Research Initiatives, we focus on several crops, with relatively limited funding for each of them compared, say, to other much larger crop-specific initiatives supported for example by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. So,  we operate on a proof-of-concept model: our goal is to demonstrate the use of new technologies and the application of out-of- the-box strategies which – if proven effective – will be funded and expanded by other agencies, including governments.

We take an integrated approach to problem-solving, exploring new avenues but exercising due caution while so doing. For example, for modern crop breeding which is our current focus, we are not promoting molecular breeding as the magic bullet and only solution – it’s an additional useful tool for arriving at educated breeding decisions.

…more than half our projects are led by scientists in developing countries

…The ‘GCP Spirit’ is visible and palpable: you can recognise people working with us have a spirit that is typical of the Programme.”

For you, what have been the major outcomes of the Programme so far?
Seeing developing-country partners come to the fore, and take the reins of project leadership. During Phase I, most project leaders were from CGIAR and advanced research institutes. However, over time, there has been a major shift and we are proud that today, more than half our projects are led by scientists in developing countries. They’ve moved from the position of implementers to the role of leaders, while CGIAR Centres and universities have taken a back seat, being more in a supporting role as mentors or tutors.

We have created this amazing chain of people, stretching  from the labs to the fields. This ‘human’ component is a terrific living asset, but it is also very difficult to scientifically quantify. Perhaps the best way I can describe it is as a ‘GCP Spirit’ created by the researchers we work with. The Programme’s ‘environment’ is friendly, open to sharing and is marked by a strong sense of community and ‘belonging’. The ‘GCP Spirit’ is visible and palpable: you can recognise people working with us have a spirit that is typical of the Programme.

One of our objectives was to bridge the gap between upstream and downstream research in the teams we brought together. While we did have some failures where groups worked together for the project duration alone and didn’t continue their collaboration, we have had other cases where the teams we forged then have not only grown but also continued to work together – with or without us.

A number of the partnerships we’ve forged have had a win–win outcome for players at opposite ends of the research–development spectrum. For example, academia tends to place a high premium on publications and theory, and relatively lower value on application and the real-world context. GCP provides a window for academics to apply their expertise, which benefits developing-country partners.

GCP’s relationship with project ppartners goes beyond funding. We are not just giving money; we are engaged in partnership with our project teams. We in management consult with them, interact and grapple over the technical issues with them in candour, and we toast and celebrate the successes together. I see our management style as fairly ‘paternal’, particularly for projects led by scientists from developing countries, but paternal in the positive sense of wanting to see these groups of people succeed, and us helping them to do so.

If a research site needs a pump for fieldwork, we work with a local or international consultant who will visit the partner and evaluate their needs, advise them on what type of pump they need, as well as other infrastructure they’ll need for the whole system to be sustainable. We’ll then provide training on how to use the pump most effectively.

It’s an investment in the people as much as in the products they are working on because we are trying to change the system of how science within partnerships is conducted and supported, as much as we are trying tap genetic diversity and breed resilient crops for the developing world.

Our successes have only been possible because of our ‘slim’ structure and the structural support we have enjoyed. With governance and advisory roles vested in an Executive Board and Consortium Committee, and with CIMMYT providing us with a legal and administrative home, we have minimal overheads and much flexibility. This agility has allowed us to adjust rapidly to changes when needed than, say, a classic research institute which would – quite rightly – have more rigid and elaborate obligatory steps, over a much longer time horizon.

…advocacy, persuasion and presenting a compelling business case are all necessary ingredients. Because we cannot be ‘directive’ with our partners in the manner their own institutes can be since they don’t ‘belong’ to us, we need to demonstrate success and convince people to adopt new business models.

How will GCP ensure sustainability?
Through our project Delivery Plans which link up a chain of users of our research products, and our Transition Strategy which shows how our research activities are embedded in the new CGIAR Research Programmes. We also hope to see our nascent communities of practice confer a sense of ownership to community members, and therefore sustainability. All that is on the ‘systematic’ and ‘documentation’ side of things.

Even more compelling is something I mentioned earlier, on the ‘organic’ and community side of things. Although it is completely outside our control, so to speak, it is wonderful to see that some of the partnerships we brought together have acquired a life of their own, and the teams we constituted are working together in other areas that have nothing to do with their GCP projects.

What are some of the lessons learnt so far?
The first one was focus. It’s very difficult to coordinate too many tasks, carried out by too many partners. Midstream in 2008, we had to review the way we were working and change course.

People management is the other. Cultivating relationships with people is critical. The trick is in balancing: by being cordial and friendly managers, we perhaps erode some of our authority over some of our project partners!

Another big lesson is that if it’s not working, don’t push it. Learn the lesson, cut your losses, and move on. Two main lessons have come from both our research and service aspects. For research, we invested in a massive fingerprinting exercise to characterise reference sets for all our 18 mandate crops at the time. [Editor’s note: A ‘reference set’ is a sub-sample of existing germplasm collections that facilitates and enables access to existing crop diversity for desired traits, such as drought tolerance or resistance to disease or pests]

The results were not great, the documentation was poor, and it was very difficult reconciling the different datasets from the work. We ended up incurring extra costs for genotyping, to salvage the investment. Then for building the Integrated Breeding Platform, we’d initially involved all major actors in developing the ‘middleware’ – the ‘invisible’ part that links the tools, services and resources IBP provides to breeders, with the respective crop databases. This did not work, and we subcontracted the work to an external service provider.

In both cases, we erred on the side of inclusiveness since we wanted to have all the players on board, and to also facilitate their capacity-building-by-engagement. We have learnt the need to strike a balance between inclusiveness and capacity building on the one hand, and outsourcing to get the job done on the other.

Then there is behaviour change – changing people’s mindsets to adopt technology, since people tend to be naturally conservative. We’ve learnt that developing the tools and techniques is the easy part. The human component – changing how people do business, getting them to adopt a corporative and cooperative over an institutional focus – is a real challenge, and needs to be strongly demand-driven with clear short-term benefits.

Data management and quality control, their documentation, publication and sharing continue to dog us and it’s probably the greatest challenge, although not unique to GCP.

Finally, advocacy, persuasion and presenting a compelling business case are all necessary ingredients. Because we cannot be ‘directive’ with our partners in the manner their own institutes can be since they don’t ‘belong’ to us, we need to demonstrate success and convince people to adopt new business models.

What is the most enjoyable aspect of your position at GCP?
More than one, actually.

We enable people, research teams and institutes to grow, thrive and stand on their own, and this is deeply gratifying; it is very rewarding to see people from developing countries growing and becoming leaders.

Working on different crops, with different partners, in different circumstances, and of different capacities is highly stimulating and brings a lot of diversity. My job is anything but boring!

I also appreciate being sheltered from the administrative burden our multi-institutional approach carries. The administrative load is ably borne by CIMMYT. This allows me to dedicate more of my time to supporting our research partnerships, institutional relationships and services to researchers.

I work with a small and dedicated team. As you can imagine, things are not always rosy, since a small team also means we operate in a ‘tight’ space and occasionally knock knuckles, and we also come from different cultures, but all these work to the good. This cultural diversity is actually a big plus, bringing a broader array of perspectives to the table. And the benefit of the ‘tight’ space is that, when there is a task to be done, the team spirit is incredible – everyone in the group, from management to office assistants, apply themselves to the task at hand. This is a fantastic experience!

Beyond the management and staff group, there is also the real GCP that is out there, which is highly stimulating, and I will end by sharing an excerpt from the external mid-term review report:

“Perhaps the most important value of GCP thus far, is the opportunities it has provided for people of diverse backgrounds to think collectively about solutions to complex problems, and, in the process, to learn from one another.”

Related blogposts

GCP website

External links

 

 

 

GCP now, then, and after

 Closing GCP, GCP, History  No Responses »
Jul 032012
 

Where we’ve come from, where we are, and where we’re going

Travel with Dave from the beginning – and before the beginning – of GCP, and how the Programme will be brought to an orderly close. Dave also elaborates on the role of the Consortium Committee.

There’s no doubt that the Programme has enabled new partnerships and rekindled and rejuvenated old or existing partnerships amongst the different partners. Some of these are between the different CGIAR Centres and others are between these Centres and partners outside the CGIAR. These partnerships have been very fruitful.

People speak of GCP almost as if it were the 16th Centre. They speak of it with pride and respect. They understand the important role it can play.

GCP has a lot of credibility with national programmes. When you go to GCP’s General Research Meetings, there’s clearly a feeling of being part of the community, and that we are all improving our efficiency because of the Programme.

…I think it’s been one of the more successful Challenge Programmes.

Dave Hoisington (pictured)  is the Chair of GCP’s Consortium Committee, and currently ICRISAT’s Director of Research. Dave was previously with CIMMYT, GCP’s host Centre. He has therefore been involved with GCP “since day minus one” in his words. “It’s equally exciting to be involved in the Programme’s closure, because I think that is even more important with regard to keeping its legacy alive.” Dave now walks us through the workings of the Programme today, its achievements and challenges, and what the early formative years were like….

What is the role of the GCP Consortium Committee?
GCP was set up as a multi-institutional endeavour. As an elaborate and broad partnership representing various interests, the decision at the Programme’s inception was to set up a committee representing all the key members from CGIAR Centres, developing-country programmes and advanced research institutes.

This Consortium Committee is ultimately the one that ‘owns’ GCP and oversees the basic functioning of the Programme to make sure that it is going in the right direction. We have an Executive Board which the Consortium appointed and it’s that Executive Board that Jean-Marcel [GCP Director] reports to. Because we set up the Board, they actually report to us.

…by having this Committee of the key players in research as well as an independent Board, we can all make sure GCP is going in the right direction, by giving voice to both the ‘players’ and ‘referees’.

Why have a Committee as well as a Board, and why seek broad partnerships?
During a mid-term review of GCP, the need for both a Committee and an independent Executive Board was recognised to give the Programme more structure and guidance. The Consortium Committee was established in 2008, and its precursor was the Programme Steering Committee.

GCP is not a research programme run by a single institute but really a consortium to enhance effectiveness. So, by having this Committee of the key players in research as well as an independent Board, we can all make sure GCP is going in the right direction, by giving voice to both the ‘players’ and ‘referees’.

There’s no doubt that the Programme has enabled new partnerships and rekindled and rejuvenated old or existing partnerships amongst the different partners. Some of these are between the different CGIAR Centres and others are between these Centres and partners outside the CGIAR. These partnerships have been very fruitful.

GCP’s tagline – ‘Partnerships in modern crop breeding for food security’ – what does this mean for you?
It really captures the essence of GCP – GCP is about creating opportunities for these partnerships. It’s about using a modern approach, a more integrated approach to breeding, to aid food security in the developing world.

Why is GCP’s work important?
The whole premise of setting up GCP 10 years ago was really the fact that our major crops were not registering the necessary increases in yield to meet food needs in developing countries. There are many reasons for that. The reason that became the main driving force for GCP was that we had not been able to tap the rich genetic diversity that exists for almost all of these crops. So the idea was to come up with mechanisms, methods, examples and proofs-of-concept that tap into this genetic diversity, and package it such that breeding programmes can integrate it into their operations. By so doing, we would broaden the horizon of breeding programmes for more rapid gains in yields and productivity in farmers’ fields.

Originally, the whole idea was mostly a proof-of-concept. Once we realised it could work, we realised that capacity needed to be built within national programmes since GCP’s scope was 10 years. So, the emphasis began to rightly shift from exploration and discovery to application and impact, buttressed by more training and capacity building within national programmes for sustainability. Genetic research was – and still remains – the backbone, but there has been a growing reliance on other tools including IT and molecular breeding. Now the technology has matured, costs have decreased, making it more viable for public research.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the alternative case of what it would have been like without GCP… but I think that many institutes within and outside CGIAR are trying to use genomics as a technology, and I think a lot of that can be traced back to projects that GCP supported.

What have been the major outcomes of GCP so far?
The greatest overall outcome is a stronger awareness and use of genomics in our research programmes across the board.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the alternative case of what it would have been like without GCP, which we could compare to, but I think that many institutes within and outside CGIAR are trying to use genomics as a technology, and I think a lot of that can be traced back to projects that GCP supported and encouraged.

In the early years, characterisation of genetic resources was very beneficial and it’s encouraging to see it still continues, with characterising genetic resources now considered routine.

What outcomes are you most looking forward to?
I think one of the most promising, and potentially important outcomes will be the adoption of GCP’s Integrating Breeding Platform.

‘Challenge’ is in GCP’s name. What are the major challenges that the Programme has so far overcome?
When GCP was being designed, there was no definition or case study for what a Challenge Programme had to do. The preliminary idea was that for projects to succeed and overcome major challenges, partnerships were key and no single institute could do it alone: they needed to do business differently, whether among the CGIAR Centres, or with partners outside the CGIAR. We had all these genebanks, all this diversity, genetic and genomic tools for some crops but not all crops. So, we put our heads together and asked ourselves, “What if we combine these modern molecular approaches used in one crop and apply them to another crop? Can we unlock the genetic diversity within it to improve quality and yield? How do we get all partners to work together towards a common goal?”

At the beginning, GCP had probably way too many facets and we were trying to move ahead on all the different fronts, so I think the mid-term reshaping and redefinition of the Programme helped it gain more focus to actually do what it set out to do.

GCP has built capacity, tools, methodologies and technologies. All these need to continue so as to increase and improve outputs and enhance outcomes.

What future challenges must the Programme overcome to remain sustainable?
Ensuring its achievements are sustained. While it was a time-bound programme from day one, the results and successes are not time-bound. They should be sustained and continued in other shapes and forms.

The challenge now is filtering these successes and figuring out how best to continue them. GCP has built capacity, tools, methodologies and technologies. All these need to continue so as to increase and improve outputs and enhance outcomes.

What are the main lessons learnt so far?
Partnerships are not easy. They take a lot of time. It’s one thing to write a proposal and say we will work together but it’s another thing to make that work effectively. I know GCP has had some instances where partners brought in have not been effective. I’m sure the GCP management has learnt lessons on how to deal with that.

People work together because they trust and respect one another and recognise and understand each other’s roles. They don’t view it as a competition. Some partnerships occur spontaneously, while others take time. They have to build trust, understanding and communication.

We’ve all learnt lessons from the research side, such as what does and doesn’t work. Focussing was a good lesson that GCP and all of us have learnt. At the beginning, we just spread ourselves too thin, trying to do too many things, making it very difficult to measure progress.

What is the most enjoyable aspect of your involvement with GCP?
I’ve been involved in GCP from day minus one. I used to be at CIMMYT and was involved in the ‘pre-pre-birth’ of the Programme, even before it had been conceptualised. Through the years since then, I’ve had different levels of engagement – and even periods of disengagement – but have always enjoyed my involvement.

It’s always been a good group of people working together, even when there have been problems. I think the Programme has scored high on successes. Jean-Marcel and his team deserve a lot of credit. They’ve really been able to keep the momentum going.

It’s equally exciting to be involved in the Programme’s closure, because I think that is even more important with regard to keeping its legacy alive.

People speak of GCP almost as if it were the 16th Centre. They speak of it with pride and respect. They understand the important role it can play.

GCP has a lot of credibility with national programmes… Ithink it’s been one of the more successful Challenge Programmes.

Jean-Marcel talks of the ‘GCP spirit’ and how successful partners share this spirit. What are your thoughts on this?
GCP definitely has a strong ‘entity’, although I’m not sure if this is a spirit! People speak of GCP almost as if it were the 16th Centre. They speak of it with pride and respect. They understand the important role it can play.

GCP has a lot of credibility with national programmes. When you go to GCP’s General Research Meetings, there’s clearly a feeling of being part of the community, and that we are all improving our efficiency because of the Programme.

I think it’s been one of the more successful Challenge Programmes.

Relevant links

 

 Older Entries
cheap ghd australia