All news and blogs
Developers unite around a common platform to liberate breeding data
EiB news | Sam Storr | 18/12/2020
As public sector breeding has modernized, it has become a more data intensive enterprise. Numerous applications and databases have been created for a wide variety of tasks from collecting field observations to analyzing genetics. However, this data still has to be manually passed...
National breeding programs prepped to measure – and boost – genetic gains
Impact | Adam Hunt | 8/12/2020
By adopting best practices and established modern tools, NARS (national agricultural research systems) are making data-driven decisions to boost genetic improvement. And they are measuring this progress through tracking and setting goals around “genetic gain.”...
New AGG project aims to accelerate genetic gains in maize and wheat
EiB news | | 19/10/2020
By Joshua MasindeCGIAR Excellence in Breeding (EiB) is contributing its science-backed support to the maize and wheat breeding program improvement plans on the new Accelerating Genetic Gains in Maize and Wheat for Improved Livelihoods (AGG) project.Tremendous impact is...
Excellence in Breeding team working to catalyze change
EiB news | Adam Hunt | 31/8/2020
Please see our team bio page.Combining culture change with technical innovations may be the most challenging part of modernization breeing programs. Working with partners across CGIAR and externally to catalyze this change, the CGIAR Excellence in Breeding (EiB) Platform has been adapting its...
New project aims to modernize rice breeding in Africa
EiB news | Sam Storr | 7/7/2020
Rice is a food for the future in Africa, with consumer demand for rice growing faster than any other staple crop. With most farms yielding less than two tons per hectare, Africa's taste for rice could lead to greater reliance on food imports, with US $7 billion already spent on imported rice each year, or 36...
Assessing the current state of breeding operations in West Africa
EiB news | Sam Storr | 6/4/2020
In February, the CGIAR Excellence in Breeding (EiB) Platform assessed breeding operations and phenotyping capacity at five CGIAR and national crop research stations in West Africa.Given that the population of West Africa is expected to double in the next 30 years (from 400 million to 800...
Dawn of a pan-African method for designing varieties with impact
EiB news | Sam Storr | 20/2/2020
Market and crop development specialists in Africa are making important steps towards embedding customer- and product-driven breeding practices in the region in 2020.One the chief obstacles to agricultural development in Africa is the low rate at which farmers adopt improved varieties ...
Plant breeders assess tools and services to accelerate breeding with genotypic data
EiB news | Sam Storr | 7/2/2020
On January 15, the CGIAR Excellence in Breeding Platform (EiB) held a one-day workshop with users of its genotyping and data analytics services at the 2020 International Plant and Animal Genome (PAG) conference, held in San Diego, USA. Through the...
Toward a unified breeding data management system
EiB news | Sam Storr | 28/1/2020
Members of the Enterprise Breeding System (EBS) advisory committee are lending expertise to make progress on the development of a full-spectrum breeding data management software.CGIAR plant breeders currently rely on a suite of different software projects to make use of the data that is crucial to...