Governments and foundations investing in CGIAR are seeing extraordinary value for money, according to a recent international report. The investment has generated a 10 to 1 return, and breeding science is highlighted as a major contributor.
The BrAPI project is creating a common standard to allow breeding applications to talk to each other, enabling greater sharing and innovation.
Through “sharing excellence” across programs and geographies, crop breeders are ready to deliver higher rates of genetic gain and varietal turnover.
Working with CGIAR and external partners to catalyze change, CGIAR Excellence in Breeding has also adapted its approaches. Its team is designed to match and augment the talented breeders across CGIAR and NARS.
High-impact Rice Breeding in East and West Africa (Hi-Rice) tackles one of the sources of low rice productivity: a lack of high performing, locally adapted varieties.
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.
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 with the potential to improve livelihoods, resilience, food security and better nutrition.
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.
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.
A common vision for CGIAR breeding backed by funders, with a view to One CGIAR
At its 2019 annual meeting, the CGIAR Excellence in Breeding Platform outlined an ambitious vision for breeding program modernization designed to deliver on the two key metrics demanded by the donors behind Crops to End Hunger: greater rates of variety turnover and genetic gain in farmers’ fields.
During the week of 12 August 2019, cassava and yam breeders from CGIAR and national agricultural research centers in Colombia, Nigeria, Uganda and Tanzania participated in an EiB-sponsored visit to Brazil.
After carrying out assessments at 13 CGIAR centers, the trip was one of the improvement opportunities identified by EiB breeding operations and phenotyping specialists Steve Corak and Gustavo Teixeira.
First steps taken to unify CGIAR-NARS breeding software
Photo credit: CIMMYT / Eleusis Llanderal Arango
From 21 October to 1 November, software developers and administrators from several breeding software projects met at the headquarters of the International Maize & Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico to work on delivering an integrated solution to crop breeders.
By Jerome Bossuet
From 10-12 September, members of the Global Maize Program at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) team met with breeders, seed system specialists, research associates, technicians and enabling technology leads from Kenya and Zimbabwe for a costing workshop.
In March 2019, EiB surveyed its members to identify the models of equipment currently used to digitize breeding operations.
These include package printers, label printers, barcode readers, electronic data collectors and seed counters that can be used to speed up, standardize and introduce efficiency savings into breeding program operations.
The survey results will be used to guide the outreach agenda of EiB module leaders, while the makes and models of equipment preferred by EiB users are available for reference on the EiB Toolbox.
CGIAR and public sector experts met at the International Potato Center (CIP, Peru) to evaluate genomics resource needs and demonstrate new tools and methods for polyploid crop breeding.
A rich source of protein, oils and other nutrients that requires few inputs to produce, groundnut is considered both an important contributor to household nutrition and a cash crop. To accelerate the development and adoption of improved varieties, a workshop on the use of product profiles low-cost genotyping was held for groundnut breeders in Malawi.
Around 115 members of the CGIAR breeding community, plus others representing national programs, universities, funders and the private sector, met for a three-day discussion of how to co-develop the next generation of advanced breeding programs that will improve the rate at which resource-poor farmers are able to adopt improved varieties that meet their needs.
Photo: Attendees at the meeting (Sam Storr/CIMMYT)
During 17-21 September, 22 members of the transformative rice breeding project at the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) received training in high-throughput genotypic selection and analysis as part of the collaboration between EiB and the High-Throughput Genotyping Project (HTGP).
Workshop hosted by IRRI with EiB and GOBII assesses breeding plan improvement and offers training, access to services.
A meeting of scientific leaders in the CGIAR agreed that a cultural change is the way forward to drive breeding technology adoption, higher rates of genetic gain and more effective replacement of outdated crop varieties in the developing world.
Greater accountability, adoption of transparent metrics, and a clearer division of breeding program processes will form a part of a culture of continuous improvement to meet CGIAR commitments to have an impact on the lives of farmers and consumers.
Excellence in Breeding Platform partners join forces to obtain lower cost services.
"By working together, we can have much greater impact and help train breeders in the latest and most efficient techniques,” Liz Jones, GOBII Director.
This article first appeared on BTIScience.org
