Wheat breeders from across the globe took a big step towards modernizing their molecular breeding skills at recent workshops sponsored by the Wheat Initiative, with the CGIAR Excellence in Breeding Platform (EiB), and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).
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.
