· Master Agenda
· Parallel Meetings Agenda
· List of Participants
· 2007 ARM Proceedings (Project Mid-Year and Final Reports)
· Themes
· Field trip
· Project Presentations
· Poster Session
· Photo Gallery
· ARM 2007 - Survey Results

The ARM is an excellent forum for scientists in GCP projects to meet with their project teams and other GCP scientists, share their research results and jointly plan for the upcoming year. The Generation Challenge Programme’s 2007 Annual Research Meeting was held on African soil for the first time in Benoni, South Africa from 12–16 September. We welcomed more than 150 scientists from around the world, who came to discuss and plan GCP activities. Most GCP Principal Investigators presented their projects. GCP wishes to thank the African Centre for Gene Technologies (ACGT) for hosting the 2007 Annual Research Meeting with support from the University of the Witwatersrand, an ACGT partner. Special thanks to Jane Morris (jmorris@csir.co.za), the official ACGT contact for this event, assisted by Corné Lombard (clombard@csir.co.za) of ACGT, as well as Vuyolwethu Mntonintshi, Pearl Cannel, and Brenda Lacey-Smith of the University of Witwatersrand.

The ARM was followed by the launch meeting, from 18–22 September, of the new project on 'Tropical Legumes Improvement for marginal environments in sub-Saharan Africa’ (TLI). A Bioversity/GCP Workshop "Managing the GCP in a Post-International Treaty World" was also held from 17th-18th September.


Themes
The 2007 ARM covered the following four themes:
1. Exploiting Allelic Diversity
2. Genomic Resources and Gene/Pathway Discovery
3. Marker Development and Breeding Applications
4. Support services and enabling delivery

Field Trip
Day three of the ARM (Friday 14th September) consisted of a field trip, with visits to the following three sites:
  • Visit to local farming community at Doornkop farm, near Krugersdorp:
    This group visited a farm at Doornkop, near Krugersdorp north-west of Johannesburg, where they had the chance to meet 4-5 small-scale farmers from the local farming association in smaller groups. Our thanks to the Agricultural Research Council who coordinated this visit. Click here for more information
  • Visit to see a small-scale farm, run by Sabina Khoza (Woman Farmer of the Year 2004) just outside Soweto:
    This group visited a small-scale farm, run by Sabina Khoza, who farms outside Soweto. Sabina won the award for woman farmer of the year in 2004. She started off by farming with poultry but now also plants a variety of crops. Many thanks to AfricaBio, who arranged this visit for us.
    Click here for more information
  • Visit to Buhle Farmers Academy in Delmas: This group visited the Buhle Farmers Academy in Delmas, considered to be an excellent initiative to train developing farmers. The group were able to meet with the farmers and see the farm land.
    Click here for more information 



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Project Presentations
For a full list of ARM project presentations, please click here.

In the 2007 ARM presentations were organised around the four themes of the ARM. Presenters were instructed to give brief but punchy presentations on the highlights of their GCP project in 2006, emphasising results and impact, as opposed to concepts or methodology. Our portfolio has expanded and now numbers about 70 projects. As in past Annual Research Meetings, brainstorming sessions were maintained to address strategic issues for GCP. With our projects now maturing and generating results, we are increasingly moving from concepts to achievements, and as such PIs were given the Project Presentation Guidelines below:
  • Length of presentation: maximum of 12 PPT slides

  • Duration: strictly a maximum of 14 minutes

  • Format: project rationale, activities and results, data format and release, link with other projects and product delivery and impact on users. It was absolutely essential that presentations followed this format for meaningful lessons and cross-comparisons across our different projects. Note to clarify ‘data format and release’: This referered to statistical package(s) used to process and analyse data, the format in which data was to be uploaded to the GCP Central Registry, and when the data was to be in available in the public domain. Project contract stipulated that data release should be within six months of the end of the project.

  • Scope, style and emphasis: a brief but punchy presentation on the highlights of your GCP project in 2006, emphasising results and impact, not concepts or methodology
A poster session with a twist
Poster winners
Poster Abstracts

The 2007 ARM featured a poster session, grouped by the four ARM themes, was facilitated by Theo van Hintum, Subprogramme 4 leader. The session proved to be a central and integral part of the ARM, being incorporated into the formal programme and with four hours being dedicated in two separate 2-hour sessions on the 13th September and 15th September.
Poster presentations were composed of one or two posters (maximum) per project. Each poster was required to be 70cm x 110cm in size, and the scope was as follows:

- Ongoing projects: specific key results or new approaches (emphasising impact, not a summary of the project).
- New projects: a general introduction to the new project.

The 2007 poster session was markedly different from that of previous years. Each and every presenter was given the opportunity to briefly introduce their poster at plenary to the audience. The session was dubbed ‘Say it succinctly in sixty seconds’. Each poster was introduced by the author(s) in a timed one-minute presentation—and not a second more! This was the presenter's window to tell the audience what the poster was about, and why they should come to view it. For every poster, we allowed only one old-fashioned transparency—but absolutely no PowerPoint slides. Beyond this, we decided to leave how presenters used their one minute entirely up to them, only encouraging them to employ any means deemed necessary to lure an audience to the poster! Participants were invited to give their creativity and imagination complete free rein. A vote to identify the best poster for each of the four themes was subsequently organised.

GCP was delighted to announce the following as the four winning posters:

Theme 1:
Poster 1.5 Characterization and Transferring of resistance genes to Rice yellow mottle virus (RYMV) from African cultivated rice (O. glaberrima) to O. sativa by molecular markers
Presenter: Deless Thiemele
Authors: Deless Thiemele*, Laurence ALBAR, Sophie Perez, Séverin Ake, Marie-Noëlle Ndjiondjop, Yacouba Sere, Alain Ghesquiere
*UMR « Génome et Développement des Plantes »,IRD/CNRS/Université de Perpignan, IRD, France /Laboratoire de Physiologie Végétale, Université de Cocody, Côte-d'Ivoire.

Theme 2:
Poster 2.9 Near-isogenic lines for disease QTL in maize
Presenter: R.J. Nelson
Authors: J. Zwonitzer,* C.-L. Chung, J. Longfellow, R.J. Nelson, and P. Balint-Kurti
*North Carolina State University

Theme 3:
Poster 3.13 Marker Development and Marker-Assisted Selection for Striga Resistance in Cowpea
Presenter: S. Muranaka
Authors: S. Muranaka,* M. P. Timko, N. Cisse, M. Wade, C. Fatokun, A. Raji, D. J. Kim and B. Ousmane
*IITA, Nigeria

Theme 4:
Poster 4.5 Characterization of Maize germplasm found in Ghana, using the bulking technique
Presenter: A.Oppong
Authors: A.Oppong,* M..Warburton, M. Ewool, R. Thompson, K. Poku-Sekyere, J.N.L. Lamptey, M.D. Quain.
*CSIR-Crops Research Institute, Ghana

And the special prize went to....Sato Muranaka for his particularly creative and entertaining presentation of the poster 3.13 Marker Development and Marker-Assisted Selection for Striga Resistance in Cowpea.

Please join us in congratulating the poster winners!


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ARM 2007 - Survey Results
During a period of  approximately six-weeks, 115 respondents from the GCP community participated in a dual online survey that was administered by Meridian Institute. The survey followed the 2007 GCP Annual Research Meeting and was in two distinct parts: 1) feedback about the 2007 ARM (8 questions, targeting ARM participants); 2) general feedback about GCP (12 questions for ARM participants and key informants who had however not attended the ARM). For a high-level overview and selected highlights from the survey, please click here.