GCP News Issue 55
11th February 2011

The IBP focus continues as we bring our readers Issue 55 of GCP News.

1. Correction
In our GCP News Issue 54 of 4 February, 2011, we carried an article on the reorganisation of Objectives 2.2 and 2.3 of the Integrated Breeding Platform Project – the objectives that were primarily concerned with the development, integration, testing and deployment of informatics tools to support integrated breeding.

In that article, reasons for the reorganisation of these two objectives were inappropriately stated and GCP apologizes for this. We would like to make it clear that the reorganisation of those two objectives was primarily the result of fundamental lessons learnt by GCP in the first year of the project, and was effected after consultations both internally and with various collaborators involved in the project.

Through the concerted effort of all partners involved, we arrived at a revised approach that increases focus on applications rather than functionality, greatly improves the practicality of tool development, and increases GCP’s role in providing more proactive leadership to ensure milestones are met. GCP gratefully acknowledges the strong support by partners towards ensuring that the IBP is a success.

We are taking immediate measures to correct both the article and the associated report.

2. IBP Data Management Course for West Africa
A one week IBP Data Management Course for collaborators in West Africa has just ended at IITA. The course, bringing together data managers and breeders from GCP and NARS rice, sorghum, cassava and legumes projects, also dedicated time to discussing establishment of crop communities of practice. We hope to bring you various news and feature stories from that event in the coming days – watch this space!

Announcements

3. IBP meetings & events 2011

• After further consultations, and in view of other events, the IBP Annual Meeting is now rescheduled for Wednesday 1 – Friday 3 June 2011. Please mark this on your calendars, pending further information.
• The GCP/Wageningen University/Synbreed Statistics Course comes the week immediately after: Monday 6 – Friday 10 June 2011.