In this special issue of GCP News, we present our latest offer—an exciting service of direct relevance to plant breeding programmes, especially in the global South.

Call for proposals: GCP Genotyping Support Service

GCP is delighted to announce a call for proposals for the GCP Genotyping Support Service (GSS). Launched by Subprogramme 5 in collaboration with other SPs, this service promotes using molecular markers to assess the potential value of germplasm and breeding materials for relevant agronomic traits.

“I believe GSS will prove a vital tool in reaching more national research programmes in the South, helping to bridge the gap between molecular laboratories and field practitioners,” observes Humberto Gomez, Coordinator of the support service.

He continues, “While many plant breeding programmes in industrialised countries are now reaping the benefits of the molecular marker technology developed over the last decade or so, GCP recognises that our partners in the South are lagging behind due to many constraints—be it unreliable power supply, difficulties in obtaining lab supplies, lack of appropriate expertise and training, among other factors. These constraints prevent them from taking advantage of molecular genetic tools accessible to their counterparts in developed countries. While setting up labs in developing countries could be a step in the right direction, this alone is far from enough to promote the dissemination of molecular marker technology at the pace needed for adoption and meaningful impact.”

Stepping in to help fill the gap is the Genotyping Support Service. What will GSS do for you? Here’s a sample of what our latest service offers: assessing proposals, hiring genotyping services from the best providers, taking care of the administrative hassles, ensuring the generation of high-quality data and training participating researchers to interpret and work with the data to optimise outputs. In this way, researchers get to use the technology right away, while also learning how to get the greatest mileage out of the technology, thus creating local capacity. As such, GSS contributes to GCP’s effort to support and motivate plant breeding ‘champions’ in developing regions.

For more information on this exciting new service, including details on the GSS call for proposals such as eligibility, application, selection and implementation, please visit http://www.generationcp.org/capcorner.php#support_services.