GCP News & Events
grave implications for food security and livelihoods. The agency called for increased funding, research and surveillance to contain the disease.
Just weeks later, GCP is delighted to announce the official release of four cassava varieties, bred through marker-assisted selection (MAS), and extensive collaboration combining the knowhow of multi-institutional agricultural experts worldwide and funding from various agencies.
These varieties of Manihot esculenta have manifold benefits: dual resistance to cassava mosaic disease (CMD) and cassava brown streak disease (CBSD), and productivity potential of up to double the yield of existing commercial varieties.
Of the four varieties released, two are for the coastal belt while the other two are for the semi-arid agroecologies of Central Tanzania.
The variety release is a triumph of hard work over adversity as cassava is a scientifically complex crop to research and breed, and this tremendous collaborative ef
fort brought together research institutes including the Agricultural Research Institute (ARI), Naliendele, Tanzania; the Nigerian National Root Crops Research Institute (NRCRI); the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT); the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA); the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center (DDPSC) in USA; and the CGIAR Generation Challenge Programme (GCP). Funding was also a collaborative effort, with support from The Rockefeller Foundation, GCP, Tanzania's Ministry of Agriculture and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).
The potential reach and impact of this project can be appreciated in the words of the project leader, Dr Geoffrey Mkamilo (pictured) of ARI, "I am now confident that we can make a green revolution in Africa happen!"
Members of the GCP-supported Cassava Breeders Community of Practice have heartily congratulated the Tanzania team for this release, expressing hope that this effort will soon be felt in the lives of "...the poor cassava farmers suffering from the ravages of CBSD," to quote Dr Heneriko Kulembeka of ARI who was part of the project technical team.
Dr Chiedozie Egesi and his colleagues at NRCRI have offered the Tanzania team the benefit of NRCRI's expertise to ensure quick delivery to farmers, drawing on experience gained following the December 2010 release in Nigeria of UMUCASS33, a disease-resistant high-yielding cassava variety, which, like the four new Tanzanian varieties, is also of joint African and South American p
arentage.
In a congratulatory message to Dr Mkamilo, GCP's Product Delivery Leader and Cassava Research Initiative (RI) facilitator, Dr Larry Butler, remarked: "Once again, a cassava team has demonstrated the efficacy of using marker-assisted selection to develop improved varieties. You and your team should be justifiably proud! The incorporation of CBSD resistance is particularly exciting!"
Dr Emmanuel Okogbenin of NRCRI, who is Product Delivery Coordinator for GCP's Cassava RI, commented: "We are very pleased at the release of these varieties which are remarkably distinct for combining both CMD and CDSB resistance. I hope our current research drive...will build on this success to develop new-generation varieties for East Africa." He observed that the next challenge is transferring these new dual-resistance varieties to West Africa under controlled conditions for pre-emptive breeding, without introducing CBSD into that region which is still free of the scourge.
For more information: please contact Dr Geoffrey Mkamilo.
Related stories and links
- Variety release in Nigeria
- Cassava community of practice
- Country profiles on cassava in Africa
- Cassava Research Initiative launch
- FAO press release (Nov 2011)
In the course of 2011, two more members became an integral part of the Integrated Breeding Platform (IBP) team.
Firstly we have Clarissa 'Candy' Pimentel, based at GCP Headquarters in Mexico, who is our Data Manager/Training Specialist. She has specific responsibility for the Central Crop databases accesible via the IBP Portal and associated tools. She is actively involved in both the development of the IB FieldBook and the training of data mangers and breeders in the use of both that and other data management tools of the IB CWS.
Secondly, Mark Sawkins has joined the team as IBP Configurable Workflow System Manager, and will oversee the design, testing and deployment of the CWS from a user perspective, ensuring that the system and the tools embedded in it (both standalone and web-based) meet the needs and expectations of the users and are easy to use. He is based in Toulouse, France.
And finally, there have been further changes in IBP management. More
The GCP 2010 Annual Report and Medium-Term Plan 2011-2013 are now available in hard copy.
If you wish to receive a copy of these publications by post, please request one from Communications Assistant Gillian Summers, indicating your full name and mailing address.
Electronic PDF versions are also online:
To view other current GCP publications, please visit our publications page.
For five days in September 2011, GCP researchers from around the globe joined forces on Indian soil for GCP's General Research Meeting held in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. Materials from the event, including presentations, posters and photographs, are now available online.
The 2011 GCP General Research Meeting (GRM), which took place at the Hyderabad Marriott Hotel and Convention Centre from 21-25 September 2011, and hosted by ICRISAT, was a truly global meeting, with 160 participants from forty countries representing diverse institutes and specialisations. Principal Investigators from the majority of ongoing GCP projects attended and reported on project progress and updates from their fields of study.
In addition to the plenary sessions, covering general GCP activities, thematic areas and Research Initiatives, the meeting included parallel sessions focussing on nine specific crops (beans, cassava, chickpeas, cowpeas, groundnuts, maize, rice, sorghum and wheat). There was also a series of specialised informatics meetings, plus presentations and dynamic exhibitions of posters covering GCP projects and related work. An open morning and field trip, taking in the sights of Hyderabad, and a guided tour of ICRISAT and its work rounded off the programme in style.
Outcomes from the meeting, including presentations, posters and photographs, are now available online.
The GRM also got a spotlight on Indian media (thanks to ICRISAT), and was reported across local electronic media, radio and television, plus in the following printed media:
- Hindu Times
- ICRISAT's newsletter, Happenings
- Business Standard
Towards the end of last year, a small group at GCP knocked heads (and a few knuckles too!) and locked lexicons to come up with a new tagline that better reflects what and where GCP is today. From a long list of suggestions, the following winner was selected:
Partnerships in modern crop breeding for food security
This new slogan replaces Cultivating plant diversity for the resource-poor, which had been an apt description for GCP in its early to middle years. This change is being reflected throughout GCP's online and print publications.
GCP is pleased to invite visitors to our website to take part in the 'Mapping the future' survey, which seeks your input in helping to more clearly determine the core nature, primary purpose and operational priorities of a possible successor entity for the GCP.
GCP is now entering its closing years, since it was designed as a time-bound initiative. In this regard, and responding to requests from our partners and stakeholders, the GCP Consortium Committee and the Executive Board have commissioned this survey to map out the trends and possible basis for an ‘after-GCP', in terms of what should happen next once the Programme winds up in December 2014.
The desire for a successor entity indicated a consensus that this entity when established should primarily target crop improvement in the developing world.
This survey will take 15–30 minutes to complete and will be available until February 5, 2012.
We hope that you will take the time to give your personal opinion or position, which may or may not reflect the position of the institute(s) you represent: we are extremely keen that the design of any possible successor to GCP be demand-driven.
Please click on the link below to begin the survey, which we ask that you complete by February 5, 2012.
All responses are confidential and will be processed by an independent research consulting firm, Vital Research. If you have any questions about this survey, please contact Dr Harold Urman from Vital Research.
Thank you in advance for completing this most important survey.
Like rest to a tired traveller, or a refreshing breeze after a long day under the sun, our proverbial ‘pot of gold' publication will be savoured much more by all those who have been patiently waiting for a taste of this tome. Drought phenotyping in crops: from theory to practice is an epic volume whose path from concept to publication has at times taxed the patience of many, though the challenge was valiantly borne by all.
GCP is delighted to announce that this book is now fully accessible online. Visitors can thumb through the chapters one by one, or alternatively download the whole book. Part I is on methodology while Part II is on application covering the following 14 crops:
- Cereals: maize, millet, rice, sorghum, wheat
- Legumes: beans, chickpeas, cowpeas, groundnuts, pigeonpeas
- Clonal crops: bananas and plantains, cassava, sweet potatoes,
GCP is extremely grateful to all the 89 authors who contributed to this volume, and to the editor.
To ensure the widest possible dissemination, the book has been published under the Creative Commons (CC) Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Mexico licence. Special thanks to Francesca Re Manning (then with the former CGIAR Central Advisory Services, Intellectual Property [CAS-IP]) and to Petr Kosina (then with CIMMYT) for their advice on CC publishing.
The book is also available on CD. If you wish to receive a CD of the book, please send an e-mail request, with your mailing address provided, to books@generationcp.org.
The first half of 2011 marked a season of community goings-on at GCP, as a series of comprehensive discussions on the formation, expansion and management of communities of practice (CoPs) were succeeded by the successful launch of several crop-specific CoPs. More
The Bean Coordinated Agricultural Project (BeanCAP) is pleased to announce the release – into the public domain – of the first instalment of resources to boost molecular breeding in common beans. BeanCAP is releasing to GCP information on more than 1,575 bean SNPs that will broaden the genetic tools available to developing-country bean breeders. ‘SNPs' (pronounced ‘snips') is a technical term, and the abbreviation is derived from ‘single nucleotide polymorphism' – an advanced molecular-marker system widely used in genetic science, but SNPs have not been available in critical amounts to bean breeders until this landmark release. By reducing not only time but also cost, the use of SNPs for molecular breeding greatly increases the efficiency of crop breeding. This means it has high potential for improving food production in the tropics by developing new varieties better adapted to increasing environmental challenges.
The USA BeanCAP team of plant breeders and geneticists is led by Dr Phil McClean, BeanCAP Project Director, and Researcher at North Dakota State University. The SNP marker development and evaluation was conducted by Dr Perry Cregan, a BeanCAP team member, and legume Research Leader at the Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA–ARS) in Beltsville, Maryland. "These SNPs were evaluated on 384 bean cultivars, including cultivars of Mesoamerican and Andean origin," clarified Dr Cregan. "The SNPs donated to GCP fall into two groups: one selected to function well in the Mesoamerican and the other in Andean germplasm. Both sets will be suitable for applications in the breeding of tropical bean germplasm."
"This transfer is consistent with the USDA Feed the Future commitment to be actively engaged in global food security efforts," Dr McClean observed "It supports the research objective to seek gains in productivity through adoption of improved technologies that will promote development of more nutritious, environmentally sustainable and climate-resilient crops. Transfer of these molecular markers is consistent with a USDA strategy that envisions outcomes that will deliver scientific breakthroughs, and research to promote adoption of the best science through links with private-sector research partners and international agencies."
BeanCAP will partner with GCP to aid in the dissemination of the SNPs to developing-country researchers. "GCP works with a wide network of partners within and outside the CGIAR system, and this should ensure broad dissemination of these new bean resources to researchers across the world, particularly in the global South," said Dr Xavier Delannay, Leader of Integrated Crop Breeding at GCP. "The BeanCAP SNPs are a welcome and much-needed resource for bean molecular breeding since sufficient SNPs had not been previously available for this critical food crop." Full BeanCAP–GCP press release
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