Other News & Events

The Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security Challenge Programme (CCAFS-CP) is a network of the world’s leading researchers in agricultural and Earth system sciences. This challenge programme works to overcome the threats posed to food security by climate change,  to enhance livelihoods and to improve environmental management.

The objective of the programme’s research theme Adaptation pathways under progressive climate change is to achieve farming systems adapted to changing climatic conditions through the development of improved crops, livestock, farmed fish, and natural resources management. This will require the development of new technologies and testing of the same across a range of pilot sites, as well as modelling activities to out-scale the potential of individual adaptation options across a wide-range of geographies.

Towards this end, CCAFS is requesting the submission of project proposals for the development of an initial analogue methodology and proof of concept for identifying and mapping spatial and temporal analogue sites across the globe based on multiple climate projections.

Applicant consultants/research teams should have a strong modeling and computational background, and proven track record in development of similar tools/methodologies. Those with already advanced analogue methods will be given preference.

Deadline for submission of applications: 10th August 2010

For more information, download the full details of the call here.

The National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR)-Bioversity International Centre of Excellence is to hold its Fifth International Training Course, entitled “In Vitro and Cryopreservation for Conservation of Plant Genetic Resources: Current Methods and Techniques”, from 15th to 27th November 2010 at NBPGR, Pusa Campus, New Delhi, India. This will be a practical, hands-on course, designed for those currently involved in the development and use of in vitro and/or cryopreservation techniques for the medium to long-term conservation of vegetatively propagated and non-orthodox seed species.

This course aims to:
• Improve skills of participants in using tissue culture techniques for conservation and management of PGR
• Equip participants with essential knowledge necessary for developing and using cryopreservation techniques
• Enhance the use of in vitro conservation and cryopreservation protocols for germplasm of crops relevant in their countries
• Acquaint the participants with molecular techniques for PGR management
• Understand the underlying principles of stress tolerance during processing for conservation

The Centre of Excellence aims to provide training opportunities to enhance the capacity of national programmes for using in vitro and cryogenic techniques for conservation of plant genetic resources. This Centre is equipped with advanced facilities for in vitro conservation, particularly cryopreservation, and staffed with knowledgeable and experienced resource persons for imparting theoretical knowledge as well as hands-on training.

Eligibility
Applicants must have prior experience in and/or be actively working on in vitro conservation and cryopreservation of PGR, stress responses in vitro and ex vitro and using molecular marker techniques in their own work.

Expenses
This is a fee-based course and participants are encouraged to seek assistance from their own organizations or other funding agencies. However, both Bioversity International and NBPGR will make efforts to identify sources of funding for a few full or partial scholarships. The course fees are US$1,700 for non-Indian participants and Rs 25,000 for Indian participants and include the following:
• Lecture and course materials
• Local transportation
• All meals / Tea / Coffee
• Accommodation
• Administration charges

Deadline for submissions: 30 September 2010
Maximum number of participants: 15

For further information contact:

Dr. D. C. Bhandari, Director, National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources
Email: director@nbpgr.ernet.in
www.nbpgr.ernet.in

or

Dr. P.N. Mathur, South Asia Coordinator, Bioversity International, Sub-regional Office for South Asia
Email: p.mathur@cgiar.org
www.bioversityinternational.org

The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is seeking an innovative, results-oriented agricultural scientist with excellent skills in experimental design and statistics to support its cutting-edge maize improvement programs in Africa.  CIMMYT’s high-impact maize breeding effort in eastern and southern Africa, strongly supported by leading development donors, serves smallholder farmers in some of the world’s most difficult and stress-prone environments. By joining our international team of plant breeders, geneticists, agronomists, and social scientists, you will have the opportunity to work on problems as diverse as estimating the performance of new varieties and management systems in farmers’ fields, controlling for soil variability in low-fertility fields to improve breeding precision, and understanding the fertilizer use and variety adoption patterns of smallholders in maize-legume farming system.  A key task will be to use cutting-edge experimental design and statistical methods to increase the rate of genetic gain in African maize breeding. As an Africa-based member of the CIMMYT Crop Research Informatics Laboratory (CRIL), you will work closely with CIMMYT’s elite research teams, as well as with partners in advanced laboratories, seed companies, and national research programs world-wide, to improve the lives of African farmers and consumers who depend on maize for livelihoods and food security
We are seeking candidates with the following qualifications:

Interested applicants must possess:

• A PhD in statistics, biometrics, or plant breeding
• Demonstrated understanding of agricultural research
• Excellent statistical computing skills, including proficiency in R, SAS, and GENSTAT
• The ability to work effectively in multi-disciplinary and multicultural teams
• Strong organizational skills and leadership skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English.

Deadline for applications: 31st August 2010 

For more details on the position and on how to apply, please see the Vacancy Announcement.

Scientists have bred an improved variety of wheat that has proven to be 25% more productive in saline soils than its normal counterpart.

To produce the improved durum wheat, which is set to be made freely available to the developing world, the research team isolated two salt tolerance genes from an old species of wheat (Triticum monococcum),  and then introduced them into commercially important lines of Australian durum wheat (Triticum durum) using non-genetically modified methods. The genes limit the passage of sodium from the roots to leaves, where it can be toxic to the plant.

In an interview with electronic news network SciDev, GCP and ICARDA scientist Francis Obgbonnaya explains: “Unlike bread wheat, durum is generally intolerant to salinity so the first salt-tolerant durum line is a great achievement”.

For more information, please visit the SciDev website

The 5th World Cowpea Research Conference will be held from 27th September to 1st October 2010 in Dakar, Senegal. The conference, organised by the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), in cooperation with the Dry Grain Pulses Collaborative Research Support Programme (USA), Purdue University (USA) and the Institut Senegalais de Recherches Agricoles (Senegal), will cover a wide variety of topics ranging from cowpea genetic improvement and use of molecular tools, through human nutrition, to processing and enterprise development.

For more information please visit the conference website

For more events of interest to the GCP research community and beyond, please visit our Events calendar. 

Following a number of international conferences of relevance to the GCP research community, we are pleased to inform you about the availability of books of abstracts from the following events:

• 2nd International Symposium on Genomics of Plant Genetic Resources (24–27 April 2010, Bologna, Italy): this conference, organised by Bioversity International, the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK) and the University of Bologna, followed a tightly-packed agenda organised in nine different sessions, addressing themes such as 'harnessing plant diversity: From sequence to function' and 'genomics-assisted crop improvement for food security in developing countries', amongst others. The book of abstracts can be downloaded here. For more information, please consult the conference website.
• The Africa Rice Congress 2010 (22–26 March 2010, Bamako, Mali): organised by the Africa Rice Center, the congress' aim was to take stock of advances in rice science and technology aimed at enhancing rice productivity in farmers' fields, while protecting environmental services and coping with climate change. A 205-page publication, edited by P Kiepe, M Diatta and D Millar, containing abstracts from the congress, in English and French, is now available. The abstracts, many of which describe the use of biotechnologies in rice, are organised under six main themes, one of which is 'genetic diversity and improvement' (pages 1-59). To download the abstracts (available in French and English), please visit the Africa Rice Congress website.
• 6th International Rice Genetics Symposium (6–19 November 2009, Manila, The Philippines): organised by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), the symposium's aim was to 'showcase the latest developments in the field, including research on breeding, mapping of genes and quantitative trait loci, identification and cloning of candidate genes for biotic and abiotic stresses, gene expression, and genomic databases and mutant induction for functional genomics'. A 365-page publication is available, containing abstracts from the plenary, concurrent and poster sessions and from two workshops. The symposium was held in conjunction with the 7th International Symposium on Rice Functional Genomics. For the abstracts and more information, please visit the Symposium website.

We bring you this information courtesy of Update 4-2010 of FAO-BiotechNews, available at  http://www.fao.org/biotech/, to whom we are grateful for permission to reuse the item.

For details on other forthcoming events of relevance to the GCP research community, please visit our Events calendar webpage.

Plant scientists from around the world with an interest in molecular breeding will come together in Beijing, China, fom  5–9 September 2010 for the Third International Conference on Plant Molecular Breeding (ICPMB).

The scientific programme will include plenary sessions in the morning for four days and concurrent sessions/workshops and poster sessions in the afternoon.

Topics for the plenary sessions (one or two speakers on each subject) include:

A broad range of topics for the afternoon parallel sessions will be on offer.

Registration
Earlybird deadline (for reduced fee of US$550 for regular participants, US$650 for industry participants and US$350 for student participants) is 30th April 2010. For cost of registration before and after 31st July, please consult the Conference website.

Papers and abstracts

• Full length paper: The full length papers will be published in a special issue of Molecular Breeding, if the submission is accepted by the journal.
• Abstract: Abstracts will be collected and presented in the proceedings, which will be indexed in the Chinese Proceedings of the Conference. Full details on the required presentation of abstracts are on the Conference website.
• Deadline for submission of (voluntary) abstracts and posters: 15th August 2010

Fellowships
The conference will provide full or partial support to up to 15 researchers/students from developing countries in Africa and Asia. Applicants must submit research results to the conference in the form of an oral presentation or poster. Application should be submitted to Dr. Judy Lee at icpmb3@gmail.com or icpmb@thegsr.org before 30th April 2010. Acceptance letters with details will be sent to awardees by the end of July 2010.

For more information on the event and on how to apply, please visit the ICPMB website.

A press release from GCP partner HarvestPlus, a sister Challenge Programme of the CGIAR, has revealed the noteworthy findings of an international team of scientists, whereby their discovery of rare variations of a maize gene (crtRB1) can lead to an 18-fold increase in beta-carotene content of maize in an academic research setting. HarvestPlus reports that plant breeders are starting to use these naturally occurring genetic variations to breed maize that can provide more beta-carotene to malnourished people. The body converts beta-carotene into vitamin A. A deficiency in the vitamin affects millions of people in the developing world, and blinds up to 500,000 children annually, HarvestPlus explains.

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The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has released, through the latest edition of its newsletter FAO-BiotechNews and via its website, a full report on the activities and outcomes of its recent conference entitled Agricultural biotechnologies in developing countries: Options and opportunities in crops, forestry, livestock, fisheries and agro-industry to face the challenges of food insecurity and climate change (ABDC-10), which took place in Guadalajara, Mexico, from 1–4 March 2010.

Approximately 300 people attended the event, comprising policy-makers, scientists and representatives of intergovernmental and international non-governmental organisations from 68 countries, including delegations nominated by 42 governments.

The conference consisted of a mixture of plenary and parallel sessions, with the plenary sessions examining issues such as how to target agricultural biotechnologies to the poor; how to enable research and development (R&D) in agricultural biotechnologies; and how to ensure that the benefits of R&D are accessible in developing countries. 27 parallel sessions were also held, opening discussions on sector-specific, regional or cross-sectoral issues.

To view the report, as well as full documentation from the conference, please visit the ABDC-10 section of the FAO website.

Rothamsted International (RI) is a UK non-profit organisation working for sustainable agriculture in developing and emerging countries. The Rothamsted International Fellowship Scheme (RIFS) aims to share scientific excellence in agricultural and environmental research by contributing to the development and dissemination of
technologies relevant to sustainable agricultural growth across the developing world.

Through the Rothamsted International Fellowship Scheme, scientists undertake projects for 6 to 12 months at Rothamsted Research in the UK. RI Fellowships are directed towards mid-career researchers in agricultural sciences from developing and emerging countries.

• Target: Mid-career scientists who are citizens of developing or emerging countries, or whose work has been based exclusively within such a country. Most applicants have doctoral status. The applications will be assessed on the basis of their scientific merit, and the potential for long-term research collaboration.
• Deadline for applications: 8th May 2010
• More