Tackling a tricky topic: Drought phenotyping

Wednesday, 30 January 2008 20:47

Droguth phenotyping
From 28–30 January 2008, GCP lived up to its middle name and organised a workshop on an intricate challenge—drought phenotyping. Held at GCP’s Headquarters at CIMMYT, the workshop brought together specialists from diverse disciplines such as crop physiologists, GIS specialists and model developers, to more effectively address the increasing phenotyping needs from genomic studies and breeding programmes, through an interdisciplinary lens.

Participants in the workshop were Gregory Edmeades (Consultant), Abraham Blum (Consultant), Glenn Hyman (CIAT), Sam Geerts (Gent University, Belgium), Robert Koebner (Consultant), Paul Brennan (Consultant), Reinaldo Gomide (EMBRAPA), John O’Toole (Consultant), Guy Davenport (CRIL-CIMMYT), Rosemary Shrestha (CRIL-CIMMYT), Eduardo Hernández (CRIL-CIMMYT), Humberto Gómez (Genotyping Support Service Coordinator, GCP), Jean-Marcel Ribaut (Director, GCP) and Philippe Monneveux (Subprogramme 3 Leader, GCP).

Participants discussed several options for tackling the complexity of drought phenotyping in GCP projects, mainly centering on:

Expected outputs from the actions proposed at the workshop include:

Component 1:

Component 2:

Component 3:

Energy levels at the end of the workshop were high, with several participants commenting that the event came as a welcomed opportunity to interact with colleagues and more easily exchange ideas on the complex issue of drought phenotyping. The outlook for the steps ahead and the future network was also positive, as captured by GIS specialist Glenn Hymann: “The phenotyping network and all the work that will be carried out in the network sites is where we will really see how the wonders of genetics and bioinformatics research play themselves out on the ground. So, in the coming years it well be exciting to see the results of GCP research in the crop plants”.

For further information on this workshop, please contact Subprogramme 3 Leader This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .