By ISAAC KHISA The EastAfrican
Posted Saturday, December 15 2012 at 18:02
In Summary
The project dubbed Next Generation Cassava Breeding will be hosted by Cornel University, in the United States, together with five other partner institutions.
The partners will share cassava data, expertise, and information publicly on a website being developed by Lukas Mueller of Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research in New York.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DfID) are investing $25.2 million to support a five-year project that seeks to improve breeding and productivity of cassava in sub-Saharan Africa.
The project dubbed Next Generation Cassava Breeding will be hosted by Cornel University, in the United States, together with five other partner institutions, including the National Crops Resources Research Institute (NaCRRI) in Uganda, and the National Root Crops Research Institute (NRCRI) in Nigeria.
Other partner institutions include the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Nigeria, Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research in New York, and the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.
Ronnie Coffman, Cornell University professor of plant breeding and genetics, is the principal investigator of the multi-partner grant.
Yonah Baguma, the project co-ordinator for NaCCRI in Uganda said: “Increased support for strengthening the research capacity in Africa and harnessing novel technologies is critical to improving overall agricultural productivity and food security for poor people.”
Uganda is currently working on a number of projects including the development of cassava resistant to mosaic virus disease and cassava fortified with vitamin A.
The partners will share cassava data, expertise, and information publicly on a website being developed by Lukas Mueller of Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research in New York.
The researchers will use the latest information from cassava genome sequencing to improve cassava productivity and yields by shortening the cassava breeding cycle from almost a decade to as little as six years, in addition to training the next generation of cassava breeders, improving infrastructure at African institutions, and holding awareness-building workshops for farmers, scholars, researchers, and policy makers.
Significant plant
According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), smallholder farmers in Africa produce more than half of the world’s 250 million metric tonnes of cassava per year, a tough woody plant predicted to be one of the few crops that will benefit from climate change.
Currently, some 500 million Africans consume cassava freshly boiled or raw on a daily basis, and the plant also serves as a low-cost source of carbohydrates for animals.
“Next generation cassava provides a great opportunity for us to harness the power of modern science for faster delivery of best-bet cassava varieties for smallholder farmers,” said Chiedozie Egesi, assistant director at NRCRI and head of cassava breeding, who works to biofortify cassava with essential micronutrients to make it more nutritious.
Peter Kulakow, a cassava breeder and geneticist at International Institute of Tropical Agriculture said the project will not only give breeders in Africa access to the most advanced plant breeding technologies to deliver improved varieties to farmers more rapidly, but also ensure that cassava genetic research is at par with other top food crops such as wheat, rice, maize and potato.
