Sixteen scientists from agricultural research centers around the globe came to Cornell in October to participate in workshops designed to strengthen worldwide crop breeding efforts. Organized by the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Crop Improvement (ILCI), the workshop included scholars from ILCI’s Priority Setting team, ILCI’s Cross-Cutting themes team and ILCI-supported Centers of Innovation working in Burkina Faso, Costa Rica, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Senegal and Uganda.
The workshop, held Oct. 1-15, was designed to offer training on resources like gender-inclusive research design and the Cornell Library, provide networking opportunities, and create time for hands-on team working sessions. These sessions allowed researchers to drill down on high-impact projects and solve problems alongside colleagues, said Martina Occelli, co-lead for ILCI’s Priority Setting team.
Belarmino Amadeu Faife Divage, a workshop participant and social scientist with the Mozambique Agricultural Research Institute, analyzes the cowpea value chain in his country. Cowpea are a legume native to sub-Saharan Africa, valued for their hardiness, nutrition, ability to grow off-season and to serve as a food source for both humans and livestock. Divage, who has a background in plant breeding and works on cross-cutting issues with the Center of Innovation for Crop improvement for East and Southern Africa (CICI-ESA) in Mozambique, seeks to understand which traits are most desired by growers and consumers and to influence priorities for plant breeding programs in the country.
“Agriculture is critical because it’s the start of economic development,” Divage said. Adoption of new varieties, and uptake of new technologies in general, is lower than it should be in Mozambique and studying community dynamics is key to understanding why, he said. “That’s why we came to Cornell, to learn, to share experiences and to see how we can make our contribution to change these dynamics.”
The workshop aimed to encourage plant breeders and social scientists to consider multidimensional priorities in crop improvement, such as economic, environmental and nutritional considerations alongside themes of gender equity, youth engagement, inclusion and resilience. The workshop brought together researchers working on a range of crops and multiple crop improvement programs in East Africa, West Africa, Central America and the Caribbean.
“We pre-decided with each team which interdisciplinary project they wanted to speed up during these two weeks and literally sat down, computer to computer, trying to figure out together how to resolve some of the problems,” Occelli said. “Visiting scholars also exchanged their experiences and lessons learned.”
Source: cornell.edu
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Categories: New York, Crops, Corn, Education