English French

WACCI - Purdue University Workshop on “Developing a Functional Gene Discovery Platform for Sorghum Improvement” opens at the University of Ghana

The West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement (WACCI) and Purdue University, USA, with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, have opened a workshop on “Developing a Functional Gene Discovery Platform for Sorghum Discovery” at the University of Ghana. 

Opening the workshop, the Director of WACCI, Professor Eric Yirenkyi Danquah said he was delighted to welcome Dr. Mitch Tuinstra, Professor of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Dr. Cliff Weil, Professor of Agronomy and Dr. Charles Addo-Quaye, Post Doctoral Fellow in Bioinformatics from Purdue University, USA and Dr. Hamidou Traore from the Institut de l'Environnement et Recherches Agricoles (INERA), Burkina Faso to the University of Ghana as instructors. He said he was optimistic that by the end of the training, WACCI students would have learnt a lot in the area of genomics and bioinformatics for plant breeding and the trainers would be content that they played a key role in their training. In response, the Visiting Scientists spoke briefly about their research and international collaborations. The week-long workshop (August 5 - 9, 2013) is expected to build students’ capacity in the use of modern tools to develop new improved crop varieties with in-built resilience against biotic and abiotic stresses for increased productivity.