Half of the world supply of cassava is grown by smallholder farmers in Africa, where the starchy staple is a critical crop for food and cash, as it is in Asia and South America. To contribute towards addressing the apparent shortage of plant breeders in West and Central Africa, the Next Generation (NEXTGEN) Cassava Project is sponsoring three students at the West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement (WACCI) to read the Centre innovative PhD in Plant Breeding Program.
The Next Generation Cassava Breeding program is a five-year grant, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the United Kingdom Department for International Development. Coordinated at Cornell University, USA, the project features the following partner institutions: the National Crops Resources Research Institute (NaCRRI) in Uganda, National Root Crops Research Institute (NRCRI) in Nigeria, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Nigeria, Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research (BTI) on the Cornell campus, the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, and Makerere University (Uganda).
The WACCI program is training the next generation of plant scientists from Africa, said Eric Danquah, Director of WACCI and Professor of plant molecular genetics at the University of Ghana. These are students from African countries. When they complete their degree they will bring their expertise back to their home country. There has been significant brain drain in the past as students from Africa go abroad to study and then to do not return to their home countries. It is a huge loss of knowledge and resources any time that happens. The WACCI program is an antidote to this issue.
| From the left: Ismail Kayondo, Lydia Chidimma Ezenwaka and Olumide Alabi Alaba |
Ismail Kayondo grew up in Uganda on a small farm: At the front of our home was a small orchard where beans, maize and cassava were grown in alternate seasons. My mother always insisted on having cassava planted, however, so we could be sure of food security and some income. Kayondo is one of three new students, along with Olumide Alabi Alaba and Lydia Chidimma Ezenwaka (both from Nigeria), who are starting a Plant Breeding PhD Program at the West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement (WACCI) (www.wacci.edu.gh) , in Ghana. The three students are part of the Next Generation (NEXTGEN) Cassava project (www.nextgencassava.org), a program designed to bring cutting-edge breeding techniques to cassava breeding.
Being able to study in Africa will be a great benefit for the students. Training at WACCI in cassava breeding provides me the flexibility of working with a crop that is of close proximity and major importance to the livelihoods of smallholder famers, said Alabi.
I want to study cassava breeding because it is the most important source of energy in the diet of people in my country, Nigeria, said Ezenwaka. And it has so many other uses; every part of the cassava plant is utilized. The roots are used for livestock feed, bio-ethanol, starch, and processed food like gari and fufu. The stems are used as planting materials, firewood when dried, for mushroom growing when they are wet.
At WACCI, the cassava cohort will study bioinformatics and plant breeding, genotypic selection for accelerated plant breeding, advanced quantitative genetics in plant breeding, biotechnology in plant breeding, and scientific communication, among others.
The NEXTGEN Cassava project aims to revolutionize cassava breeding through the tools of genomic selection, a new plant breeding method that uses statistical modeling to predict how a plant will perform before it is field-tested. "The Next Generation Cassava Breeding project 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 National Root Crops Research Institute (NRCRI) in Nigeria.
The enrollment of the NEXTGEN Cassava students at WACCI represents efforts by International Programs Office in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (IP-CALS) to fully integrate across projects. IP-CALS is always searching for ways existing projects can work together and take advantage of all potential opportunities. We do a lot of work in Africa and it great to catalyze cross-project coordination. This allows us to deliver greater impact to more people, said Ronnie Coffman, Professor of plant breeding and genetics and Director of IP-CALS.
WACCI was recently recognized by the World Bank as one of 15 Africa Centres of Excellence. The program will receive an $8 million USD grant to bolster postgraduate programs, improve curricula, attract top researchers, offer specialized courses for research scientists, and conduct more research, and partner with industry and other academic institutions in the region. Recognition by the World Bank was a confirmation of the important work we are doing, said Prof. Danquah, and it highlights the importance of sustaining WACCI beyond the donor-funded stage which ends in 2018. We are launching a $30 million USD endowment fund to ensure our sustainability in training African scientists.
The West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement is a partnership between Cornell University, USA and the University of Ghana, Legon with initial funding from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), for the purpose of filling a critical shortage of plant breeders in Sub-Saharan Africa."