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TANZANIA’s efforts
in increasing food security by having improved varieties of cassava have
received a major boost of 35 million US dollars in new funding from the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and UK aid from the United Kingdom.
According to a statement issued by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) yesterday, Cornell University will expand international efforts to deliver improved varieties of cassava to smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.
“This grant funds a
second five-year phase that will allow us to build on previous work and
focus on getting improved varieties into farmers’ fields,” said Ronnie
Coffman, international plant breeder and director of Cornell’s
International Programmes in the College of Agriculture and Life
Sciences, who leads the project.
During Phase 1 of
the Next Generation Cassava Breeding project - also funded by the Gates
Foundation and UK aid from 2012 to 2017 - researchers shortened the
breeding cycle for new cassava varieties by improving flowering and
using genomic selection.
Through analysing
plant genotypes and identifying cassava lines with desirable traits,
such as resistance to cassava brown streak disease or high dry matter
content, breeders also improved their ability to make selections based
on genetics and probability without having to wait for seedlings to
reach adulthood.
These methods save
breeding time for a crop where flowering and sexual propagation are
issues. In Africa, NextGen collaborators include the International
Institute of Tropical Agriculture and the National Root Crops Research
Institute in Nigeria; the West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement in
Ghana; the National Crops Resources Research Institute and Makerere
University in Uganda and the Tanzania Agricultural Research Institute.
Another goal of Phase 1 was to make cassava genomic information publicly
accessible on an open database.
Cassava researchers
all over the world are now comparing results and improving breeding
programmes without duplicating efforts by using Cassavabase. To reduce
cost per progeny and improve the quality of data uploaded to Cassavabase
in Phase 2, NextGen researchers will use additional methods of whole
genome sequencing. “Our focus for the next five years will be to
translate this research into breeding practices to increase impact,”
said Chiedozie Egesi, NextGen project director and adjunct professor of
plant breeding and genetics at Cornell, who is based at the
International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Nigeria.
“A key goal in
Phase 2 will be to identify traits preferred by farmers and end-users
and incorporate them into new cassava lines to ensure that varieties are
responsive to people’s needs.” Egesi said, “We believe we will
accelerate genetic gain as well as adopted genetic gain, increase the
yields and resilience of cassava production by smallholder farmers and
move African cassava breeding toward greater capacity.”
“Among the 30 new
clones developed at IITA using our methods, 10 had higher dry matter
yield than any clone currently available for smallholder farmers in
Nigeria,” said Jean-Luc Jannink, a research plant geneticist with the
United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service
(USDA-ARS) and Cornell adjunct associate professor in the Department of
Plant Breeding and Genetics. “Dry matter yield is a close proxy to food
yield.Conservatively, we believe that we will increase the rate of
genetic gain in cassava by 30 to 50 per cent.
” Peter Kulakow,
IITA cassava breeder and geneticist said, “Genetic gain is a measure of
the improvement of plant performance between generations and a goal of
most modern breeding programmes.
Swifter
improvements mean more new varieties can be tested and released.” At the
sixth annual NextGen Cassava meeting, February 19-24 in Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania, teams of NextGen breeders, geneticists, data analysts,
computer programmers, food technologists, social scientists and crop
protectionists will be focusing on goals for Phase 2 and discussing how
to better coordinate and leverage the exchange of germplasm and
genotypic and phenotypic data from each other
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