January 5, 2022
The Sorghum Adaptation in West Africa with a Genomics-Enabled Breeding Network (SAWAGEN) is a unique network of national researchers, international collaborators and farmer organizations aimed at leveraging capacity to develop and deliver demand-driven improved varieties to farmers. It is built on four separate platforms – local adaptation breeding, genetic mapping research, physiological mapping research, and broad adaptation breeding – and links researchers across those platforms in a hypothesis-driven, goal-oriented research approach. The SAWAGEN spans Senegal, Burkina Faso, Togo and Niger and reinforces existing regional breeding network initiatives to further accelerate interdisciplinary solutions to key crop improvement challenges across the Sahel.
January 9, 2022
Globally, there is great interest in applying new genomic technologies to accelerate genetic gains in developing country breeding programs. However, these methods have not been adopted in developing country level National Agricultural Research Institutes (NARI) due a mismatch between available genomic selection approaches and the existing operations of NARI breeding programs.
February 24, 2022
A research team supported by the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Sorghum and Millet (SMIL) helped rescue the cereal crop sorghum with fifty years of global research and new technology.