Topic: Improving Genetic Gains in Crops to help meet Food Security in Africa
Date : Thursday, 10th August, 2016
Time : 3:30 Pm
Venue : Auditorium of The Centre for African Wetlands, Legon
Speaker: Dr. Dave Hoisington, Research Professor and Director, Feed the Future Peanut & Mycotoxin Innovation Lab, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
ABSTRACT
We are all familiar with the demands that an increasing population will have on food security globally. Providing nutritious and adequate food sustainably to the estimated 9 billion people in 2050 will be a challenge, and the possible strategies continue to be debated. Less arable land and more unpredictable weather due to a predicted warmer world will require many coordinated approaches. Improving the productivity, nutritional value and availability of many crops will be a critical component. Crop improvement of the major stable commodities has made significant gains in the past, but there are signs that the gains are declining and will not be able to keep up with the growing demand. Advances in science have been seen as a part of the solution. Our ability to understand how crops defend themselves against pests, diseases and the environment create more effective methods to continue to increase yields in the face of these yield-reducing factors. Over the past several years, the ability to sequence and analyze genomes has increased many-fold, far faster than many predicted. Now, the use of sequenced-based systems to identify and follow specific genes is considered routine in many species, and with the costs coming down each day, are being applied to even the most minor crops. Many now claim that genomic analysis is not a limiting factor. What is now clear, and was predicted by many, is that we are limited by the ability to determine phenotypic values that are required to associate genomic structure with phenotypes. Thus, attention is now focused on how to dynamically acquire accurate measures of traits. High-throughput phenotyping systems are being investigated and providing even larger challenges in data capture, analysis and storage than what genomics required.
While many of these approaches are being applied now in crop improvement programs in the private sector and many advanced institutes in the developed world, applying even the simplest of tools remains a challenge in most developing country situations. While establishing high-throughput genomic capabilities in an institute may not be required given the ever-increasing outsourcing options, conducting high-throughput phenotyping may be a much more important requirement since it is usually important to measure crop performance under its target environments.
How to establish such capacity is the challenge, along with establishing the require capacity to utilize such large-scale informatics in the in-country breeding programs. I will provide some thoughts and examples of these approaches and what I see are priorities based on my years of experience in international agricultural research.
PROFILE OF THE SPEAKER
Dr. Dave Hoisington joined as Program Director for the Peanut & Mycotoxin Innovation Lab in September of 2013. He has a joint appointment as Senior Research Professor in the Crop and Soil Sciences Department at the University of Georgia in Athens. The Peanut & Mycotoxin Innovation Lab is one of several Innovation Labs under the U.S. government’s Feed the Future initiative. Supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Innovation Labs are networks of researchers in the United States and abroad working together to improve food security and reduce poverty in key countries of the Feed the Future initiative. The Peanut & Mycotoxin Innovation Lab applies leading innovative U.S. science to improve peanut production and use, raise nutrition awareness, and increase food safety in developing countries in the Americas and Africa.
Prior to joining University of Georgia, Dave was the Deputy Director General for Research at the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) based in Hyderabad, India. As the DDG-Research, he was responsible for overseeing ICRISAT’s global research for development activities in sorghum, millets, chickpea, groundnut and pigeonpea cropping systems. Dave joined ICRISAT in March 2005 as the Global Theme Leader for Biotechnology and was appointed DDG-Research in 2008.
Prior to ICRISAT, he served in various positions at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico leading the Genetic Resources Program and the Applied Biotechnology Center for nearly 16 years. Prior to working at CIMMYT, was an Assistant Research Professor in the Agronomy Department at the University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri where he conducted research in maize genetics and was involved in developing some of the first molecular maps for maize.
Dr Hoisington has published over 100 refereed journal articles, 30 book chapters and made numerous invited presentations at international conferences. He obtained a BSc in Botany and Plant Pathology from Colorado State University, Ft. Collins and a PhD in Plant Biology from Washington University, St. Louis.
