Announcements and short news items about activities at the Center or elsewhere
During the official opening of the new addition to the World Vegetable Center South Asia building in Hyderabad, India on 18 October 2016, the Director General addressed the Center's regional role in vegetable productivity, new technology to benefit small-scale producers, and the need to overcome malnutrition, especially among women and children.
Twelve Taiwan seed companies met with World Vegetable Center staff and members of the Taiwan Council of Agriculture, Food and Fertilizer Technology Center, and the Taiwan Seed Trade Association on 3 October 2016 at WorldVeg headquarters to seek out areas for collaboration. WorldVeg staff learned about the research priorities of Taiwan seed companies, and seed companies were introduced to the Center's vital role in international agriculture, particularly in Africa and other parts of Asia. The forum aimed to facilitate knowledge sharing, opportunities for regional field trials, and transfer of the Center's research products to Taiwan vegetable producers.
The Global Action Plan for Agricultural Diversification (GAPAD) is an initiative to support the United Nation Sustainability Development Agenda 2030. Agricultural diversification will expand current food systems through increasing species diversity and creating a more resilient agriculture ecosystem that includes new crops for food and non-food uses. The GAPAD SDG 2 (Sustainable Development Goal 2) Webinar on 20 September 2016 at 11.00 am (East African Time) will stimulate the discussion on ending hunger and achieving food security. Please REGISTER for the webinar.
The World Vegetable Center will showcase its collection of better bitter gourd breeding lines during Bitter Gourd Open Field Days, 21 August – 6 September 2016 at the World Vegetable Center East and Southeast Asia/Oceania Research and Training Station, Kasetsart University, Kamphaeng Saen, Thailand. Cucurbit breeders and plant pathologists from seed companies and public institutes are invited to come to our experimental plots to examine nearly 400 advanced breeding lines. These lines belong to different market segments popular with growers and consumers in different regions of Asia. Lines have been bred for improved yield and fruit quality and resistance to diseases such as powdery mildew, Cercospora leaf spot, and viruses using a broader gene pool derived from the global collection of bitter gourd maintained at the WorldVeg genebank. For more information and to arrange your visit, please contact Narinder Dhillon, Global Cucurbit Breeder, World Vegetable Center (narinder.dhillon@worldveg.org).
Africa’s growing cities increasingly seek safe and reliable sources of quality vegetables. A vibrant agri-food sector in rural and peri-urban areas can tap into this demand to provide wholesome and affordable food for city dwellers—and in the process, fight malnutrition, create employment, and reduce poverty on-farm. This message was at the heart of a keynote presentation delivered by Marco Wopereis, World Vegetable Center Director General, on 8 August 2016 during the 3rd All-Africa Horticultural Congress at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Ibadan, Nigeria. Participants from across the continent gathered at the IITA campus to present ideas, explore options, and address bottlenecks for exploiting horticulture’s potential to expand and enhance local economies and livelihoods.
On behalf of the World Vegetable Center, Legume Breeder Ram Nair signed a memorandum of agreement between the Center and the Government of Odisha, India on 23 July 2016 in Bhubaneswar, Odisha to support the project “Improving mungbean and urdbean productivity in Odisha state.” P. K. Meherda, Commissioner cum Director, Directorate of Agriculture and Food Production, Government of Odisha, signed for Odisha.
Director General Marco Wopereis recently returned from his first official trip to Europe and Africa, where he met staff, current and potential partners, and donors. In Montpellier, France, he had discussions on collaboration between the Center and CIRAD (Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement) and attended the CIRAD Scientific Council Meeting from 8-10 June. CIRAD has strengths in field agronomy and modeling, vegetable breeding, food safety and market linkages in Africa. In Mali from 14-17 June, Marco met with the World Vegetable Center’s West and Central Africa team at the office in Bamako, and representatives of government and nongovernmental organizations. Mali seeks support to develop its horticultural sector, particularly the vegetable seed sector.
Institutes from around the world made deposits to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault this week, marking another step forward in the fight to ensure future global food security. More than 8,000 varieties of crops from Germany, Thailand, New Zealand, and the World Vegetable Center arrived at the Vault, located on a remote Norwegian archipelago, to be stored deep within the permafrost.
Are you the person to move the World Vegetable Center’s research agenda forward? Do you have the drive, vision and experience to establish collaborations with advanced research institutions, and create a simulating environment to attract world class scientific staff, partners, visiting scientists and students from around the world? If so, the Center wants you as its next Deputy Director General - Research. Download the position announcement. Deadline for applications is 15 July 2016.
The World Vegetable Center and the Rural Development Administration (RDA), Republic of Korea, have embarked on a technical cooperation project to identify molecular markers associated with disease and insect resistance for marker assisted selection in tomato breeding programs. Il-Sheob Shin, an RDA scientist seconded to the Center, is the principal investigator, under the supervision of Roland Schafleitner, head of Biotechnology/Molecular Breeding. The project runs through January 2018.