Arcad

Juliana Santilli, a former trainee of our first International Training Course on Agrobiodiversity analysis (2008), has just published the English version of her book “ Agrobiodiversity and the law. Regulating genetic resources, food security and cultural diversity”.
Juliana attended  the second edition of the Agrobiodiversity course in Morocco, no longer as a trainee but as a trainer on the political issues in PGR conservation.
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ARCAD organized its annual rendez-vous on 23-24 November 2011 in Montpellier at Agropolis International premises.

On November 23th, a large audience of more than 120 scientists and students attended a conference on plant paleogenomics by Jérôme Salse (INRA Clermont-Ferrand) and short lectures by researchers on main issues and challenges of ARCAD programme. More

During the following sessions, the activities of each components of ARCAD programme have been presented and discussed as well as future activities and perspectives.

Two hundred pupils and their teachers of Kabururu primary school in Eastern Province of Kenya are involved in the project Cereals in Africa  through an in situ trial that intends to compare folk taxonomy of sorghum landraces between different ethnolinguistic groups. A painting competition was organized to create children awareness for agrobiodiversity conservation. The three winners have reproduced their work on an information board, located at the entrance of the school to draw farmer’s attention on the project. More...

The first national symposium on genetic resources of the Fondation pour la Recherche sur la Biodiversité  (FRB) was held in Montpellier on 21-23 September 2011. How the genetic resources should be managed to face new environmental, economical and social challenges? To answer that question, 170 researchers and managers of genetic resources of plants, animals and microbes shared their experience and the results of 50 research projects launched since 2007.  " The discussions highlighted the need to combine disciplines (biological and social sciences) and put together the different stakeholders (farmers' organizations, researchers, policy makers) to work on both cultivated and wild biological diversity" said Jean-Louis Pham, the ARCAD programme leader and symposium co-organizer.

Meeting report by M. Pautasso in Biology Letters 

More details on the symposium presentations on FRB website 

Crop domestication: old story, young scientists   

Domestication is one of the key-words of the ARCAD scientific programme. It is also at the core of Amandine Cornille’s PhD research at Université Paris-Sud, who is studying the genetic origin of apple tree (Malus domestica ). ARCAD was therefore delighted to support Amandine’s idea to bring together for a one-day workshop PhD students and Post-doc scientists developing studies on crop domestication. On 13 April 2011, more than 25 young scientists and a few older ones, coming from several French labs, met in Agropolis International premises, Montpellier, to share their work on the evolutionary history of a wide range of crops and relevant statistical approaches, as well as to exchange views on concepts, methodological issues and data analyses. It is expected the enjoyable and lively discussions between participants will continue by other means and that this meeting will have contributed to create a dynamics within the new generation of scientists in crop evolutionary biology. More