Arcad

The Director of AGAP research unit, Dr Jean-Christophe Glaszmann, presented the ARCAD project at the Gene Bank Workshop during the 3d Internatinal symposium on Genomics of Plant Genetic Resources that was held  in Jeju, South Korea from 16 to 19 April, 2013. See the presentation

In the frame of Arcad project Cereals in Africa,  agrosystem surveys have been conducted on a sample of  farms located in three administrative regions of Guinea with a focus on sorghum and fonio landraces. Based on the analysis of the survey, 18 villages were visited on August 2012 and fonio samples of early varieties were collected for further genotyping. Those activities were jointly undertaken by researchers of AGAP and DIADE research units with the Institut de Recherche agronomique de Guinée (IRAG) as the African scientific partner and the major contributor for the organization of the training and field activities. More.

Jean-Marie Prosperi, a scientist of INRA, took part  in a meeting on the wild relatives of alfalfa (Medicago sativa)  organized by the Global Crop Diversity Trust and the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation. This meeting was held in Ardmore (Oklahoma, USA) on the Noble Foundation premises from September 9th to 13th 2012. The purpose of this meeting was to bring together a small international group of alfalfa breeders and genetic resource specialists to discuss pre-breeding efforts using alfalfa crop wild relatives. The current state of use, the best ways forward, the important traits for climate change and germplasm needs have been discussed. The output from the meeting will be a report that will be used by the Global Crop Diversity Trust to guide its decisions in upcoming Crop Wild Relatives activities.

Lamyae Chentoufi, a PhD student at the Institut Agronomique et Vétérinaire de Rabat (IAV), Morocco ranked first in the L'Oréal-Unesco scholarship programme entitled "Pour les Femmes et la Science". Lamyae is one of the two students working as partners of ARCAD projet 'Cereals in Africa'. Her research activities focus on the diversity of durum wheat in Morocco and the impact of human and climatic factors on the agrosystems (more details on those activities). She also attended the 2010 edition of the ARCAD Agrobiodiversity course in Rabat (Lamyae is in blue dress on the picture). Congratulations Lamyae!
Press release (in French)

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.
 More

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...