6 January 2012
No. 1500
Grain science and technology for food quality, safety and health
ICRISAT and ICC to hold first India International Grains Conference The demand for grains is growing as a number of major global issues continue to impact the world’s food security. Hence, grain science and technology has become vital in addressing major concerns such as postharvest losses of grain produce, providing quality and safe food, fighting hunger and malnutrition, and improving livelihoods, particularly of resource-poor households in the semi-arid tropics.
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iming to open up new challenges and opportunities toward improving the quality, safety and nutritional value of grain-based foods, ICRISAT has teamed up with the International Association for Cereal Science and Technology (ICC) to conduct the 1st ICC India International Grains Conference. With the theme “Developments in Grain Science and Technology to Ensure High Quality, Safe and Healthy Grain-based Foods,� the conference will be held on 16-18 January at the Eros Hotel, New Delhi.
grain food processors, suppliers and traders to discuss the quality, safety and nutritional value of grain and foods made from cereals, with specific reference to the needs of India and the Indian subcontinent.
The event will bring together grain scientists and technologists, breeders, millers, bakers, cereal and
ICC has been instrumental in revolutionizing cereal science and technology through the dissemination of
The activity will serve as a forum for networking and exchange of information and ideas among all sectors of the local and international grains industry, decision-makers in the Indian cereals and food industry, and the food cereals, food and nutrition science community.
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International Grains Conference....from page 1 knowledge, conduct of research, and development of standard methods that contribute to improved food quality, food safety and security for the health and well-being of the people. The NutriPlus Knowledge (NPK) Program of the Agribusiness and Innovation Platform (AIP) of ICRISAT is coordinating the conference along with ICC. In 2012, ICRISAT became the first ICC Institutional Member in India. Renowned speakers from international and national research institutes, multinational and domestic food companies, entrepreneurs, and food research and consultancy organizations will share their knowledge
on grain and food quality and safety, grain storage solutions and challenges, nutrition and health, equipment and tools to ensure quality and safety, crop improvement for enhanced grain quality and utilization, international and regional trends in food technology, and quality assessment of raw materials and products. The conference will include an oral paper program, an expert panel discussion, a technical trade exhibition, and a poster paper program. For more details and registration, contact Saikat Datta Mazumdar (s.dattmazumdar@cgiar.org) or visit the conference website http://india2012.icc.or.at/. g
New projects approved and funded (Part 2)
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ollowing up on last week’s series, Resource Planning and Marketing (RPM) reports the following projects that were funded and approved in the concluding months of 2011: 1. Coordination of biofortification research and development activities in grain and tuber crops to enhance nutritional security in India The HarvestPlus Challenge Program addresses micronutrient malnutrition in developing countries by developing crop cultivars with high micronutrient levels. In India, it has prioritized its research to develop high-zinc varieties of wheat and rice, and high-iron varieties and hybrids of pearl millet. The strong collaboration between HarvestPlus, the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR), and the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) will facilitate coordinated biofortified research activities to enhance overall effectiveness of biofortified cultivar development in the crops. Collaborating partners: DBT, India and ICAR Donor agency: HarvestPlus CP (Phase 2) Grant amount: US$ 490,200 2. Securing chickpea productivity under contemporary abiotic stresses: improvement of podding and seed-filling under heat, drought and salinity Chickpea is a major source of protein in the diets of people in India and an important grain legume grown in rotation with cereals in Australia. Its yields are threatened by abiotic stresses estimated to contribute losses of 6.4 million tons worldwide. This project aims to bring together detailed physiological analyses, divergent germplasm, breeding and molecular genetics to initiate multi-parental crosses, aimed at identifying QTL for tolerance to the three stresses (heat, drought and salinity) to provide new
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ICRISAT Happenings 6 January 2012/1500
tools and germplasm for abiotic stress tolerance in chickpea breeding for India and Australia. Collaborating partners: University of Western Australia and Panjab University Donor agency: India-Australia Strategic Research Fund (AISRF) Grant amount: US$ 162,400 3. Integration of MARS and GWS modules in the ISMU pipeline for facilitating molecular breeding for complex traits This project aims to identify the most appropriate marker-assisted recurrent selection (MARS) and genome wide selection (GWS) modules currently available by organizing an international workshop and integrating those tools in the Integrated SNP Mining and Utilization (ISMU) pipeline in collaboration with experts in the areas of MARS and GWS. The integrated ISMU pipeline, along with detailed documentation as well as a handy users’ manual, will be made available on the website of ICRISAT, GCP, and the Integrated Breeding Platform (IBP). Collaborating partners: Cornell University, INRA, The James Hutton Institute, and the University of Queensland Donor agency: GCP/CIMMYT Grant amount: US$ 138,000 4. DST-ICRISAT Center of Excellence (CoE) on Climate Change Research for Plant Protection (CCRPP) The complex impacts of climate change on ecosystem services call for effective prediction. Useful analysis of climate change impacts on crops and other plant systems will often require consideration of the wide array of other biota that influence plants, including to page 3 ...4
New projects approved....from page 2 plant diseases, insect pests, and weeds. This project focusing on grain legumes – chickpea and pigeonpea specifically – will evaluate the complexities of host-pathogen and host-insect-pest system, and therefore the level of knowledge and model complexity that is likely to be required by the hostpathogen and host-insect-pest system. Donor agency: Department of Science and Technology (DST)-GoI Grant amount: US$ 792,000 5. Harnessing the potential of MAGIC population for gene discovery and breeding applications in chickpea This project aims to build on the progress made under Objective 4 of TL I Phase I and complements the ongoing efforts of TL I Phase II on development of the multi-parent advanced generation inter-cross (MAGIC) population. Serious constraints in the past affected the development of MAGIC population in chickpea. Therefore, this project will ensure smooth achievement of development of MAGIC population. More importantly, it plans to undertake genotyping of at least 1000 MAGIC lines with at least 1500 SNP markers using KASPar assays through Marker Services of the Integrated Breeding Platform (IBP) of the GCP. Collaborating partners: Egerton University, Kenya and Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR) Donor agency: GCP Grant amount: US$ 425,300
6. Developing resilient and profitable rural livelihood systems in semi-arid Mozambique: a conceptual approach This project will develop a new conceptual approach guided by principles of modern resilience thinking and rural livelihood systems analysis to develop and evaluate pathways for increased food security and reduced rural poverty in the semi-arid areas of Mozambique. By identifying the constraints and defining the thresholds that keep socioecological systems (SES) in low input/low output configurations, the project will identify trajectories towards desirable states of higher productivity and profitability that are economically and ecologically sustainable and socially acceptable. This will enable the poor, particularly women, to participate and benefit from inclusive marketoriented agriculture. Collaborating partners: Mozambiquean Agricultural Research Institute (IIAM), Maputo and Centre for Development Research at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU). Donor agency: Austrian Development Agency (ADA) Grant amount: US$ 651,200 Errata: In last week’s article, “New projects approved and funded”, the grant amount for the first project (TL II Phase 2) was inadvertently mentioned as US$ 2,100,000. The figure should read as US$ 21,000,000. The error is regretted. g
Dileepkumar Guntuku joins as Global Leader of KSI Dr Dileepkumar Guntuku, an Indian national, joined on 1 January as Principal Scientist/Global Leader – Knowledge Sharing and Innovation. Dileepkumar has a PhD (Information and Communication Technology) and MS (Information Technology in Agriculture) from the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India. He also holds a Masters degree in Agricultural Entomology from the Gujarat Agricultural University (GAU), Anand, India. Before joining ICRISAT, Dileepkumar worked as Program Specialist, Global Extension at Iowa State University, Ames, USA. He also worked as Principal Scientist/ Program Coordinator of the Training School of MS Swaminathan Research
Foundation, India (MSSRF). He has over 7 years of experience in implementing research, academic and training projects. He developed and sustained many innovations in linking research– extension–farmer–markets for agricultural and rural development, and substantially contributed to the projects of many national and international agencies. He was a Research Scholar at ICRISAT-Patancheru (2004-2007) and is proficient in knowledge sharing and capacity building, ICT for development, livelihoods and food security, drought and disaster management, human computer interaction, E-learning, E-governance and E-Commerce. We welcome Dileepkumar to Team ICRISAT and wish him all success. He can be contacted on Ext # 2205. g ICRISAT Happenings 6 January 2012/1500
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ISRC news
The ICRISAT Staff Recreation Club (ISRC) will conduct sporting events for its members, beginning the third week of January in cricket, volleyball, badminton, table tennis, football, caroms, chess, tennis, swimming, cycle race (fast & slow) and cross-country race. Send in your names (with details of program, contact number and the game of
interest) to DY Giri, Groundnut Breeding (d.yadagiri@cgiar.org) by 18 January. Non-members who wish to participate are requested to become members of ISRC before the deadline. And please note… our very own Twenty-20 cricket tournament begins on 21 January! g
New managers felicitated The Scientific Officers Forum (SOF) at ICRISAT-Patancheru recently felicitated KN Reddy and DVSSR Sastry for their appointment as Manager (Germplasm Conservation) and Manager (Genebank Seed Laboratory), respectively. They were both Lead Scientific Officers in the ICRISAT Genebank. g
Visitors’ log 02 January: Fifteen students from the College of Horticulture and Forestry affiliated to the Central Agricultural University, Arunachal Pradesh. 03 January: Fifty-nine BSc agriculture students from Nagaland University. 05 January: Twenty-five trainees for seed production in oilseeds through DOR visited the groundnut breeding lab; a group of 25 from the USA with
Dr Ronald Nunn, anthropologist; and Raju Teggeli from KVK, Gulbarga, Karnataka; five students from Florida International University and UC Davis University, USA. 06 January: Fifty BSc horticulture students from Dr YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, Solan, Himachal Pradesh and 56 BSc agriculture students from ANGRAU.
Test your lung capacity! How strong are your lungs? Do they work to full capacity? Blow into the spirometer to find out at the free Lung check-up camp being conducted by the Field Medical Unit (FMU) on 12 January. The test, open to everyone, will specially help those with
asthma, allergies, lung disorders and those who smoke determine how efficiently their lungs are functioning. For those who require further tests, a consultation with the chest physician will be arranged on 13 January. To enroll, call Ext # 2638. g
Thought for the week “The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.” – Henry Kissinger