The IITA
CGIAR
No. 2336
25 –29 July 2016
Sanginga to stay on as DG until 2021, IITA BoT confirms
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hrough an email circulated to all IITA staff by Bruce Coulman, Chair of the IITA Board of Trustees (BoT), on 28 July, the IITA BoT has officially confirmed the acceptance of Nteranya Sanginga of its offer for an additional five years at the helm of the Institute. In his communication, the BoT Chair said, “on behalf of the Board of Trustees of IITA, I am pleased to announce that Nteranya Sanginga has accepted our offer of an additional five-year term as Director General, beginning 1 November 2016.”
“IITA has undergone a period of unprecedented growth in its science capacity under Sanginga’s first five years of leadership. The Board is looking forward to working with the DG on the many new initiatives under way that will strengthen IITA’s position as the leading agricultural research institute to address the problems of hunger and poverty in Africa.” The whole IITA community joins the BoT in wishing DG Sanginga another fruitful term as head of IITA. DG Sanginga.
Landmark regional crop breeding trials show promise against deadly cassava viral diseases
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isease resistance trials being conducted simultaneously in 33 different locations across 5 African countries and involving 25 shared varieties – a first-of-its-kind multi-country collaborative cassava breeding initiative in East and Southern Africa – are showing promise against the deadly Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD) and Cassava Mosaic Disease (CMD). This was highlighted during a stakeholders’ meeting of the New Cassava Varieties and
Clean Seed to Combat CBSD and CMD Project (5CP) project, under which the trials are being undertaken, held recently in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The project is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and led by IITA working in collaboration with the national agricultural research systems of Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zambia where the trials are being conducted. The 5CP project is in its final year of implementation.
This landmark regional initiative is aimed at speeding-up the breeding of cassava varieties with dual resistance to CMD and CBSD in the five countries where the diseases are of great concern. Edward Kanju, IITA cassava breeder and coordinator of the 5CP project, reported that preliminary results of the trials have already shown that several of the new varieties are virtually unaffected by CBSD and CMD, even in locations where disease pressure is extremely high from infected fields surrounding the trials. “Although in many of the countries the varieties are undergoing their first year of trials, our initial results are already showing good promise. We will further validate the performance of these varieties by comparing them to local ones that have been selected as checks,” he explained.
5CP team visiting the trials in Tanzania.
In these trials, 25 cassava varieties contributed by and shared among the five countries are simultaneously being evaluated in multiple locations under high-disease pressure field conditions. The planting materials being used in Cont’d on page 2
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