África: A colaboração internacional $15M visa melhorar as principais culturas agrícolas para os agricultores ruandeses.
O Centro de Ciências Vegetais Donald Danforth is part of a new international initiative to establish a Centre of Excellence for Crop Biotechnology at the Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB) Rubona Station in Huye District, Rwanda.
The Rwanda Capacity Building (BioCap) Project is a new five-year, $15 million effort supported by the Gates Foundation that aims to improve agriculture and food production by enhancing key food crop’s resistance to pests and diseases in order to increase productivity. The program will greatly strengthen Rwanda’s ability to develop, regulate and deploy improved crop varieties tailored to national needs, thereby supporting food security and sustainable agricultural growth.
Researchers based at the Centre of Excellence will focus on developing three priority crops crucial to Rwanda’s food and economic security, including virus resistance in cassava to combat cassava brown streak disease, which threatens food security for millions, farmer-preferred potato varieties resistance to late blight—one of the most destructive diseases in Rwandan farming systems and farmer-preferred banana types such as Scandisi and Jaggi, to confer resistance to banana Xanthomonas wilt and Fusarium wilt.
“The Danforth Center is excited to be a partner in this important initiative to strengthen capacity for crop biotechnology in Rwanda,” said Nigel Taylor, PhD, vice president of Impact and Dorothy J. King Distinguished Investigator at the Danforth Center. “This extends our existing collaboration with RAB to deliver virus resistant cassava to smallholder farmers in Rwanda and strengthens our commitment to help Rwanda as it develops to become a leader for crop biotechnology in Africa.”
“Our agriculture sector continues to face serious challenges, including emerging pests such as fall armyworm and mango mealybug, and diseases such as cassava brown streak disease, potato bacterial wilt, banana Xanthomonas wilt, Fusarium wilt and drought stress,” said Solange Uwituze, State Minister in the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources.
The investment will strengthen research infrastructure, develop human capacity and strengthen Rwanda’s ability to integrate biotech crops into performance trials, seed systems and extension services as well as support the generation of regulatory and environmental and food safety data to ensure biotech crops are both productive and safe for farmers and consumers.
Florence Uwamahoro, Acting Director General of RAB, said the BioCap Project will help strengthen seed system aggregation, certification pipelines and public–private partnerships to enable widespread deployment of improved crop varieties to farmers.
Beyond individual crop products, the initiative aims to build long-term national expertise and position Rwanda as a regional leader in crop biotechnology.
In addition to the Rwandan government and the Danforth Center, partners include the International Potato Center (CIP), International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Michigan State University and Alliance for Science Rwanda.
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