The GCP is a 10-year program launched in 2003 with a $15 million annual budget to improve crops in harsh drought-prone environments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It partners with over 200 institutes including the CGIAR. The GCP aims to use genetic diversity and plant science to develop improved crop varieties for food security. It focuses on cereals, legumes, roots, and tubers through research themes, initiatives, and an integrated breeding platform. Major achievements include developing genetic resources, genomic tools, and stress-resistant markers. Moving forward, the GCP faces challenges in monitoring and evaluating impact, ensuring product delivery, and strengthening partnerships to complete its work by 2013.

1. GGIAR Generation Challenge Programme
(GCP)
Partnerships in modern crop breeding
for food security
November 2011

2. GCP in brief
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Launched in August 2003
10-year framework (2004–2008; 2009–2013)
About US$15M annual budget
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Target areas: Harsh drought-prone environments
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Africa (SSA), S & SE Asia, LA
Mandate crops
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Via CGIAR (DFID, EC, SDC, USAID, CG Fund Council)
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Cereals: maize, rice, sorghum, wheat,
Legumes: beans, chickpeas, cowpeas, groundnuts
Root and tubers: cassava
A CGIAR Challenge Programme hosted at CIMMYT
Main objective: To use genetic diversity and advanced plant science to
improve crops for greater food security in the developing world
GCP : A broker in plant science bridging the gap between upstream
and applied science
www.generationcp.org

3. Partnerships

4. GCP network

5. The GCP network in 2010:
200+ Institutes
Germplasm
Breeding
Private
sector
Technology
CGIAR
Private
sector
Products/Impact
Farmer’s field
ARIs
Country
programmes
NGOs
Germplasm
Environments
Needs

6. Major achievement: GCP community
Partnerships

EPMR panel noted that GCP community is one of the
Programme’s crucial assets. In their words: “Perhaps the
most important value of GCP thus far, is the opportunities
it has provided for people of diverse backgrounds to think
collectively about solutions to complex problems, and, in
the process, to learn from one another.”
Linking upstream with applied science
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The sorghum case: From Cornell to Moi University with a
stop in Brazil
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Within a decade: Plantlet under hydroponics – Gene
cloned – Favourable alleles identified – Improved
germplasm for Brazil – Improved germplasm for Kenya
Evolution of roles and responsibilities
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Leader become mentors
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Trainees become doers and leaders

7. Research Themes and Logframe

8. Research Organisation (Management)
3. Crop information systems
Databases, Information Network
1. Integrated crop breeding
Phenotyping
Germplasm
Phenotyping
Genes
Molecular breeding
2. Comparative and applied genomics
Human resources & infrastructure
4. Capacity building
Breeding programmes
Improved genotypes
Delivery Plans
Products
5. Product delivery
Improved germplasm in farmers’ fields

9. The two phases of the Programme
Phase I (2004–2008):
A combination of commissioned and competitive projects
‘Opportunistic’ and high project turn over
Establishing the GCP community
Identifying the winners and opportunities for Phase II
Phase II (2009–2013):
Mid-term activities
Focused and targeted research
Major effort in service development
Clear impact indicators by 2013 to evaluate success
A needs and bottom-up approach: Research and services
2014: Transition year

10. Selected major outputs
Access to genetic resources
 Genotyping for 21 reference sets of CGIAR mandate crops
 Substitution lines (groundnuts, rice)
 Mutant collections (rice, potatoes, beans)
 Synthetics (groundnuts and wheat)
 MAGIC (cowpeas, rice, sorghum) NAM (rice) BCNAM, (sorghum)
Development of genomic resources
 BAC libraries and EST sequences (legumes, cassava)
 New markers: DArTs, SSRs and SNPs (all crops)
Identification of markers for biotic stresses
 Validated markers for resistance to pests and diseases for beans,
cassava, chickpeas, cowpeas, groundnuts, maize, potatoes and rice

11. Selected major outputs
Identification of markers for abiotic stresses
 Tolerance to Al toxicity in sorghum and salinity and phosphorus
deficiency in rice
 Drought tolerance in chickpeas, cowpeas, maize, rice, wheat
New tools
 GIS, bioinformatic and data management tools
 Marker tool kit
Enhanced capacities in country programmes
 Human capacities / Local infrastructure / Analytical power
Socioeconomic studies
 Ex ante analyses MB impact in developing countries
 Impact briefs

13. The 7 Research Initiatives:
50% of GCP resources to RIs in Phase II
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Basis: RIs are crop-, crop cluster-, and area-based
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Key trait: Main focus of all the RIs is drought tolerance
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Target crops/area and target countries/countries of planned research
1.
Cassava: Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda/Brazil, Colombia
2.
Legumes
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Cowpeas: Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Senegal/USA
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4.
Chickpeas: Ethiopia, India, Kenya
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3.
Beans: Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mexico, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe
Groundnuts: Malawi, Senegal, Tanzania
Maize: China, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Thailand, The Philippines, Vietnam
Rice: Africa – Burkina Faso, Mali, Nigeria; Asia – Bangladesh, Cambodia,
Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar
5.
Sorghum: Mali (additional countries via CoP to be established)/Australia
6.
Wheat: Africa – Ethiopia, Morocco; Asia – China, India/Australia
7.
Comparative genomics to improve cereal yields in high-aluminium and lowphosphorus soils (maize, rice, sorghum): Indonesia, Kenya, Niger/Brazil

14. An Integrated Breeding Platform
to support reeding in the South
www.integratedbreeding.net
Overall objective
To provide access to modern breeding
technologies, breeding material and related
information in a centralised and functional manner
to improve plant breeding efficiency in developing
countries.
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Short-term objective
To establish a minimum set of tools, data
management infrastructure and services to
demonstrate that molecular breeding can be
efficiently applied to eight crops spread across 14
user cases
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Multilateral funding for an overall budget
of US$ 20M over 5 years
Mainly Gates, DFID, EC

15. The IB Platform will offer:
Access to Breeding Services:
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well characterised and useful genetic resources
quality, economic high throughput genotyping
sophisticated phenotype and metabolite analyses
Access to Informatics Tools:
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for breeding logistics and data management
analysis and decision support for molecular breeding
accumulated public crop information of certified quality
Capacity Development - Training and support for:
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planning and comparing breeding strategies
data management and curation and quality control
analysis and decision support
use of markers and molecular breeding techniques
phenotyping sites and protocols
use and protection of intellectual property
Community development
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support for communities of practice by crop or discipline
facilitation of germplasm exchange
The IBP will not do breeding per se

16. Services
Integrated Breeding Platform
Breeding
Services
Support
Services
Portal
Information System
Configurable Breeding Workflow System
Cyber Infrastructure
Custom
Formatted
Data
Files
Web Service
Data Source
Local
Database
Data Sources
SoapLab
High
Performance
Computer
MOBY, GDPC,
BioCase/TAPIR

17. The IBP Configurable Breeding Workflow System
Breeding Activities
Project
Planning
Germplasm
Management
Germplasm
Evaluation
Molecular
Analysis
Data
Analysis
Open Project
Specify objectives
Identify team
Data
AA resources
Define strategy
Parental selection
Crossing
Population
development
Experimental Design
Fieldbook production
Data collection
Data loading
Marker selection
Fingerprinting
Genotyping
Data loading
Quality Assurance
Trait analysis
Genetic Analysis
QTL Analysis
Index Analysis
Workbench
administration
&
configuration
Administration
Project conf.
Breeding
Management
System
Breeding mana.
Genealogy mana.
Query tools
Field Trial
Management
System
Trial Fieldbook
Environment
characterization
system
Breeding Applications
Genotypic
Data
Management
System
Sample mana.
Sample
management
Analytical
Tools
Data management
Statistical analysis
Molecular Genetic
Breeding
Decisions
Selected lines
Recombines
Recombination
plans
Decision
Support Tools
Sel. Indices
Breeding App.
MARS App.
Cross Prediction
Simulation
Analytical Pipeline

18. Conclusion and Perspectives

19. Major Challenges Today
 M&E: Implement realistic workplans
 Clear milestones, products and timelines
 Reliable Delivery Plans with clear impact indicators
 Ensure delivery and sustainable use of GCP products
 Product delivery strategy
 Reinforce ownership by the GCP community
 Partnership
 Balance community momentum and a focused research agenda
 Data release and quality control
 Difficult to finish the work (time, resources)
 Still not a lot of data in our Central Registry today
 Quality and documentation are very variable
Change in mindset: from institutional to corporate

20. Conclusions
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A vibrant community bridging the gap between basic and
applied agricultural science providing new tools for plant
breeding
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Agile programme structure
Dynamic network of partners
Significant amount of products already been generated
Already an impact in the breeding community
The success of the GCP will be judged on the
quality of the science and relevance of its
products for impact on crop improvement
Visit us: www.generationcp.org

21. GCP people:
The Programme’s greatest asset!
Participants of the GCP General Research Meeting, September 2011