By christelle.rabil@croptrust.org
1 June 2022

Staff from the Seeds for Resilience partner genebanks learned about Genesys during the GOAL workshop that took place in Nairobi, Kenya 9-13 May 2022.

Seeds for Resilience is a five-year project funded by the Federal Government of Germany through the German Development Bank (KfW) and managed by the Crop Trust. The project started in 2019 and is working with the national genebanks of Nigeria, Zambia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Ghana.

These national genebanks conserve thousands of important crop samples that farmers could use directly and that could help scientists develop more resilient, productive and nutritious varieties. But for years they have faced challenges, including insufficient staffing and funding, which have put their collections at risk.

A key goal of the Seeds for Resilience project is improving internal genebank processes and increasing the technical capacity of staff. To that end, a workshop was held in Nairobi between 9-13 May 2022, during which some 30 participants from the partner genebanks attended a series of sessions on genebank science, quality management, communications, and policy.

Participants wrote their expectations from the workshop about Genesys and GG-CE

In one session, the Information Systems team at the Crop Trust talked about the data that  genebank staff can manage using GRIN-Global Community Edition (GG-CE) to run their genebank, and also the data that they can make publicly available to users in Genesys. Simon Kang'ethe from the World Agroforestry Center - ICRAF demonstrated the upload of characterization and evaluation datasets in Genesys and participants got the chance to try it out for themselves.

Group picture of the participants and Crop Trust staff members at the workshop venue in Nairobi.

Stay tuned for new datasets coming in from Seeds for Resilience partners!