The Green Super Rice (GSR) and Stress-Tolerant Rice for Africa and South Asia (STRASA) projects held a joint workshop titled Strengthening linkages on the ground for GSR-STRASA activities in Africa and Asia on 23 November at IRRI headquarters.
The workshop aimed to strengthen the linkage between the two BMGF-funded projects, identify common grounds for active cooperation in both Africa and Asia, identify approaches to realize the outputs as envisioned in the project on the ground, and ensure sound ways for timely reporting from cooperators.
The workshop was attended by about 40 participants from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, NARES of STRASA, AfricaRice, and IRRI.
Zhikang Li, GSR project director, and Bas Bouman, Program 2 leader and CESD head, formally opened the workshop. A welcome message was given by IRRI DDG-R Achim Dobermann. In the morning, the first discussion was on updates for the Asia component. Abdelbagi Ismail presented for STRASA while Jauhar Ali presented for GSR. For the Africa part, Baboucarr Manneh, AfricaRice scientist, presented STRASA updates and Eklou Attiogbevi-Somado presented GSR updates. Raafat El-Namaky, the new GSR Africa Coordinator, was also introduced.
In the afternoon session, discussions were on ways to strengthen linkages and practical steps to improve coordination and identify modes for regular reporting for the two projects.
Engr. Eugene Castro, associate scientist from IRRI Training Center, presented on the seed training conducted in East and southern Africa in September 2009. There was also a 20-minute conference call with David Bergvinson of BMGF after the discussion proper. The practical steps and mechanisms identified to improve coordination for both projects were management and coordination, research materials sharing, training and capacity building, and seed upscaling.
