Announcements

Awards

CGIAR scientists were honored with several major awards recently, highlighting the CGIAR’s reputation for scientific excellence in the world's major agricultural scientific fora. The awardees include:

Achim Dobermann , of IRRI, received the Werner Nelson Award for Diagnosis of Yield -Limiting Factors.

Braima James of IITA was elected Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, UK. He joins an eminent group of Fellows of the Society which includes Darwin and Wallace to mention but two. James is Coordinator of the CGIAR Systemwide Program on Integrated Pest Management and is Officer-in-Charge of the IITA Benin Station.

David J. Mackill , Head of IRRI’s Plant Breeding, Genetics, and Biotechnolgy Division, was made Fellow of the American Society of Agronomy.

Jorge Franco , José Crossa, Marilyn Warburton, and Suketoshi Taba, all CIMMYT scientists, were awarded the Crop Science C8 Outstanding Paper Award by the Crop Science Journal for their paper “Sampling strategies for conserving maize diversity when forming core subsets using genetic markers.” Working with a smaller number of accessions facilitates breeding, testing, and germplasm bank use.

M.V.K. Sivakumar , formerly of ICRISAT and currently with WMO, was given the International Service in Agronomy Award.

Ravi Singh , CIMMYT Principal Scientist, was elected Fellow of the American Society of Agronomy at the Society’s 2007 Annual Meeting. He was also recently awarded the International Service in Crop Science Award for his ongoing contributions to develop rust-resistant wheat. Singh has developed some of the highest-yielding and widely adapted CIMMYT-spring wheat germplasm that also features high levels of durable resistance to both leaf and yellow rusts.

Roland Buresh , IRRI Senior Scientist, and John Ryan of ICARDA received the International Soil Science Award and the Soil Science Distinguished Service Award, respectively from the Soil Science Society of America.