Selected to Make their Mark

A program that teaches West Africans marker-assisted selection while establishing advanced laboratories in the region is creating a new breed of national scientist

Ken Bugul Jaiteh looks very happy as she collects her certificate for finishing an intensive course at the Africa Rice Center (WARDA) on molecular biology techniques. These techniques will be of immense value for Jaiteh’s work at The Gambia’s National Agricultural Research Institute, where she is a research technician. Armed with new skills, she now belongs to a new breed of national scientific staff trained to bring molecular biology to bear on the heretofore intractable problem of rice yellow mottle virus (RYMV).

RYMV is unique to Africa, where it is sometimes called riz SIDA , or rice AIDS, because of its devastating effect on lowland rainfed and irrigated rice. It can sometimes cause total crop failure and contribute to famine in areas where rice is an important food staple. The RYMV pathogen is both highly infectious and highly variable. Efforts to develop cultivars with durable resistance to RYMV have met little success so far, but marker -assisted selection (MAS) promises to speed up the process of pyramiding useful genes into elite rice varieties and so improve their resistance to RYMV.

In 2005, WARDA launched a 3-year project, with support from the West Africa Regional Program of the US Agency for International Development, to train research staff and university students from the national programs of four West African countries to use MAS to develop RYMV-resistant rice varieties. The four project countries are Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali and Gambia, but the project’s benefits are expected to reach all African countries that grow rice.

An important component of the project is to help set up in each of the four countries a small but functional molecular biology laboratory where trained national staff, such as Jaiteh, will be able to transfer RYMV-resistant genes to elite rice varieties. Participatory varietal selection will be used to introduce improved and resistant varieties to farmers in each country and so allow them to help select the most appropriate varieties for further development.

“It is also important to note that, beyond achieving the project objectives, the legacy of this project will be the availability of laboratories furnished with basic equipment necessary to apply molecular biology techniques and trained national staff, as well as PhD students, who can apply these techniques across many different crops,” explains Marie-Noelle Ndjiondjop, the WARDA molecular biologist who heads the project.

The first of the series of training programs planned for the project was held in Cotonou, Benin, in April 2006. Eight researchers, including Jaiteh, took part in the intensive, hands-on course, which included every step from DNA extraction to data analyses for genetic diversity studies, linkage mapping, analyzing qualitative trait loci, and MAS.

Participants learned how to collect, analyze, interpret, and present data from a wide rage of molecular markers, with emphasis on random amplified polymorphic DNA, inter-simple sequence repeats, amplified fragment length polymorphisms, and microsatellites. In addition to training, the project supports several doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows from sub-Saharan Africa as they undertake research studies in biotechnology.

“This is a significant partnership for sub-Saharan Africa, because it is enabling our national partners to take advantage of the biotechnological revolution to address problems faced by poor farmers,” observes WARDA Director General Kanayo F. Nwanze.