Bioversity International awards two research fellowships

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Bioversity International’s Board of Trustees recently approved two Vavilov-Frankel Fellowships for research into agricultural biodiversity.

Enoch G. Achigan-Dako, of Benin, will study watermelon and its wild relatives with a view to improving conservation and use of genetic diversity.

Dorin Gupta, from India, plans to mine the genome of Medicago truncatula (barrel medic) in search of markers that can be used in lentil breeding. The Fellowships are intended to advance the careers of younger scientists from developing countries by enabling them to carry out relevant, innovative research outside their own countries. Research must also be valuable and applicable to the home country.

Medicago trunculata was selected as a model legume for genome sequencing and the results are now being used to further research in many areas. Gupta will work with Dr Paul Taylor at BioMarka at the University of Melbourne in Australia, looking for markers in medic that could help to identify useful genes in lentil, especially wild relatives. Cultivated lentil diversity is not all that broad, and Gupta’s previous research has been somewhat hampered by the lack of useful variability from which to breed improved varieties. Although she has had some success with using wild lentils to improve cultivated varieties, Gupta believes that molecular markers will improve the efficiency of lentil breeding by enabling her and all breeders to target genes of interest. Gupta will be co-supervised by Sarkar Ashutosh, a lentil breeder at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), which will also be supplying some of the materials for the study in Australia.

For most people watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) is first and foremost a juicy, refreshing fruit associated with hot summer days. In west Africa, however, there are species of C. lanatus and its close wild relative C. colocynthis that have bitter, inedible flesh. Both species are widely used as sources of proteins, vitamins and oil, and also provide an income for small farmers. Some researchers have taken that as evidence that watermelon was domesticated in Africa. However, the situation is unclear, with the relationship between C. lanatus and C. colocynthis confused, and several other species or subspecies adding to the confusion. Achigan-Dako plans to use molecular tools to characterize various species of melon collected in Africa and elsewhere and to use the data to build a better tree of family relationships among the various groups. This will help both to conserve genetic diversity and to make use of that diversity, for example by breeding new watermelon varieties with seeds appropriate for infant food, an increasingly important use in sub-Saharan Africa. Achigan-Dako will be hosted by the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Research at Gatersleben in Germany.

Dr Olga Linares, leader of the Bioversity Board’s Fellowships Task Group, commented that all the short-listed applications had been strong, and both of the chosen applications were very good.

«I am very happy with the quality of our Vavilov-Frankel Fellows again this year,» said Elizabeth Goldberg, head of training at Bioversity. «In future we hope to be able to strengthen the programme even further.«

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