Summary overview from the West Africa SweetGAINS Sweetpotato Breeding and Seed Community of Practice meeting.

A series of 5 ongoing online meetings takes steps to strengthen a West Africa Sweetpotato Breeding and Seed Community of practice, to ensure the continuing development and dissemination of nutritious and productive sweetpotato varieties for the sub-Region.  The meetings organized by the International Potato Center under the auspices of the SweetGAINS Project, in collaboration with CORAF, and aligned to its strategy of Regional Centers of Excellence have the specific objectives to:

1. Work towards building a functioning regional sweetpotato Breeding and Seed Community of Practice in West Africa
2. Strengthen capacity of interested partner programs in key elements of breeding excellence, including product profiles, stage gate management, trial design and data management

The time and topic of the five sessions of the program are as follows:

1. 27 May, 9-11 a.m. GMT. Regional breeding/seed background and potential.
2. 29 May, 9-11 a.m. GMT. Concepts in breeding/seed excellence.
3. 1 June, 9-11 a.m. GMT. Concepts in breeding/seed excellence.
4. 3 June, 9-11 a.m. GMT. Seed Systems and Dissemination updates and innovations.
5. 5 June, 9-11 a.m. GMT. Next steps towards a regional vision.

Participants in attendance are from several national programs in the ECOWAS region, including Ghana, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, Cote d’Ivoire, Togo, Senegal and Sierra Leone, and additional interested participants are welcome to attend.

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