Tag Archives: Biotechnology

Unfortunately, weevils continue every year to damage about a quarter of the sweetpotato harvest in countries like Uganda and alter the quality and safety of storage roots. A long effort to express Cry proteins that would kill weevil larvae in the infected storage root has not resulted in obtaining fully …

Being the starting point of the value chain, plant breeding carries a great responsibility. In addition to being a reliable food security crop, orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP) varieties are rich in beta-carotene; hence reduce vitamin A deficiency (VAD) in women and young children and is increasingly being recognized and expanding …

Weevils damage about a quarter of the sweetpotato harvest in Uganda and induce the accumulation of toxic compounds in the healthy-looking parts of damaged storage roots. We have introduced new genes that produce anti-weevil proteins in the sweetpotato storage root through biotechnology. We may have found few with some resistance …

Kwame Ogero, a Regional Research Associate based in Mwanza, Tanzania, was awarded the best poster prize at the Emerging Technologies for Global Food Security Conference held in Saskatoon, SK, Canada on June 13 – 16, 2016.  This was a double win for Kwame who had also received a full travel …

Biotechnology and related fields of science have over the years been used extensively to revolutionize agriculture and crop production. Although Genetic Engineering (GE)  technology has rapidly progressed worldwide and several initiatives on the broadening of biotechnology research and outreach exist in Africa, GE is yet to be applied in crop …

The African Farm Management Association (AFMA) invites interested farm management and agribusiness professionals and practitioners to submit papers for the forthcoming Congress planned for the 20-25th November 2016, Le Meridien Hotel, Pointe aux Piments, Mauritius. The tenth AFMA Congress follows a successful ninth Congress held in Cape Town, South Africa, …

Weevil’s damage on sweetpotato threatens food security for the poor. Additionally, its production, marketability, and sustainability, especially in areas experiencing longer dry periods. Mitigation procedure applied conventional breeding methods which failed in spite of considerable investments for decades leaving farmers hopeless. This brief report on project aimed at developing weevil …

Genetically modified (GM) crops contain traits that have been introduced by the tools of modern biotechnology. Their novelty has prompted comprehensive assessment of their human and environmental safety. With conventional breeding, thousands of genes are shuffled and recombined to obtain a desired trait. In comparison, modern biotechnology adds as little …

Weevil is a major threat to sweetpotato, which plays a vital role in food security and income generation for both the urban and rural poor in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Weevils can devastate sweetpotato production, and even cause total crop loss. Weevil resistant varieties are the most sustainable solution to this …