成果の概要

1. December is the main rice transplanting season in Madagascar and I supervised the transplanting of two experiments testing breeding lines developed as part of our project, of two screening experiment evaluating tolerance to iron (Fe) toxicity and of an experiment testing whether using a Genomic Prediction model based on project data from the past two years would be successful in selecting highly adapted and high-yielding accessions from a rice gene bank. In addition, I held meeting with the director of our counterpart organizations FOFIFA and LRI to discuss general project matters, and with the head of the rice research division of FOFIFA to discuss funding and staff issues.
2. I was supervising the sowing of upland rice breeding lines and of one experiment testing lines from the HarvestPlus program for grain Zn content. Further, we were phenotyping a QTL mapping trial with 200 lines grown under drought and well-watered conditions for tiller number and heading/flowering. A new partner from the UK visited and several field visits and project planning meetings were held to develop a detailed research plan for the topics of Fe toxicity screening and modeling of P uptake from P-fixing Oxisols.