成果の概要

The organizers of the annual meeting of the German Society for Tropical Agriculture had invited me to give a keynote presentation during their annual meeting, the Tropentag, which was held in Bonn. I gave a presentation on how molecular approaches may contribute to agricultural development, mainly focusing on how modern plant breeding technologies like marker assisted selection are already becoming reality. Next, I visited the SATREPS project on utilizing rock phosphate in Burkina Faso. At INERA in Bobo Dioulasso I met with the local rice breeder and we visited fields used to increase the seeds we had sent earlier. In addition, we inspected the field sites that had previously used to screen for tolerance to iron toxicity. Symptoms of Fe toxicity were very clear. From there we moved to the main SATREPS site at Saria, where experiment on the utilization of rock phosphate are ongoing. The rice in fields applied with ground rock phosphate were responding well. We started to harvest some of the varieties. From Burkina Faso, I traveled to Madagascar to participate in the inception meeting of the SATREPS project entitled “Breakthrough in nutrient use efficiency for rice by genetic improvement and fertility sensing techniques in Africa”.