3rd Online café PlantB+B
In our third Plant Biotechnology and Breeding (Plant B+B) online café, we have invited speakers Em. Prof. Dr Rony Swennen (IITA), Dr Jerome Kubiriba (National Agricultural Research Organization- NARO, Uganda) and Mary Mwangi (Kenyatta University, KU, Kenya)
Our invited scientists presented their findings on how their teams' breeding work has been instrumental in creating high-yielding cooking bananas and how these new varieties are finding their way to East African markets. Indeed, the speakers went further than the breeding work and shared their experiences on the key characteristics that led to a better adoption by farmers of the newly bred banana lines and the acceptance by the local consumers. The researchers further discussed cross-cutting aspects such as how gender-responsive breeding and improved agronomical practices have a role to play in adopting and disseminating the new banana varieties to improve EA farmers' livelihoods.
Em. Prof. Dr. Rony Swennen, IITA, Uganda
Rony Swennen obtained his PhD at KU Leuven, Belgium in 1984. After a brief research stay in the Canary Islands, Spain, he joined IITA in 1979 in Nigeria. In 1990 he became a professor at KULeuven and lead the Laboratory of Tropical Crop Improvement until 2020. He collected worldwide banana and plantain varieties that laid the basis for the International Transit Centre of Banana. He has been PI of two Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation projects including the Breeding Better Bananas project. At IITA he leads the highland banana breeding program and has been key in breeding and registering new banana varieties all over the world and through his career, he has made an enormous impact on the livelihoods of many farmers and their families.
Dr. Jerome Kubiriba
He is Senior Research Scientist at the National Agricultural Research Organization (NARO), Uganda. He is specialised in Plant Disease Epidemics control for improved livelihoods of the farming and consuming communities. With a background in plant pathology he has 22 years of experience in the generation of technologies and actively mobilizing banana value chain actors to utilise the technologies. He currently leads a vibrant team of scientists and technicians working on generation and promotion of technologies for increased production and utilization of the banana crop in Uganda and beyond.
Ms Mary Mwangi
Mary Mwangi is a Lecturer and plant biotechnology researcher at Kenyatta University, Kenya. Her area of interest is Banana Biotechnology; specifically, Sigatoka disease resistance breeding and the popularization of tissue culture banana technology among rural farmers. Mary is actively involved in initiatives to promote participation of women in STEM as a member of the International network of Women Engineers and Scientists (INWES) and the Association of African Women in Science and Engineering (AAWSE). Mary is a collaborator in the Climate Smart Banana project (CLISMABAN) in which she leads the Kenyan initiative in participatory, gender, responsive variety selection of improved cooking banana hybrids (NARITAs).
