“There are plenty of opportunities here to present and get feedback on our planned activities for the next ten years”, said CIP’s Deputy Director for Development, Oscar Ortiz. “It is also a great place to enter into new partnerships or renew past ones.”
The EAPR seeks to promote the exchange of scientific and general information relating to all facets of potato growing and utilization, and also to encourage and assist international cooperation in this field. While 80% of the 400 attendees came from Europe, potato specialists from other continents were present, including representatives from the African Potato Association (APA) and the Latin American Potato Association (ALAP).
Two CIP senior scientists were invited to give keynote lectures in the first two days of the event. Andre Devaux, CIP’s regional operation leader for Latin America and the Caribbean, was the first keynote speaker with a presentation entitled: “From a poverty lens to a food security lens: potatoes to improve global food security and sustainability“. CIP’s Executive Officer for Research Management, Philippe Monneveux, gave a keynote lecture on ‘Drought and heat tolerance evaluation in potato (Solanum tuberosum L.)‘ .
In addition to the display of five scientific posters designed by CIP, other CIP scientists gave presentations on different topics, including:
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Potato in cereal-based system to meet food security in South Asia (Mohinder Kadian)
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Potato yield gap analysis in Sub-Saharan Africa through participatory modeling: optimizing the value of historical breeding trial data (Dieudonne Harahagazwe)
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Development of late blight resistant potato biotech varieties for Sub-Saharan Africa (Marc Ghislain)
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Supporting iron and zinc potato biofortification through XRF fast screening technology (Thomas zum Felde)
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Is the discrimination against 13c in leaflets and tubers an appropriate trait to determine genotypic differences related to drought tolerance in potato? (David Ramirez)
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Relationship of water use efficiency, yield and drought tolerance in potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) under controlled conditions (Evelyn Farfan)
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Visual inspection to manage bacterial wilt in Sub-Saharan Africa: improving seed quality and impacting smallholder farmers (Monica Parker)
A CIP booth allowed the 300+ attendees to find out about the latest publications, including the Catalogue of potato varieties and advanced clones 2014, and to taste colorful potato chips made from native potatoes from the Andes.
More than 50 attendees also joined CIP scientists for three open discussions held in a parallel session dedicated to international research for food security, where CIP’s new strategy and corporate plan was presented. Topics of discussion included seed systems, physiology and genomics.
“CIP’s presence at the conference clearly reinforced the global dimension of the event,” commented the outgoing EAPR President, Jean-Pierre Goffart. “It is important for the EAPR because even though we are a European association, we are interested in international cooperation and global food security.”