DOE JGI partners Cornell on cassava project

Cassava, a rough and ready root crop that has long been the foundation of food security in Africa is finally getting the respect it deserves. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Department for International Development of the United Kingdom (DFID) are investing $25.2 million to improve the staple crop’s productivity and build human and technical capacity for plant breeding in sub-Saharan Africa.The five-year project is hosted by Cornell University with five partner institutions: the National Crops Resources Research Institute (NaCRRI) in Uganda, National Root Crops Research Institute (NRCRI) in Nigeria, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Nigeria, Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) for Plant Research in New York, and U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in California.