News Stories - Page 8

Collaborators in two of the Peanut Innovation Lab’s first projects met this month in Uganda to kick off work to strengthen a promising coalition of peanut breeders working together across the continent. The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut is a research program funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and managed by the University of Georgia's College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

The Peanut Innovation Lab management team met with External Advisory Panel members in a retreat last week to discuss priorities for the first projects funded by the program.

The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut has dropped a request that project proposals initially explain how they will use outputs from commissioned projects, since the details of those commissioned projects are not yet available. Concept notes on project proposals are due April 20 for scientists who would like to lead a project in the $14 million, five-year Peanut Innovation Lab program.

The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut Research is calling for concept notes in two Areas of Inquiry: varietal development and value-added gains.

An event scheduled for next week in Washington D.C. will highlight the innovation labs’ role in global food security and the University of Georgia’s part in that work.

The University of Georgia has received a $14 million grant from the U.S. Agency of International Development to manage the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut Research, known as the Peanut Lab, a global peanut research program that works to alleviate hunger by helping farmers in developing countries grow healthy crops. The agreement builds on UGA and USAID’s long-standing partnership on global peanut research dating to the 1980s.

An international group of agricultural scientists, including University of Georgia and USDA scientists based in Georgia, have mapped the genetic code of the peanut. Results of the five-year research project give scientists around the world a map with which to unlock some of the genetic potential of the peanut plant.

Daniel Mwalwayo has spent most of his professional career working to ensure a safe food supply in his home country of Malawi.

A few years ago, peanut farmers in the Dagomba village in the Ashanti region of Ghana had little training in how to grow, dry and store their crop in a way that would increase yield and improve quality. They planted the same variety that has grown in the region for decades and hoped that rains would fall at the right time to make a good crop. They harvested whenever they could and spread the nuts out on the ground to dry in the sun. But when offered the chance to learn improved techniques, they took advantage and have results to show for it.

his summer University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences students traveled the world with help from the college’s Office of Global Programs’ Graduate International Travel Awards.