After attending the Ug99 conference in New Delhi (5-8 November), DG Tom Lumpkin traveled to Ethiopia to meet with CIMMYT collaborators and visit regional offices. His travels across Africa will also include Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique, where he will attend the Annual General Meeting of the Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research (CGIAR) 4-5 December in Maputo before returning to Mexico in mid- December. During his absence Jonathan Crouch, director of CIMMYT’s Genetic Resources, will assume designated DG responsibilities.
While in Ethiopia, Lumpkin learned first-hand about the work of CIMMYT maize breeder Strafford Twumasi Afriyie, pictured here with BH660, a popular hybrid. Afriyie and his team are converting the hybrid into quality protein maize (QPM) as part of a CIDA-funded project that also involves village-level QPM effectiveness studies, taste trials with njira (the local starchy staple) made from QPM, and other breeding efforts.
Capacity development 