During 21-25 January, 29 persons attended a course at El Batán on Fieldbook and MaizeFinder. Organized by Eduardo Hernández, of the CRIL, with support from Marianne Bänziger and Kevin Pixley, director and associate director of the Global Maize Program, the aim was to train maize workers in orderly data management. Fieldbook is an application used to prepare seed for trials, manage trial data, print labels, record data, manage breeding program inventories, conduct statistical analyses, and implement selection indexes.
Instructors were Fredy Salazar (CIMMYT-Colombia), Juan Carlos Alarcón, and Eduardo Hernández (CIMMYT-Mexico), who demonstrated the advantages and functionality of Fieldbook, a package developed by Bänziger and perfected by CIMMYT maize breeder, Bindiganavile S. Vivek. Participants included maize breeders and technicians, as well as others who might find the application useful. The course also covered MaizeFinder, a database that permits advanced searches for germplasm with particular traits of interest, and CropFinder, a prototype program that will allow the same functions for rice, wheat, and maize. Petr Kosina, Jennifer Jones, and Ricardo de la Rosa recorded the event on video for future training uses.
Participants were: Víctor Chávez, Luciano Juárez, Marcial Rivas, Martín Rodríguez, Simón Pastrana, Eva Huerta, Carlos Martínez, María Zaharieva, Martha Hernández, Natalia Palacios, Adolfo Basilio, Andrés Corona, José Luis Torres, Hilda Hernández, Fernando Juárez, Silverio Ávila, George Mahuku, Carlos Muñoz, Efrén Rodríguez, Daniel Fernández, Gerónimo Ortega, Israel Sánchez, Manuel Lorenzo López, Mayolo Leyva, Ciro Sánchez, Óscar García, Sotero Rivas, Beatriz Morales, Silverio García y Mansir Yusuf.
Capacity development 