marker-assisted selection in wheat - ictsd

468Marker-assisted selection – Current status and future perspectives in crops, livestock, forestry and fishBox 6Partnerships for technology transfer: the African Agricultural TechnologyFoundationThe mission of the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) is to promote foodsecurity and reduce poverty. It is a not-for-profit foundation set up in 2002 with the help of theRockefeller Foundation, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) to identifyopportunities for royalty-free transfers of technologies useful to resource-poor smallholderfarmers in Africa. In pursuing its mission, it negotiates access to technologies, enters intocontractual arrangements to facilitate their deployment and provides stewardship over theirdeployment. It is the responsible party for addressing the concerns about technology ownerswhile protecting the interests of smallholders, handling intellectual property management,regulatory compliance, liability, licensing and freedom-to-operate assessments. In effect itis a “one-stop-shop” for structuring and accessing agricultural technologies and know-how.Among its priorities is genetic improvement of cowpea. This is being tackled through aNetwork for the Genetic Improvement of Cowpea for Africa, involving African and UnitedStates’ universities, IITA, the Kirkhouse Trust, which is a United Kingdom charity, andMonsanto. Part of the project involves developing ready-to-use molecular marker kits forcowpea breeding teams in Africa. The markers are being selected from the cowpea SNPprogramme in IITA and the cowpea genome-sequencing programme, with polymorphismsdetected using agarose gel systems.knowledge to the field does not followa linear and top-down transfer path thatbegins with research, moves on to developmentand production, and ends with thesuccessful introduction of new products orprocesses. Instead, it involves continuousfeedback loops between researchers, extensionagents and farmers within which thedevelopment, fine-tuning and adoption ofthe products of research take place withina specific context. All too often, technologieslie “on the shelf”, lost between researchand its transformation into useful products,because of the lack of understanding of thefunctional linkages between research institutions,extension services and farmers.Policy- and decision-making aboutsupporting agricultural research and technologydevelopment therefore need to shiftaway from traditional and often laboratorybasedresearch and the supply of technologyper se, towards fostering an innovation systemsapproach to understand better theways in which the producers and users oftechnology interact, and thereby identifyand get round the obstacles faced in transformingresearch outputs into developmentoutcomes and impacts. For example, whyhas artificial insemination, a technologycentral for driving improved genetics intomany species of farm animals, been successfulin some countries and localities andnot in others and what are the implicationsof this for applying MAS?Unrealistic expectations of whatagricultural research and agricultural biotechnologyin particular can do to alleviatehunger and poverty have had a negative