Crop breeding for climate resilience in southern Africa: Opportunities and principles for integrating climate model projections

Targeting resilience to climate change within seed systems is an area of key investment in contributing to food security in southern Africa, and it presents a variety of challenges and opportunities.

In this free webinar University of Leeds researchers, Dr Stephen Whitfield and Dr Sarah Chapman will present analysis from work undertaken within the GCRF-AFRICAP programme on characterising current efforts to breed climate resilient crops in southern Africa. They will consider and demonstrate some of the potential applications of climate models in informing breeding priorities and strategies, and discuss some of the principles of pitfalls associated.

Following the presentation, discussant Justify Shava (Head of the SADC Plant Genetic Resources Centre) will provide a response from the practitioner's perspective, situating the GCRF-AFRICAP research within the broader context of African seed systems and climate resilience. The event will close with a Q&A period.

This seminar is hosted by the GCRF-AFRICAP programme in partnership with the Global Food and Environment Institute, University of Leeds. For more GCRF-AFRICAP seminars on food systems and climate resilience in sub-Saharan Africa, visit https://africap.info.

Register for the webinar here.