Lamyae Chentoufi, a PhD student at the Institut Agronomique et Vétérinaire de Rabat (IAV), Morocco ranked first in the L'Oréal-Unesco scholarship programme entitled "Pour les Femmes et la Science". Lamyae is one of the two students working as partners of ARCAD projet 'Cereals in Africa'. Her research activities focus on the diversity of durum wheat in Morocco and the impact of human and climatic factors on the agrosystems (more details on those activities). She also attended the 2010 edition of the ARCAD Agrobiodiversity course in Rabat (Lamyae is in blue dress on the picture). Congratulations Lamyae!
Press release (in French)

Juliana Santilli, a former trainee of our first International Training Course on Agrobiodiversity analysis (2008), has just published the English version of her book “ Agrobiodiversity and the Law. Regulating genetic resources, food security and cultural diversity”.
Juliana attended  the second edition of the Agrobiodiversity course in Morocco, no longer as a trainee but as a trainer on the political issues in PGR conservation.
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ARCAD organized its annual rendez-vous on 23-24 November 2011 in Montpellier at Agropolis International premises.

On November 23th, a large audience of more than 120 scientists and students attended a conference on plant paleogenomics by Jérôme Salse (INRA Clermont-Ferrand) and short lectures by researchers on main issues and challenges of ARCAD programme. More

During the following sessions, the activities of each components of ARCAD programme have been presented and discussed as well as future activities and perspectives.

Two hundred pupils and their teachers of Kabururu primary school in Eastern Province of Kenya are involved in the project Cereals in Africa  through an in situ trial that intends to compare folk taxonomy of sorghum landraces between different ethnolinguistic groups. A painting competition was organized to create children awareness for agrobiodiversity conservation. The three winners have reproduced their work on an information board, located at the entrance of the school to draw farmer’s attention on the project. More...

Crop domestication: old story, young scientists   

Domestication is one of the key-words of the ARCAD scientific programme. It is also at the core of Amandine Cornille’s PhD research at Université Paris-Sud, who is studying the genetic origin of apple tree (Malus domestica ). ARCAD was therefore delighted to support Amandine’s idea to bring together for a one-day workshop PhD students and Post-doc scientists developing studies on crop domestication. On 13 April 2011, more than 25 young scientists and a few older ones, coming from several French labs, met in Agropolis International premises, Montpellier, to share their work on the evolutionary history of a wide range of crops and relevant statistical approaches, as well as to exchange views on concepts, methodological issues and data analyses. It is expected the enjoyable and lively discussions between participants will continue by other means and that this meeting will have contributed to create a dynamics within the new generation of scientists in crop evolutionary biology. More

In the framework of ARCAD project Cereals in Africa , two regions of Morocco (a valley of High Atlas and southern Rif) have been chosen as study areas for analysing genetic diversity and climatic adaptation of landraces of durum wheat. The aim of the project is to identify and analyse the different factors (social organisation, farming practices, and environment) shaping the genetic structure of traditional varieties of wheat. More

On the 4^th  of November 2010 in the University of Ougadougou, Romaric Nanema successfully defended his PhD thesis on the genetic resources of the tuber crop Solenostemon rotundifolius  (“fra-fra potato”) in Burkina Faso. Romaric is a former trainee of the ARCAD Agrobiodiversity training course, Montpellier 2008. More

Congratulations Romaric!

The second edition of the international training course on agrobiodiversity “Agrobiodiversité: des hommes et des plantes. Outils et Méthodes d’analyse”  was held in Rabat, Morocco on May 3-14, 2010. The course was organized by ARCAD in partnership with the Institut Agronomique et Vétérinaire Hassan II  and with the support of Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement  (IRD) Office in Morocco. More