BioCassava Plus

BioCassava Plus is an integrated team of scientists from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America whose objective is to reduce malnutrition among the 250 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who rely on cassava as their staple food by delivering a more nutritious and marketable cassava.

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Participants

Dr. Paul Anderson

Donald Danforth Plant Science Center
975 N. Warson Road,
St. Louis, MO 63132, U.S.A.
Tel: 1-314-587-1894
Fax: 1-314-587-1794
E-mail: pcanderson@danforthcenter.org

Dr. Paul Anderson, Executive Director, Institute for International Crop Improvement
PI and Core Team Member, BioCassava Plus Program

Dr. Anderson has 25 years of experience in corn, soybean, and wheat improvement and plant biotechnology development. His area of specialty is grain composition improvement for feed, food, and industrial end uses. Prior to joining the Danforth Center, Paul held the position of Research Director for Food and Feed Research at Pioneer Hi-Bred International, a DuPont Company, improving the end use value of corn and soybean grain. Most recently, he was Senior International Grain End Use Manager for Pioneer International Operations responsible for positioning of grain products in Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America. During his career, Dr. Anderson has served as Research Director or Manager at Molecular Genetics, Inc., Plant Science Research, Inc. and DEKALB Genetics Corporation. In these positions, he oversaw the development of several improvements of corn and soybeans including plants with herbicide tolerance and improved protein quality. Dr. Anderson also served for four years as Principal Investigator of a program funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop biofortified sorghum for arid and semi-arid areas of Africa. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota, with Ph.D and B.S. degrees in Biochemistry.

Dr. Mark J. Manary

Core Team Member, BioCassava Plus Program
E-Mail: manary@wustl.edu
Phone: (314) 454-2341
Fax: (314) 454-4345
Mail: Washington University School of Medicine
Campus Box 8116
660 S. Euclid Ave.
St. Louis, MO 63110

Dr. Manary received his undergraduate education at Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he received a B.S. in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. In 1982 he earned his M.D. degree at Washington University School of Medicine and then served his internship and residency in Pediatrics at St. Louis Children's Hospital. After working in Tanzania and serving as Medical Officer and Acting Clinical Director of the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in South Dakota, Dr. Manary returned to St. Louis and became an Instructor in Pediatrics in the Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine. In 1994 he was promoted to Assistant Professor of Pediatrics. He is board certified in Pediatrics and subspecialty board certified in Pediatric Emergency Medicine. His clinical and teaching duties include working as an attending physician in the Emergency Unit at St. Louis Children's Hospital where he serves as a preceptor for pediatric housestaff and medical students rotating through the unit.

Dr. Manary's research interests focus on different aspects of nutrition in populations of developing countries, especially in Malawi, Africa. Dr. Manary has been awarded multiple grants and awards to fund his research activities, most recently including grants from the Thrasher Research Fund, Nestle Foundation, and the Allen Foundation. Dr. Manary is a member of the American Society for Clinical Nutrition.

Dr. Edgar Cahoon

Core Team Member, BioCassava Plus Program
Associate Professor, Biochemistry
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, E31B BEAD, Lincoln NE 68588-0664
Tel: 402-472-5611; Fax: 402-472-3139
E-mail: ecahoon2@unl.edu

Research Interests: Dr. Cahoon’s lab conducts basic and applied research on plant lipid metabolism. The goals of their research are to enhance the nutritional and industrial value of crop plants and to probe the synthesis and function of bioactive lipids for nutritional biofortification and improved agronomic performance of crops.

Oilseed crops such as soybean can serve as platforms for the sustainable production of fatty acids for human and livestock nutrition, bio-based fuels, and industrial chemicals. Functional genomic studies in the Cahoon lab are aimed understanding the synthesis and metabolism of high-value fatty acids, such as the conjugated fatty acid eleostearic acid. They are attempting to identify genes from non-agronomic species that can be used to generate novel vegetable oils in soybean and the emerging oilseed camelina. Dr. Cahoon’s lab also is actively involved in understanding the regulation of flux in the plastid isoprenoid pathway in order to enhance the content of vitamin E antioxidants and provitamin A in crop plants. One of their current areas of research is the development of provitamin A-rich cassava to meet the nutritional demands of populations in sub-Saharan Africa (www.biocassavaplus.org).

Sphingolipids are major components of the plasma membrane and tonoplasts of plant cells and contribute to the ability of plants to respond to biotic and abiotic stresses. They are attempting to understand the synthesis and function of sphingolipids in Arabidopsis in order to produce higher yielding crops with improved stress tolerance. Recent publications from the Cahoon lab have highlighted the importance of sphingolipids in pollen and endomembrane development. They have also shown that small modifications of sphingolipid structure in planta can result in enhanced production of sphingolipids with aberrant fatty acid chain lengths, which provides insights into the regulation of the biosynthesis of these essential lipids in plants.

Dr. Eliana Gaitan-Solis

Eliana Gaitan-Solis, Ph.D., Product Development Manager and Core Team Member

Eliana Gaitan-Solis obtained her bachelor's degree in Biology with a focus on genetics from the Universidad del Valle (Cali-Colombia). She spent 10 years working at CIAT, Palmira-Colombia, where she was involved in molecular marker development and implementation of new methodologies for determining molecular diversity and molecular mapping studies in common bean, Brachiaria and palms. In 2004, she obtained her PhD in plant breeding from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Palmira-Colombia. Her PhD was funded by a scholarship for tuition and research from COLCIENCIAS, Colombia.

Eliana's doctoral research focused on population genetic structure and molecular genetic diversity of three endangered Colombian palms. After finishing her PhD, she worked for one-year as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois. In 2005 Eliana joined the Danforth Center, first as a postdoctoral fellow working to increase zinc in cassava roots with the BC+ project and then as the Cassava Pipeline Coordinator for VIRCA. She assumed her current role with the BC+ project in November of 2011.

Dr. Nigel Taylor

Core Team Member, BioCassava Plus Program
ILTAB/Donald Danforth Plant Science Center
975 North Warson Road
St. Louis, MO 63132, USA
E-mail: ntaylor@danforthcenter.org

Dr. Nigel Taylor, Assistant Research Member, Fauquet Lab

Dr. Taylor leads the cassava genetic transformation teams for both the BioCassava Plus and Virus Resistant Cassava for Africa (VIRCA) projects. He acts as Technical Director for the latter. His expertise centres on the plant tissue culture and the genetic transformation technologies required to deliver genetically improved cassava to famers in East and West Africa. Dr Taylor also coordinates training of visiting African researchers at the Danforth Center in the technologies required to produce genetically engineered cassava. After receiving his PhD and doing postdoctoral research in the United Kingdom, he has worked with Dr Fauquet at ILTAB since 1996, first at the Scripps Research Institute, and from 1999 at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center.

Dr. Dimuth Siritunga

Core Team Member, BioCassava Plus Program
Associate Professor,
Department of Biology
University of Puerto Rico
Mayaguez, PR, USA
E-mail: siritunga@uprm.edu

Dr. E. N. Ada Mbanaso

In-Country PI, BioCassava Plus Program
National Root Crops Research Institute
Umuahia, Abia, Nigeria
E-mail: embanaso@yahoo.com

Dr. Chiedozie Egesi

Chiedozie is a Nigerian and served as a Cassava breeder at the National Root Crops Research Institute (NRCRI), Umudike, Nigeria. The main focus of his research has been breeding for resistance to the major pests and diseases of cassava such as the cassava mosaic disease; and in the biofortification of cassava roots with beta carotene. The Cassava Research Programme coordinates the development of superior cassava varieties and national pre-release varietal trials conducted in all agroecologies of the cassava growing areas of Nigeria. He has numerous publications in cassava and yam breeding or genetics in peer reviewed journals. He also pioneered and supervised the introduction of molecular marker assisted breeding for important traits in cassava in NRCRI.

Chiedozie was also a postdoctoral researcher in the Cassava Genetics Laboratory of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Colombia between late 2005 and Fall 2007. He worked on the introgression of delayed post-harvest physiological deterioration (PPD) genes from Manihot walkerae (a wild relative of cassava) into cultivated cassava in the BioCassava Plus project. He also investigated the genetics of inheritance of the delayed PPD trait. The work was focused on transferring the PPD trait, through molecular breeding, into adapted cassava varieties for distribution to breeders and farmers in the major cassava growing areas of the world.

In the Fall of 2007, Chiedozie returned back to Nigeria where he continued his work on cassava variety development. From there he joined the BioCassava Plus team as the In-Country Product Development Manager for Nigeria where he coordinates all project activities with relevant stakeholders in Nigeria. Chiedozie’s goal is to apply modern molecular biotechnology approaches to low-cost and efficient improvement schemes aimed at making cassava fulfill its roles as a food security and poverty alleviation crop. During his leisure time, Chiedozie enjoys traveling and visiting historic sites. He is married to Chioma and they have three lovely sons Chineme, Josh, and Stephen.

Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) Laboratory

Dr. Simon Gichuki

In-Country PI, BioCassava Plus Program
Kenya Agricultural Research Institute
KARI Biotechnology Centre
P.O. Box 14733
Nairobi, Kenya
E-mail: stgichu@yahoo.co.uk

Joyce Maling’a, Ph.D., Institute for International Crop Improvement Representative for East Africa
Joyce Maling’a holds a Ph.D. in Crop Protection from Egerton University, Kenya. As an entomologist and plant breeder, she has worked as a researcher on multiple crops and programs under a variety of international grants, including the Murdoch University-led Russian wheat aphid project, the Kenya-South Africa bilateral grant on Russian wheat aphid, the PROBIOFUEL project and the small holder climate change project both funded by ERA-ARD, the BBSRC stem rust project, and the AGRA sweet potato project. Over the past 12 years, Joyce has been developing wheat varieties resistant to Russian wheat aphid and breeding sweet potatoes for high beta carotene, high dry matter content.

Joyce has supervised 10 MSc students on sweet potato, wheat and oil-palm crop projects. She has also been a part-time college lecturer at Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology (MMUST) and Egerton University both in Kenya. She is completing a post doc on biofuel policy under the PROBIOFUEL project with Boku University, Austria and has published 13 papers in refereed journals.

In her role with the IICI, she has been involved with the BioCassava Plus project (BC+), the Virus Resistant Cassava for Africa project (VIRCA) and sweet potato virus resistance implementation at Kenya Agriculture Research Centre, Njoro, where she is also a Deputy Centre Director. In addition Joyce serves as a general IICI representative in East Africa.