SDPU Webinar on Plant Breeding Techniques for Underutilized Crops in Africa  

Join CRDF Global on May 9, 2024, from 09:00 – 11:00 EST for the SDPU Webinar on Plant Breeding Techniques for Underutilized Crops in Africa to be held via Zoom. This webinar, in support of the Sustained Dialogue on Peaceful Uses (SDPU), will include a panel discussion on how different plant breeding techniques can be used to improve plant varieties in Africa in the face of climate change. The webinar will also feature insights on how the Treaty on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons provides a mechanism for uplifting and broadening access to peaceful uses of nuclear technology to address development needs like food security. The webinar will engage a diverse audience from across the food security community, as well as those from organizations like the IAEA, CGIAR, WorldVeg, and the African Academies of Sciences to understand how plant breeding techniques can support ongoing efforts to increase food security, including under the U.S.-led Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils that aim to address global food security needs. CRDF Global encourages the participation of representatives from academia, research institutions, development organizations, and public and private sectors.

These discussions will focus on the following United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets:

• SDG 2.4: Ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding, and other disasters and that progressively improve land and soil quality.
• SDG 2.5 maintain the genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals and their related wild species, including through soundly managed and diversified seed and plant banks at the national, regional and international levels, and promote access to and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, as internationally agreed.
• SDG 2.a: Increase investment, including through enhanced international cooperation, in rural infrastructure, agricultural research and extension services, technology development and plant and livestock gene banks in order to enhance agricultural productive capacity in developing countries, in particular least developed countries.

A recording for this activity can be found in the activity press release available here: SDPU Implements Webinar on Plant Breeding Techniques for Underutilized Crops in Africa. • Sustained Dialogue on Peaceful Uses. For any questions on this event, please reach out to the organizer, sdpu@crdfglobal.org.