Plant Breeding Education Programs

Summary

The Soybean Innovation Lab (SIL) created Instructor Guides (IGs) through three PBEA (Plant Breeding E-Learning for Africa) portfolios. IGs empower educators to use the PBEA modules effectively in their classrooms. Each set of IGs highlights key points to be emphasised in class, suggests activities that the instructor could implement to practice and reinforce skills and demonstrate their working knowledge, and provides additional references for deeper study of the topical content.

Challenge/Problem

Achieving food security in Africa, particularly in response to climate change, requires the development of high-yielding plant varieties that are resistant to pests, diseases, and environmental pressures. Research to identify and create these varieties must be accomplished by local breeding programs, but currently there are only about a half dozen breeders on average for each sub-Saharan African country who are responsible for all crops in all zones.

SIL’s Breeder Education platform is a product that addresses several needs expressed by educators tasked with developing the next generation of highly trained plant breeders in SSA.  First, higher education instructors operating at the leading plant breeding academic institutions of SSA (University of Abomey-Calavi - UAC (Benin), Makerere University (Uganda), Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology - KNUST (Ghana), West Africa for Crop Improvement - WACCI (Ghana), and University of Kwazulu-Natal - UKZN (South Africa)) required access to high-quality graduate-level educational materials to produce better trained students who can go on to lead modern and productive breeding programs. 

Solution

To increase the number of plant breeders for the crop improvement workforce in Africa, SIL partnered with Iowa State University to leverage and build off the successful Plant Breeding E-learning in Africa (PBEA) online curriculum.  The PBEA course materials are freely accessible for students and instructors.  However, without matched Instructor Guides (IGs), Applied Learning Activities (ALA) guides, and educational materials, the PBEA curriculum is not fully harnessed and utilized by educators.  To respond to this need, SIL partnered with the PBEA developers and junior faculty at WACCI at the University of Ghana to produce these resources, house them virtually for instructors to access, and measure their uptake and usefulness among African plant breeding education faculty.

New instructor guides, teaching resources, and applied learning activities support improvement of quality and effectiveness of graduate level plant breeding education programs and can be used by African faculty across the continent tasked with training the next generation of plant breeders. These teaching resources bring curricula to life, enabling students to learn how to apply what they’re learning, and complement the PBEA portfolio of courses.

IGs and ALAs can be used by educators for four PBEA courses in Molecular Plant Breeding, Quantitative Genetics, Quantitative Methods, and Cultivar Development. Collectively the consortium produced 273 ALAs across 50 educational modules, with each being led by an African faculty member based at WACCI. 

The WACCI faculty members leading the effort include Dr. John S.Y. Eleblu, Dr. Beatrice E. Ilfie, Dr. Agyemang Danquah, and Dr. Daniel Dzidzienyo. These individuals serve as WACCI Faculty Mentors, supporting fellow African educators based at other higher-education institutions wishing to utilize the teaching and course materials.

Results

- In October 2021, the WACCI faculty delivered a Teaching Workshop at the 2021 APBA (African Plant Breeders Association) Conference in Kigali, Rwanda. Nearly 100 participants engaged in person and/or online. The WACCI faculty introduced the PBEA course portfolio, shared Instructor Resources, and introduced the concept of a "flipped classroom" that uses the Applied Learning Activities they developed in collaboration with SIL & ISU collaborators.

- Adoption of the “flipped classroom” model that modernizes the traditional lecture system. In a flipped classroom, a pre-class reading assignment accompanies or replaces the lecture, and classroom time is used to complete activities that develop students’ mastery of the concepts and integrate the content. The classroom activities are called Applied Learning Activities (ALAs), and each course includes at least one ALA per hour of teaching time. Through SIL, the WACC/ISU/UIUC team of lecturers and specialists have created over 260 ALAs.

- A new website hosted by WACCI is live and houses all the PBEA Teaching Resources and associated materials.  Resources are freely available to access by any African faculty based at a higher-education institution through a secure log-in system. Introductory videos and lists of ALAs for each course can be found on the WACCI-PBEA website (https://pbea-wacci.ug.edu.gh/). 

Lessons Learned/Potential for replication

SIL's partner at the University of Ghana, WACCI, is designated to develop the next generation of plant breeders and seed scientists needed for the transformation of Africa’s agriculture through high-quality research, teaching, and learning.  Rather than sending young scientists off to other countries for training, the University of Ghana and other partners have invested in creating an excellent graduate program on the continent and now have extended that benefit to universities in other African countries.

This project facilitates mentorship by renowned researchers. SIL empowered the WACCI faculty, and they have now trained a dozen students and other lecturers. The train-the-trainer model of SIL must be replicated and scaled out to ensure that Plant Breeding education is locally sustainable in addressing the critical issues of food and nutrition insecurity on the continent.

Next Steps

Enable faculty to provide training, guidance, and mentorship to plant breeder faculty at other leading institutions, to enable a new paradigm in higher education plant breeding of African-led instruction, mentorship, and quality curriculum. For this to be accomplished, SIL will:

- Support faculty in providing mentorship and training to partner plant breeding institutions through online and in-person opportunities, targeting two institution per year for training.

- Measure uptake and usefulness of IGs and ALAs among partner institutions and among faculty.

- Engage in a promotional and marketing campaign to ensure widespread awareness and adoption of PBEA materials and associated IGs and ALAs.