The third cohort of the Africa Plant Breeding Academy (AfPBA) CRISPR Course has officially graduated, marking another milestone in strengthening Africa’s capacity for advanced crop improvement technologies. This cohort hosted eleven scientists from five African countries, including Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria.
The training, hosted at the IITA–CGIAR Biotechnology Platform in Nairobi, on the ILRI campus and at CIFOR-ICRAF, is part of a multi-partner initiative of the African Orphan Crops Consortium (AOCC), in collaboration with IITA, the University of California, Davis, and the Innovative Genomics Institute at UC Berkeley. The course provides African researchers with both theoretical and practical knowledge in the use of CRISPR-Cas systems for precise and efficient genome editing in plants.