Sorgnet: 1st European and West African Sorghum Research Conference

AGAP Institute successfully completed the 1st European and West African Sorghum Research Conference which was organized during October 14-15, 2021 at Montpellier, France.

The conference included plenary sessions and 3 parallel sessions on (1) Agronomy and Production, (2) Genetics and Breeding, (3) Products and Processing. Sessions were specifically designed with keynotes and testimonies for identifying future challenges of sorghum research, highlighting synergies between Europe and West Africa and expectations from one discipline to the others. Despite the mixed organization due to Covid constraints with a few people in the same room and others in videoconference, we succeed in creating a friendly network environment among the 70 participants.

These two days constituted a unique opportunity to reinforce the links among people working on sorghum:

  • the stakeholders of the value chains (public and private bodies) and the research groups
  • the European and West African research groups (8 European and 7 West African countries were represented) with the contributions of colleagues from Brazil (EMBRAPA), USA (Sorghum Check Off) and Eastern (2 countries) and Southern Africa (1 country)
  • the Agropolis research groups (47 scientists from 13 different research groups (UMR, UR and GIS)

This event was funded by the Agropolis fondation , the IAVAO Platform in Partnership for research and training , the CIRAD Sorghum value chain , the AGAP Institute  and SorghumID .