Plant Breeding and Biotechnology (Plant B+B) is creating a robust plant biotechnology and breeding network to foster and contribute to the advancement of global scientific knowledge and unite international institutions’ expertise.

Food and agriculture lie at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development aimed at ending poverty and hunger, while ensuring responsible production and consumption in the coming years. The need to increase food production is more crucial than ever. To ensure food security, agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) needs to increase more than double in the next two decades. To deliver quality food for all and preserve the agroecosystems, agricultural systems will have to shift and sustainably intensify.

On the 1st of December, IPBO officially launched the Plant B+B project with an online inception meeting. During this event, we had the chance to present our project to our members, its objectives and planned activities. We also had the time to interact & engage with all our network’s partners scattered across the world through interactive polls. Our purpose was to explore & validate the suitability of some of the proposed activities aimed at strengthening the cooperation among partners (networking) and the capacity of its members (trainings and courses). It was a smooth and interactive meeting, and we are thankful to our members for their proactive feedback. We are looking forward to seeing this network expanding and consolidating with the contributions from our members across the globe’