Genetic Improvement @ ICSE 2020

Following Prof. Mark Harman of Facebook's keynote and formal presentations (which are recorded in the proceedings) there was a wide ranging discussion at the eighth international Genetic Improvement workshop, GI-2020 @ ICSE (held as part of the 42nd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering on Friday 3rd July 2020). Topics included industry take up, human factors, explainabiloity (explainability, justifyability, exploitability) and GI benchmarks. We also contrast various recent online approaches (e.g. SBST 2020) to holding virtual computer science conferences and workshops via the WWW on the Internet without face-2-face interaction. Finally we speculate on how the Coronavirus Covid-19 Pandemic will affect research next year and into the future

Capacity Building Workshop on Genetic Resource Policies for CGIAR Scientists and Partners in East Africa, 4 - 7 June 2019, ILRI Campus, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

The CGIAR Genebank Platform Policy Module, in coordination with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), organized the ‘Capacity building workshop on genetic resource policies for CGIAR scientists and partners in East Africa’. The workshop was held from 4 - 7 June 2019, at the ILRI campus in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This event brought together 30 staff members from 6 CGIAR Centres and 10 participants from national agricultural research organizations in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe. The workshop was designed to increase participants’ understanding of the CGIAR Centres’ and national research organizations’ obligations vis-à-vis international treaties and conventions dealing with access and benefit-sharing, and how these international instruments influence the day-to-day management of the collections. The workshop included participatory analyses of practical case studies and hypothetical scenarios where the interface between the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing and the ITPGRFA (Plant Treaty) can raise legal and procedural issues. It also addressed the management of information associated with genetic resources including digital sequence information

Resilient seed systems for climate change adaptation and sustainable livelihoods in the East Africa sub-region: Report of training workshop, Addis Ababa Ethiopia, 17-21 September 2019

Bioversity International is implementing a Dutch-supported project entitled: Resilient seed systems for climate change adaptation and sustainable livelihoods in the East Africa sub-region. This work aims to boost timely and affordable access to good-quality seed for a portfolio of crops / varieties for millions of women and men farmers’ and their communities across east Africa. A first project training: i) contextualized farmer varietal selection, ii) provided practical demonstrations of tools for climate-change analysis, iii) introduced policy issues associated with managing crop diversity, iv) outlined characterization and evaluation of genetic resources, and v) articulated associated gender issues, and issues related to disseminating elite materials. The training concluded with a contextualizing field trip. In the workshop evaluation, 98% participants declared their overall satisfaction level to be high (74%) or medium (24%), indicating the training furnished them with good ideas for networking and using the tools and methods they learned about

Rice and Water: The Final Frontier

Outlines the threat of diminishing water resources for rice crops, the economic and social dimensions of the droughts' potential effects, and the new cultural systems and adapted rice varieties being pursued as potential solutions

Towards Objective-Tailored Genetic Improvement Through Large Language Models

While Genetic Improvement (GI) is a useful paradigm to improve functional and nonfunctional aspects of software, existing techniques tended to use the same set of mutation operators for differing objectives, due to the difficulty of writing custom mutation operators. In this work, we suggest that Large Language Models (LLMs) can be used to generate objective-tailored mutants, expanding the possibilities of software optimizations that GI can perform. We further argue that LLMs and the GI process can benefit from the strengths of one another, and present a simple example demonstrating that LLMs can both improve the effectiveness of the GI optimization process, while also benefiting from the evaluation steps of GI. As a result, we believe that the combination of LLMs and GI has the capability to significantly aid developers in optimizing their software.Comment: Accepted to the 12th International Workshop on Genetic Improvemen

Genetic improvement and utilisation of indigenous tilapia in southern Africa: final technical report, December 1st 1998 to June 31st, 2002

Mozambique tilapia (Oreochromis mossambicus) is an indigenous tilapia species in southern Africa, until now the majority of genetic research has been carried out on Asian species of tilapia but this project aims to look at this African species. Those most suited to further development in aquaculture in southern Africa have now been identified. The genetic characterisation of strains has been completed. This information has aided the choice of strains for use in small scale aquaculture and for genetically male tilapia (GMT) production. They will form the basis of future strategies for further genetic improvement, and management of genetic diversity of Mozambique tilapia. The information will also contribute towards responsible management and development of genetic resources, particularly with regard to indigenous species of tilapia. Good progress has been made with the adaptation and implementation of producing the supermale fish required to produce all male offspring, resulting in faster growing populations of tilapia. The presence of the project and its associated activity has been a catalyst for a surge in interest in tilapia culture throughout southern Africa. [PDF contains 183 pages

Capacity Building Workshop on Genetic Resources for CGIAR Scientists and Partners from Near East and Neighbouring Countries, 17 - 20 September 2018, ICARDA, Beirut, Lebanon

In September 2018, the CGIAR Genebank Platform Policy Module joined the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) and the Association of Agricultural Research Institutions in the Near East and North Africa (AARINENA) to organize a capacity-building workshop on genetic resource policies for CGIAR scientists and partners from Near East and neighbouring countries. The workshop was held from 17 - 20 September 2018, hosted by ICARDA, Beirut, Lebanon. This event brought together 20 staff members from 6 CGIAR Centres (including genebank managers and technical staff, plant breeders, senior scientists, legal counselor and genetic resources policy specialists), 16 representatives of national agricultural research organizations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Syrian Arab Republic and Yemen, and representatives of the Secretariats of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the coordination team of the Global Project on Access and Benefit Sharing of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The workshop was designed to increase participants’ understanding of the CGIAR Centres’ obligations vis-à-vis international treaties and conventions dealing with access and benefit-sharing, and how these international instruments influence the day-to-day management of scientists, researchers and support staff involved in the management of plant germplasm collections and plant breeding prorgammes at national and international levels. The workshop included participatory analyses of practical case studies and hypothetical scenarios where the interface between the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing and the ITPGRFA (Plant Treaty) can raise legal and procedural issues. It also addressed improving genebank operations and communications and as such, enhancing availability and accessibility of ex situ collections and promoting farmers’ rights