Welcome to the African Orphan Crops Survey

You are invited to contribute your knowledge and opinions about crops being studied by the African Orphan Crops Consortium. We deeply appreciate your willingness to share insights with this important research effort and would encourage you to forward the survey to others in your network who might like to participate.

Goal of Survey
The results of this survey will be used by the African Orphan Crops (AOC) consortium to inform a process for prioritizing which crops will be initially selected for genetic sequencing, assembly, and annotation by the AOC. Once this information is developed, it will be placed into the public domain, and plant breeding programs will be established to support development of these crops including the training of 750 plant scientists in Africa. Ultimately, we would like to sequence all of the appropriate crops on this list, and we believe that the momentum generated by the first set of sequenced crops will attract additional interest and funding.

Survey Outline

Part 1. Participant Information
Part 2. Ranking of Crops for Sequencing
Part 3. General Comments on Crops
Part 4. (Optional) Detailed Species Questions
Note: Individual survey results will be kept confidential. Please use “Prev” and “Next” buttons to navigate survey. “Back” arrow might cause the software to lose information.

Time Required
The required portions (Parts 1, 2 and 3) should take 10-15 minutes to complete. The optional portion (Part 4) should take 10-20 additional minutes, depending on the number of crops for which you choose to offer responses. The initial deadline for the survey is February 24th, 2012.

If you have questions about this survey, please email Martha Stevenson at martha.stevenson@wwfus.org.

Thank you again for your participation!

About the African Orphan Crops Consortium
The AOC is an international consortium of governmental and non-governmental bodies, scientific institutions and companies, endorsed by the African Union Assembly, to launch an effort to improve some of Africa’s most important food crops, making them more nutritious and more robust in the face of weather disasters, pests and disease. The AOC was officially launched at the Clinton Global Initiative meetings in New York in September 2011. The AOC is currently led by the following organizations: New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), Mars, Incorporated, World Wildlife Fund – US, Beijing Genomic Institute, Plant Breeding Academy at the University of California, Davis, IBM, DuPont/Pioneer Hi-Bred, World Agroforestry Centre, Bioversity International, African Academy of Sciences, and TransFarm Africa (at the Aspen Institute). Many other experts have generously donated their time and expertise. For more information please click here.

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