AsiaBlight Update: Request to EuroBlight members August 2016 from Louise Cooke
We ask members of the EuroBlight network to help in identifying contact people who might assist in FTA card sampling of P. infestans from late blight lesions in the following countries: Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar & Pakistan
AsiaBlight, initiated in 2015 thanks to the efforts of Greg Forbes of CIP, is the newest of the global late blight networks established based on the EuroBlight model. Late blight is a major problem for growers in Asia particularly for smallholders whose diets and incomes CIP works to improve. The network aims to add value to existing research programs and to provide a forum to increase collaboration among public and private organizations in Asia.
The initial AsiaBlight project, to produce a coarse-scale map of the Phytophthora infestans population in Asia, is now underway with organizational help from Louise Cooke (EuroBlight member, Belfast). Bayer Regions APAC 1 and APAC 2 have funded the purchase of FTA cards, which has been arranged by Xie Kaiyun of the CIP China Center for Asia Pacific (CCCAP), Beijing. The cards are now being sent out by Wu Lei of the laboratory of Ruofang Zhang, Inner Mongolia Potato E & T Research Center, Inner Mongolia University, China to 11 countries in Asia (in addition to China, where there are existing projects) where we have identified contacts.
However, we would like to ask EuroBlight colleagues if any of them have contacts in the Asian countries that we are missing for a complete regional map.
Countries to which cards are already being sent:
- Bangladesh
- Georgia
- India
- Indonesia
- Japan
- Korea, Republic of
- Nepal
- Taiwan
- Tajikistan
- Uzbekistan
- Vietnam
Countries where we lack contacts:
- Armenia
- Kazakhstan
- Kyrgyzstan
- Myanmar
- Pakistan
If any EuroBlight colleague has a contact in one of the above missing countries (or any other missing potato-producing country in Asia) who might be willing to collect samples of late blight onto FTA cards, please would he/she email Louise Cooke (l.cooke@qub.ac.uk) with details? We only require collection of samples from approx. 10 sites (1 FTA card per site) per country, so the task is not very onerous. Please note that AsiaBlight has no funding of its own, so we can’t pay travel or expenses for sample collection and hope that those sampling can arrange for the completed cards to be sent back to the Inner Mongolia University.