US plant science centre that helped Rwanda fight cassava disease plans to widen work with RICA
The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center wants to expand into maize, sorghum, millet and beans, and into student exchanges with the Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture.
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Kigali — The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, a large independent non-profit plant science institute based in St Louis, Missouri, is building a partnership with the Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture (RICA), KT Press reported.
The move grows out of the centre's existing work with the Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB) against cassava brown streak disease, a major threat to cassava production in Rwanda.
Beyond cassava
"So far, it's really been focused on Brown Streak Disease in cassava. And so, the field trials that are going on right now, which has really solved that problem," said Dr Giles Oldroyd, the centre's president, who visited Rwanda with a delegation from St Louis that included the city's mayor, Cara Spencer.
"I see huge opportunities for working here at RICA on developing conservation agriculture, expanding the focus outside of cassava to also include other crops like maize and sorghum, millets," he said, adding that he was keen to start work on beans.
Students and food innovation
Oldroyd said he also saw scope for student exchanges, with Rwandan and American students visiting each other's fields. He described the collaboration as part of the Rwandan Food Innovation Partnership, a government initiative to make Rwanda a hub for food systems innovation, of which RICA is a founding member.
Source: KT Press, 12 November 2026.
