17 March 2008

The ProMusa network—established in 1997 by Bioversity to provide expert support to the world’s (very few) banana breeders—has a new website featuring discussion fora, an electronic newsletter, an e-mail alert for registered users and commenting facilities to express opinions on individual articles.

The changes come on the heels of the re-launch of the ProMusa network under the auspices of the International Society for Horticultural Sciences (ISHS). The involvement with ISHS provides the opportunity to draw in expertise from other crops and to increase impact through the dissemination of results in the Society’s publications, such as Acta Horticulturae and Scripta Horticulturae. In the process, the number of working groups has been reduced from six to three (Crop Improvement, Crop Protection and Crop Production) to encourage inter-disciplinary thinking, enable a more rapid response to changing research priorities and facilitate the development of inter-group projects. The working groups take the lead in organizing annual research meetings, rotating between topics and moving around banana-producing regions.

The interactive tools on the website are designed to facilitate the exchange of ideas among scientists and other stakeholders with an interest in banana and plantain. Each working group has a discussion forum where scientists can jointly reflect on the many R&D challenges that the ProMusa community addresses and reach an initial consensus on actions to address specific problems. For instance, virologists have initiated a discussion on the site as to whether the guidelines for the safe movement of banana germplasm, which currently impede the dissemination of about one-third of the accessions in the international Musa collection, should be revised.

The ProMusa website is maintained by Bioversity, which also provides a full-time Coordinator and logistic support. Other organizations provided the elected chairs of the working groups.

The ProMusa website is accessible at www.promusa.org.