RosBREED Project Issues Impact Statements

Posted by Brian Sparks|January 13, 2014

As the RosBREED project comes to a close, collaborators have presented an update on the four-year project. A Portfolio of Impact Statements summarizing major outcomes and impacts to date can be downloaded from www.rosbreed.org/impact-statements. In addition to documenting the scientific deliverables enabled by RosBREED, the impact statements also highlight the sustainable increases in rosaceous crop breeding effectiveness and efficiency for traits valued by producers, market intermediaries, and consumers.

“On behalf of the RosBREED team, we wish to thank our partners, collaborators, and Advisory Panel members for their dedication and contributions to our shared goals,” the group said in a statement. “The success of RosBREED was achieved due to these partnerships, the tireless collective energy put toward furthering our scientific goals, and our laser focus on our target outcome: enabling the breeding of rosaceous crops to be more efficient, accurate, and creative to provide improved cultivars for producers, market intermediaries, and consumers.

“We wish to acknowledge the USDA-National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Specialty Crop Research Initiative (SCRI) program for this unprecedented opportunity to compete for such significant and meaningful funding. The dedicated NIFA staff who created and managed the SCRI deserve sincere appreciation for crafting an exciting and consequential program. Similarly, we wish to also acknowledge the amazing support provided by the Michigan State University staff, Joan Schneider and Audrey Sebolt, who took care of the communication and administrative needs, respectively, freeing up the rest of us to pursue scientific advances. Finally, a big thank you to all those industry stakeholders who have worked so hard over so many years to raise the profile of specialty crops and engage the rosaceous scientific community, not to mention produce and deliver amazing rosaceous products to the world. We are certain this partnership will not end with RosBREED.

Editor’s Note: American/Western Fruit Grower and American Vegetable Grower magazines were represented on the RosBREED Advisory Panel. American Fruit Grower editor Brian Sparks recently wrote an editorial highlighting the legacy of RosBREED; it can be found here.

Source: RosBREED