On Friday 30 August, the CSC Alumni Team invited Commonwealth Alumnus Dr Tofazzal Islam to deliver a webinar on ‘Breadbasket in peril: strategies to combat wheat blast for food security’.
This webinar addressed the CSC development theme of strengthening resilience and response to crises.
The CSC’s Development in Action webinar series aims to highlight the work and research of Commonwealth Alumni across a range of development impact areas.
About the speaker
Dr Tofazzal Islam is an internationally-reputed molecular biologist and biotechnologist. He is the Founding Director of the Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering (IBGE) at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Agricultural University in Bangladesh.
He has been a recipient of prestigious fellowships and has won many awards for his work as an agriculture biotechnologist, including the 2019 Commonwealth Innovation Award.
Currently, he spearheads a large international consortium addressing wheat blast disease through genomics, genome editing, nanobiotechnology, and advanced molecular approaches. This collaboration has resulted in the development of a rapid point-of-care diagnostic method.
Open science to strengthen food security About the webinar
In this webinar, Dr Tofazzal Islam highlighted the challenges to wheat production caused by the fungal disease, wheat blast, which threatens food security in Bangladesh and countries around the world.
Dr Tofazzal discussed the efforts he and his team have put into leveraging next-generation sequencing, open data sharing, and open science approaches to quickly identify the genetic lineage of the wheat blast fungus in Bangladesh.
His webinar highlighted the importance of collaborative action in managing wheat cultivation to prevent potential threats to global food security.
This webinar presentation was followed by an interactive Q&A session with Commonwealth Scholars and Alumni. A recording of this webinar is available to view on the CSC’s YouTube channel where you can also watch previous events in the series.
Post-webinar, attendees were invited to network with fellow attendees to further discuss the webinar topic, exchange ideas and knowledge, seek out collaborators for their own work, and promote their research.
Join future Development in Action webinars
The CSC’s Development in Action webinars take place each month and are open to all Commonwealth Scholars and Alumni.
To find out about upcoming webinars, please visit the CSC’s events webpage.
