I am Bunmi Olasanmi, a lecturer in the Department of Agronomy, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. My responsibilities at the university include teaching, supervision of students’ project work, research into the improvement of crops, administration and community service.
I participated in Class I of the African Orphan Crops Consortium’s African Plant Breeding Academy in Nairobi, Kenya, a six-week course conducted from December 2013 through to December 2014 during which I learnt new, modern methods in plant breeding, improved data collection methods and new tools for data analysis, most especially R software.
During the third session of the training, I presented a proposal that I had developed using some of the new techniques I learned during the first two sessions of Class 1, in addition to the experience I had in plant breeding before the training. The proposal was developed with guidance from my supervisor at the Academy, Bruce Walsh, a professor at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA. Suggestions on how to improve the proposal were made by other tutors and colleagues at the training and I went back to Nigeria to make the necessary amendments.