Collaborative projects on quality management between ULiège and CGIAR Germplasm Health Units
An international active learning experience is currently organized between 130 students in bioengineering from Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech – Uliège (Belgium) and the Germplasm Health Units (GHU) at five CGIAR centers: Bioversity International in Belgium, CIP in Peru, ICARDA in Lebanon, ILRI in Ethiopia and IITA in Nigeria.
In the course "Quality Management" (3rdyear, taught by Professors Sébastien Massart and Marianne Sindic), students acquire theoretical knowledge in the classroom, including the intervention of external experts. To reinforce the learning outcome of this course and apply it in a professional context, the students will actively participate in the writing of quality management procedures – also called Standard Operation Protocols (SOP) – for the GHUs at five CGIAR centers.
Together with international specialists from the GHUs, groups of students will analyse their operations and integrate them into the relevant SOP and existing quality management documents. Complementary information will be gained through interviews. The students will write the SOP under the supervision of their professors and international experts from the CGIAR centers.
This innovative project, based on collaborative distance learning and learning-by-doing, combines capacity building for students with an international experience with real case studies and the delivery of SOPs, which will in turn support GHU activities and contribute to the continuous improvement of their operations.
Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech trains life science engineers and is at the forefront of active teaching techniques. Through various courses and extracurricular activities, students are trained to assume the role of tomorrow's engineers, capable of designing innovative technical solutions while taking into account interactions with the environment and civil society.
CGIAR genebanks safeguard and make available a unique global resource of crop and tree diversity, responding to thousands of requests for germplasm from users in more than 100 countries worldwide every year. The GHUs enable the exchange of healthy germplasms in accordance with the national and international phytosanitary requirements. GHUs develop phytosanitary procedures to eliminate pathogens from germplasm and proactively create versatile diagnostics tools for health indexing tests, screening invasive, exotic, and endemic pathogens.
Contact for
Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech – Uliège & Bioversity International: Prof. Sébastien Massart
IITA and CGIAR GHU component: Dr. Lava Kumar
CIP: Dr. Jan Kreuze
ILRI: Dr. Lei Sun
ICARDA : Dr. Saafa Kumari
QMS specialist for the CGIAR Genebank Platform: Janny van Beem
