The kick-off workshop for the project “German-Ethiopian Institutional Partnership on Plant Variety Breeding, Testing and Multiplication” took place in Addis Ababa on April 28th and 29th 2026. The aim of the one-year administrative partnership between the Julius Kuehn Institute (JKI) and the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR) is to specifically strengthen the professional exchange and scientific cooperation in the field of plant breeding. The bilateral partnership is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Agriculture, BMLEH through the project management organisation, GFA Consulting Group GmbH.
JKI and Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research launch Institutional Partnership by signing an Implemtation Agreement
The initial project content was developed jointly during a previous visit by JKI researchers to the partner-institute in 2025. The one-year administrative partnership, now formalised with the signing of the Implementation Agreement in Ethiopia, builds on a long-standing and successful collaboration, which has included joint doctoral projects such as the award winning analysis of wheat rust populations and research into improving drought tolerance in wheat and barley, which resulted in several joint international scientific publications. The administrative partnership on plant breeding is complemented by strategic initiatives such as the EU twinning project to strengthen plant health standards (SPS) in Ethiopia, in which the JKI is also involved.
The Implementation Agreement was signed by Prof. Dr Benjamin Stich, Head of the JKI Institute for Crop Breeding Research, and Prof. Nigussie Dechassa Robi, Director-General of the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR), on 28 April 2026 in the Ethiopian capital, in the presence of GFA Project Manager Simon Wittich.
With the signed document the partners agree to strengthen the cooperation and technical exchange between JKI and EIAR and thereby between Germany and Ethiopia mostly within the thematic field of plant breeding. This will be pursued through direct collaboration and the structured exchange of knowledge and expertise between specialists from both institutions on the following topics: advanced plant breeding methods; advanced field trial designs, statistical analysis and phenotyping with regard to plant variety breeding; plant variety testing and seed propagation; and by gaining better knowledge of structure and organisation of the plant variety development systems in Germany and Ethiopia.
Plans include training courses for early-career researchers in Ethiopia, research visits by EIAR researchers to the JKI, as well as reciprocal specialist lectures and study visits. The kick-off workshop in the “Land of Origins” concluded with a tour of the research station in Holetta on the second day. Here exemplary breeding research on barley and potatoes, as well as experiments carried out in the “Molecular Biotechnology Laboratory”, were presented.
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