The importance of advanced breeding for crop improvement programs to global sustainable agriculture and the world economy is widely understood (Gates 2018, Borlaug 2000; Rock et al. 2023; See also Special Issue on Genome Editing, In Vitro Plant, Ed. Songstad 2021). Advanced crop breeding programs are now deeply integrated with the recent and rapid technological advances in genomics, plant transformation, and genome editing (Kausch et al. 2019, 2021). The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations (BMGF) has long been a leading funder of GM crop development for Africa, contributing well over $170 million USD as one of the largest funders of GM in Africa (Grain 2021) with the goal to “solve nutrition problems, solve productivity problems, [and] solve crop disease problems for African farmers” (Gates 2015). Bill Gates (2018), in Foreign Affairs magazine, and others (Mudziwapasi et al. 2018; Komen et al. 2020; Li 2020; Tripathi et al. 2022) have recognized genome editing as an important cornerstone technology for agricultural transformation in Africa. In order to realize this potential, complete formal seed systems need to be integrated with advanced crop breeding programs supported by strong institutional education, research, and training. In this way, complete formal seed systems involve a set of activities and programs contributing to regional variety development, seed production, and delivery to farmers (Ayenan et al. 2021; Louwaars, and Manicad 2022). Seed systems in Africa are a recognized challenge to securing affordable access to quality seeds for smallholder farmers with diverse preferences and demands (Almekinders et al. 1994, 2019). Haug et al. (2023) evaluated how multiple expectations of seed systems development in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Tanzania influence outcomes, including improving nutrition, closing the yield gap, ensuring adaptation to climate change, enhancing agro-biodiversity, and securing farmers’ rights. They conclude that to achieve this, different approaches to seed systems development are needed to address different needs for different crops and different groups of farmers in different agro-ecologies.

A recent article by Rock et al. (2023) provides a suite of recommendations regarding how lessons learned from GM crop implementation in Africa inform future breeding programs utilizing genome editing. They recommend “that donors, policy makers and scientists should move beyond the genome towards systems-level thinking by prioritizing the co-development of technologies with farmers; using plant material that is unencumbered by intellectual property restrictions and therefore accessible to resource-poor farmers; and acknowledging that seeds are components of complex and dynamic agroecological production systems.” To realize the benefits of genome editing to the development of effective national seed systems, the inclusion of advanced breeding programs with strong institutional education, research, and training support is required.

The importance of advanced breeding programs to germplasm development and securing seed systems has created a situation critical to nation state independent food security and economic stability in Africa that cannot be overstated (Bänziger and Cooper 2001; Haug et al. 2023). Control over germplasm resources directs commercial agricultural markets and is essential to the continent’s independent agricultural supply chain. Seed systems from the researchers and plant breeders to the seed companies and farmers, and to the consumers they serve, will play a critical role in Africa (Louwaars and Manicad 2022). The current situation relies heavily on imported germplasm. This leaves African farmers deprived of high-quality high yielding varieties bred for regional requirements, who do not benefit from the newer technologies afforded by advanced breeding programs. Most of the imported seed is developed outside the continent and most regional seed companies produce open-pollinated varieties (OPV) rather than proprietary hybrids. Agricultural productivity continues to be low, and the use of regionally improved varieties is highly limited (Deconinck 2020). Additionally, widespread distribution of counterfeit seed stocks is a serious problem undermining internal programs with the result that seed companies are reluctant to invest in countries where their brands are not protected resulting in a downward spiral in production quality and yields. The African seed sector lacks sufficient research and development investment and programs to support internal germplasm development. For example, only a small number of private sector vegetable seed companies in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) conduct research and breeding programs and spend a paltry $5 million USD annually, or about 0.5% of global investments, while the SSA countries account for 14% of world population (S and P Global Commodity Insights 2022). This situation results in a lack of support from foreign seed companies and the domestic seed sector lacking the resources for R and D becomes a vicious cycle that ultimately hurts the people of Africa. The solution must resolve with the development of strong internal programs to support each country’s needs for agricultural biotechnology and germplasm development resources.

Global agricultural seed markets are now dominated by a small number of large multinational corporations (Bonny 2017; Clapp 2018, 2021). As reviewed by Deconinck (2020), the concentration in seed and biotech markets occurred between 2015 and 2018, with global seed and crop biotechnology industry consolidations resulting in only four major companies controlling world agriculture, including the merger of Dow and DuPont/Pioneer Hybrid creating the agricultural division as Corteva Agrisciences; the acquisition of Monsanto by Bayer forming Bayer CropScience; while, BASF, acquired divested Bayer businesses; and the acquisition of Syngenta by ChemChina. These four mega-agricultural biotechnology firms, Corteva Agriscience, Bayer-Monsanto, BASF, and ChemChina-Syngenta, control over 65% of the global seed market (Clapp 2021). The major large multinational agricultural seed corporations have well-organized programs using advanced breeding for crop improvement to develop high-value, high-yielding commercial germplasm. These programs are resource intensive and have accrued substantial intellectual property platforms associated with the enabling technologies for advanced breeding, such as plant transformation and genome editing. The improved varieties from these programs are dominating the world seed markets (Schenkelaars and Wesseler 2016). Over 90% of the corn, soybean, and cotton grown in the USA is genetically modified (U.S. Department of Agriculture 2024). Globally, across 26 countries, GM crops are grown on over 200 million hectares (Mha) comprising mainly of soy, maize, cotton, and canola, with 88% being herbicide-tolerant crops including 45% that carry stacked traits for both insect resistance and herbicide tolerance (James, 2019). Since the introduction of transgenic maize into advanced breeding programs, over 53.6 Mha accounting for 29% of the world’s maize production has been planted. Up to 10% higher yields are achieved using new varieties generated using genetic modification technologies compared to similar conventional varieties. These developments highlight the influence of the control of standard GM technology on global agriculture and hence on the generation of germplasm required by independent nation states on the African continent to achieve food security with economic export potential.

By extension, the impact of new varietal releases developed through genome editing and new advanced breeding programs will likely be even more significant. This realization is highlighted by several papers including Bhattacharya et al. (2021) on the application of genome editing for crop improvement in India, Zhang et al. (2021) on such programs in Australia, and Caradus (2023) on the status in New Zealand. Most private seed companies in Africa have business models that are focused on trading and distribution, with limited R&D investment to develop their own locally adapted varieties (S&P Global Commodity Insights, 2022).

This cycle has been going on for some time; Rock et al. (2023) admonish us to learn from the past with the first introduction of GM crops to Africa. The first wave of GM seeds developed by the large multinational companies brought the promise and potential to alleviate food insecurity in Africa (Keetch et al. 2005). However, high costs of GM seeds and their required inputs, some 30 to 40% higher than conventional seed, proved prohibitive for farmers, thus preventing more widespread adoption (Schnurr 2015; Schnurr and Dowd-Uribe 2021). In addition, the highly consolidated agricultural biotechnology landscape resulted in the concentration of enabling intellectual property and strict patent enforcement (van Esse et al. 2020) which did not favor R and D. In response, a concerted effort was made to develop programs to create GM varieties of staple African crops unencumbered by the high costs and freedom-to-operate issues (Schnurr 2015). The African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) was formed by the Rockefeller Foundation, in partnership with the agbiotech leaders, to facilitate agreements between African scientists and private seed companies allowing access to patented technologies (Schurman 2016). This allowed the AATF to develop programs for genetic modification of African staple crops such as cowpea, maize, and rice for pest, disease, and drought tolerance. The AATF negotiated and provided royalty-free licenses to the intellectual property and with backing from the world’s most powerful donors, including The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Gates 2018); the promise for creating GM crops specifically for Africa’s farmers has largely not been realized. With the notable exception of insect-resistant Bt cowpea in Nigeria, other programs such as nutritionally enhanced bananas in Uganda, water-efficient maize, and virus-resistant cassava for Africa have remained hindered by scientific and regulatory delays. The lessons learned from the efforts to develop the first wave of GM crops specifically for Africa warrant reflection and an opportunity to rethink and redesign programs for strong African specific germplasm development (Rock et al. 2023) through complete seed systems.

Development of advanced breeding for complete seed systems requires building programs from education and training to research and development through to commercialization. The seed systems situation in the SSA countries can be exemplified by Ghana. The problem simply stated is that Ghana needs to develop programs for advanced breeding for traits specifically for crops essential for Ghanaians.

To address this problem, an integrated program model in agricultural biotechnology for crop improvement has been designed. The concept for this model was developed from a NSF Sponsored Program which funded an initial collaboration between the authors and resulted in several presentations at the SIVB meeting in Norfolk, VA, USA 2023 (Tetteh et al. 2023a, b; Tetteh and Kausch 2023a, b). Dr. Tetteh is from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), a public university located in Kumasi, Ashanti region, Ghana. Dr. Kausch is from the University of Rhode Island (URI) and is Director of the Plant Biotechnology Laboratory with a research focus on plant transformation and genome editing in cereal crops. This concept paper offers a model for continued collaboration to enhance technology transfer and capacity building. The purpose of this model is to provide a blueprint as an example for developing a biotechnology-driven platform which can be implemented to enhance Ghanaian agriculture through crop improvement. Described here is a suite of courses that when integrated into a classical plant breeding program will accelerate new varietal development of Ghanian crops and lessen dependence on foreign seed companies. This model focuses on the use of the tools for plant transformation and genome editing agricultural biotechnology capacity building in Ghana through an education-to-project-based research curriculum and commercial development. Additional programs with a focus to strengthen classical breeding programs through genomics assisted breeding are also needed. The program intends to increase institutional capacity building in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education and training from undergraduate to postdoctoral levels, with a focus to teach technology through the development of new biotech traits introduced for rea- world applications.

This program model is aimed to broaden the accessibility of advanced breeding technology, germplasm, and trait development in Ghana, recognizing that germplasm controls commercial agricultural markets and is critical to the country’s agricultural supply chain. To develop a sustainable program, our plan includes regional public–private partnerships for commercialization of programmatic outcomes. The model provides the basis for an integrated education, research, and development program that becomes successful when linked to commercial outcomes. Our eventual goal is to implement this technology for crop improvement at the KNUST Ghana Facility with a long-term vision to create The African Institute for Plant Transformation and Genome Editing for Advanced Breeding and Crop Improvement.

The goal of this model is to establish an integrated education, research, and development program that will provide practical molecular and advanced breeding solutions to enhance Ghanaian agriculture through crop improvement. To achieve this goal the project objectives are to (1) build collaborative partnerships with labs established in the technology. Our example is to strengthen established ties between The Kausch Lab/URI and The Tetteh Lab/KNUST to develop and deliver the program described in this model as a collaborative project; (2) use partnerships, such as the URI/KNUST collaboration, to build a suite of courses geared toward strengthening biotechnology and agriculture career development through curriculum expansion, course exchange, and shared training opportunities; and (3) initiate integrated project-based technical training research programs in plant cell and tissue culture for plant transformation and genome editing through virtual laboratory partners at URI and KNUST. The Advanced Teaching and Learning (ATL) and URI Online for E-Learning at URI will partner with the E-Learning Directorate, KNUST, for the delivery technology adapted to best suit KNUST needs for this course activity; (4) establish collaborative research projects based on genetic constructs for trait improvement projects initially in sorghum and other crops to develop continuous technology transfer capabilities between the two universities; (5) develop a detailed plan to create a plant transformation and genome editing facility in Ghana, complete with laboratory space, equipment, funded staff, and supplies fully capable of producing transgenic and genome-edited plants for research and commercial improvement purposes in Ghana; and (6) initiate discussions to encourage public–private partnerships between US and Ghanaian agricultural companies to commercialize the outcomes.

Building on programs

A model program to strengthen STEM education and conduct research and training for the development of crop improvement with the goal towards commercialization of improved varieties has been designed. This innovative project-based education and training model provides opportunities with built-in technical training and research experience that result in practical outcomes for crop improvement. The program involves three interconnected areas including education, research, and commercial development (Fig. 1).

Figure 1.

Three interconnected entities of biotechnology education, research, and seed production to address food security and bioenergy, providing education, training and skills, and commercialization.

An educational platform that supports existing curricula and training and research programs with courses geared to recruit, train, and retain the researchers necessary for the future has been designed and presented (Tetteh et al. 2023a, b; Tetteh and Kausch 2023a, b). Table 1. presents a suite of courses designed to support STEM education with hands-on laboratory and project-based training program on agricultural biotechnology for crop improvement beginning with a course (1) called the “Issues in Biotechnology: The Way We Work With Life,” which is a General Education STEM course for all majors and academic years with no prerequisites, available and accessible to all students (Tetteh and Kausch 2023a). The second course (2) in this series is called Agriculture and Biotechnology, providing the history, theory, and practice of biotechnology applications to agriculture. These courses provide students with the necessary general background and are followed by theory and practice of the molecular toolkit for agricultural biotechnology. The third course (3) is called Principles and Techniques in Molecular Cloning Applied to Plant Genetic Engineering. In this course, students are taught vector construction and molecular analysis of transgenic plants. The project for the students in this course is the actual construction of a molecular vector that they will use to introduce into plants to recover transformants in the next two courses. To be clear, the students become engaged at this point in the development of vectors of interest to the final outcomes. The trait genes of interest will be part of this entire program, with eventual potentially commercial outcomes intended. These are not merely training vectors only as the student’s vectors enter the transformation pipeline, in their own hands. The next two courses in the series (4) comprise a two-semester course called Plant Transformation and Genome Editing, with the theory and hands-on laboratory experience in tissue culture–based integrative transformation of plants (Tetteh and Kausch 2023b). Here, students introduce their own constructs from the previous course into plants and recover stable transgenics as a project-driven laboratory approach to agricultural biotechnology. A necessity of this model is to establish active training and research collaborations that include staff and student exchange for capacity building and technology transfer. This way, a practical project-based and research-oriented collaborative pipeline is envisaged for trait gene introduction and testing for Ghanaian crop improvement studies. Candidate lines produced by such a program could enter further research programs at the University to eventually result in field trials. With such a program in place, it would be possible to involve regional seed companies and breeders toward actual commercial product development. The intent is to use the URI/KNUST Partnership to build a suite of courses geared toward strengthening agricultural biotechnology and career development through curriculum expansion, course exchange, and training opportunities. The major goal of this program is to build a sustainable platform focused on achieving agricultural biotechnology solutions for food security. Implementation of this model may have far-reaching implications for Ghana and extension to other universities could provide benefits to agriculture and crop improvement to Africa.

Table 1. Suite of courses to support STEM education and hands-on laboratory and project-based training program on agricultural biotechnology for crop improvement

This interconnected program and the sequence of courses is based on the learn-design-build-test model (Fig. 2) constructed to build a pipeline for Ghanaian agricultural crop improvement. With the “Learn” component covered in the Lecture courses, attention is then turned to the “Design” component through hands-on project-based applications courses. The suite of courses (Table 1.) in our model is based on our learn-design-build-test model to establish a pipeline for Ghanaian agricultural crop improvement through education and training objectives and may serve as a model elsewhere. These courses have been previously designed, tested, and delivered at the University of Rhode Island.

Figure 2.

Integrating a series of STEM courses geared toward strengthening biotechnology and agriculture career development with practical technical training and research in plant transformation and genome editing for advanced breeding. The learn-design-build-test model builds pipeline for Ghanaian agricultural crop improvement. Modified from a figure by Ivan Baxter.

The first course in this series is “Issues in Biotechnology: The Way We Work With Life,” which provides a general survey on all fields of biotechnology and is intended for a broad audience, with life science majors and non-majors without prerequisites (Tetteh and Kausch 2023a). The increasing demand for STEM courses is driven by the growing technological need for a qualified workforce and an informed public. Online instruction has rapidly become essential to higher education, with about 6 in 10 college students in the USA enrolling and 30% of students exclusively online. Issues in Biotechnology has been developed as a fully asynchronous online semester-long course complete with 22 interactive video lectures, survey questions on bioethics, and discussion board threads covering the controversial aspects of biotechnology. The course is constructed in two parts covering the foundational biology and techniques in biotechnology (Part 1) and the various applications in biology (Part 2) including lecture sets on agricultural, pharmaceutical, health, and medical biotechnology and DNA-based forensics. As a general education STEM course, this courseware package is approved by the US Department of Education meeting National Quality Matters (QM) standards and accredited by the University of Rhode Island. The courseware is compatible with multiple learning management systems (LMS) and has enrolled 500 plus students per semester with one instructor. Working with URI Online this course will be available to students at KNUST and other institutions. This courseware package may also be useful to non-science staff in biotechnology industry fields and is available as a Professional Enhancement Certificate. The authors can be contacted by additional institutions with interest in access to this course.

The second lecture course in the series is called Agriculture and Biotechnology, which as a fully asynchronous online course will be developed to follow up on the General Education course with further depth into agricultural applications. This course has been designed to provide an educational foundation for understanding modern agriculture and the use of biotechnology. The course examines Agricultural Biotechnology in five parts including Part I — Where Does Our Food Come From? This part provides a historic perspective for plant breeding from the importance wild plants, plant domestication, varietal selection, and modern plant breeding, including the use of hybrids, wide crosses, triploids to make seedless varieties, and mutagenesis. This section provides a backdrop to the tools of genetic modification (GM) technologies; Part II — DNA-based Biotechnology and Modern Agriculture covers how DNA-based biotechnology is used for crop improvement. Building on the material covered in the General Education course, this section covers how the techniques for gene cloning and construction of transgenes are applied to agriculture, the history of plant gene transfer, and genetic engineering, and shows that trait gene modification is one more important tool in the box for modern agriculture. This section emphasizes the traits that have been commercialized across many crop species; Part III — Issues, Controversies and Concerns addresses the public perception about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in food. In this part, the basis of the issues and controversies are examined, including uncertainty about safety; regulatory issues; right of choice and the labeling of GM products; environmental concerns; globalization of agriculture; “Big science, big companies”; distrust of science; food culture, and other considerations. Part IV — The Organic Food Debate covers the practice and commercial aspects of the organic market. In Part V — The Ethics of Agriculture and Renewable Energy and the Future of Humanity, this course intends to put modern DNA-based biotechnology in context of agricultural needs and practice and addresses the concerns and misconceptions about GMOs and their application in agriculture. Together, these lecture-based courses provide the necessary theoretical knowledge base for this program.

The flagship course for this program is a two-semester project-based sequence that has been developed and conducted at the University of Rhode Island on Genetic Engineering in Plants (Tetteh and Kausch 2023b). The innovative premise of this program is that students have projects defined by gene constructs each designed to a confer trait of interest. This program will focus on crops of interest to Ghana, such as maize and sorghum, to recover stable transgenic plants and utilizes a full complement of techniques in plant tissue culture and transformation biology for agricultural biotechnology. Ideally, each student will develop their own construct to introduce into sorghum in a course called Principles and Techniques in Molecular Cloning Applied to Plant Genetic Engineering. That project-based laboratory course covers molecular techniques used for construction of vectors used in the two-semester course. While ideal for this sequence, collaborators will also provide vectors of interest.

The project-based two-semester course has been designed to present fundamental topics and approaches in plant biotechnology, as a lecture component, and techniques for genetic engineering, genome editing, and analysis of plant gene expression, as a laboratory component. The lecture component examines many aspects of the growing field of plant biotechnology and transgenic plant biology including both basic and applied fields, patents and intellectual property, commercialization, and agricultural and environmental considerations. The lecture component to the course provides background and historical perspective to the fields of genetic engineering and biotechnology. The theory and basis for all currently applied techniques are the focus of the first semester lecture topics. The second semester examines strategies for specific genetic engineering approaches to problems related to agricultural biotechnology and the use of these techniques for analysis of problems in developmental genetics and cell biology. The laboratory course is intended to present state-of-the-art techniques for plant biotechnology through an intensive hands-on approach. The laboratory experience provides students with all the necessary techniques currently used in genetic engineering approaches common to the growing industry of agricultural biotechnology as well as approaches for basic research using transgenics. This exposure allows students to prepare themselves for career options at BS or MS levels and provide the necessary tools for advanced graduate thesis research utilizing modern genetic approaches in the plant sciences. Many students are actively seeking programs that will allow them the option to seek career employment.

The finale in the sequence is titled Experiential Undergraduate Practical Internships to provide the opportunity for students to work to assemble their projects toward publication or submission and presentation to an international conference, such as the Society for In Vitro Biology (SIVB) Meetings. Undergraduate internships and a work study program provide additional opportunities for students to gain real-world experience in plant biotechnology. The authors have presented a series of poster presentations to recent SIVB meetings on these topics (Tetteh et al. 2023a, b; Tetteh and Kausch 2023a, b).

Integration of courses into exiting curricula

The suite of courses in Table 1. is designed to integrate into existing curricula for undergraduate programs on plant breeding and genetics (PBG) or similar programs. Table 2. presents a general model curriculum for undergraduate plant breeding and genetics and shows how the suite of courses from Table 1. would integrate into such an existing curriculum. This model curriculum was constructed based on the existing programs at several US universities with undergraduate programs on plant breeding and genetics, including Cornell University, The University of Illinois, and Purdue University.

Table 2. A general model curriculum for undergraduate plant breeding and genetics

Implementation for the two-semester course necessarily involves a hierarchy of training and a team-taught approach to technology transfer capabilities. In practice, while each student ideally is to introduce their own constructs, they are working together with graduate students and postdocs in order to accomplish their projects. For example, a trait gene(s) of interest would be the central theme that defines a project. This project would be the overall responsibility of a postdoc, working with two graduate students whose thesis projects are framed by these experiments. In turn, the graduate students are each overseeing two undergraduate students on their projects creating a pipeline of training. To ensure technology transfer capabilities, the KNUST lab will work on projects in parallel with the similar situation in the Kausch Lab. Students in each lab can confer and compare notes and experiences on results.

These courses would integrate well into the existing graduate program at KNUST. Table 3. shows the existing curriculum for a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) Degree Programme in Biotechnology, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, College of Science, Faculty of Biosciences, Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology. Graduate students in this program could be involved with the undergraduate students working on the projects in the two-semester project-based courses previously described.

Table 3. Suite of courses integrated into a graduate biotechnology program. Master of Philosophy (MPhil) Degree Programme in Biotechnology, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, College of Science, Faculty of Biosciences, Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology Collaborative research projects and developing continuous technology transfer

Collaborative research projects are a necessary component of this model with a focus on the introduction of traits genes important to crop improvement. Advanced molecular breeding efforts (Che et al. 2018; Hao et al. 2021) have identified significant trait genes of interest for sorghum crop improvement with attention on specific target input and output traits (Duodu et al. 2003; Kumar et al.