More CBU Subscribers Receive Replica of Norman Borlaug Congressional Medal

Three lucky subscribers of the Crop Biotech Update are the second set of winners of the Knowledge Campaign on crop biotechnology launched by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA). They will each get a bronze duplicate of the Dr. Norman E. Borlaug Congressional Gold Medal and are eligible for the grand draw of a netbook on December 31, 2010. Three medals will be drawn every week until the end of the year.

The winners are Ruth Mumo of the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Kenya; Fatma Bhiri of Ecole nationale d'ingenieurs de sfax, Tunisia; and Bettina Broeckling of the Colorado State University, USA.

The first medal recipients were Joseph Peltier, of the InterAmerican Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, Barbados; Vikas Yadav Patade, of the Institute of Bio-Energy Research, India; and Jaine Reyes of the University of the Philippines Los Baños. Mangesh Y. Dudhe of the Directorate of Oilseeds Research, Hyderabad, India won an Ipod Touch in celebration of the 10th year of the Global Knowledge Center on Crop Biotechnology. Pictures of winners will be posted as soon as they are received.

The Knowledge Campaign for "A million healing hands to help a billion hungry" is dedicated to Dr. Norman Borlaug, 1970 Nobel Peace Laureate who was the founding patron of ISAAA. With his full support and initiative, ISAAA established the Global Knowledge Center on Crop Biotechnology in 2000 in the Philippines with active nodes called Biotechnology Information Centers (BICs) in 24 countries globally. ISAAA and its global family of BICs are celebrating a decade of success in spearheading the sharing of knowledge and capacity building on crop biotechnology to help alleviate poverty in developing countries.

ISAAA has institutionalized the sharing of knowledge on crop biotechnology by creating and distributing a weekly email-based newsletter Crop Biotech Update (CBU) which summarizes the latest world developments in agriculture, food and crop biotechnology relevant to developing countries. CBU is now distributed to over 850,000 subscribers in 200 countries and the campaign hopes to up the figures to 1 Million by December 31, 2010.

ISAAA urges people participation by simply enrolling, without cost or obligation, 1 to 5 email addresses, or preferably more, of their co-professionals, and colleagues including students until December 31, 2010. To participate, log on to ISAAA Knowledge Campaign at http://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/invitepromo/cbu-promo,asp.