| Summary: | During the second semester (September-October) of 2025, a series of training activities was conducted under the KoLFACI project, aimed at strengthening the technical capacities of partners in research, plant breeding, technological innovation, and strategic decision-making for common bean production in Latin America.
The program began with the presentation of the Common Bean Observatory, a tool designed to support decision-making and regional knowledge exchange by providing access to key information for research and breeding programs, thereby promoting collaborative work among countries.
Subsequently, data management was addressed through BMS, ontologies, and protocols, emphasizing the importance of metadata and trait ontologies for standardizing experimental information. The need to properly document the experimental context and to use a common language to ensure data consistency, traceability, and quality was highlighted. These practices were reinforced through hands-on exercises using the BMS platform.
The training on IoT technologies and agroclimatic modeling introduced an integrated ecosystem of real-time monitoring, artificial intelligence, and crop modeling, highlighting its usefulness in addressing climate variability, improving common bean monitoring, and supporting breeding and crop management decisions, with active participation from farmers.
In the session on Megalurothrips usitatus, progress in resistance evaluation was shared, identifying elite genotypes with strong productive performance and tolerance to the insect, and emphasizing the need for standardized protocols and proper protection of materials under evaluation.
In addition, the industrial processing workshop strengthened capacities in nutritional analysis, bean flour production, and sensory evaluation, highlighting the value of common bean as a food raw material.
Finally, the presentation on food systems, value chains, and business models underscored the importance of integrated and inclusive approaches to transform food systems, improve incomes, reduce losses, and advance toward sustainable and resilient production in the region.
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