Over a few days, November 5 th -8 th , 2018 we meet as group for an NSF PIRE project meeting at BecA-ILRI Hub in Kenya, Nairobi. The meeting brought individual team members from NCSU, Rutgers, Auburn, and ECSU and multiple African Partners institutions. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss progress on project aims and circumvent hurdles. It was a busy and fruitful three days filled with many talks, deep discussions, and team building. One highlight was a round table discussion among the cassava community in Nairobi about how to work together to overcome common challenges facing cassava food security. Overall, the meeting was a success in marking milestones that been accomplished in establishing a whitefly transmission lab at the BecA-ILRI Hub and successful sequencing DNA viruses.