GCP's two Subprogramme (SP) Advisors, assigned to Subprogramme 2 and Subprogramme 5, serve as external reviewers of the projects under their tutelage. They provide an objective perspective on GCP activities, and they are able to focus on major issues they believe their respective Subprogramme Leaders must deal with, both skills which are highly appreciated by the Management Team. The SP Advisors participate in the Annual Research Meeting each year, provide extensive feedback to their SP Leaders on the research conducted within the relevant Subprogramme, and review the commissioned research proposals. In addition, the SP Advisors sometimes accompany their respective MT member to on-site visits to GCP partner institutes. It is a goal of the MT for each MT member to conduct two site visits per year to review GCP products and get feedback from our partner institutes about how to strengthen our collaborations.

The two Subprogramme Advisors were previously members of GCP's Review & Advisory Panel (RAP), which, until the last quarter of 2009, consisted of five scientists in total, with each of the five members performing the activities described above for the five GCP Subprogramme Leaders. However, in keeping with GCP's evolution and changes in our project monitoring framework, RAP was dissolved in September 2009, with Subprogramme Advisors being maintained for Subprogramme 2 and Subprogramme 5 only. This change was due to two factors. Firstly, Project Delivery Coordinators have been identified for each of the seven Challenge Initiatives, and one of their main tasks is to assist GCP management in project monitoring from a product delivery perspective. Secondly, the two GCP platforms launched in 2009 - the Molecular Breeding Platform (MBP) and the the Genetic Resource Support Service (GRSS) - will each have their own advisory committee, to be established in the course of 2010.