CIMMYT scientist Gemma Molero speaks at the 9th International Wheat Congress in Sydney, Australia, in 2015. (Photo: Julie Mollins/CIMMYT)
“We need to encourage and support girls and women to achieve their full potential as scientific researchers and innovators,” says UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres. And he is right. Bridging the gender gap in science is central to achieving sustainable development goals and fulfilling the promises of the 2030 Agenda.
Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. While in recent years the global community has increased its efforts to engage women and girls in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), they remain staggeringly underrepresented in these fields. According to UNESCO, less than 30 percent of the world’s researchers are women, and only one in three female students in higher education selects STEM subjects.
“Science is male-dominated,” agrees CIMMYT wheat physiologist Gemma Molero. “It’s challenging being a woman and being young — conditions over which we have no control but which can somehow blind peers to our scientific knowledge and capacity.”
Samjhana Khanal surveys heat-tolerant maize varieties in Ludhiana, India, during a field day at the 13th Asian Maize Conference. (Photo: Manjit Singh/Punjab Agricultural University)
Investing in the science education for women and girls is a key part of changing this reality. Samjhana Khanal, a Nepali agricultural graduate, social entrepreneur and recipient of a 2018 MAIZE-Asia Youth Innovator Award testifies to this. She cites support from her family as a driving factor in allowing her to pursue her education, particularly her mother, who “despite having no education, not being able to read or write a single word, dreamed of having a scientist daughter.”
Enhancing the visibility of established female scientists who can serve as role models for younger generations is equally important.
“One of the most important factors that register subconsciously when undergraduates consider careers is what the person at the front of the room looks like,” claims the Association for Women in Science, “and women and underrepresented minorities visibly perceive their low numbers in fields like engineering and physical sciences.”
Visiting researcher Fazleen Abdul Fatah is studying the the growing importance of maize and wheat in emerging economies.
Fazleen Abdul Fatah is a senior lecturer in agricultural economics, trade and policy at Universiti Teknologi MARA (UITM), Malaysia, who recently spent three months as a visiting researcher based at CIMMYT’s global headquarters in Mexico. She acknowledges the importance of raising the visibility of minority female scientists who can serve as role models for young girls by demonstrating that careers in STEM are attainable.
“I had an amazing professor during my undergraduate degree who really inspired me to move forward in the field,” says Abdul Fatah. “She was a wonderful example of how to do great maths, lead successful national and international projects, work in the STEM field, and be a mom.”
With support from CIMMYT, Molero, Khanal and Abdul Fatah are helping pave the way for the next generation of female scientists. Whether working on crop physiology, nutrient management or food consumption patterns, their careers serve as an inspiration for young and early career researchers around the world.
“Crop modelling has the potential to significantly contribute to global food and nutrition security,” claim the authors of a recently published paper on the role of modelling in international crop research. “Millions of farmers, and the societies that depend on their production, are relying on us to step up to the plate.”
Among other uses, crop modelling allows for foresight analysis of agricultural systems under global change scenarios and the prediction of potential consequences of food system shocks. New technologies and conceptual breakthroughs have also allowed modelling to contribute to a better understanding of crop performance and yield gaps, improved predictions of pest outbreaks, more efficient irrigation systems and the optimization of planting dates.
While renewed interest in the topic has led in recent years to the development of collaborative initiatives such as the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) and the CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture, further investment is needed in order to improve the collection of open access, easy-to-use data available for crop modelling purposes. Strong impact on a global scale will require a wide range of stakeholders – from academia to the private sector – to contribute to the development of large, multi-location datasets.
Resource-poor farmers worldwide stand to gain from developments in the field of crop modelling. (Photo: H. De Groote/CIMMYT)
In “Role of Modelling in International Crop Research: Overview and Some Case Studies,” CGIAR researchers outline the history and basic principles of crop modelling, and describe major theoretical advances and their practical applications by international crop research centers. They also highlight the importance of agri-food systems, which they view as key to meeting global development challenges. “The renewed focus on the systems-level has created significant opportunities for modelers to participant in enhancing the impact of science on developments. However, a coherent approach based on principles of transparency, cooperation and innovation is essential to achieving this.”
The authors call for closer interdisciplinary collaboration to better serve the crop research and development communities through the provision of model-based recommendations which could range from government-level policy development to direct crop management support for resource-poor farmers.
Farmer Gudeye Leta harvests his local variety maize in Dalecho village, Gudeya Bila district, Ethiopia. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)
Ethiopia is Africa’s third largest producer of maize, after Nigeria and South Africa. Although the country produces around 6.5 million tons annually, the national average maize yield is relatively low at 3.5 tons compared to the attainable yield of 8.5 tons. This high yield gap — the difference between attainable and actual yields — can be attributed to a number of factors, including crop varieties used, farm management practices, and plant density.
The Taking Maize Agronomy to Scale (TAMASA) project aims to narrow maize yield gaps in Ethiopia, Nigeria and Tanzania through the development and scaling out of decision-support tools, which provide site-specific recommendations based on information held in crop and soil databases collected from each country. These help farmers to make decisions based on more accurate variety and fertilizer recommendations, and can contribute to improving maize production and productivity.
One such tool is Nutrient Expert, a free, interactive computer-based application. It can rapidly provide nutrient recommendations for individual farmers’ fields in the absence of soil-testing data. The tool was developed by the International Plant Nutrition Institute in collaboration with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), and research and extension service providers.
Nutrient Expert user interface.
In Ethiopia, regional fertilizer recommendations are widely used, but soil fertility management practices can vary greatly from village to village and even between individual farmers. This can make it difficult for farmers or extension agents to receive accurate information tailored specifically to their needs. Nutrient Expert fills this gap by incorporating information on available fertilizer blends and giving customized recommendations for individual fields or larger areas, using information on current farmer practices, field history and local conditions. It can also provide advice on improved crop management practices such as planting density and weeding, thereby helping farmers to maximize net returns on their investment in fertilizer.
Data calibration was based on the results of 700 multi-location nutrient omission trials conducted in major maize production areas in Ethiopia, Nigeria and Tanzania. These trials were designed as a diagnostic tool to establish which macro-nutrients are limiting maize growth and yield, and determine other possible constraints.
In Ethiopia, CIMMYT scientists working for the TAMASA project conducted nutrient omission trials on 88 farmer fields in Jimma, Bako and the Central Rift Valley in 2015 to produce a version of Nutrient Expert suitable for the country. Researchers trialed the app on six maize-belt districts in Oromia the following year, in which Nutrient Expert recommendations were compared with soil-test based and regional ones.
Researchers found that though the app recommended lower amounts of phosphorus and potassium fertilizer, overall maize yields were comparable to those in other test sites. In Ethiopia, this reduction in the use of NPK fertilizer resulted in an investment saving of roughly 80 dollars per hectare.
Results from Nutrient Expert trials in Ethiopia, Nigeria and Tanzania showed improved yields, fertilizer-use efficiency and increased profits, and the app has since been successfully adapted for use in developing fertilizer recommendations that address a wide variety of soil and climatic conditions in each of the target countries.
The World Bank’s 2016 Digital Dividends report states that we are currently “in the midst of the greatest information and communications revolution in human history.” This shifting digital landscape has significant implications for the ways in which stakeholders in the agricultural sector generate, access and use data. Amidst Africa’s burgeoning technology scene, CIMMYT’s TAMASA project demonstrates the transformative power of harnessing ICTs for agricultural development.
Learn more about different versions of Nutrient Expert and download the free software here.
TAMASA is a five-year project (2014-2019) funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, seeking to improve productivity and profitability for small-scale maize farmers in Ethiopia, Nigeria and Tanzania. Read more about the project here.
Visiting researcher Fazleen Abdul Fatah is studying the growing importance of maize and wheat in emerging economies.
Fazleen Abdul Fatah credits a number of factors for her interest in agricultural research, from a childhood spent in a small town in one of Malaysia’s main rice farming areas, where the neighborhood revolved around agriculture, to supporting lecturers and professors who encouraged her interests during her undergraduate studies. “My experiences as an intern in the Philippines and visiting commercial farms in Germany and Japan as a student also shaped my motivation to work in sustainable agriculture and rural development, and ultimately I’d like to be able to influence food and agriculture policy,” she says.
Now a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Plantation and Agrotechnology at Universiti Teknologi MARA (UITM) in Malaysia, where she specializes in agricultural economics, trade and policy. For the past three months she has been based at the global headquarters of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico, where she is conducting research into food consumption patterns.
Having previously completed an internship with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines, Abdul Fatah was keen to gain more experience within the CGIAR system. After graduating from the University of Gottingen, Germany, with a PhD in Agriculture Trade Policy, her interest in the growing importance of maize and wheat in emerging economies prompted her to apply for a research opportunity at CIMMYT.
“I’m very interested in understanding how current shifts in food consumption patterns might affect the consumption of cereals in Indonesia and Malaysia.” Her previous research focused on the shift to cereals from food items such as meat, fish, or vegetables, but Abdul Fatah notes that few studies document shifts between cereals. “Rice is typically the main staple food crop for Malaysians,” she explains, “but changes in diets, incomes, and urbanization mean that people are shifting towards maize and wheat. What I’ve found more striking from my research is that in some areas people are actually consuming more wheat than rice, which means there are going to be some interesting decisions for policy makers to consider in the near future, especially in terms of import strategies.”
Abdul Fatah presented her initial research findings at CIMMYT, where she updated colleagues on her efforts to analyze consumption patterns for major cereals in 11 developing countries in Africa and Asia using government household surveys and World Bank datasets. She hopes to continue this line of research once she returns to UITM and is currently working on a paper based on case studies from Indonesia and Malaysia.
South Asia faces multiple food security challenges, one of which being its extreme vulnerability to climate change. Millions living in the region are expected to be affected by water stress, yield loss, and other climate disasters caused by rising temperatures. Technological innovations can in important tool in ensuring food and livelihood security in the region, but social inclusivity is key to promoting the large-scale adoption of new technologies and practices.
Women’s participation in agricultural activities is increasing over time, but many still have limited capacity to contribute to farm decision-making. They may also have limited control over and access to resources such as credit, extension services and markets. The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) has developed and piloted the use of climate-smart villages (CSVs) in the Indian states of Bihar and Haryana to test climate-smart agriculture options for managing climate-related risks and promoting gender equality in agricultural production.
As climate change disproportionately affects poor and socially marginalized groups, including women, it is important to understand the ways in which the climate-smart approach helps to address specific climate change adaptation challenges. However, there are few studies to date focusing on this question.
In an attempt to fill this gap, a new study carried out as part of the CCAFS project on Climate-Smart Agriculture analyzes the extent to which the climate-smart village approach can contribute to establishing greater gender equality across the agricultural, political, social and economic sectors. The study introduces a Gender Empowerment Index for climate-smart villages, based on measurable indicators. It also documents the gender gap by mapping differences in empowerment levels across selected climate-smart villages and other villages across India’s eastern and western Indo-Gangetic Plains.
Climate change impact on Mexico wheat production. 2018. Hernandez-Ochoa, I.M., Asseng, S., Kassie, B.T., Wei Xiong, Robertson, R., Pequeño, D. N. L., Sonder, K., Reynolds, M.P., Md Ali Babar., Molero, A., Hoogenboom, G. In: Agricultural and Forest Meteorology v. 263, p. 373-387.
TEXCOCO, Mexico (CIMMYT) — Food security is heavily dependent on seed security. Sustainable seed systems ensure that a variety of quality seeds are available to farming communities at affordable prices. In many developing countries, however, farmers still lack access to the right seeds at the right time.
In the past, governments played a major role in getting improved seed to poor farmers. These days, however, the private sector plays a leading role, often with strong support from governments and NGOs.
“Interventions in formal seed systems in maize have tended to focus on improving the capacity of seed producing companies, which are often locally owned small-scale operations, to produce and distribute quality germplasm,” says Jason Donovan, Senior Economist at International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). “These local seed companies are expected to maintain, reproduce and sell seed to underserved farmers. That’s a pretty tall order, especially because private seed businesses themselves are a fairly new thing in many countries.”
Prior to the early 2000s, Donovan explains, many seed businesses were partially or wholly state-owned. In Mexico, for example, the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales, Agrícolas y Pecuarias (INIFAP) produced seed and supplied it to a market-oriented entity which was responsible for distribution. “What we’re seeing now is locally owned private seed businesses carving out their space in the maize seed market, sometimes in direct competition with multinational seed companies,” he says. In Mexico, around 80 locally owned maize seed producing businesses currently exist, most of which have been involved in CIMMYT’s MasAgro Maize project. These are mostly small businesses selling between 150,000 and 500,000 kg of hybrid maize per year.
In the following Q&A, Donovan discusses new directions in research on value chains, the challenges facing private seed companies, and how new studies could help understand their capacities and needs.
Seed storage warehouse at seed company Bidasem in Celaya, Guanajato state, México. (Photo: X. Fonseca/CIMMYT)
How does research on markets and value chains contribute to CIMMYT’s mission?
We’re interested in the people, businesses and organizations that influence improved maize and wheat seed adoption, production, and the availability and quality of maize and wheat-based foods. This focus perfectly complements the efforts of those in CIMMYT and elsewhere working to improve seed quality and increase maize and wheat productivity in the developing world.
We are also interested in the nutrition and diets of urban and rural consumers. Much of the work around improved diets has centered on understanding fruit and vegetable consumption and options to stimulate greater consumption of these foods. While there are good reasons to include those food groups, the reality is that those aren’t the segments of the food market that are immediately available to or able to feed the masses. Processed maize and wheat, however, are rapidly growing in popularity in both rural and urban areas because that’s what people want and need to eat first. So the question becomes, how can governments, NGOs and others promote the consumption of healthier processed wheat and maize products in places where incomes are growing and tastes are changing?
This year, CIMMYT started a new area of research in collaboration with A4NH, looking at the availability of processed maize and wheat products in Mexico City — one of the world’s largest cities. We’re working in collaboration with researchers form the National Institute of Public Health to find out what types of wheat- and maize-based products the food industry is selling, to whom, and at what cost. At the end of the day, we want to better understand the variation in access to healthier wheat- and maize-based foods across differences in purchasing power. Part of that involves looking at what processed products are available in different neighborhoods and thinking about the dietary implications of that.
Your team has also recently started looking at formal seed systems in various locations. What direction is the research taking so far?
Our team’s current priority is to advance learning around the private sector’s role in scaling improved maize varieties. We are engaged with three large projects: MasAgro Maize in Mexico, Stress Tolerant Maize for Africa (STMA) and the Nepal Seed and Fertilizer Project (NSFP). We are looking to shed light on the productive and marketing capacities of the privately owned seed producing businesses and their ability to get more seed to more farmers at a lower cost. This implies a better understanding of options to better link seed demand and supply, and the business models that link seed companies with agro-dealers, seed producing farmers, and seed consumers.
We are also looking at the role of agro-dealers — shops that sell agricultural inputs and services (including seed) to farmers — in scaling improved maize seed.
At the end of the day, we want to provide evidence-based recommendations for future interventions in seed sectors that achieve even more impact with fewer resources.
Farmers purchase seed from an agro-dealer in Machakos, Kenya. (Photo: Market Matters Inc.)
This research is still in its initial stages, but do you already have an idea of what some of the key limiting factors are?
I think one of the main challenges facing small-scale seed producing businesses is the considerable expense entailed in simultaneously building their productive capacities and their market share. Many businesses simply don’t have a lot of capital. There’s also a lack of access to specialized business support.
In Mexico, for example, a lot of people in the industry are actually ex-breeders from government agencies, so they’re very familiar with the seed production process, but less so with options for building viable businesses and growing markets for new varieties of seed.
This is a critical issue if we expect locally owned seed businesses to be the primary vehicle by which improved seeds are delivered to farmers at scale. We’re currently in the assessment phase, examining what the challenges and capacities are, and hopefully this information will feed into new approaches to designing our interventions.
Is the study being replicated in other regions as well?
Yes, in East Africa, under the Stress Tolerant Maize for Africa (STMA) project. We’re working with seed producing businesses and agro-dealers in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda to understand their strategies, capacities, and needs in terms of providing improved seed to more farmers. We’re using the same basic research design in Mexico, and there is also ongoing work in the Nepal Seed and Fertilizer Project. Given that we are a fairly small team within CIMMYT, comparable cross-regional research is one way to punch above our weight.
Why is this research timely or important?
The research is critical as CIMMYT’s impact relies, in part, on partnerships. In the case of improved maize seed, that revolves around viable seed businesses.
Although critical, no one else is actually engaged in this type of seed sector research. There have been a number of studies on seed production, seed systems and the adoption of improved seed by poor farmers. A few have focused on the emergence of the private sector in formal seed systems and the implications for seed systems development, but most have been pretty broad, examining the overall business environment in which these companies operate but not much beyond that. We’re trying to deepen the discussion. While we don’t expect to have all the answers at the end of this study, we hope we can shift the conversation about options for better support to seed companies and agro-dealers.
Jason Donovan joined CIMMYT in 2017 and leads CIMMYT’s research team on markets and value chains, based in Mexico. He has some 15 years of experience working and living in Latin America. Prior to joining CIMMYT he worked at the Peru office of the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF), where his research focused on business development, rural livelihoods, gender equity and certification. He has a PhD in development economics from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
The visiting delegation pose for a photo with CIMMYT representatives in El Batan, Mexico. Photo: CIMMYT.
On October 23, 2018, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) welcomed a delegation of government officials from Sichuan Province, China, for the signing of a memorandum of understanding.
The Vice Governor of the Sichuan Province Government, Yao Sidan, led the delegation, which included representatives from the provincial government, the Sichuan Forestry Department, Chongzhou Municipal Government, and the Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences (SAAS).
They met with CIMMYT’s Deputy Director General, Marianne Bänziger; the Director of the Global Wheat Program, Hans Braun; the Director of the Sustainable Intensification Program, Bruno Gerard; and the Head of Bread Wheat Improvement and Rust Research, Ravi Singh.
CIMMYT representatives presented the center’s current research agenda in China and discussed with Sichuan officials possible opportunities for strengthening collaboration.
Sichuan is the fourth most populated province in China, with a population of 91 million, over two-thirds of whom live in rural areas. The province is rich in natural resources and has a cultivated land area of 10 million hectares. Despite its rapid development over the past decades, 1.7 million of Sichuan’s inhabitants still live in poverty and food security remains a key priority. In order to improve standards of living, it is important to ensure that Sichuan residents not only have enough food, but that they can harvest and consume high-quality crops.
Looking into the future of a long partnership
“CIMMYT’s support and collaboration is very important for us,” explained Yao. Collaboration between CIMMYT and the Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences has contributed to a significant improvement in standards of living within the province over the last 30 years, but there is scope for deepening and widening the partnership in order to continue improving maize and wheat production in the region.
Maize and wheat research is particularly advanced at the Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Many of its scientists are already working closely with CIMMYT researchers, but further collaboration is required to tackle ongoing wheat production and quality challenges.
“CIMMYT has enjoyed many years of collaboration with scientists in Chengdu,” said Singh, “and though there has been successful development of wheat varieties using CIMMYT germplasm, production and quality is still being affected by challenges such as yellow rust and rising water levels of the Yellow and Yangtze rivers.” However, he explained, CIMMYT can offer wheat materials for greater quality.
Gerard highlighted that as one of the world leaders in terms of conservation agriculture, China can play a key role in reducing global agriculture’s environmental footprint. CIMMYT also stands to learn from China’s expertise on agricultural technologies, he added, particularly with regard to precision agriculture, small-scale mechanization, and other tools that would prove useful to farmers in other regions of the world.
Another possible area for collaboration is researching the effects of radiation on yield loss and crop quality. There is evidence that wheat yields in other countries are significantly reduced by high levels of pollution, but the full effects of radiation on yield loss are still not very well understood, particularly in China. There is also scope to strengthen cooperation on seed industries, the use of specialty maize, diversification and aflatoxins.
For decades, rice stubble has been burned in India to clear fields and prepare for wheat sowing. The easiest way of getting rid of rice crop residue is to burn it in bulk, but this poses a serious threat to the entire biosystem, from soil nutrition to human health. Deteriorating soil health results in lower crop yields, increased dependence on fertilizers, and increased water volume requirements for irrigation, all of which have negative impacts on farmer incomes.
“Earlier when rice harvesting was manual, crop residues were taken out from fields and farmers benefited from selling them,” explains M.L. Jat, principal scientist and systems agronomist at CIMMYT. “Later, when agriculture included more mechanical operations for harvesting with the increase in the production to the tune of millions of tons, crop residue became a hazard in terms of disposal that would involve huge money, labor, and logistics.”
Natalia Palacios, CIMMYT maize quality specialist, spearheads the center’s work to raise the nutritional value of maize-based foods.
Exposure to more frequent and intense climate extremes is threatening to reverse progress towards ending hunger and malnutrition. New evidence points to rising world hunger. A recent FAO report estimated the number of undernourished people worldwide at over 800 million. Severe food insecurity and undernourishment are increasing in almost all sub-regions of Africa, as well as across South America.
“It’s very important to ensure food security,” says CIMMYT maize quality specialist Natalia Palacios. “But we also have to focus on food nutrition, because increasing yields doesn’t always mean that we’re improving food quality.” Food quality, she explained, is affected not only by genetics, but also by crop and postharvest management practices. As head of CIMMYT’s maize nutritional quality laboratory, Palacios’ work combines research on all three.
What role can CIMMYT play in addressing global nutrition challenges?
Nutrition is an interdisciplinary issue, so there are several ways for CIMMYT to engage. In breeding, there’s a lot we can do in biofortification—which means to increase grain nutrient content. The CIMMYT germplasm bank, with its more than 175,000 unique collections of maize and wheat seed, is an invaluable source of genetic traits to develop new nutritious and competitive crops.
CIMMYT also addresses household nutrition challenges, including food availability, proper storage, and consumer behavior and choice. In cropping systems, the Center studies and promotes diversification, agroforestry, and improved soil health and farming practices, and at the landscape level it examines the role of agricultural practices. Gender research and foresight allow us to identify our role in the evolving setting of agri-food systems and rural transformation. We are prioritizing areas where CIMMYT can play a key role to address global nutrition challenges and partner effectively with leading nutrition groups worldwide.
How does the biofortification of staple crops like maize and wheat help to improve nutrition?
CIMMYT biofortification research has focused on micronutrients such as provitamin A in maize and zinc in both maize and wheat, to benefit consumers whose diets depend on those crops and may lack diversity. Biofortification must be complemented by enhanced dietary diversification and education for better nutrition.
How important are processing and post-harvest storage in terms of ensuring high-nutritional quality?
Research on post-harvest processing and storage is key to our work. A critical topic in maize is monitoring, understanding, and controlling aflatoxins—poisonous toxins produced by molds on the grain. CIMMYT has worked mainly to develop aflatoxin-tolerant maize, but recent funding from the Mexican food industry has enabled us to launch a small, more broadly-focused study.
In the past, aflatoxins showed up every three or four years in Mexico, and even then at fairly low levels. Aflatoxin incidence has lately become more frequent, appearing almost every year or two, as climate changes expose crops to higher temperatures and fungi are more likely to develop in the field or storage, especially when storage conditions are poor.
What are the implications of high aflatoxin incidence for health and nutrition?
The implications for health and nutrition are huge. High consumption can affect the immune system and lead to pancreatic and liver cancers, among other grave illnesses.
How easy is it to tell if a kernel is contaminated?
It’s impossible to tell whether grain is contaminated without doing tests. The chemical structure of the toxin includes a lactone ring that fluoresces under UV-light, but this method only tells you whether or not the toxin is present, and results depend contamination levels and kernel placement under the lamp.
We’re spreading the lamp method among farmers so they can detect contamination in their crops, as well as making other of our other methods more accessible and less expensive, for use by farmers and food processors.
How do gender norms, agency and agricultural innovation interlink? How can we research this question comparatively to better understand patterns without overlooking the specificities of different contexts and the people who occupy them? These questions set the stage for the new special issue in the Journal of Gender, Agriculture and Food Security (Agri-Gender) on the GENNOVATE research initiative.
Ahead of the International Day of Rural Women (October 15), researchers from across CGIAR drew on the voices of over 7,000 rural women and men across diverse regional contexts to demonstrate why understanding and addressing gender norms is critical for achieving sustainable and equitable development.
Gender norms comprise the social rules that differentiate what a society considers a man and a woman should be in their lives. The papers published in the GENNOVATE special issue provide new empirical and methodological contributions to the literature on gender, agricultural innovation and rural transformation. The testimonies gathered across 137 communities in 26 countries illuminate how agricultural innovation processes are regularly constrained by gender norms. These norms prescribe women’s deference to men’s authority and in turn assign women with heavy household and care work burdens. They also limit their access to resources, physical mobility and social interactions.
Challenging the norms
Women in Nepal participate in a focus group discussion as part of GENNOVATE’s field research (Photo: Anuprita Shukla)
Nevertheless, women and men find ways to challenge and redefine these norms, and village practices are often different from normative expectations. In a large majority of GENNOVATE research communities, women influence important household decisions and innovate in their rural livelihood activities, albeit often close to their homesteads and on a smaller scale than rural men. Some gender norms are beginning to relax to accommodate women’s and men’s changing lives, but these processes vary greatly across the types of norms, the groups of people concerned — young or unmarried women, widows, resource-constrained women, etc. — and the places where they live. By and large, women continue to face a myriad of barriers trying to expand their economic initiatives.
Two of the papers in the special issue explore gender norms in circumstances where farmer innovation and community development are particularly prevalent. CIMMYT researcher Lone Badstue and co-authors present findings from 336 semi-structured interviews with rural women and men from 19 countries who are known in their villages for agricultural innovation. While finance and physical assets emerge as important enablers of innovation, the testimonies stress that factors related to personality and agency are key drivers for both women’s and men’s capacity to innovate. Compared to men, women innovators are far more likely to detail how supportive spouses, parents, siblings, in-laws or children can help them learn about and adopt new farming techniques or otherwise actively innovate in their rural livelihoods.
Men in Kenya participate in a focus group discussion as part of GENNOVATE’s field research (Photo: Renee Bullock/IITA)
In another paper focused on 79 community case studies, Patti Petesch and co-authors focus on a small set of “transforming” villages, where participants in the GENNOVATE study widely reported accelerated processes of empowerment and poverty reduction in their communities. Case studies and comparative evidence are able to show that more equitable gender norms play a crucial role in catalyzing inclusive agricultural innovation and development processes.
Other papers in the issue emphasize concerns over innovation processes that reinforce gender inequality and marginalize specific social groups. For example, Marlène Elias and co-authors focus on rural youth in seven countries to demonstrate how norms that discriminate against women in agriculture are key for understanding young women’s limited aspirations in agricultural work. Petesch and co-authors also introduce the concept of local normative climate to shed light on the contextual and fluid ways in which norms operate, such as why in one community only men perceive their village to be an enabling climate for their agency and agricultural innovation, while in another community only women perceive this.
Women in Ethiopia participate in a focus group discussion as part of GENNOVATE’s field research (Photo: Mahelet Hailemariam)
A large-scale endeavor
Two papers describe GENNOVATE’s methodology and conceptual framework. The authors reflect on the challenges and opportunities faced in carrying out the large-scale qualitative study. They highlight the need to be attentive to the complexities of various local social contexts and women’s and men’s own understanding of their lives, while looking for patterns to make broader claims that can contribute to agricultural research and development. They also discuss GENNOVATE’s research protocols for sampling, data collection and analysis, and reflect on challenges that correspond with their application.
The GENNOVATE papers make evident that gender norms set the stage for agricultural innovation and that some people and places find pathways to forge ahead far faster than others. The special issue makes an important contribution to the development of strategies that are meaningfully informed by social realities while also allowing for comparisons across various contexts. This insight is relevant to research and development beyond the field of agriculture and natural resource management.
Involving diverse segments of a target population in agricultural innovation interventions allows for more inclusive and equitable processes while stimulating local innovation and development outcomes. But what are the key characteristics of rural innovators? And how are their experiences similar for women and men, and how are they different?
To examine these questions, a team of researchers from CIMMYT, collaborating CGIAR centers, and Wageningen University and Research conducted individual interviews with 336 rural women and men known in their communities for trying out new things in agriculture. The results of this study are collected in 84 GENNOVATE community case studies from 19 countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Building on study participants’ own reflections and experiences with innovation in their agricultural livelihoods, the research team combined variable-oriented analysis with analysis of specific individuals’ lived experience. The study provides in-depth knowledge on how the characteristics and experiences of individual innovators interlink with the social setting to facilitate or impede innovation.
Results indicate that factors related to personality and agency are what most drive capacity to innovate. Access to resources is not a prerequisite but an important enabling aspect. Women have great potential for local innovation, but structural inequalities mean that men are often better positioned to access resources and leverage support – as a result when women challenge the status quo, men’s support is important.
This paper draws on data collected as part of GENNOVATE case studies funded by the CGIAR Research Programs on Wheat, Maize, Grain Legumes, Humid Tropics and Rice, as well as RTB (Roots, Tubers and Bananas), A4NH (Agriculture for Nutrition and Health) and FTA (Forests, Trees and Agroforestry).
Development of research design and field methodology was supported by the CGIAR Gender & Agricultural Research Network, the World Bank, the governments of Mexico and Germany, and the CGIAR Research Programs on Wheat and Maize. Data analysis was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Women farmers in Nepal use a mini tiller for direct seeding. (Photo: P.Lowe/CIMMYT)
Check out other recent publications by CIMMYT researchers below:
Facilitating change for climate-smart agriculture through science-policy engagement. Dinesh, D., Zougmore, R., Vervoort, J., Totin, E., Thornton, P.K., Solomon, D., Shirsath, P.B., Pede, V.O., Lopez-Noriega, I., Läderach, P., Korner, J., Hegger, D., Girvetz, E.H,. Friis, A.E., Driessen, P.P.J., Campbell, B.M. In: Sustainability v. 10, no. 8, art. 2616.
Assessment of management options on striga infestation and maize grain yield in Kenya. Kanampiu, F., Makumbi, D., Mageto, E.K., Omanya, G., Waruingi, S., Musyoka, P., Ransom, J. K. In: Weed Science v. 66, no. 4, p. 516-524.
Maize combined insect resistance genomic regions and their co-localization with cell wall constituents revealed by tissue-specific QTL meta-analyses. Badji, A., Otim, M., Machida, L., Odong, T., Kwemoi, D.B., Okii, D., Agbahoungba, S., Mwila, N., Kumi, F., Ibanda, A., Mugo, S.N., Kyamanywa, S., Rubaihayo, P. In: Frontiers in Plant Science v. 9, art. 895.
Gender and equitable benefit-sharing mechanisms through agricultural innovation platforms in Rwanda. Adam, R.I., Misiko, M.T., Dusengemungu, L., Rushemuka, P.N., Mukakalisa, Z. In: Community Development vol. 49, no. 4, p. 380-397
Genomic-enabled prediction models using multi-environment trials to estimate the effect of genotype × environment interaction on prediction accuracy in chickpea. Roorkiwal, M., Jarquín, D., Muneendra K. Singh., Pooran M. Gaur., Chellapilla Bharadwaj., Abhishek Rathore., Howard, R., Samineni Srinivasan., Ankit Jain., Vanika Garg., Sandip Kale., Annapurna Chitikineni., Shailesh Tripathi., Jones, E., Robbins, K., Crossa, J., Varshney, R. K. In: Scientific Reports v. 8, art. 11701.
For the first time ever, a research team of more than 40 scientists has genetically characterized values of exotics in hexaploid wheat. CIMMYT scientists, together with partners in Demark, India, Mexico, Pakistan, and the UK, used next-generation sequencing and multi-environment phenotyping to study the contribution of exotic genomes to pre-breeding lines. Research required collaborative development, evaluation, and deployment of novel genetic resources to breeding programs addressing food security under climate change scenarios in India, Mexico, and Pakistan.
The team generated large-scale pre-breeding materials, which have been evaluated for important traits such as grain yield, quality, and disease resistance. Pre-breeding and haplotype-based approaches revealed useful genetic footprints of exotic lines in pre-breeding germplasm. Results of the study, recently published in Nature Scientific Reports, show that some DNA from exotic germplasm improved the biotic and abiotic stress tolerances of lines derived from crosses of exotics with CIMMYT’s best elite lines.
The practical successes of large-scale, impact-oriented breeding work will be useful to other wheat breeding programs around the world, and the information generated could be used to boost global wheat productivity.
Sukhwinder Singh, wheat lead on CIMMYT’s SeeD Project, explains that pre-breeding is in-demand and the resources developed through this study can serve as tools to address upcoming challenges in wheat production more efficiently, as desirable alleles from exotics have been mobilized into best elite genetic background. Breeding programs can now use this material to deliver outcomes in shorter timeframes by avoiding the lengthy process of searching for exotics first.
This research was conducted as part of the Seeds of Discovery and MasAgro projects in collaboration with the Borlaug Institute for South Asia, and was made possible by generous support from Mexico’s Department of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food (SAGARPA), the Government of Punjab, and the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat.
Check out other recent publications by CIMMYT researchers below:
Applications of machine learning methods to genomic selection in breeding wheat for rust resistance. González-Camacho, J.M., Ornella, L., Perez-Rodriguez, P., Gianola, D., Dreisigacker, S., Crossa, J. In: Plant Genome v. 11, no. 2, art. 170104.
Bayesian functional regression as an alternative statistical analysis of high‑throughput phenotyping data of modern agriculture. Montesinos-López, A., Montesinos-López, O.A., De los Campos, G., Crossa, J., Burgueño, J., Luna-Vázquez, F.J. In: Plant Methods v. 14, art. 46.
Effect of ppd-a1 and ppd-b1 allelic variants on grain number and thousand-kernel weight of durum wheat and their impact on final grain yield. Arjona, J.M., Royo, C., Dreisigacker, S., Ammar, K., Villegas, D. In: Frontiers in Plant Science v. 9, art. 888.
Genomic-enabled prediction accuracies increased by modeling genotype × environment interaction in durum wheat. Sukumaran, S., Jarquín, D., Crossa, J., Reynolds, M.P. In: Plant Genome v. 11, no. 2, art. 170112.
Mexican tropical cream cheese yield using low-fat milk induced by trans-10, cis-12 conjugated linoleic acid: effect of palmitic acid. Granados-Rivera, L.D., Hernández-Mendo, O., Burgueño, J., Gonzalez-Munoz, S.S., Mendoza-Martinez, G.D., Mora-Flores, J.S., Arriaga-Jordan, C.M. In: CyTA-Journal of Food v. 16, no. 1, p. 311-315.
Abraham Blum, 1934-2018. (Photo: Courtesy of Arnon Blum)
Long-time CIMMYT partner and plant physiologist Abraham Blum passed away on March 10, 2018, at the age of 84, after having dedicated his career to understanding how plants cope with stress.
From 1968 to 2000 he was based at The Volcani Centre in Israel, where he led the Agriculture Research Organization’s dryland wheat and sorghum breeding programs. His research focused on the functional basis and improvement of heat and drought tolerance in cereals.
Blum and his team developed wheat and sorghum cultivars adapted to dryland conditions, using novel breeding methods. A strong advocate for multidisciplinary approaches, he pioneered and championed the study of observable traits to enhance the understanding of plants’ ability to cope with and adapt to changes in the environment.
Blum authored more than 100 scientific papers and reviews, challenging common beliefs concerning drought tolerance. His 1988 book, Plant Breeding for Stress Environments, describes how plants cope with drought stress through traits to avoid or tolerate dehydration and is considered the first comprehensive treatise on plant breeding for water-limited environments.
“Abraham initially visited CIMMYT in my first year, 1989,” said Matthew Reynolds, head of wheat physiology at CIMMYT, “but I later applied his advice to make more strategic crosses and this eventually became the core principle of our physiological breeding work.”
Blum sustained his engagement with CIMMYT, serving as an advisor and speaker at CIMMYT’s inaugural Yield Potential Workshop in Obregón, Mexico, in 1996, and again at the inaugural meeting of the Heat and Drought Wheat Improvement Consortium (HeDWIC) in Frankfurt in 2014.
He spent much of his retirement consulting, teaching, and curating his website, Plant Stress, which offers concentrated information on environmental plant stress, written or compiled by specialists. “The website he developed is a unique resource that has been used by plant and crop scientists worldwide for decades,” explained Reynolds, “and I am honored to have been asked to help continue this invaluable legacy.”
Plant physiologist Abraham Blum in the field. (Photo: Courtesy of the Journal of Experimental Botany)
New technologies are at the core of sustainable agricultural growth and rural poverty alleviation, says Khondoker Mottaleb, an Agricultural Economist working within CIMMYT’s Socioeconomic Program. However, he explains, despite the visible benefits of using new agricultural machinery or farm management practices, overall uptake remains low as a range of factors continue to limit farmers’ ability to invest.
In a bid to enhance irrigation efficiency, Bangladesh has tried to introduce and popularize the use of axial-flow pumps (AFPs) for surface water irrigation. These pumps can lift up to 55 percent more water than a conventional centrifugal pump, but despite the obvious benefits, there has been limited uptake in targeted areas of the country. From 2012-13, a CIMMYT initiative made AFPs available for purchase for farmers in the southern regions of Bangladesh, but as of September 2017 only 888 had been purchased by lead farmers and irrigation service providers.
A recent study by CIMMYT in Bangladesh used primary data collected from 70 irrigation service providers – each of whom was given a free AFP for one season under a demonstration program – to examine user perception of AFPs and the major constraints to their adoption. It found that even though the use of AFPs can significantly reduce irrigation and overall crop production costs, more demonstrations and awareness-raising programs are needed if uptake is to be increased in target areas.
The study also highlighted the need for continuous modification of new technologies based on farmers’ requirements, with Mottaleb emphasizing that these must be adapted to local demand specifications, and that prices must be competitive with those of alternative technologies in order to ensure rapid uptake.
This study was supported by USAID through the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia – Mechanization and Irrigation (CSISA-MI) project. It was also supported by USAID and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) Phase II project.
A farmer in Bangladesh irrigates his land using an axial-flow pump. (Photo: Ranak Martin)
Check out other recent publications by CIMMYT researchers below:
Bayesian functional regression as an alternative statistical analysis of high-throughput phenotyping data of modern agriculture. 2018. Montesinos-López, A., Montesinos-Lopez, O.A., De los Campos, G., Crossa, J., Burgueño, J., Luna-Vazquez, F.J. In: Plant Methods v. 14, art. 46.
Exploring the physiological information of sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence through radiative transfer model inversion. 2018. Celesti, M., van der Tol, C., Cogliati, S., Panigada, C., Peiqi Yang, Pinto Espinosa, F., Rascher | Miglietta, F., Colombo, R., Rossini, M. In: Remote Sensing of Environment v. 215, p. 97-108.
Genome-wide association mapping for resistance to leaf rust, stripe rust and tan spot in wheat reveals potential candidate genes. 2018. Juliana, P., Singh, R.P., Singh, P.K., Poland, J.A., Bergstrom, G.C., Huerta-Espino, J., Bhavani, S., Crossa, J., Sorrells, M.E. In: Theoretical and Applied Genetics v. 131, no. 7, p. 1405-1422.
High-throughput method for ear phenotyping and kernel weight estimation in maize using ear digital imaging. 2018. Makanza, R., Zaman-Allah, M., Cairns, J.E., Eyre, J., Burgueño, J., Pacheco Gil, R. A., Diepenbrock, C., Magorokosho, C., Amsal Tesfaye Tarekegne, Olsen, M., Prasanna, B.M. In: Plant Methods v. 14, art. 49.
Long-term impact of conservation agriculture and diversified maize rotations on carbon pools and stocks, mineral nitrogen fractions and nitrous oxide fluxes in inceptisol of India. 2018. Parihar, C.M., Parihar M.D., Sapkota, T.B., Nanwal, R.K., Singh, A.K., Jat, S.L., Nayak, H.S., Mahala, D.M., Singh, L.K., Kakraliya, S.K., Stirling, C., Jat, M.L. In: Science of the Total Environment v. 640-641, p. 1382-1392.
Major biotic maize production stresses in Ethiopia and their management through host resistance. 2018. Keno, T., Azmach, G., Dagne Wegary Gissa, Regasa, M.W., Tadesse, B., Wolde, L., Deressa, T., Abebe, B., Chibsa, T., Mahabaleswara, S. In: African Journal of Agricultural Research v. 13, no. 21, p. 1042-1052.
Detection of aflatoxigenic and atoxigenic mexican aspergillus strains by the dichlorvos–ammonia (DV–AM) method. 2018. Masayo Kushiro, Hidemi Hatabayashi, Kimiko Yabe, Loladze, A. In: Toxins v. 10, no. 7, art. 263.
Excessive pruning and limited regeneration: Are Faidherbia albida parklands heading for extinction in the Central Rift Valley of Ethiopia? 2018. Tesfaye Shiferaw Sida, Baudron, F., Dejene Adugna Deme, Motuma Tolera, Giller, K.E. In: Land Degradation and Development v. 29, no. 6, p. 1623-1633.
Multi-temporal and spectral analysis of high-resolution hyperspectral airborne imagery for precision agriculture: Assessment of wheat grain yield and grain protein content. 2018. Rodrigues, F., Blasch, G., Defourny, P., Ortiz-Monasterio, I., Schulthess, U., Zarco-Tejada, P.J., Taylor, J.A., Gerard, B. In: Remote Sensing v. 10, no. 6, art 930.
Screening and validation of fertility restoration genes (Rf) in wild abortive CMS system of rice (Oryza sativa L.) using microsatellite markers. 2018. Bhati, P.K., Singh, S.K., Kumar, U. In: Indian Journal of Genetics and Plant Breeding v. 78, no. 2, p. 270-274.
Time-series multispectral indices from unmanned aerial vehicle imagery reveal senescence rate in bread wheat. 2018. Hassan, M.A., Mengjiao Yang, Rasheed, A., Xiuliang Jin, Xianchun Xia, Yonggui Xiao, He Zhonghu. In: Remote Sensing v. 10, no. 6, art. 809.
Natural variation in elicitation of defense-signaling associates to field resistance against the spot blotch disease in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). 2018. Sharma, S., Ranabir Sahu, Sudhir Navathe, Vinod Kumar Mishra, Chand, R., Singh, P.K., Joshi, A.K., Pandey, S.P. In: Frontiers in Plant Science v. 9, art. 636.
Population structure of leaf pathogens of common spring wheat in the West Asian regions of Russia and North Kazakhstan in 2017. 2018. Gultyaeva, E.I., Kovalenko, N.M., Shamanin, V.P., Tyunin, V.A., Shreyder, E.R., Shaydayuk, E.L., Morgunov, A.I. In: Vavilovskii Zhurnal Genetiki i Selektsii v. 22, no. 3, p. 363-369.
The ADRA2A rs553668 variant is associated with type 2 diabetes and five variants were associated at nominal significance levels in a population-based case–control study from Mexico City. 2018. Totomoch-Serra, A., Muñoz, M. de L., Burgueño, J., Revilla-Monsalve, M.C., Perez-Muñoz, A., Diaz-Badillo, A. In: Gene v. 669, p. 28-34.
