CIMMYT E-News, vol 3 no. 12, December 2006

Wheat lines that resisted virulent stem rust last season have now succumbed.

Observations from wheat rust screening trials in Kenya indicate even more of the world’s wheat is at risk from a stem rust attack than originally thought. Scientists from CIMMYT and its partners, studying wheat planted at the Njoro Agriculture Research Centre, report that more than 85% of sample wheats, including cultivars from the major wheat producing regions of the world, have succumbed to the stem rust known as Ug99. Most importantly some wheat lines which showed resistance to Ug99 stem rust a year ago now appear to be susceptible to the disease.

In August, 2005 an expert panel raised the first alarm about the new, virulent form of stem rust that could devastate world wheat crops. These new observations could mean the threat to the global wheat harvest is now significantly greater.

The Njoro Research Centre is in an area of Kenya where the virulent form of stem rust fungus is endemic. For the past three years scientists have used the station to expose wheat to the disease to see which is susceptible and most importantly, which is not. In March of 2006 more than 11000 different types of wheat and relatives of wheat from all over the world were planted and exposed to the fungus.

Studies are still underway to clarify the situation but it appears that at least one of the major stem rust resistance genes that has protected many of the world’s wheats for decades is no longer effective against the rust fungus at Njoro. This new development enhances the significance of what is already recognized as a dangerous threat to future global wheat harvests.

Wheat grows on more than 200 million hectares in both the developed and the developing world and the new data indicate that very little of that area is planted to varieties which resist the stem rust found at Njoro. Though stem rust may not be able to thrive in all parts of the world, scientists estimate that well over half of the total wheat area could suffer rust epidemics if susceptible varieties planted there are exposed to the pathogen.

“I was shocked at what I saw this season,” says Rick Ward, coordinator of the CIMMYT-ICARDA led Global Rust Initiative. “Essentially we have to find a way to replace all of the world’s wheat.”

Stem rust is one of the most dreaded of all plant diseases. In the mid-1950s it wiped out up to 40% of the North American spring wheat crop. Thanks in large part to the wheat breeding work of Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Dr. Norman Borlaug and those who followed him, the disease has not been a significant threat for almost half a century. Breeders combined several sources of resistance to the fungus into new varieties of wheat. Unfortunately, over time, the rust pathogen evolved and mutated and in 1999 scientists found a strain in Uganda (Ug99) that could bypass much of that resistance. The spores of the Ug99 fungus can travel great distances on the wind. The pathogen has already spread from Uganda into Kenya and Ethiopia. An outbreak of yellow rust originated in the same region of eastern Africa and eventually spread across the Arabian Peninsula and into the major wheat-growing areas of India and Pakistan. Studies of wind patterns in the region have led scientists to conclude that the new pathogen will eventually threaten wheat crops on a global scale.

CIMMYT and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), together with partners such as the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) are leading a global effort to characterize the rust pathogen; to track its spread and to find new sources of resistance to the disease and breed them into new wheats. This is especially important to farmers in the developing world who have little access to fungicides that could help reduce the damage.

“The good news is that some samples at Njoro did resist the fungus,” says CIMMYT wheat scientist, Ravi Singh. “That has given us a good place to start.” In fact Njoro is also the site where potential resistant breeding lines are now undergoing test.

For more information, Rick Ward (r.w.ward@cgiar.org)

CIMMYT E-News, vol 2 no. 10, October 2005

A new study from the Carnegie Institute of Washington, Stanford University, and CIMMYT shows wheat yield gains in northern Mexico could be due mostly to the weather.

Since the beginning of the Green Revolution in the 1960s Mexico has seen a continuing rise in average wheat yields. At the end of the 20th century yields were 25 percent higher than they were in 1980. It started with the improved wheat that Dr. Norman Borlaug developed during the 1940s and 50s in the Yaqui Valley of Mexico’s Sonora State.

CIMMYT scientists and partners have tracked yield trends in the area for decades, noting changes in varieties, cropping practices, disease pressures, and even policy changes that might have an impact on the final tonnage a farmer gets from the field. Trends observed here, in the cradle of the Green Revolution, may be good indicators for other parts of the wheat producing world.

CIMMYT agronomist Dr. Ivan Ortiz-Monasterio and his colleagues from Stanford University were curious to evaluate the most significant factors in that yield gain. But before they could look at the contribution of fertilizers or improved varieties, they decided to eliminate any impact that changes in climate might have had. This is no easy task, and often in calculations in the past, the weather was assumed to have been relatively constant and therefore would not affect a trend in yield.

By taking climate into account, the team came up with a surprising result, one that has long-term implications in a world where global warming is likely a major part of ongoing climate change.

Taking detailed weather data from 1987 – 2002 recorded at two weather stations close to farms whose output of wheat per hectare was well documented, they used a computer model for how wheat grows to simulate what would happen to wheat yields using the real weather data and leaving every other potential impact constant. The result was that from 85-100% of all the change in wheat yield could be explained by the climate.

“Basically a two-degree change in temperature accounted for nearly all of the yield change,” says the Carnegie Institute’s Dr David Lobell, the principal author of the study.

The study found that the nighttime temperature had the most significant impact on wheat yield. The weather data showed that over the 15-year period there had been a gradual trend toward cooler nights. During that time, farm yields in the areas studied in the Yaqui and Mayo Valleys (Sonora State) and in the San Luis and Rio Colorado Valleys (Baja California) increased from below 5 tons / hectare to about 6 tons / hectare, a significant increase.

“Although higher yielding wheat varieties were developed during the 15 years of the study, these were not widely grown by farmers in the region,” says Dr. Ortiz-Monasterio. “This was due to the breakdown of disease resistance or bread making quality limitations.”

Not satisfied with a result based on a single computer model, the team decided to try a second approach to get at the impact of temperatures on production. Again, the independent analysis produced very similar results.

The new study, published in the current issue of Field Crops Research and supported by the National Science Foundation and the Packard Foundation, has important implications for directions in wheat research. Climate changes, in particular increases in average temperatures, could have important, negative effects on wheat yields in the future.

For further information, contact Ivan Ortiz-Monasterio (i.ortiz-monasterio@cgiar.org).

May, 2004

In the next 25 years, a very large share of the additional wheat needed to feed the rising population in developing countries will come from intensive farming systems. It is more important than ever to learn how to reduce the impact of intensive agriculture on the environment while ensuring that those systems can supply much-needed food in the years to come.

One such system is the Yaqui Valley in northwestern Mexico, site of CIMMYT’s main wheat research station. “Because of its location—between the ocean and a mountain range—the Valley serves as an ideal laboratory for investigating the long-term effects of intensive farming on neighboring ecosystems,” comments David Lobell, a Stanford University researcher collaborating with CIMMYT. “These effects have regional implications—for example, for the Sea of Cortes and adjacent ecosystems—as well as global consequences, since they contribute to global warming and, ultimately, climate change.”

Remote sensing by NASA satellites, started in 1999 as part of the CIMMYT/Stanford University collaborative study, is a new way of studying farming activities in the Valley. Forty percent of the wheat produced in the developing world comes from irrigated environments resembling the environment in the Valley. Because of this similarity, investigations conducted in the Valley have applications far beyond it, particularly in the intensive production systems of South Asia, which feed billions of people.

The Latest Applications of Remote Sensing in the Valley

The Yaqui Valley can be thought of as a large experimental field, made up of individual farmers’ fields. These farmers can be divided into three groups. Some plant wheat too early, others plant it on time, and others plant it too late. During each cropping cycle, researchers use remote sensing to make thousands of observations across the whole Valley and determine how different sowing dates affect wheat yields. This procedure is more effective than establishing a trial specifically to test the effects of different planting dates at a research station.

Based on the resulting information, CIMMYT researchers have calculated that in bad years, when temperatures are high and water is scarce, late planting causes yield losses worth about US$ 10 million in the Valley. “This information comes just in time for wheat farmers, who can adjust their sowing dates and cope better with the intense drought we’ve had in the Valley for the past eight years,” says Ortiz-Monasterio.

In good years, when there is enough water and cool temperatures, the effect of late sowing on wheat yields is either negligible or nil. Nonetheless, data on when most farmers sow their wheat are potentially useful to decision makers, who, based on these data, could ensure that credit and irrigation water are available to producers when they are ready to plant.

Remote sensing is also being used for tracking nitrogen derivatives that are released into the atmosphere or leached into the soil with irrigation water. Currently several Stanford professors are leading teams that study the effect of irrigation water that flows from the Yaqui Valley into the Sea of Cortes, about 20 km away. They are observing the increases in the algae bloom and/or the plankton in the Sea, and so far the increases seem to coincide with the outflow of irrigation water from the Valley. If this finding is confirmed, recommendations need to be made to Valley farmers that would allow them to reduce their nitrogen fertilizer applications.

In years past, CIMMYT wheat agronomists have worked out strategies that could dramatically reduce the amount of fertilizer applied to wheat without affecting yields. For example, farmers could reduce nitrogen applications by more than 30% if they apply less fertilizer exactly at the time when the crop starts pulling nitrogen from the soil. Currently farmers apply nitrogen with irrigation water, weeks before wheat is actually sown. This practice causes nearly 35% of the nitrogen to be lost through gas emissions and leaching before the crop is even in the ground.

Sensing Plants’ Nutrient Needs

Another way of fine-tuning fertilizer applications is to use an electronic sensor that is held over the wheat crop by a technician walking through the field. The sensor detects which plants need fertilizer and allows farmers to apply the exact amount of nitrogen at the right time, thereby reducing waste and farmers’ production costs. But, most importantly, this practice would reduce the amount of unused nitrogen that leaches through the soil and into the Sea of Cortes with the outflow of irrigation water. “Because individual farmers cannot afford to have their own sensors, we envision that district representatives in the Valley could offer this detection service to farmers districts every crop cycle,” comments Ortiz-Monasterio.

For more information, contact Ivan Ortiz-Monasterio.

In a determined effort to shield consumers against food price volatility, the government of Ecuador has renewed its investment in food crop research, including a vigorous program to restore wheat production and reduce the nation’s perilous dependence on imported grain.

The mild irony of putting on a festival to release a drought-tolerant wheat variety after days of unseasonably rainy weather was not lost on Esteban Falconí and Jorge Coronel of Ecuador’s National Institute of Agricultural Research (INIAP). They could not have imagined a more fitting demonstration of the “crazy climate” that has emerged in recent years, altering the long-established weather patterns that govern the cropping season.

In the days before the variety launch, held on 15 July in the Saraguro area of Loja Province, Falconí, who leads INIAP’s cereals program, and Coronel, who heads up the program’s work in southern Ecuador, worried about the bad weather’s real and immediate consequences. Occurring at harvest time (which should have been accompanied by clear skies and intense heat), it threatened to spoil the grain in experimental plots and wreak havoc on farmers’ harvests of wheat, barley, and other crops. The rain also posed a hazard to INIAP’s carefully orchestrated release event.

As luck would have it, the morning of the event, the rains ceased and the harsh Andean sun shown brightly, not only reducing the risk of crop damage but also ensuring that researchers, farmers, political leaders, and other invitees could fittingly celebrate the official arrival of the new wheat, INIAP Vivar 2010 (named after scientist Hugo Vivar). It is among the first products of a campaign launched in 2008 to renew Ecuador’s diminished wheat production.

A posthumous tribute Deviating just this once from their custom of naming wheat varieties after Ecuador’s highest mountains, researchers dubbed their latest release ‘INIAP Vivar 2010’ in honor of the late Hugo Vivar. He worked as a barley breeder for 16 years with the International Center for Agriculture in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), which posted him at CIMMYT to serve the Latin American region. Subsequently, CIMMYT employed Vivar for another 9 years. A native of Ecuador’s Loja Province, Vivar spent brief periods during his childhood at the family farm in Saraguro. One of the farmers attending an event held to release the new wheat variety recalled that her mother had been one of his playmates. As a scientist, Vivar returned to Saraguro often, helping design a long-term project in collaboration with INIAP, which confronted with remarkable success problems that have kept agricultural productivity low and rural poverty high in this remote mountainous region.

Having tested Vivar for several years in their own plots, farmers attending the event knew that it would bring higher yields of good-quality grain and offer a buffer against increasingly common drought, another sign of the crazy new climate.

A hole in the food basket
Planted in small plots on steep mountain slopes, Saraguro’s wheat and barley crops appear in the distance like yellow stamps stuck on huge crumpled sheets of green and brown paper.

Against that backdrop, INIAP’s release event celebrated both a new agricultural technology and southern Ecuador’s vibrant rural life. Speeches, displays, and an outdoor banquet drew attention to the new wheat as well as to the region’s rich popular culture, passionate politics, deep religious faith and hard-working people.

Despite the event’s local flavor, it had far-reaching repercussions, including creating public awareness (partly through mass media coverage) of a new technology that represents concrete and rapid progress in an ambitious plan to revive Ecuador’s wheat production.

The plan forms part of this country’s decisive response to the global food price crisis of 2008. Across the developing world, the crisis showed how quickly food security can deteriorate, aggravating the plight of millions of poor and reflecting fundamental weaknesses in the global food system which had been overlooked for years.

In Ecuador, the crisis revealed one gaping hole in an otherwise sturdy basket of staple foods. The country is self-sufficient in rice and produces abundant supplies of beans, cassava, maize, and potatoes. However, Ecuador imports nearly all of its wheat for bread, which figures importantly in the diets of rural and urban consumers alike.

“When wheat prices spiked in 2008, Ecuador’s government cushioned the blow by temporarily subsidizing imported wheat at great cost,” explains Julio César Delgado, INIAP’s director general. Well aware of the flaws in such a policy, he says, government policy makers, at the prompting of president Rafael Correa, sought INIAP’s help in formulating a plan to revitalize wheat production and reduce the country’s excessive dependence on the international wheat market.

Resilient wheat for a rugged environment

INIAP itself had suggested such action many times before, but the message had always fallen on deaf ears. Shaken by the 2008 food crisis, the government took the initiative this time, setting out realistic goals and providing about USD 4.3 million over 5 years for intensified wheat research and promotion.

The central aim of the new initiative is to expand Ecuador’s wheat area to about 50,000 hectares, enough to satisfy at least 30% of domestic demand. That would be up from just 3% currently covered by local production. This assumes that farmers will adopt new varieties and apply adequate quantities of fertilizer, for which they will receive credit on reasonable terms.

“A major challenge will be to produce and provide enough improved seed,” says Walter Larriva, director of an INIAP experiment station near the city of Cuenca. The new funding will help, and so will INIAP’s years of experience in helping establish farmer seed production groups, he explains.

Less than two years after the 2008 decision to renew Ecuador’s wheat research and production, INIAP is already releasing improved varieties, including Vivar for southern Ecuador and San Jacinto (released later in July, along with a new barley variety) for the country’s central and northern zones. Those are the first wheat varieties to be released in Ecuador since the early 1990s, when Cojitambo became available. Much of the country’s limited wheat area is planted to that and older varieties.

Vivar is far more resilient than its predecessors under rugged conditions, offering a consistent yield advantage of about 80%. Based on a line developed by CIMMYT and named Berkut, it was introduced into Ecuador during 2003. Vivar’s good tolerance to drought probably comes from a line in its pedigree that resulted from crosses made at CIMMYT between domesticated wheat and related wild species. The excellent performance of the new variety bodes well for INIAP’s initiative to reduce Ecuador’s dependence on imported wheat, but it could generate further benefits as well.

One of the farmers present at the release, Patricio Ordóñez, describes how he invested extra income from improved wheat in the production of high-value tropical fruits. Ordóñez is one of more than a dozen community leaders trained under a project carried out jointly by INIAP and CIMMYT in Saraguro from 1995 to 2008, with the aim of reducing rural poverty through more diverse and sustainable agricultural systems.

A renaissance of research results
INIAP was able to release Vivar and San Jacinto so soon after the start of the new national wheat initiative for two reasons. One was CIMMYT’s unswerving support for local wheat research even during its time of relative dormancy in Ecuador. If that service had ceased, INIAP’s new wheat team would have been forced to start essentially from scratch, adding many years to the process of variety development.

Just as important was the government’s decision in the wake of the food crisis to thoroughly refurbish INIAP’s research infrastructure as well as to hire and train dozens more scientists and technicians.

“Many years of neglect,” says Delgado, “had left our facilities in a poor state and had undermined the ability and motivation of our scientists to deliver results.” As director general, Delgado’s main achievement was to restore what he refers to as “la mística del trabajo” (or work ethic), leading to a renaissance of research results, as demonstrated by Vivar and other new varieties.

Segundo Ceballos, who worked in INIAP’s barley and wheat plots for more than four decades, is very happy about the new varieties and the wheat research revival. For they vindicate years of struggle to keep a central pillar of his country’s food security from falling.

For further information: Hans Braun, director, global wheat program (h.braun@cgiar.org)

January, 2005

In recent years, CIMMYT’s collaboration with partners in the South Africa Development Community (SADC) has flourished in scope and strength to span research, training, and shared experiences with researchers, extension workers, farmers, seed companies, and four national universities. The various parties bring their strengths to this alliance, resulting in synergy and a fluid transfer of impact-oriented technologies and knowledge to smallholder farmers.

From the Ivory Tower to Farmers’ Fields

Mick Mwala’s friends have nicknamed him “Dr Mobile.” On any given day he can be found at any of three or more places: the lecture halls and laboratories of the Department of Crop Science at the University of Zambia (UNZA), interacting with his students at the CIMMYT-Zimbabwe research station, or in the field visiting smallholder farmers who host “baby” trials in farmer-participatory maize variety evaluations (popularly known as mother-baby trials ) throughout the SADC region. Occasionally, he will also call on the offices of local seed companies to chat about the varieties being tested in the field. The only way to reach Mwala on weekdays is via his mobile phone, hence the nickname.

Mwala, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Zambia (UNZA), is among the many individuals who supply impetus to agricultural progress in the region. Since 2000, he has been allocating 30% of his time to providing regional leadership within CIMMYT’s southern African research agenda. “I advise national research and extension staff in 10 southern African countries, each of them leading a network among farmer and partner organizations to identify new maize varieties suitable to smallholder conditions,” he explains. Marianne Bänziger, director of CIMMYT’s African Livelihoods Program, sees Mwala’s secondment to CIMMYT as one approach to an extremely productive collaboration between an international agricultural research center and the present expertise of African universities, and Mwala concurs.

“Many universities had become ivory towers, with little actual connection to the development issues their research and training activities should address,” he says. His focus on CIMMYT has involved him in a highly relevant, cooperative effort allowing CIMMYT’s state-of-the-art science and technologies—such as new breeding approaches for drought tolerance, or GIS tools—to be utilized. “The experience has definitely cross-fertilized my approach to teaching at the university and equipped me with a developmental perspective towards training and research,” Mwala says. The expanse of collective knowledge is also shared among international agricultural research centers, national agricultural research systems (NARS), non-governmental and community-based organizations, church-based groups, schools, the private sector, and with individual smallholder farmers. In turn, CIMMYT has gained much from Mwala’s experience in capacity building and his intrinsic knowledge of southern Africa and its people.

New Challenges Add a New Dimension to Collaboration

For many decades, agricultural research institutions have grappled with how to design variety release systems that are more responsive to smallholder farmers’ needs. Farmers’ access to seed must be improved, especially for those who have to travel long distances. By partnering with institutions possessing broad and in-depth knowledge of the southern Africa region, its people, cropping systems, and technology transfer approaches, international centers such as CIMMYT are better able to deliver innovative science-based solutions for improved livelihoods.

A troubling phenomenon that Mwala has observed in the course of his work is the extremely high staff turnover rate in the region’s NARS. “It is not unusual for the staffing profile of an institution to completely change in a given year, and this presents a tremendous challenge to agricultural development,” he states. Bänziger estimates that half of the maize breeders in southern Africa leave their posts within three years, and she notes, “This is less time than is needed to identify a variety for release to farmers.” Staff trained in the 1980s are approaching retirement or have already done so

In addition, most staff joining NARS come only with a fresh BSc degree, and the experienced people are involved in management rather than research or have moved to greener pastures. In recent times, many succumb to illness, ranging from preventable diseases like malaria to terminal conditions like HIV/AIDs. Donor investments in graduate training have decreased to the extent that few universities in the region can maintain viable MSc programs.

To address these issues in a more coordinated fashion, Mwala, in collaboration with CIMMYT, obtained support from The Rockefeller Foundation in 2003 for MSc training of NARS scientists at the University of Zambia. Six scientists are completing their research projects at four international centers in the region—CIMMYT, ICRISAT, CIAT and IITA/SARNET —following a year’s course work at university.

Dibanzilua Nginamau, one of the Rockefeller-supported students, says, “I could never have done an MSc degree in plant breeding in Angola, because my country does not have a postgraduate program in that field. While at UNZA, I met colleagues from Zambia, Mozambique, and Tanzania who, like me, were breeders confronted with a tremendous responsibility and no postgraduate education.” The course work at UNZA coupled with his applied research at CIMMYT has equipped Nginamau with the skills, competence, and confidence to breed successfully for Angola’s needs. “I can now lead my own breeding program back home!” he says.

Gaining from this network are farmers, scientists, NARS, universities and their students, as well as organizations like CIMMYT. Building on relationships and working together is essential for smooth transfers of knowledge to the farmers. It is also more cost-effective. “Working together actually required fewer resources than if we had all gone down the path on our own,” Mwala concludes.