Blogs – Page 219

Understanding local needs and looking to the future: A visit to the BISA sites

Written by on February 23, 2012. Posted in News.

BISA-India-visit-Day-2-088 During 21 January-05 February, a delegation consisting of Director General Thomas Lumpkin, Global Wheat Program Associate Director and Head of Pathology, Etienne Duveiller, Board member Andy Barr, and Development Officer Cheraé Robinson travelled from El Batán to visit the three sites of the newly established Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA). They were accompanied by Ajai Kumar and Raj Gupta, from CIMMYT’s New Delhi office.

Duveiller, who will be relocating from Mexico to India as the Head of Research for BISA stated “it is amazing what has been done in such a short span of time. But there is still a great deal of work to do and very exciting opportunities for research in a fast changing environment —not only economically in India, but also considering global change and climate change.”

The visit offered an opportunity not only for the delegation to gain an understanding of the new institute, but also to speak with local farmers about their concerns and specific challenges they are experiencing in their region. The group met with agricultural producers, students of the local agricultural universities, and state agricultural research institutes to develop ties with local stakeholders and understand the challenges and needs currently facing communities surrounding the BISA sites.

Towards the end of the visit, Lumpkin also participated in a gathering in Bihar, which brought together over 1,000 farmers from India’s poorest state to address current shortcomings and needs of agricultural producers in the region. The event gathered not only local producers, but also government officials and representatives including Nitish Kumar, Chief Minister of Bihar and Mangala Rai, Agriculture Advisor to the Chief Minister of Bihar.
BISA was officially launched on 05 October 2011. In less than four months, the three BISA sites have begun research activities, a process which has included demarcating the boundaries of the properties and preparing the land and seeding. The official groundbreaking ceremony for the sites will be held later this year.

BISA-Visit-Roll-5-040

Gates says agricultural investment is key, and backs this up with a grant for CIMMYT

Written by on February 23, 2012. Posted in News.

Earlier today, Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, spoke at IFAD’s Governing Council Meeting in Rome on “Sustainable smallholder agriculture: Feeding the world, protecting the planet.” He called on the international scientific community to unite around a common global target for fighting hunger and reducing poverty, through sustainable productivity growth. “If you care about the poorest, you care about agriculture,” he said. “Investments in agriculture are the best weapons against hunger and poverty, and they have made life better for billions of people. The international agriculture community needs to be more innovative, coordinated and focused to really be effective in helping poor farmers grow more. If we can do that, we can dramatically reduce suffering, and build self-sufficiency.”

To further these sentiments, Gates announced a further USD 200 million in grants from the Foundation’s agriculture program, bringing their total investment in smallholder farmers to more than USD 2 billion, since the program began in 2006. One of the seven projects to receive grants is phase III of CIMMYT’s Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa (DTMA) initiative, which will receive USD 33 million over four years. CIMMYT is coordinating the project in collaboration with IITA and national partners from 13 African countries. The project has made great strides toward its ten-year goal of increasing average maize productivity under smallholder farmer conditions by 20-30% on adopting farms. The new funding should enable delivery of enough drought tolerant maize seed to benefit 30-40 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, adding grain worth an annual average of USD 160-200 million in drought-affected areas. “In this phase, our focus will be on developing varieties with both heat and drought tolerance, and getting the seed of these varieties into farmers’ hands as widely, timely and affordably as possible,” said Wilfred Mwangi, DTMA Project Leader.

Does science hold the answers? an Economist conference features CIMMYT’s views

Written by on February 22, 2012. Posted in News.

DGEQEconomist On 08 February 2012, CIMMYT’s Director General Thomas Lumpkin participated as a speaker in the Economist Conference “Feeding the World: The 9 Billion People Question” in Geneva, Switzerland. Attendees included a number of high level representatives and government officials, including Kanayo Nwanze, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Jikun Huang, Founder and Director of the Center for Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAAS), and Bruno Le Maire, the French Minister of Agriculture, Food, and Fishing.

Alongside Nina Federoff of Pennsylvania State University and Howard Shapiro, Global Director of Plant Science and External Research at Mars, Lumpkin debated “Does Science Hold the Answers?”. He highlighted the advanced work of CIMMYT scientists on photosynthesis efficiency of wheat, zero tillage agronomic practices, precision fertilizer application and the use of sensors, and high resolution, site-specific cell phone decision support tools. Lumpkin also advocated technologies currently being made accessible and tailored for farmers.

In his speech, Lumpkin called for the international community to resist complacency and work towards yield increases of 200 to 300 percent, whilst striving for a reduction in the amount of arable land under cultivation, in order to address the world’s food security concerns. His presentation, “Higher Yields for Food Security with Less Water, Inputs, and Land: Does Science Hold the Answers?” will be featured on the Economist website, and is currently available on the CIMMYT intranet.

In addition to being well represented by our Director General, CIMMYT was mentioned several times in other panels, underscoring the value of public agricultural research in the toolbox of solutions for making our world food secure. With key policy makers and leaders from some of the premier corporations in the food and agribusiness industries in attendance, the conference provided an ideal occasion to present CIMMYT’s work and offered a platform for engaging future partners and donors.

Remote sensing shows the importance of keeping wheat cool

Written by on February 21, 2012. Posted in News.

TheSun A recent study co-authored by CIMMYT agronomist Iván Ortiz- Monasterio has demonstrated how temperatures greater than 34°C can significantly cut wheat yields. Using nine years of satellite data for wheat grown in northern India, the team showed how previous models had underestimated the effects of high temperatures on senescence and yield. The onset of senescence seriously limits grain filling, and senescence is hastened by high temperatures. In South Asia, if wheat is not sown early enough, the crop reaches grainfilling stage during pre-Monsoon hot spells. Existing models may have underestimated grain losses by as much as 50%, for some sowing dates. “This study shows how innovative research tools like remote sensing can provide important information in the area of agriculture and climate change,” said Ortiz-Monasterio.

The study was led by Stanford University scientist David Lobell, who has recently published several important works on climate change and crop yields. The results are particularly significant because India and Mexico are among the countries expected to be most sorely affected by climate change. The Indo-Gangetic Plains are the bread basket of South Asia, providing food and incomes for hundreds of millions.

Since being published in Nature Climate Change on 29 January 2012, the study has received coverage in New Scientist, SciDev.Net, and Reuters, amongst others. CIMMYT breeders are already selecting for wheat lines with more extensive roots, allowing them to find and take up moisture and reduce the effects of heat on the plant. The center has also begun investigating varieties that can be sown earlier and harvested before spring heat.

Tackling Ug99 at the AAAS annual meeting

Written by on February 21, 2012. Posted in News.

L1030812.EQresize Innovative techniques in wheat breeding are necessary to meet the increasing population demand and overcome environmental challenges, said CIMMYT Wheat Breeder, Ravi Singh, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) on 18 February 2012.

Wheat currently provides approximately 20% of the world’s calories, and 20% of the total protein intake in the developing world, but yields will need to increase by 1 ton per hectare by 2020 to keep pace with the growing global population, according to Singh. This is a great challenge, considering the anticipated negative effects of rising global temperatures and the risks posed by highly-virulent new pathogens such as Ug99.

A strain of the causal fungus of wheat stem rust disease that first appeared in Uganda in 1998, Ug99 has since been detected in several countries of eastern and southern Africa, overcoming previously resistant wheat varieties there, and researchers fear its spread to the major bread baskets of northern Africa, Asia, and Europe. In 2005, the world’s leading wheat researchers established the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat (DRRW) project, administered by Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Science. Through this project, CIMMYT and a global cadre of researchers are developing new varieties of wheat that both resist Ug99 and also produce higher yields.

Through breeding sequentially at two diverse locations in Mexico and screening promising wheat lines at a Ug99 hot spot in Kenya, researchers have been able to develop more than 20 Ug99-resistant lines, now present in varieties released or in advanced trials in eight countries, including India and Pakistan. Singh’s symposium, entitled “Emerging Risks in the Global Food System,” focused on the progress and challenges to global food security presented by Ug99. “We have made great strides in identifying new varieties that will provide durable resistance to stem rusts and increase yields,” said Singh, “but there is still much work to be done because of the importance of wheat and the ever-changing pressures it faces globally.”

200,000 views for CIMMYT photos

Written by on February 20, 2012. Posted in News.

flickr Many of us were celebrating love and friendship on 14 February 2012, and CIMMYT’s online image collection was no exception. Users around the world showed us how much they love CIMMYT’s photos, with the flickr site receiving its 200,000th view since the collection began. If you haven’t yet seen our fantastic photos, join in at: www.flickr.com/cimmyt.

As well as making our photos easier to find and use within CIMMYT, many other organizations are also picking up on our images and using them on their own websites and blogs, spreading recognition of CIMMYT. Some recent examples from 2012 alone include use on the popular blogging site African Seed Network, PreventionWeb (1, 2), which supplies information for the disaster risk reduction community, the Radio Netherlands Worldwide website, and the CCAFS page/blog.

In addition, the CIMMYT twitter feed now has over 2000 followers, illustrating how CIMMYT’s message can also be spread via long texts, photos, or 140 characters!

Crop rotations in conservation agriculture systems equal healthy profits and soils in Zambia’s Eastern Province

Written by on February 14, 2012. Posted in News.

During 06-10 February 2012, a team of CIMMYT scientists travelled to six communities in Zambia’s Eastern Province to monitor progress on activities implemented under the Sustainable Intensification of Maize-Legume systems for the Eastern Province of Zambia (SIMLEZA) project, funded by USAID as part of Barack Obama’s “Feed the Future” initiative. The team was joined by national partners from governmental extension services, field coordinators from Total Land Care, Zambian researchers from Msekera Research Station, IITA, and CIP, and a group of farmers from Monze, in Zambia’s Southern Province. Journalists from two radio stations, one daily newspaper, and Zambian television covered the visit.

The SIMLEZA project began in October 2011 and exhibits a large variety of validation trials using improved maize and legume varieties, in conjunction with conservation agriculture (CA), to sustainably increase productivity on farmers’ fields. The validation trials currently demonstrate maize grown either as a sole crop, intercropped, or planted in full rotation with legumes. Farmers in the Eastern Province are excited about these new ways of farming; they want to shift from traditional, monocropped systems to more profitable crop rotations. In field discussions, farmers commended the other benefits of CA: Reductions in labor, effectiveness of weed control through judicious use of herbicides, increased moisture conservation, and reduced surface run-off and soil erosion. The project also has a strong emphasis on involving women in the extension of new technologies to improve their livelihoods.

Identifying a suitable market for alternative crops such as cowpeas or soyabeans remains a challenge in the Eastern Province, though the SIMLEZA project is addressing this by targeting bottlenecks in the value chain. Through involvement of agro-dealers, the availability of improved seed and markets for produce will be facilitated and processing skills will be enhanced. CIMMYT also collaborates with IITA scientists in this project to make use of their expertise in legume production and processing.

Currently the SIMLEZA project operates in six target communities, but it aims to impact 20,000 households in the Eastern Province by 2014.

Capacity building for detecting plant pathogens using real time PCR

Written by on February 14, 2012. Posted in News.

Mexico has a network of state and private laboratories with authorization from the Mexican Plant Health Authority (DGSC), an office of the National Service of Agri-Food Health, Safety, and Quality (SENASICA), to examine and identify plant diseases, in order to protect crops in Mexico. It is vital that the technicians at these facilities continue to receive and update their training, in order to ensure the highest levels of competence, and to help deliver the projects of MasAgro.

As part of its component to develop genetic resources and seed multiplication, deliver new technologies, and build capacity, MasAgro funded the second theoretical-practical course on detecting plant pathogens using PCR in real time, during 24-26 January 2012, at El Batán. The course was organized by Mónica Mezzalama, Head of CIMMYT’s Seed Health Laboratory, and lead by Paul Vincelli, Professor at Kentucky State University, USA. The 16 participants came from SENASICA-SAGARPA, Plant Health State Committees, universities, the private sector, and CIMMYT.

“The course was excellent and reached the objectives set,” said Kenia Rodriguez, Technician at the Molecular Biology Laboratory, Morelia. “I learnt a lot about things I do at the National Center of Phytosanitary Reference, particularly on techniques I didn’t know about.” Daisy Fuentes, Head of GeMBio, Science Research Center, Yucatán AC, said that the course will be helpful for her daily activities after being exposed to the PCR techniques in much greater detail.

The certification ceremony was presided over by Marco Antonio Caballero García, Director of Production Inputs, SAGARPA, with Kevin Pixley, Director of CIMMYT Genetic Resources, and Mezzalama. Congratulations to all the graduates!

List of LNT (low nitrogen tolerant) inbred donor lines

Written by on February 13, 2012. Posted in News. 1 Comment on List of LNT (low nitrogen tolerant) inbred donor lines

Inbred Line Pedigree	CIMMYT HG	Colour	Endosperm
DTPWC9-F67-2-2-1-B	A	White	Normal
DTPWC9-F18-1-3-1-1-B	A	White	Normal
CZL068	B	White	Normal
LaPostaSeqC7-F103-2-2-2-1-B	A	White	Normal
CML341	AB	White	Normal
[MBR-ET(W)C1F139-2-1-B-2-B-B-B-B-B-BxMBRC5BcF13-3-1-2-B-B-B-B-1-2-B-B-BxCML264Q]-1-1-B	B	White	Normal
LaPostaSeqC7-F10-3-3-1-1-B	A	White	Normal
LaPostaSeqC7-F71-1-2-1-1-B	A	White	Normal
CLWQ253	A	White	QPM
VL05620	–	White	Normal
LaPostaSeqC7-F180-3-1-1-1-B	A	White	Normal
LaPostaSeqC7-F64-2-6-2-2-B	A	White	Normal
CZL052 -stockid-C240-27	B	White	Normal
CML373	A	White	Normal
LaPostaSeqC7-F78-2-1-1-1-B	A	White	Normal
(CML491xCML150)-B-11-2	A	White	QPM
LaPostaSeqC7-F96-1-5-1-1-B	A	White	Normal
CML176	–	White	QPM
LaPostaSeqC7-F153-1-2-1-2-B	A	White	Normal
CML343	AB	White	Normal
DTPYC9-F74-1-1-1-1-B	A	White	Normal
CML264	A	White	Normal
CLWN201	B	White	Normal
DTPYC9-F74-3-4-1-3-B	A	Yellow	Normal

The global food situation, explained

Written by on February 9, 2012. Posted in News.

Thanks to Peter Kim and the folks at publichealthdegree.com, we now have some lovely new graphics that explain the global food situation quite brilliantly. And they’d love your thoughts on the new graphics, so feel free to post your comment below. The Food Crisis
Created by: Public Health Degree

MasAgro takes the spotlight

Written by on February 7, 2012. Posted in News.

At the launch of the MAIZE and WHEAT CRPs, Undersecretary Mariano Ruiz-Funes Macedo of the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food (SAGARPA) spoke of the challenges being faced by agriculture worldwide. Before the international audience, he highlighted MasAgro as Mexico’s strategy to strengthen food security, combat negative effects of climate change, and promote agricultural in a sustainable and productive way. SAGARPA and CIMMYT are key partners of the MasAgro initiative, which “is a project of Mexico, to the world,” said Karen García, MasAgro’s Executive Director.

“MasAgro is working to increase maize and wheat production and yields in rainfed zones, to benefit small-scale farmers,” said Ruiz-Funes, emphasizing that so far, 21 experimental platforms have been established, with 132 demonstration modules, and 20,790 hectares or extension areas with sustainable technology in the Mexican Highlands, Bajío, Lowland Tropics, and North Pacific regions. CIMMYT’s certified conservation agriculture technician course now has 28 graduates, with a further 180 people registered for future courses, and a collaborative project with the Program of Support to the Productive Chain of Maize and Bean Producers (PROMAF), has trained more than 2000 Mexican technicians.

Ruiz-Funes reminded the audience that Mexico will host the G-20 this year. At this international forum, the Mexican Government will propose four strategic axes for agriculture: Research and technology development and transfer; public and private investment; sustainability and adaptation to climate change; and risk management. This will be an important platform for Mexico and MasAgro, as the G-20 recognizes the need to transfer research and technology to farmers, and has a commitment to strengthening international cooperation.

A man who builds bridges: CIMMYT bids farewell to Wilfred Mwangi

Written by on February 7, 2012. Posted in News.

Mwangi At the closing dinner of the MAIZE and WHEAT meetings on 20 January 2012, CIMMYT took the opportunity to say farewell to Wilfred Mwangi, Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa (DTMA) Project Leader, who will soon be retiring.

Mwangi grew up in a rural village in Kenya and completed PhD studies at Michigan State University, USA. Returning to Kenya afterwards, Mwangi eventually became a Professor and Chair of the Department of Agricultural Economics at the University of Nairobi. His career also includes stints as Permanent Secretary in Kenya and as a World Bank economist. He said that, despite all his academic expertise and impressive career, his mother still tells him how to farm!

Speaking at the farewell, CIMMYT Deputy Director General for Research and Partnerships, Marianne Bänziger, who worked for many years with Mwangi in Africa, called him “a person who builds bridges” between other people and noted that “…he could have taken other choices, easier choices” than his 24 years of work for CIMMYT. Mwangi, however, didn’t see this as an option: “We have such a noble mission,” he said. “This is a calling; you’re working for the poorest of the poor. CIMMYT is still my best employer.”

Mwangi has made significant contributions both as a principal scientist and distinguished economist with over 150 authored publications, as Country and Regional Liaison Officer, as Associate Director of the Global Maize Program, and as Leader of the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa (DTMA) Project, one of CIMMYT’s most successful and crucial initiatives.

At the ceremony, Mwangi received a plaque thanking him for “dedication, wisdom, unbiased advice, and mentoring of hundreds of young national program scientists; for strengthening partnerships and mutual understanding across institutions, cultures, and countries; for sharp and pointed insights that stimulated us to change, improve, and be ambitious.” We may yet see more of these strengths: “Retiring is not ‘being tired’,” said Mwangi, “I’ll be around.”

Data, data, everywhere!

Written by on February 7, 2012. Posted in News.

Over 23-24 January 2012, CIMMYT’s global maize program received an unprecedented gift: over 2 billion maize marker data points from 4,000 CIMMYT lines. “For each line, we are now able to detect over half a million markers,” said Gary Atlin, Associate Director of the program. “These ‘signposts’ give us great power to do genetic analysis; they are distributed more or less randomly across the 10 chromosomes of maize, so we are able to track very small pieces of chromosome,” he added.

CIMMYT is currently working with USDA maize geneticist Dr. Ed Buckler at Cornell University’s Institute for Genomic Diversity, whose team produced this data for CIMMYT using genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) technology. As the operation increases, CIMMYT is partnering with Diversity Arrays Technology Pty Ltd (DArT P/L) to establish a self-sustaining genetic-analysis service in Mexico, which will be based on GBS (“Servicio de Análisis Genético para la Agricultura” or SAGA in Spanish). SAGA will genotype large numbers of genebank accessions for the Seeds of Discovery project, whilst also serving the needs of breeding programs, both at CIMMYT and in Mexican partner organizations.

Using both these data and phenotypic information, researchers will learn how to select lines which perform well under drought, or low soil nitrogen levels, or possess resistance to a particular disease. Previously, CIMMYT was using SSR genotyping, at a cost of around $1 per data point. SSRs span several hundred base pairs, essentially allowing them to detect more alleles and therefore provide four or five times more information than the Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) currently being used. However, there are fewer SSR loci and SSR visualization technologies are more expensive; in fact, whilst the current data set cost less than $160,000 to obtain, in 2005, using SSRs, it would have cost around $400,000,000. “It’s a new ballgame,” states Atlin. “GBS genotyping costs us about $40 per line, and will likely drop to around $20 next year. This is about the same cost as evaluating the line for yield in a single field plot. At this price, we can genotype all CIMMYT maize breeding lines entering replicated field testing, and build powerful models to predict performance in the field for traits that are difficult and expensive to measure.” He notes that it will also speed up the breeding cycle, resulting in greater yield gains per year.

Getting the two billion marker data points is just the beginning; next steps include analyzing and converting the data to information. The team plans to generate at least this much data annually henceforth. “It’s a huge job,” says Atlin, “but already a significant achievement.”

Seeds of Sustainability: a multi-disciplinary approach to sustainably improving wheat yields

Written by on February 7, 2012. Posted in News.

foto-MOD8 The Yaqui Valley is one of Mexico’s main bread baskets and supplies seeds and grain globally. It was the birthplace of the Green Revolution and, as the home of CIMMYT’s primary field station, Campo Experimental Norman E. Borlaug (CENEB), it has been a hub of agronomic research for decades, with a wealth of accumulated knowledge, field research, and survey data. However, the region is not without its problems. It faces environmental, resource, economic, and social challenges related to water resources, air and water pollution, policy changes, human health concerns, biodiversity conservation, and climate change.

Twenty years ago, a multidisciplinary team of experts set out to address the issue of how to maintain livelihoods and increase food production, whilst protecting the environment. Led by biogeochemist Pamela Matson, economist Roz Naylor, and CIMMYT agronomist Iván Ortiz-Monasterio, their approach allowed for the investigation of a wide range of variables, and it soon became apparent that they were all connected in some way. Matson described Ortiz-Monasterio as a “lynchpin…serving both as research co-leader and a critical boundary-spanning individual, linking the research community with the farmers and decision makers of the valley.” Together, the team investigated the possibility of win-win-win solutions for economics, agronomics, and the environment in the wheat fields of the Yaqui Valley, and what would be needed to make these a reality.

Seeds8 Seeds of Sustainability is the product of these 15 years of research, analysis, and evaluation in the Yaqui Valley. Edited by renowned scientist and Dean of the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford University, Pamela Matson, with contributions from experts worldwide, all of whom participated in research in the Valley, this book forms an invaluable resource for researchers, policymakers, and students, as it examines new approaches in agriculture that make sense for people and the environment. The development of the Yaqui Valley as a comprehensive case study has already had implications for understanding and managing humanenvironment systems extending well beyond the valley margins. In his comments (published on the book’s back cover), Prabhu Pingali, Deputy Director of the Agricultural Development Division of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation noted, “Seeds of Sustainability illustrates the kind of integrative research that will be needed to address the challenges our food systems face, now and in the future.”

To order your copy of Seeds of Sustainability visit the Island Press website and enter code 5SEEDS for a 30% discount.

BISA in Bihar

Written by on February 3, 2012. Posted in News.

The Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA) received another boost this week when the Bihar government pledged to provide 200 acres to the center, at a price of just 1 Rupee (0.02 USD) per acre. This center will be located in Pusa, Samastipur district, with a further two centers in Ludhiana, Punjab, and Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh.

You can read more about these recent developments in The Bihar Times.