Wheat never sleeps in Nepal. On 28 February 2011, a training course addressing, “Wheat disease scoring methodologies” was held at the National Wheat Research Program, Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC), Bhairahawa, in collaboration with CIMMYT.

The course’s objective was to enhance the knowledge and skills of collaborators participating in wheat pathological experiments in Nepal. The workshop provided its participants with instruction on how to obtain good quality, uniform data about wheat diseases. The list of participants included seven scientists and technical officers from various NARC research stations along with five resource persons from NWRP, Bhairahwa –all of whom are actively involved in collaborative wheat pathological research experiments at their research stations.

The training course included both theory and practical sessions that each addressed various aspects of wheat diseases. Janmejai Tripathi, NWRP Wheat Coordinator, delivered a brief introduction about the importance of wheat disease training and the NARSCIMMYT collaboration in Nepal and South Asia.

After opening announcements and addresses, six sessions were conducted to share and discuss the most current ideas on rusts and foliar blight diseases. Also, instruction touched on scoring methodologies at field level.

Deepak Bhandari, NARC wheat pathologist, took the lead in explaining wheat rusts and leaf blight scoring while Nutan Raj Gautam, NARC wheat breeder, was the main person to explain integrating these tools into the wheat breeding process.

Next, participants were taken to the wheat plots where they practiced scoring for each of the three rusts and leaf blight; detailing the scoring method, characteristics of disease symptoms, the differences between each of the rust, and how to record diseases at different growth stages.  All the attendees received an information sheet providing information such as symptoms, scoring methods, inoculation approaches, and proper growth stages for scoring. Participants carried these around throughout the training to make additional notes. The participants appreciated the experience, saying that it improved their ability to record important wheat diseases (rusts and leaf blight) and to plan for the promotion of pathological experiments. It also updated them on the most current NARS/CIMMYT wheat pathological research.

The Economist, a chief international source of world affairs and political news, has recently published a series entitled “A Special Report on Feeding the World” wherein it discusses CIMMYT’s role in feeding the ever-increasing global population. The report, which appears in The Economist’s print and online editions, mentions CIMMYT in three separate articles that all focus on the series’ theme of agricultural production.

The articles commend the successes of Borlaug’s Green Revolution and CIMMYT’s current work to increase the efficiency of wheat and maize. The articles feature contributions from Director General Thomas A Lumpkin as well as Hans-Joachim Braun, head of the Global Wheat Program; Patrick Wall, Global Conservation Agriculture Program director; and Gary Atlin, associate director of CIMMYT’s Global Maize Program.

Though CIMMYT’s mentions are gratifying, the larger success is that today’s food crisis is taking center-stage. The articles, which reach an immense audience, stress the importance of raising global food productivity, emphasizing technology’s ability to assist this effort. Thanks to these articles, people world-wide are realizing the dire importance of food insecurity and how CIMMYT is using technology to help secure food throughout the world.

To read the full articles, visit The Economist.

The globe’s changing weather has brought extreme frosts to the north Mexican states of Sonora and Sinaloa this February, causing large crop losses. In Sonora, the frost has damaged more than 6,000 hectares of maize, potato, squash, and pepper crop, and an incredible 90,000 hectares of wheat crop. Sonora’s people depend heavily on agriculture, as it composes 85% of the state’s economic activity.

As significant at Sonora’s losses may be, Sinaloa was hit even harder by the uncharacteristic frost. Sinaloa lost around 505,000 hectares of its principle crop, maize. This overwhelming loss represents 77% of the state’s total maize crop. Also, Sinaloa provides 80% of the Mexican maize supply during the autumn-winter growing season, so this loss is devastating to the people of Sinaloa as well as consumers throughout the country.

As addressing climate change is a focus here at CIMMYT, CIMMYT’s conservation agriculture program has sent instructional materials to the regions’ farmers, advising them what the options are to recover from the frost. Conservation agriculture gives the option to react quickly, as time is precious in replanting some alternative crops to generate some income this cycle. The conservation agriculture Mexico-team has had a strong presence in Sinaloa and Sonora and will continue to support the states’ agriculture sectors during a period when the government has declared the states agricultural disaster areas.

Currently, the weather in Sonora and Sinaloa is improving, though the crop devastation will affect the states’ and nation’s food supply and economy for months to come.

From Bihar PRABHA News:

The Indian unit of Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo (CIMMYT) Mexico, which played an important role in India’s Green Revolution in the 1970s, has developed a unique cellphone-based facility for farmers.
Besides answering queries, it will send out tailor-made, crop-specific advisories to farmers growing that particular crop, and that too in the language of their choice. Called CIMMYT Agriplex, the facility covers one lakh farmers in Bihar, Haryana, Karnataka, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and is backed by a team of 50 agricultural scientists.

CIMMYT Director General Dr Thomas A Lumpkin, said: “We sent out 5,000 messages to wheat-growing farmers in Haryana about yellow rust (a pest that affects wheat crops) that the scientists had forecast, and immediately our phone lines started ringing as the queries flowed in.” Dr Lumpkin is on a visit to India to participate in the 10th National Agriculture Science Congress, organised by the National Bureau of Fish Genetic Research.

He told : “We have designed a database of farmers which will be updated from time to time, containing individual farmer’s details, like the crops he grows and other field history. Whenever our experts think there is a warning to be issued for a group of farmer about a certain crop, instead of sending a blanket message to all farmers, which is more costly; besides the message value is lost ¿ the software will filter only those farmers of the region who grow that crop and send them the message.”

Raj Gupta, South Asia Coordinator of CIMMYT, said: “We are working with 60 Krishi Vigyan Kendras in these states. The government system can also use our database through these KVKs.”

Ajai Kumar, Senior Country Coordinator, CIMMYT India, said: The facility will also provide a phone-in helpline to registered farmers. We have hubs in each of these states. When a farmer calls in on our helpline number, depending on the region he belongs to, the call will be taken by our team in the respective hub. This will solve the language problem, as each of our hubs has a team of agriculture scientists from that region, who can access our central database.”

Read the original article …

A course entitled “Fieldbook and applied statistics – ICAMEX” aimed at scientists and research assistants from ICAMEX (Instituto de Investigación y Capacitación Agropecuaria, Acuícola, Forestal del Estado de Mexico) was held recently at CIMMYT-El Batán. Of the course’s 15 participants, eight scientists, including Director of Research Francisco Javier Manjarrez Juárez, arrived from ICAMEX; one participant represented Semillas Azteca; and six represented CIMMYT. The course, which was held during 31 January-02 February 2011 discussed various statistical applications, specifically, Feildbook software.

The course touched on Fieldbook’s capability to create an inventory, a nursery, preparation of seed for a nursery, analysis of a trial, GxE interaction experimental design, management, basic management of SAS and other statistical models. Héctor Sánchez, Claudio Ayala, José Crosa, and Mateo Vargas led the course.

All of the course participants showed a great interest in the course and believe the information and skills they learned will be of great value in their everyday work. “I learned so much about Fieldbook that I never knew. These new techniques will prove very useful in the development of research activities that I perform at work— specifically in the follow-up and evaluation of those activities. I also learned a little about statistical application, but we weren’t able to explore it enough. It’s a complicated subject that requires more time,” said one of the ICAMEX researchers.

Manjarrez expressed interest in conducting more courses, such as this one, at CIMMYT. The courses would cover topics relevant to ICAMEX staff.

During the closing ceremony, the participants received an award recognizing event participation.

The Insect Resistant Maize for Africa (IRMA) project recorded a tremendous success in 2010 with the release of six maize varieties. The released varieties are hybrids that have post-harvest and stem borer resistance, which means they are not susceptible to damage by pests such as the maize weevil and the larger grain borer (LGB). Under the IRMA project, CIMMYT, working alongside the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), submitted 12 maize hybrids to the Kenya National Performance Trials (NPT) for testing during 2008-2010.

The Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Services (KEPHIS) and the National Performance Trial Committee (NPTC) oversee the release of varieties in Kenya. The variety release process begins when a variety is nominated for testing. Soon after, seed samples are submitted for testing in at least five locations in the target agro-ecological zones. The insect pest-resistant varieties were subjected to the pests, but the release was also based on yield superiority. Typically, less than 5% of samples submitted are released after two to three years of testing. It is a huge accomplishment that the IRMA project’s hybrids were rapidly accepted, taking only two years for approval and release.

The maize hybrids were tested in three agro-ecological zones; coastal lowlands, dry lowland, and medium altitude zones. The successful varieties are MTPEH0701, MTPEH0702, and MTPEH0702 for the humid coastal lowlands ecology; EMB 0701 and EMB 0701 for the medium maturity mid-altitude ecology; and KATEH 2007-3 for the dry mid-altitude areas of Kenya. MTPEH0701, MTPEH0702, and EMB 0701 are post-harvest pest resistant (maize weevil and LGB) varieties, while MTPEH 0703, KATEH 2007-3, and EMB 0703 are stem borer resistant varieties.  The hybrids are medium and early lowlands varieties, suitable for the Embu Katumani and Mtwapa regions in Kenya. These varieties join the nine already existing varieties that IRMA/KARI released in 2006-2007.

The nominations of the varieties were done by CIMMYT’s partners from KARI; Charles Mutinda (KARI, Embu), James Gethi (KARI, Katumani), and Ruth Musila (KARI, Mtwapa). In Kenya, KARI has begun producing breeders’ seed for the new varieties which are currently being tested in eight other IRMA-participating countries, with hopes of eventually releasing them there as well.

The 7th Workshop on QTL Mapping and Breeding Simulation was held at CIMMYT-El Batán during 20-21 January 2011. The two-day workshop, which explored advanced breeding software and technologies, was free for all CIMMYT and GCP scientists, consultants, students, and interested visitors who were visiting El Batán. Twenty-eight scientists from various CIMMYT programs attended the workshop, kicked off by our DDG Marianne Banziger.

The first day of the course, led by CIMMYT scientist Jiankang Wang, and the Generation Challenge Program scientists Scott Chapman and Mark Dieters, focused on modeling breeding programs to achieve faster genetic gains and more efficiently use known gene information. To achieve this, the participants learned the ins and outs of software programs such as QU-GENE, an investigative platform of quantitative genetics, and QuLine, a breeding simulation tool for inbred line-breeding programs.

QuLine has the potential to simulate most methodologies for developing inbred lines. It has been used to compare different selection strategies, to study the effects on selection of dominance and epistasis, to predict cross performance using known gene information, to optimize marker assisted selection to efficiently pyramid multiple genes, and to investigate the use of identified QTL-marker associations and design-led breeding approaches for improving rice quality, among other things. At the end of the first day, Ravi Singh, wheat scientist, said “I am a strong supporter of simulation to evaluate the potential of new strategies.” And although the software may not be perfect, looking forward, Singh added, “The real value will come when you have known information, and have computer simulations that tell you what crosses to make. Simulation will assist both new breeders and seasoned breeders”.

The second day, led by Wang, focused on QTL mapping. Rapid increase in the availability of fine-scale genetic marker maps has led to the intensive use of QTL mapping in the genetic study of quantitative traits. However, the construction of linkage maps and QTL mapping are two separate steps, no software does both. In 2010, Wang and his team at CAAS implemented map construction in the software QTL IciMapping under the support of GCP and other Chinese projects. This is the only software which integrates linkage map construction and QTL mapping, saving researchers invaluable time when they are using QTL mapping to identify the genes of important traits.

The participants acknowledged the great functionalities and user interfaces of the software. At the end of the second day, Sybil Herrera, CIMMYT associate scientist, said, “It is great that we can construct the genetic linkage map in QTL IciMapping software. Before we needed to use one software to construct the map, and then use another one to do QTL mapping. It took a lot of time to work on the format from map construction software to the format for QTL mapping software.”

The workshop proved a successful example of knowledge sharing and capacity building. At the end of the second day, the participants had a thorough understanding of the addressed software programs and the experts and compiled a list of tips and suggestions to improve breeding simulation tools and the QTL mapping software.

Thank you to all who made this workshop possible!



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Despite numerous flight disruptions in Europe, due to unusually cold winter weather and an unforeseen strike of Spanish air traffic inspectors, 15 university professors of plant breeding, pathology, and molecular biology from seven Mediterranean countries (Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Spain, Tunisia, and Turkey) and Ethiopia arrived at El Batán on 5 December 2010 to attend a week-long workshop entitled, “Wheat Science to Textbooks.”

The first of its kind prepared by CIMMYT, this unusual workshop was designed to comprehensively present and share the explorations of the Global Wheat Program so they may be used to enrich the curriculum of plant breeding and related subjects at universities.

One of the course participants, Tadesse Dessalegr, associate professor at Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia, plans to share what he has learned during the course with his students, researchers, and colleagues. “It’s a great experience to meet with wheat breeders and pathologists from all over the world,” said Dessalegr, who visited El Batán once before in 1985. “I am happy to see how CIMMYT has changed in the past 25 years, and I am glad to be making links between Bahir Dar University and CIMMYT, as well as other world-wide universities with prestigious wheat breeding programs,” he continued.

The majority of the course consisted of presentations given by CIMMYT scientists, however, participant presentations comprised Wednesday’s program, allowing the attendees to exchange on the conditions of regional agricultural and university programs. The workshop concluded on Friday, 10 December 2010, wherein half the participants took in the archaeological beauty of Teotihuacan, pre-Columbian pyramids less than one hour’s drive from El Batán, and the other half enjoyed food, drink, dancing and good cheer at CIMMYT-El Batán’s annual Christmas party.