Last week, nearly 90 students from all around the world visited El Batán to learn about CIMMYT’s research and mission. They were all members of the International Association of Students in Agricultural and Related Sciences (IAAS) which is having its World Congress in Mexico. At CIMMYT, participants viewed the germplasm bank, learned about wide crosses and diversity analysis work at the Applied Biotechnology Center, and visited conservation agriculture experiments in the field.

IAAS provides a platform for students to share experiences, knowledge, and social responsibility. The students, who are from more than 20 countries, will spend three weeks visiting Mexico City, Queretaro, and Jalisco exploring  this year’s theme: “Biodiversity now, food tomorrow.”

About 17 people from the American Confederation of Associations in Sustainable Agriculture (CAAPAS, by its Portuguese acronym) visited El Batán on 23 July 2009. The group visited CIMMYT as part of their international meeting on direct seeding and sustainable agriculture.

Hans Braun, director of CIMMYT’s global wheat program, officially welcomed CAAPAS to the center. Ken Sayre, conservation agriculture (CA) specialist, then spoke to participants about CIMMYT’s CA program. He was followed by Petr Kosina, knowledge, information, and training manager, who informed them about the center’s origins, mission, and research focus. As well, Bram Govaerts, cropping systems management specialist, showed the group CIMMYT’s long-term CA trials in the field.

“It was a good opportunity to meet some new people interested in conservation agriculture,” said Sayre. “CIMMYT may work with a group like this in the future if there is money to support such collaboration.” After the morning’s presentations, there was a lively debate on the definition of CA and CA practices in different areas.

Ivo Mello, CAAPAS president, spoke about ‘quality zero-tillage.’ “We have to do what is necessary to respect the soil, conserve microorganisms and worms, etc., that aid crop production,” he said. “We must eliminate the use of chemicals and strive for soils with biological equilibrium, which is not going again nature.”

As part of the conservation agriculture (CA) hub initiative in the central Mexican highlands, 15 technicians who supervise CA demonstration modules met at CIMMYT-El Batán on 06 July 2009. CIMMYT has been partnering with ASGROW (a Monsanto seed company) to implement CA for highland maize cropping systems in this area for a little over a year. The module technicians, who are all also ASGROW representatives, each summarized their experiences with the recently planted CA demonstration areas.

“Each module is different,” said Bram Govaerts, cropping systems management specialist. “It’s a dynamic learning process for us and for the farmers as we work together to find out what works. This is the concept of the hub: to have our long-term trials as a training platform, to install modules with farmers in order to adapt CA to their systems, and to invite different partners to join us in disseminating CA.”

“I wanted to try something new to improve my products and yields,” said Alejandro Gómez Cornejo, a particularly motivated farmer who attended the event and has participated in previous tours of CIMMYT’s experimental station in Toluca. “I became interested when I saw the quality of the products they were getting and bit by bit I began implementing CA. The first year was difficult but we’ve been getting better bit by bit.”

It is farmers like Cornejo that some of the technician participants want to help. “As an agronomist, I want to improve rural areas that have low crop yields and subsistence problems,” said technician Arturo González Capistrán.

The day also included an information session on a Googleearth CA hub database. This tool will soon show all the farmer CA modules as well as information such as soil, altitude, latitude, previous cropping season results, socio-economic data, etc. “The database enables a steady flow of information between our technicians, partners, and farmers and is another way to disseminate CA,” said Govaerts.

CIMMYT staff at all levels increasingly need to describe and explain center objectives, activities, and accomplishments to a broad public that includes students, scientific colleagues, decision makers, donors, and the media, among others. It may seem simple, but such communication requires considerable knowledge of the center and its global and local contexts, as well as sensitivity about the audience and skill in crafting and presenting messages.

To help personnel frequently called upon to interact with the media in Mexico, CIMMYT held a four-hour media training workshop at El Batán on 09 July 2009. Organized by Karen García, head of communications of AgroBIO-México, and Mike Listman, the event was conducted in Spanish by communications expert Alejandro Romero of the Mexican public relations firm Llorente & Cuenca. After a detailed, theoretical presentation and discussion, participants Victor Chávez and Bibiana Espinosa, research assistants who frequently show visitors the germplasm bank, as well as Bram Govaerts and Kevin Pixley, took part in individual, simulated television interviews that were filmed and subsequently critiqued by Romero and the group. All received advice and specific techniques on how to stay on message, to steer interviews in the desired direction, and to deal with leading questions and sensitive issues, like genetically modified maize in Mexico.

The workshop is just a beginning, and highlighted the need to formulate concise, effective messages on key topics and, especially, for more practice in handling interviews. “You always have to remember that you’re representing an organization, and not your personal views,” Romero told the group. Other CIMMYT participants on this occasion were Nele Verhulst, Andrea Chocobar Guerra, Susanne Dreisigacker, Natalia Palacios, George Mahuku, Claudia Bedoya, Laura Yates, and Allison Gillies. Special thanks to AgroBIO-México, which put on the event free-of-charge.

Raymundo López, Agua Fría station superintendent, facilitated training for 13 farmers from the small communities of Hixtololoyax and Pantepec, in the state of Puebla on 25 June 2009. The farmers learned about developing, disseminating, and sowing quality protein maize (QPM). They also learned about intersynthetic and synthetic maize varieties that are tolerant to drought, low nitrogen, pests, and disease. Lastly, the course dealt with proper application of agro-chemicals.

The training was part of a longterm initiative organized by the state government to improve maize yields in the poorest part of Puebla. CIMMYT is interacting with farmers in these small mountain  communities to teach them about the production of improved maize varieties. With the new skills learned from the course, farmers can experiment in their respective communities under local conditions.

It’s that time of year again. Some CIMMYT staff are preparing their international wheat trials, which is the seed the center sends to its partners around the world. A 42-ton shipment of wheat seed arrived at El Batán on 29 June 2009 from a multiplication area in Baja California, northern Mexico. This seed will make up the winter nursery for 2009-10. This year’s consignment also contained materials for the wheat germplasm bank, and was twice as big as last year’s shipment.

Unloading the 261 boxes and 2,700 bags of seed from the truck was no small task. A huge thank you to all who participated from the following units: international wheat trials (11); bread wheat (4); durum wheat (3); germplasm bank (3); physiology (2); fusarium (2), and irrigated bread wheat (2).

CIMMYT hosted staff of the CGIAR Internal Audit Unit (IAU), as part of a professional development workshop organized by Gerardo Carstens and Yunuhe Reyes. The training began in Mexico City on 23 June 2009, 21 auditors and financial specialists from seven CGIAR centers attended workshop sessions at El Batán during 29 June-02 July. In a welcome address to the group, DG Tom Lumpkin discussed the crucial and evolving role of internal auditing in the business world and the importance of it for centers like CIMMYT: “We count on you to give us the ‘bad’ news when we get off course, to oppose us when we’re wrong,” he said. John Fitzsimon, IAU director, noted that “the workshop provided a rare opportunity for auditors and clients of their services, who are spread all over the globe, to get together in one place to exchange views and undertake training to make their work more relevant and useful to the CGIAR centers.” At the conclusion of the workshop he pronounced the event a great success, conveying to the group a challenge to “get ahead of the curve to spot problems centers may encounter and help them head these off.”

On 24 June 2009, 16 members of the Mixed Consultative Council (Consejo Consultivo Mixto) of Mexico’s Intersecretarial Commission on Biosafety and Genetically Modified Organisms (Comisión Intersecretarial de Bioseguridad y Organismos Genéticamente Modificados, CIBIOGEM) met at El Batán to discuss the country’s emerging policies on the regulation, testing, and use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), particularly in agriculture. The Council, which includes representatives from diverse sectors of Mexican agriculture, met at El Batán at the request of its current president, Fabrice Salamanca, who is also the executive director of AgroBIO México, a private agency that promotes public awareness about biotechnology and its products. Salamanca wanted Council members to learn about CIMMYT and its work. In addition to their formal sessions, the group interacted with center staff and visited the germplasm bank and the long-term conservation agriculture trial.