CIMMYT’s Mexico-based cropping systems management team has developed a plan to set up decentralized learning hubs in different farming systems and agro-ecological zones in Mexico. Each hub will provide a benchmark site for research on the impacts of conservation agriculture (CA) on crops and the environment in the prevalent cropping systems of these regions, furnish a focal point for agro-ecological capacity-building and scalingout of research applications and innovation systems, and foster the emergence of regional CA networks. As part of this, they will engage multiple actors— farmers, scientists, machinery manufactures, decision-makers, and input suppliers, among others.

The hub in the Yaqui Valley, an intensive irrigated commercial farming region in northwestern Mexico, is in full swing. Three seasons ago farmers were using CA practices on only 25 hectares in the Yaqui Valley in Sonora State. One such practices is zero-tillage with residue retention, whereby wheat is sown directly into the residues from the previous crop without plowing. Today the practice is being used on 1,000 hectares. The cropping systems management team has established six CA modules in the region, and is preparing for work in the winter cycle promoting and testing with farmers and farmer unions the practice of cropping on permanent beds, employing a multi-use/multicrop seeding implement designed by CIMMYT. Local media have begun running stories on these efforts and farmers’ responses.

As part of a joint project with ASGROW seed company in central Mexico, CIMMYT research assistants Dagoberto Flores, Adrian Martinez, and Andrea Chocobar, together with Toluca station superintendent Fernando Delgado, cropping systems expert Bram Govaerts, and ASGROW representatives, established more than 20 farmer modules this summer in the Mexican highland states of Hidalgo, Mexico, and Pachuca, as well as organizing several events including the following recent ones:

• (24 Sept) Farmer day at El Batán, involving 35 Texcoco farmers, with help from station superintendent Francisco Magallanes and the cropping systems management team.
• (03 Oct) Farmer day in Toluca, with over 100 farmers from 3 Mexican states.
• (15 Oct) First of several capacitybuilding course modules for ASGROW technicians in Toluca.
• (23 Oct) Discussion day in Toluca with farmers regarding modules for harvesting, winter planting, and fallow preparation.

Team members are regularly visiting a local machine shop in Hidalgo State that is producing the multi-use/ multi-crop direct seeding implement, and will discuss advances with the machine builder and the local ASGROW seed distribution outlet. In addition to the CIMMYTASGROW initiative, the team is interacting with and supporting farmers and researchers in various other states of Mexico, with support from special Mexican production foundations, and is seeking additional funding from public and private partners in the country to further strengthen the effort.

Professor Lene Lange, CIMMYT Trustee since 2002 and Board Chair as of 2005, has stepped down from the Board, after chairing the meetings in India during 6-10 October 2008. On that occasion she received the best wishes of fellow Trustees and of the center’s Management Committee, and in a small ceremony was given a commemorative plaque signed by incoming Chair Julio Berdegué and by Pedro Brajcich and Tom Lumpkin, with the following text: “The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center wishes to recognize and thank Professor Lene Lange…for her positive and energetic contribution to the role of CIMMYT in working for the resource-poor and her commitment to building a better and more effective Center; for her sincere concern in helping to improve CIMMYT as a place where staff—especially younger scientists—can develop their careers; for her leadership of the Center during a challenging period of change; for her warm and inclusive style of chairing the Board, ensuring that the views and opinions of all Trustees were heard; and, for her vision, clarity of purpose, strength of character, and ability to stimulate debate in the best interests of the Center, the people for whom we work, and the CGIAR.”

Lange has informed CIMMYT that she will pursue two new positions in Denmark: Vice Dean of Research for the Faculties of Engineering, Natural Sciences and Medicine at Aalborg University (AAU), and Professor of Biotechnology in the Copenhagen Institute of Technology, a new branch of AAU, with a new unit on Biotechnology and Bioenergy. All the best, Lene!

The Directors General of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and CIMMYT, Mangala Rai (right) and Tom Lumpkin, signed the 2009-2012 joint work plan between the two institutions at a ceremony held at ICAR facilities in Delhi this week, reaffirming a long-standing and productive partnership.

The National Water Commission of Mexico (CNA) recently approved a proposal to install a new irrigation system at the center’s experimental station near Ciudad Obregón, northwestern Mexico. The CNA will finance half of the MXN 4,216,850 (about U$330,000) project and Patronato, the Agricultural Research and Experimentation Board of the State of Sonora (a group of private farmers) will fund the rest. The new irrigation system will be installed by the end of October.

“The replacement of the underground irrigation system at our research station was a high priority,” says Rodrigo Rascón, Obregón station superintendent. “Some of the pipes are over 30 years old, and there are many leaks that are difficult and expensive to repair. This deteriorated infrastructure represents a constant threat to our research activities, particularly those related to drought or supplementary irrigation.”

The pipes are over five km long and most are made of cement with junctures every 90 cm. On multiple occasions, it has been necessary to make regular unlined canals that carry irrigation water on the soil surface, according to Rascón. Unfortunately, these lead to water losses in infiltration and evaporation, and recurring costs associated with maintenance, he says. Water leaches down into the soil from the unlined canals, and the sun also evaporates part of the water that runs through them.

CIMMYT’s Obregón station is located on Patronato’s land in the Yaqui Valley. Patronato allows the center to use 170 hectares of land for research that generates advanced wheat germplasm for the world. Thanks to both the CNA and Patronato for their generous support for the new irrigation system!

A recent four-day workshop held in Lusaka, Zambia 15-18 September addressed poverty reduction through value chain analysis. The 12 national agricultural research program representatives from Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Zambia who attended the workshop learned how maize-based conservation agriculture (CA) can increase productivity and became acquainted with research tools to map key value chain actors and service providers.

The workshop presented integrated soil fertility management technologies (ISFM) and followup activities to improve CA and ISFM. Also covered was how to increase farmers’ access to key input and output markets. In addition, participants heard about current activities of the Soil Fertility Consortium for Southern Africa and visited the Zambian Food Reserve Agency and the National Milling Corporation in Lusaka.

Organized by CIMMYT economist Mulugetta Mekuria and CIMMYT poverty specialist Jon Hellin, the workshop complemented the center’s efforts to develop CA practices for smallholder farmers in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The aim is to improve farmers’ linkages with input suppliers (seed, equipment, knowledge of crop/land management) and their access to markets where they can sell anticipated surpluses resulting from the adoption of CA. The Zambian Agricultural Research Institute (ZARI) hosted the workshop with financial support from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Soil Fertility Consortium for Southern Africa Challenge Program (SOFECSA-SSA CP) project.

On Friday 19 September, 115 farmers from Sombrete, Zacatecas, Ocampo, and Guanajuato visited CIMMYT’s Toluca field station in Mexico. They came to see wheat, maize, oat, bean, canola, sunflower, and alfalfa harvests done under conservation agriculture. Yann Manes, CIMMYT wheat breeder, also spoke to farmers in the field about wheat crosses for selecting resistant plants. He placed special emphasis on droughttolerant plants, as many of the farmers were from dry areas. Karim Ammar, CIMMYT wheat breeder, (right in the photo), presented his work on triticale and showed farmers a soon-to-be released line. He also highlighted the excellent potential of this crop for fodder.

During the past 10-15 years, CIMMYT, as part of the Rice- Wheat Consortium, has worked to improve use of the two-wheel tractor—the preferred implement for farmers in Bangladesh. CIMMYT has developed a seeder that allows farmers to efficiently seed their crops using conservation agriculture (CA) and resource-conserving technologies (RCTs). This seeder provides a dramatic reduction in tillage on flat or permanent raised beds during seeding and reduces turn-around time between crops.

Farmers in West Bengal, India, an area very similar to Bangladesh, have started to buy two-wheel tractors to assist with conventional tillage. In response, CIMMYT arranged a traveling seminar from 16-23 September 2008 to show how these two-wheel tractors can be used with CA-based RCTs in West Bengal. Six scientists and technology transfer agents from West Bengal traveled to Bangladesh where they visited key CA locations where two-wheel tractors are used and met with Bangladeshi scientists.

Ravi Gopal Singh, CIMMYT CA agronomist based in Begusarai, Bihar, India, organized the traveling seminar and is in charge of CIMMYT’s collaborative CA-based activities in the eastern IGP of India. He was assisted by Enamul Haque, CIMMYT Senior Program Manager in charge of coordinating CIMMYT’s CA-based field activities in Bangladesh, and Anton Adhikari, CIMMYT administrator in Bangladesh. Participants met with farmers in Rajbari to discuss reduced seed tilling using power tiller operated seeders (PTOS) and visited the Regional Wheat Research Center in Rajshahi to observe long-term permanent raised bed trials and investigate various raised bed planting systems.

At the Wheat Research Center near Dinajpur, the West Bengal participants interacted with farmers who had adopted various CA technologies. They were introduced to various CA-based implements for reduced, strip, and zero-tillage seeding as well as to service providers who assist their clients with the adoption of these CA-based technologies. Other locations included the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute and Bangladesh Rice Research Institute in Gazipur, and the Regional Agricultural Research Station in Jamalpur. CIMMYT hopes to help interested parties in West Bengal obtain prototypes of these implements to be tested and used in local farming.

More than 200 Mexican university students visited El Batán on 19 September 2008. They came from nine universities–some from as far away as Saltillo, Coahuila, from the Autonomous Agrarian University Antonio Narro, while others traveled from Puebla, Hidalgo, and Querétaro very early on the day of the event.

“The day was designed to present CIMMYT’s research and the global scope of its work to students in plant breeding, molecular biology, and agriculture,” said Petr Kosina, knowledge sharing and capacity building coordinator at CIMMYT. “We want to show students real examples of how CIMMYT and Mexico are contributing to reducing poverty and hunger and impacting on the livelihoods of poor farmers around the world—hopefully this will be motivating for them.”

“I’ve realized the important role CIMMYT play as an international facilitator in response to the need to feed people…” said Judith Ortiz Martínez, a rural development student at the Colegio de Postgraduados. “Up until now, we’ve only had partial information [from our studies] and today after seeing the presentations we had lots of questions but the schedule was very tight. But I think today has been very enriching for us as students.

Oscar Raúl Manilla Villa, a hydroscience student, also from the Colegio de Postgraduados said: “Despite all the research to increase productivity and improve maize and wheat varieties, we still have 800,000 people who are hungry… So there’s more work to be done.”