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Generation Challenge Programme meets CIMMYT

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This week, during August 6-8, the Generation Challenge Programme (GCP) held the kick-off meeting for its current round of six two-year projects at CIMMYT’s El Batán headquarters, bringing together 31 scientists from around the world.

Each project focuses on aspects of using genomic science to explore and harness crop genetic diversity, and employing useful genes to generate improved varieties. CIMMYT’s Matthew Reynolds is leading a project looking for genetic markers for drought tolerance in wheat that can be used in breeding programs.

The teams worked on detailed delivery plans, focusing on end users, their needs, and how to ensure project products reach them. “It’s a new way of thinking, taking our philosophy into concrete targets,” says Carmen de Vicente, GCP Sub-programme Leader in capacity building. “It’s a big motivator, and I think everyone’s worked very hard and learned a lot.”

It was also “a great opportunity to get to know our collaborators,” says Reynolds. The teams included scientists from CGIAR and other advanced research institutes, and also from national programs. “It’s important that everyone is engaged,” says de Vicente. “By integrating delivery into the planning, our national partners share in the feeling of ownership of the project and its outcomes.”

Award for Ravi Singh

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CIMMYT Distinguished Scientist Ravi Singh has yet another honor to add to his growing collection. He has been awarded the 2007 International Service in Crop Science Award, given by the Crop Science Society of America. The focus of this award is on creativity and innovation in bringing about specific changes in practices, products, and/or programs in the crops area at the international level. The award will be presented on November 6 at a ceremony during the Crop Science Society of America awards program in New Orleans. Congratulations Ravi.

Developing CG guidelines for safe germplasm exchange

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Meetings under phase two of the World Bank’s project on Collective Action for the Rehabilitation of Global Public Goods in the CGIAR Genetic Resources System continued at El Batán this week, as participants learned from each other concerning the ways in which individual centers deal with specific pathogens for mandate crops.

“A key part of this involves prioritizing pathogens of quarantine relevance for the transfer of germplasm and protection of genetic resources,” says Etienne Duveiller, CIMMYT wheat pathologist. “We need to make sure that we are harmonizing our approaches in addressing the safe exchange of germplasm; for example, procedures for checking new introductions and sending materials to our clients.”

Among other outcomes, it is expected the workshop, which ended 23 August 2007, will provide a platform for collaborative efforts in support of genebanks, with extension to partners’ systems in the development of a crop-based global system. In addition to Duveiller, participants in this week’s workshop were Thomas Payne, Head of the Wheat Genetic Resources, CIMMYT; Monica Mezzalama, Head of the CIMMYT Seed Inspection and Distribution Unit; Suketoshi Taba, Head of Maize Genetic Resources, CIMMYT; Ehsan Dulloo, of Bioversity’s Understanding and Managing Biodiversity Programme; Maritza Cuervo, Coordinator of CIAT’s Germplasm Health Laboratory; Cecilia Ynouye, of CIP’s Genetic Resource Conservation and Characterization Division; Siham Asaad, Head of ICARDA’s Seed Health Laboratory; Maria Ayodele, Head of IITA’s Germplasm Health Unit; and Patria G. Gonzales, Manager of IRRI’s Seed Health Unit.

They did it … Permanent beds take off in northern Mexico

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After years of research, things are starting to happen in the Yaqui Valley. Ken D Sayre and his agronomy team have been doing research on permanent bed planting with crop residue retention at the research station near Obregón. Results are very clear: use of permanent beds with adequate crop residue retention reduces irrigation water use, maintains stable yields, reduces production costs, avoids burning of crop residue, reduces CO2 emissions, and improves soil health. Based on results in northern Mexico and thanks to international training courses, this technology has spread to Turkey, China, India, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and other countries.

Ironically, the irrigated, high/yielding areas of Mexico, where conventionally/tilled raised bed planting was developed and is a common practice, have been slow to adopt this next step towards conservation agriculture. But this may be changing. Recently farmer groups and government organizations (federal and regional) have shown interest in the technology. And now the first hectares with permanent beds were planted in farmers’ fields in Obregón, this summer cycle.

Rodrigo Rascón, Obregón Station Manager, Manuel Ruiz Cano, and Jesús Gutiérrez, collaborators in the agronomy team, worked out an agreement with two farmers to plant up to 5 ha each of sorghum on reshaped beds with full straw retention after wheat/ triticale. Only the CIMMYT prototype multi-crop/ multi-use implement was provided to the farmers plus training on planting from Rodrigo and the wheat crop management team.

Pleased with the effort the farmers insisted that a larger area be planted and therefore a total of 55 ha of sorghum was grown this way on the two farms. These plantings are true hallmarks in the efforts to extend conservation agriculture, permanent bed technologies in the Yaqui Valley. Many farmers have already visited the fields and local farmer groups recently held a farmer field day. Examples from other areas in the world tell us that the first 5 ha are the most difficult. Thanks to Rodrigo, Manuel, and Jesús, this first step has been accomplished!

Mexico’s Agriculture Minister flies to CIMMYT, fortifies partnership

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The whirling blades of the official helicopter in which he arrived foretold something of the pace and intensity of CIMMYT’s tour for Alberto Cárdenas Jiménez, Mexico’s Secretary of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food (SAGARPA), at El Batán on 01 August 2007.

After a quick introduction to CIMMYT from Masa Iwanaga, the Minister and his entourage, which included coordinator of international affairs and long-time CIMMYT partner, Víctor Villalobos Arámbula, visited superb field and lab presentations prepared by Kevin Pixley, Julio Huerta, Bram Govaerts, Suketoshi Taba, Mónica Mezzalama, Marilyn Warburton, and Natalia Palacios. They were accompanied among others by CIMMYT Trustees Julio Berdegué and Pedro Brajcich and a select group of 33 representatives of Mexico’s print, radio, and TV media, who interviewed Masa and Cárdenas in a 20-minute press conference following the tour. The busy day ended with closed-door chats with CIMMYT directors and administrators on research and non-science issues, and a late lunch in the Guest House.

Major Mexican media outlets posted at least a dozen stories on CIMMYT the following day (see the Intranet Informa for links to the reports). In a follow-up message thanking staff for their efforts, Masa said the visit had exceeded his expectations. Cárdenas seemed greatly to enjoy the tour and interactions with CIMMYT staff and praised the Center in several public statements during the day, at one point calling CIMMYT “…a jewel of humanity.”

He called on the Center to collaborate with Mexico on diverse fronts, including the development and dissemination of yellow maize hybrids, conservation agriculture, biotechnology, and addressing climate change in agriculture. “We realize that technology is a road we must travel with greater precision and efficacy, that it constitutes a tool which, in the case of Mexico, we should use to improve the lives of the 25 million Mexicans who live in rural areas.”

More precise targeting of poverty in South Asia

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In line with the need to target activities where they contribute most to alleviating poverty, CIMMYT and the Rice-Wheat Consortium (RWC) for the Indo-Gangetic Plains, a CIMMYT-convened network of national programs and other partners in South Asia, have produced the publication “Livelihoods, poverty and targeting in the Indo- Gangetic Plains: A spatial mapping approach,” authored by CIMMYT scientists Olaf Erenstein, Jonathan Hellin, and Parvesh Chandna. It outlines results of work to develop a spatial mapping methodology that can guide priority-setting and targeting within the RWC. The approach draws on data for 18 quantitative, spatially-explicit variables, which serve as indicators of poverty based on the natural, social, human, physical, and financial assets of households, complementing the more conventional monetary approach to measure poverty.

Outputs include district-level spatial poverty maps for the four sub-regions of the Indo- Gangetic Plains in India, covering the states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and West Bengal. In addition to its relevance for the RWC, the approach outlined and the results are of potential use for policy makers, researchers, or development practitioners who wish to ensure that agricultural research continues to contribute to poverty reduction and economic growth. The publication will soon be available through the RWC and the publications catalog on CIMMYT’s website.

Award to Jonathan Crouch

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Jonathan Crouch, director of Genetic Resources and Enhancement (GREU) is one of three scientists to win the very first Japan International Award for Young Agricultural Researchers. He is the only one from a CGIAR research center. These new awards, sponsored by the Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS), recognize the contribution of young agricultural researchers to technological development for the improvement for food security and the environment in developing countries. They commend young researchers who show outstanding performance and research achievements that are expected to lead to future innovation. Jonathan will give a award-acceptance lecture at the United Nations University-HQ (Tokyo) on September 12th.

CIMMYT-Colombia maize enters the coffee zone

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The June 2007 edition of the Colombian publication “Agricultura & Ganadería” (www. agriculturayganaderia.com) carried a report on the recently-released maize hybrid FNC 3056, developed for cropping between coffee rows in fields where coffee plants have been pruned. The practice was adopted with government support several years ago by Colombian coffee growers, who would previously leave the unused rows to weeds, and has added to their profits and to the incomes and food security of the many thousand laborers they employ. Like several other maize varieties for this niche, the hybrid was developed by Colombia’s National Federation of Cereal and Legume Producers (FENALCE), as part of its long-time partnership with CIMMYT, and drew on CIMMYT germplasm.

“The varieties are high-yielding and resistant to two locally harmful maize diseases—tar spot and gray leaf spot,” says Luis Narro, CIMMYT maize specialist in South America.

According to the publication, the area sown to maize in coffee-growing zones of Colombia has increased from 30,000 hectares in 2003 to more than 60,000 in 2006. Eight-tenths of that area is sown to the variety ICA V305, released in 1993 and developed from CIMMYT sources.

Colombian President Álvaro Uribe has said he would like to see 120,000 hectares of improved maize grown in coffee zones by 2008. If this occurs, it will be due partly to the productivity and quality of the maize varieties, which under the coffee farmers’ excellent management yield as much as 9 tons per hectare, and to excellent partnerships with FENALCE and the National Federation of Colombian Coffee Growers (FEDERECAFE).

Borlaug: green revolution to gold standard

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On Tuesday at a ceremony in the United States Congress, Norman Borlaug was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor, the highest civilian award the American government can give.

Global Wheat Program Director Hans Braun represented CIMMYT at the ceremony. “It was a fantastic setting for a fantastic honor,” he said. “It was his will, his bold vision, and the solutions of science, by which Dr. Borlaug used the timeless resources of one farmer and one field to feed more people than ever before,” said speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, who with President Bush presented the gold medal to Borlaug.

In his remarks Bush said “Wealthy and prosperous nations have a moral obligation to help poor and struggling people find their own paths to progress and plenty.”

In accepting the medal, Borlaug agreed with Bush and challenged the United States to stop its own funding reductions and put funds back into agricultural research for development.

“My plea today to the members of Congress and to the Administration is to re-commit the United States to more dynamic and generous programs of official development assistance in agriculture for Third World nations, as was done in the 1960s and 1970s,” he said. “Ever-shrinking foreign aid budgets in support of smallholder agriculture, and especially to multilateral research and development organizations such as the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) where I have worked for 40 years, as well as its sister research institutes under the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), are not in our nation’s best interest, nor do they represent our finest traditions.”

Borlaug joins civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. of the United States, Mother Teresa of India, Nelson Mandela of South Africa and World War II Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel as a recipient of three prestigious awards — the Congressional Gold Medal, the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Nobel Peace Prize.

Wheat trials preparation

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This week SIDU staff started to prepare the first International Wheat Trial (2nd Stem Rust Resistance Screening Nursery). The process includes selection of the best materials from those that arrived from Mexicali last week, taking samples for analysis at the Seed Health laboratory, and washing, treating and packing the seeds.

Visitors from China

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A delegation from the National Nature Science Foundation of China (NNSFC) visited CIMMYT El Batán on 11-12 July. The group of seven was led by Zhu Daoben, the Vice-President of NNSFC. During their visit they were briefed on all of CIMMYT’s programs and visited the Wellhausen-Anderson Plant Genetic Resources Center, the Crop Research Informatics Laboratory (CRIL) and saw the biotech facilities.

Borlaug to receive highest US honor

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Norman Borlaug will receive the highest civilian honor the United States of America can bestow at a ceremony in Washington DC this coming Tuesday, 17 July. The Congressional Gold Medal will be presented by President Bush and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. An original gold medal has been created by the United States Mint commemorating Borlaug’s achievements.

The United States Senate first passed the legislation on September 27, 2006. The United States House of Representatives voted to honor Borlaug with the Medal, on December 6 last year in the final days of the 2006 legislative session.

The first Congressional Gold Medal was awarded in 1776 to General George Washington. Borlaug will join an illustrious list of recipients that includes Thomas Edison, Pope John Paul II, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Students from Tabasco

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Eight biology students from Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco visited CIMMYT El Batán on Wednesday. They had a special interest in the management and conservation of seeds. The students were accompanied by their professor, M.C. Georgina Vargas Simón. They toured the Wellhausen- Anderson Genetic Resources Center and the Seed Health laboratory and had a chance to visit the library and publications distribution unit.

Trustee Çakmak given 2007 Derek Tribe Award

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CIMMYT Board member and Professor at Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey, Ismail Çakmak, has received the prestigious 2007 Derek Tribe Award of Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) Crawford Fund, in recognition of his outstanding work and leadership in identifying zinc deficiency as the underlying cause of poor wheat yields in the calcareous soils of the Central Anatolia in Turkey. The award announcement appears on the 29 June 2007 update of the ATSE-Crawford Fund website.

Çakmak’s research led to the rapid uptake of Zn-containing NP and NPK fertilizers (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium) by farmers in the region and their development by fertilizer industries. Use of the enhanced fertilizers rose from nothing in 1995 to a record 350,000 tons per annum in Turkey in recent times. In some locations with extremely low plant-available zinc, their use has raised grain yields six-fold. In addition to boosting cereal productivity and farmers’ profits, the fertilizers improve zinc density in the grain, which should better the health, productivity, and mental development of members of resource-poor farm households who depend heavily on wheat in their diets.

The ATSE Crawford Fund Derek Tribe Award was inaugurated in 2001 to mark the outstanding contributions of Emeritus Professor Derek Tribe, founding director of the Crawford Fund, to the promotion of international agricultural research. The award is made biennially to a citizen of a developing country in recognition of distinguished contributions to the application of research in agriculture or natural resource management in a developing country or countries. The recipient of the inaugural 2001 Crawford Fund Derek Tribe Award was Sanjaya Rajaram, former Director of the CIMMYT Wheat Program.

Seeds in transit

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It’s an annual event at El Batán, the arrival of the shipment of wheat seed from the multiplication site near Mexicali in North West Mexico. The seed is grown in Mexicali because that area is free of a fungal disease called karnal bunt that can be carried on seeds. This is vital if CIMMYT is to distribute the seed to partners around the world. The newly arrived seeds will now be washed, treated, and bagged in preparation for shipment to their final destinations.