Energy is vital for modern farming. âDisruption in energy supply to the farm sector can hold back efforts to achieve poverty, hunger, health and education and energy-related SDGs  in the rural farming areas,â said Akhter Ali, corresponding author of the study and agricultural economist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center. Read more here.
To mitigate the food security and economic risks of South Asiaâs frequent and intense droughts, scientists and policymakers from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) recently joined forces to launch an innovative decision support and agricultural planning system that combines remote sensing and  climate data analysis for drought monitoring and early warning.
The Regional Drought Monitoring and Outlook System application was unveiled during a workshop to train experts and policymakers in its use at relevant regional and national institutes in Islamabad, Pakistan, from July 29 to August 1, 2019. The Regional Drought Monitoring and Outlook System is the product of an ICIMOD-CIMMYT partnership through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) supported SERVIR Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) programme, in collaboration with Climate Service for Resilient Development (CSRD), led by ICIMOD and CIMMYT, respectively.
âCommonly associated with epic flooding, particularly in the enormous breadbasket region known as the Indo-Gangetic Plains that extends across Pakistan, India, southern Nepal, and Bangladesh, the region also faces droughts driven by rising temperatures and erratic rainfall and which threaten crops, food security, and livelihoods,â said Faisal Mueen Qamer, Remote Sensing Specialist of ICIMOD, which helped develop the system and organize the workshop.
âWe expect the system to foster resilience in South Asian agriculture, while supporting future institutional frameworks and policies for farm compensation and adaptation, through decision makersâ access to timely and action-oriented information,â Qamar explained.
With a growing population of 1.6 billion people, South Asia hosts 40% of the worldâs poor and malnourished on just 2.4% of its land. A 2010 study found a linear drop of 7.5% in rainfall in South Asia from 1900 to 2005.
âShrinking glaciers, water scarcity, rising sea levels, shifting monsoon patterns, and heat waves place considerable stress on South Asian countries, whose primary employment sector remains agriculture,â said Mohammad Faisal, Director General for South Asia at Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, during the workshop opening.
Media reports in early 2019 documented displacement and hunger from Pakistanâs worst drought in years.
Raising awareness about drought and its mitigation
Twenty-three participants from six South Asia countries plus five expert instructors attended the workshop, which offered presentations and hands-on training on a suite of applications and associated data analysis tools, including the South Asian Land Data Assimilation System (SALDAS), the Regional Drought Explorer, and the National Drought Early Warning System.
Muhammad Azeem Khan, Member of the Food Security & Climate Change at the Planning Commission of Pakistan, said the scale of present and future climate challenges is clearly evident.
âIn Pakistan, we regularly see parts of the country in the grip of severe drought, while others have flash floods,â Khan commented during the workshop closing, while commending its organizers. âFrequent drought diminishes agricultural production and food security, especially for people in rural areas. Effectively managing the impacts of climate change requires a response that builds and sustains South Asiaâs social, economic, and environmental resilience, as well as our emergency response capacity.â
Through CSRD, a global partnership that connects climate and environmental science with data streams to generate decision support tools and training for decision-makers in developing countries, CIMMYT helped extend the Regional Drought Monitoring and Outlook System to Bangladesh, from its original coverage of Afghanistan, Nepal, and Pakistan.
âTranslating complex climate information into easy-to-understand and actionable formats is core to CSRDâs mission and helps spread awareness about climate challenges,â said Tim Krupnik, CIMMYT cropping systems agronomist based in Bangladesh. âThis consortium provides strength and technical expertise to develop relevant climate products, including decision-support information for farmers and other stakeholders, thus fostering resilience to climate-related risks.â
A research paper published in the worldâs leading scientific journal, Science Magazine, indicates that using the Happy Seeder agriculture technology to manage rice residue has the potential of generating 6,000-11,500 Indian rupees (about US$85-160) more profits per hectare for the average farmer. The Happy Seeder is a tractor-mounted machine that cuts and lifts rice straw, sows wheat into the soil, and deposits the straw over the sown area as mulch.
The paper âFields on fire: Alternatives to crop residue burning in Indiaâ evaluates the public and private costs and benefits of ten alternate farming practices to manage rice residue, including burn and non-burn options. Happy Seeder-based systems emerge as the most profitable and scalable residue management practice as they are, on average, 10%â20% more profitable than burning. This option also has the largest potential to reduce the environmental footprint of on-farm activities, as it would eliminate air pollution and would reduce greenhouse gas emissions per hectare by more than 78%, relative to all burning options.
This research aims to make the business case for why farmers should adopt no-burn alternative farming practices, discusses barriers to their uptake and solutions to increase their widespread adoption. This work was jointly undertaken by 29 Indian and international researchers from The Nature Conservancy, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT), the University of Minnesota, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA) and other organizations.
Every year, some 23 million tonnes of rice residue is burnt in the states of Haryana, Punjab and Western Uttar Pradesh, contributing significantly to air pollution and short-lived climate pollutants. In Delhi NCR, about half the air pollution on some winter days can be attributed to agricultural fires, when air quality level is 20 times higher than the safe threshold defined by WHO. Residue burning has enormous impacts on human health, soil health, the economy and climate change.
âDespite its drawbacks, a key reason why burning continues in northwest India is the perception that profitable alternatives do not exist. Our analysis demonstrates that the Happy Seeder is a profitable solution that could be scaled up for adoption among the 2.5 million farmers involved in the rice-wheat cropping cycle in northwest India, thereby completely eliminating the need to burn. It can also lower agricultureâs contribution to Indiaâs greenhouse gas emissions, while adding to the goal of doubling farmers income,â says Priya Shyamsundar, Lead Economist at The Nature Conservancy and one of the lead authors of the paper.
âBetter practices can help farmers adapt to warmer winters and extreme, erratic weather events such as droughts and floods, which are having a terrible impact on agriculture and livelihoods. In addition, Indiaâs efforts to transition to more sustainable, less polluting farming practices can provide lessons for other countries facing similar risks and challenges,â explains M.L. Jat, CIMMYT cropping systems specialist and a co-author of the study.
âWithin one year of our dedicated action using about US$75 million under the Central Sector Scheme on âPromotion of agriculture mechanization for in-situ management of crop residue in the states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and NCT of Delhi,â we could reach 0.8 million hectares of adoption of Happy Seeder/zero tillage technology in the northwestern states of India,â said Trilochan Mohapatra, director general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). âConsidering the findings of the Science article as well as reports from thousands of participatory validation trials, our efforts have resulted in an additional direct farmer benefit of US$131 million, compared to a burning option,â explained Mohapatra, who is also secretary of Indiaâs Department of Agricultural Research and Education.
The Government of India subsidy in 2018 for onsite rice residue management has partly addressed a major financial barrier for farmers, which has resulted in an increase in Happy Seeder use. However, other barriers still exist, such as lack of knowledge of profitable no-burn solutions and impacts of burning, uncertainty about new technologies and burning ban implementation, and constraints in the supply-chain and rental markets. The paper states that NGOs, research organizations and universities can support the government in addressing these barriers through farmer communication campaigns, social nudging through trusted networks and demonstration and training. The private sector also has a critical role to play in increasing manufacturing and machinery rentals.
This research was supported by the Susan and Craig McCaw Foundation, the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat (WHEAT), and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). The Happy Seeder was originally developed through a project from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).
For more information, or to arrange interviews with the researchers, please contact:
Rodrigo Ordóñez, Communications Manager, CIMMYT
r.ordonez@cgiar.org, +52 (55) 5804 2004 ext. 1167
Sonali Nandrajog, Communications Consultant, The Nature Conservancy â India
sonalinandrajog@gmail.com, +98 9871948044
Spokespersons:
M.L. Jat, Cropping Systems Agronomist, CIMMYT, India
M.Jat@cgiar.org
Priya Shyamsundar, Lead Economist, The Nature Conservancy
priya.shyamsundar@tnc.org
Seema Paul, Managing Director, The Nature Conservancy â India
seema.paul@tnc.org
About CIMMYT
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is the global leader in publicly-funded maize and wheat research and related farming systems. Headquartered near Mexico City, CIMMYT works with hundreds of partners throughout the developing world to sustainably increase the productivity of maize and wheat cropping systems, thus improving global food security and reducing poverty. CIMMYT is a member of the CGIAR System and leads the CGIAR Research Programs on Maize and Wheat, and the Excellence in Breeding Platform. The Center receives support from national governments, foundations, development banks and other public and private agencies.
About The Nature Conservancy â India
We are a science-led global conservation organisation that works to protect ecologically important lands and water for nature and people. We have been working in India since 2015 to support Indiaâs efforts to âdevelop without destructionâ. We work closely with the Indian government, research institutions, NGOs, private sector organisations and local communities to develop science-based, on-the-ground, scalable solutions for some of the countryâs most pressing environmental challenges. Our projects are aligned with Indiaâs national priorities of conserving rivers and wetlands, address air pollution from crop residue burning, sustainable advancing renewable energy and reforestation goals, and building health, sustainable and smart cities.
As many regions worldwide baked under some of the most persistent heatwaves on record, scientists at a major conference in Canada shared data on the impact of spiraling temperatures on wheat.
In the Sonora desert in northwestern Mexico, nighttime temperatures varied 4.4 degrees Celsius between 1981 and 2018, research from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) shows. Across the world in Siberia, nighttime temperatures rose 2 degrees Celsius between 1988 and 2015, according to Vladimir Shamanin, a professor at Russiaâs Omsk State Agrarian University who conducts research with the Kazakhstan-Siberia Network on Spring Wheat Improvement.
âAlthough field trials across some of the hottest wheat growing environments worldwide have demonstrated that yield losses are in general associated with an increase in average temperatures, minimum temperatures at night â not maximum temperatures â are actually determining the yield loss,â said Gemma Molero, the wheat physiologist at CIMMYT who conducted the research in Sonora, in collaboration with colleague Ivan Ortiz-Monasterio.
âOf the water taken up by the roots, 95% is lost from leaves via transpiration and from this, an average of 12% of the water is lost during the night. One focus of genetic improvement for yield and water-use efficiency for the plant should be to identify traits for adaptation to higher night temperatures,â Molero said, adding that nocturnal transpiration may lead to reductions of up to 50% of available soil moisture in some regions.
Climate challenge
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported in October that temperatures may become an average of 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer in the next 11 years. A new IPCC analysis on climate change and land use due for release this week, urges a shift toward reducing meat in diets to help reduce agriculture-related emissions from livestock. Diets could be built around coarse grains, pulses, nuts and seeds instead.
Scientists attending the International Wheat Congress in Saskatoon, the city at the heart of Canadaâs western wheat growing province of Saskatchewan, agreed that a major challenge is to develop more nutritious wheat varieties that can produce bigger yields in hotter temperatures.
As a staple crop, wheat provides 20% of all human calories consumed worldwide. It is the main source of protein for 2.5 billion people in the Global South. Crop system modeler Senthold Asseng, a professor at the University of Florida and a member of the International Wheat Yield Partnership, was involved in an extensive study  in China, India, France, Russia and the United States, which demonstrated that for each degree Celsius in temperature increase, yields decline by 6%, putting food security at risk.
Wheat yields in South Asia could be cut in half due to chronically high temperatures, Molero said. Research conducted by the University of New South Wales, published in Environmental Research Letters also demonstrates that changes in climate accounted for 20 to 49% of yield fluctuations in various crops, including spring wheat. Hot and cold temperature extremes, drought and heavy precipitation accounted for 18 to 4% of the variations.
At CIMMYT, wheat breeders advocate a comprehensive approach that combines conventional, physiological and molecular breeding techniques, as well as good crop management practices that can ameliorate heat shocks. New breeding technologies are making use of wheat landraces and wild grass relatives to add stress adaptive traits into modern wheat â innovative approaches that have led to new heat tolerant varieties being grown by farmers in warmer regions of Pakistan, for example.
Collaborative effort
Matthew Reynolds, a distinguished scientist at CIMMYT, is joint founder of the Heat and Drought Wheat Improvement Consortium (HeDWIC), a coalition of hundreds of scientists and stakeholders from over 30 countries.
âHeDWIC is a pre-breeding program that aims to deliver genetically diverse advanced lines through use of shared germplasm and other technologies,â Reynolds said in Saskatoon. âItâs a knowledge-sharing and training mechanism, and a platform to deliver proofs of concept related to new technologies for adapting wheat to a range of heat and drought stress profiles.â
Aims include reaching agreement across borders and institutions on the most promising research areas to achieve climate resilience, arranging trait research into a rational framework, facilitating translational research and developing a bioinformatics cyber-infrastructure, he said, adding that attracting multi-year funding for international collaborations remains a challenge.
Nitrogen traits
Another area of climate research at CIMMYT involves the development of an affordable alternative to the use of nitrogen fertilizers to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. In certain plants, a trait known as biological nitrification inhibition (BNI) allows them to suppress the loss of nitrogen from the soil, improving the efficiency of nitrogen uptake and use by themselves and other plants.
Scientists with the BNI research consortium, which includes Japanâs International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS), propose transferring the BNI trait from those plants to critical food and feed crops, such as wheat, sorghum and Brachiaria range grasses.
âEvery year, nearly a fifth of the worldâs fertilizer is used to grow wheat, yet the crop only uses about 30% of the nitrogen applied, in terms of biomass and harvested grains,â said Victor Kommerell, program manager for the multi-partner CGIAR Research Programs (CRP) on Wheat and Maize led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.
âBNI has the potential to turn wheat into a highly nitrogen-efficient crop: farmers could save money on fertilizers, and nitrous oxide emissions from wheat farming could be reduced by 30%.â
Excluding changes in land use such as deforestation, annual greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture each year are equivalent to 11% of all emissions from human activities. About 70% of nitrogen applied to crops in fertilizers is either washed away or becomes nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide, according to Guntur Subbarao, a principal scientist with JIRCAS.
Although ruminant livestock are responsible for generating roughly half of all agricultural production emissions, BNI offers potential for reducing overall emissions, said Tim Searchinger, senior fellow at the World Resources Institute and technical director of a new report titled âCreating a Sustainable Food Future: A Menu of Solutions to Feed Nearly 10 Billion People by 2050.â
To exploit this roots-based characteristic, breeders would have to breed this trait into plants, said Searchinger, who presented key findings of the report in Saskatoon, adding that governments and research agencies should increase research funding.
Other climate change mitigation efforts must include revitalizing degraded soils, which affect about a quarter of the planetâs cropland, to help boost crop yields. Conservation agriculture techniques involve retaining crop residues on fields instead of burning and clearing. Direct seeding into soil-with-residue and agroforestry also can play a key role.
A new economic study in the journal Science shows that thousands of farmers in northern India could increase their profits if they stop burning their rice straw and adopt no-till practices to grow wheat. Alternative farming practices could also cut farmersâ greenhouse gas emissions from on-farm activities by as much as 78% and help lower air pollution in cities like New Delhi.
The new study compares the costs and benefits of 10 distinct land preparation and sowing practices for northern Indiaâs rice-wheat cropping rotations, which are spread across more than 4 million hectares. The direct seeding of wheat into unplowed soil and shredded rice residues was the best option â it raises farmersâ profits through higher yields and savings in labor, fuel, and machinery costs.
The study, conducted by a global team of eminent agriculture and environmental scientists, was led by researchers from The Nature Conservancy, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA) and the University of Minnesota.
A burning issue
To quickly and cheaply clear their fields to sow wheat each year, farmers in northern India burn an estimated 23 million tons of straw from their rice harvests. That enormous mass of straw, if packed into 20-kilogram 38-centimeter-high bales and piled on top of each other, would reach a height of over 430,000 kilometers â about 1.1 times the distance to the moon.
Regulations are in place in India to reduce agricultural fires but burning continues because of implementation challenges and lack of clarity about the profitability of alternate, no-burn farming.
Farmers have alternatives, the study shows. To sow wheat directly without plowing or burning rice straw, farmers need to purchase or rent a tractor-mounted implement known as the âHappy Seeder,â as well as attach straw shedders to their rice harvesters. Leaving straw on the soil as a mulch helps capture and retain moisture and also improves soil quality, according to M.L. Jat, CIMMYT Principal Scientist, cropping systems specialist and a co-author of the study.
Win-win
The Science study demonstrates that it is possible to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions in a way that is profitable to farmers and scalable.
The paper shows that Happy Seeder-based systems are on average 10%â20% more profitable than straw burning options.
âOur study dovetails with 2018 policies put in place by the government of India to stop farmers from burning, which includes a US$166 million subsidy to promote mechanization to manage crop residues within fields,â said Priya Shyamsundar, Lead Economist, Global Science, of The Nature Conservancy and first author of the study.
Shyamsundar noted that relatively few Indian farmers currently sow their wheat using the Happy Seeder but manufacturing of the Seeder had increased in recent years. âLess than a quarter of the total subsidy would pay for widespread adoption of the Happy Seeder, if aided by government and NGO support to build farmer awareness and impede burning.â
“With a rising population of 1.6 billion people, South Asia hosts 40% of the world’s poor and malnourished on just 2.4% of its land,â said Jat, who recently received Indiaâs prestigious Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Award for outstanding and impact-oriented research contributions in natural resource management and agricultural engineering. âBetter practices can help farmers adapt to warmer winters and extreme, erratic weather events such as droughts and floods, which are having a terrible impact on agriculture and livelihoods. In addition, Indiaâs efforts to transition to more sustainable, less polluting farming practices can provide lessons for other countries facing similar risks and challenges.â
In November 2017, more than 4,000 schools closed in Delhi due to seasonal smog. This smog increases during October and November when fields are burned. It causes major transportation disruptions and poses health risks across northern India, including Delhi, a city of more than 18 million people.
Some of these problems can be resolved by the use of direct sowing technologies in northwestern India.
âWithin one year of our dedicated action using about US$75 million under the Central Sector Scheme on âPromotion of agriculture mechanization for in-situ management of crop residue in the states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and NCT of Delhi,â we could reach 0.8 million hectares of adoption of Happy Seeder/zero tillage technology in the northwestern states of India,â said Trilochan Mohapatra, director general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). âConsidering the findings of the Science article as well as reports from thousands of participatory validation trials, our efforts have resulted in an additional direct farmer benefit of US$131 million, compared to a burning option,â explained Mohapatra, who is also secretary of Indiaâs Department of Agricultural Research and Education.
Read the full study in Science
This research was supported by the Susan and Craig McCaw Foundation, the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat (WHEAT), and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). The Happy Seeder was originally developed through a project from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).
For more information, or to arrange interviews with the researchers, please contact:
Rodrigo Ordóñez, Communications Manager, CIMMYT
r.ordonez@cgiar.org, +52 5558042004 ext. 1167
Newly formed, non-profit ProMaĂz Nativo will promote Mexicoâs native corn biodiversity with a front-of-pack logo to help consumers choose sustainably-grown, heirloom varieties. Read more here.
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is offering a new set of improved maize hybrids to partners in South and South East Asia and similar agro-ecological zones, to scale up production for farmers in these areas.
National agricultural research systems and seed companies are invited to apply for the allocation of these pre-commercial hybrids, after which they will be able to register, produce and offer the improved seed to farming communities.
The deadline to submit applications to be considered during the next round of allocations is August 15, 2019. Applications received after that deadline will be considered during the following round of product allocations.
Information about the newly available hybrids, application instructions and other relevant material is available below.
Or download individual files below:
Appendix 4: Trial Summary information 2017-18 in South Asia
To apply, please fill out the CIMMYT Improved Maize Product Allocation Application Forms, available for download at the links below. Each applicant will need to complete one copy of Form A for their organization, then for each hybrid being requested a separate copy of Form B. Please be sure to use these current versions of the application forms.
FORM A â Application for CIMMYT Improved Maize Product Allocation
FORM B â Application for CIMMYT Improved Maize Product Allocation
Please send completed forms via email to P.Nagesh@cgiar.org with copy to GMP-CIMMYT@cgiar.org.
July 29, 2019, was a remarkable day for Ethiopia. People across the country planted 353,633,660 tree seedlings in just 12 hours, according to the official count, in what is believed to be a world record. This figure also exceeded the target of a nationwide campaign calling citizens to plant 200 million trees in one day. This initiative was part of the Ethiopian governmentâs âGreen Legacyâ initiative, which aims to plant 4 billion trees by October.
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and other CGIAR centers working in Ethiopia joined the tree-planting campaign. In the morning of July 29, staff members turned out at Adwa park, near Addis Ababaâs Bole International Airport, to plant tree seedlings. This activity was coordinated by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) after receiving an invitation from the Bole subcity administration.
Ethiopiaâs tree-planting day received worldwide attention. Al Jazeera reported that, âin addition to ordinary Ethiopians, various international organizations and the business community have joined the tree planting spree which aims to overtake India’s 66 million planting record set in 2017.â
A greener future for CGIAR
Ethiopiaâs reforestation efforts align with CGIARâs sustainability strategy.
In its current business plan, CGIAR has five global challenges including planetary boundaries. Food systems are driving the unsustainable use of the planetâs increasingly fragile ecosystem. A stable climate, water, land, forests and the biodiversity they contain are a precious, yet finite, natural resource. Food systems account for about one-third of greenhouse gas emissions and will be profoundly affected by its impacts. Agriculture is driving the loss of the worldâs forests and productive land, with 5 million hectares of forests lost every year and a third of the worldâs land already classified as degraded. Agriculture accounts for about 70% of water withdrawals globally, is a major cause of water stress in countries where more than 2 billion people live, and water pollution from agricultural systems poses a serious threat to the worldâs water systems.
With Ethiopiaâs increasing population, there is a high pressure on farmland, unsustainable use of natural resources and deforestation.
At the Agriculture Research for Development Knowledge Share Fair organized in Addis Ababa on May 15, 2019, CGIAR centers demonstrated how they are working together to improve agriculture production and environmental sustainability, tackling local challenges and generating global impact in partnership with other organizations, communities and governments.
At the fairâs opening ceremony, Seleshi Bekele, Ethiopiaâs Minister of Water, Irrigation and Electricity, noted that the country has policies, institutional arrangements as well as human and financial resources to work towards sustainability. As a result, Ethiopia has made remarkable achievements towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals with the continued support and contributions from partners like CGIAR. He also called CGIAR centers to support the efforts to plant 4 billion tree seedlings in 2019, as part of Ethiopiaâs climate change adaptation and mitigation goals.
How can social protection programs be truly inclusive? Taking a social inclusion lens to agricultural development means looking beyond gender to other identity markers and changing the narratives in gender development approaches, which often place a disproportionate burden on women. Social protection programs do not always keep up with the changes of the traditional gender order.
In this episode, we talk to Juan Gonzalo Jaramillo Mejia, Project Manager and Researcher on Inclusion Innovation and Social Protection. He discusses why we must engage men in the fight for gender equality and how using a social inclusion lens to social protection programs is necessary to ensure that no one is left behind.
You can listen to our podcast here, or subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, or Google Play.
CIMMYT researcher Bekele Abeyo remarked at the International Wheat Congress that there are hardly any African countries self-sufficient in wheat, and that food security in Africa is dependent on wheat production.
Matthew Reynolds, CIMMYT researcher and head of the Heat and Drought Wheat Improvement Consortium (HeDWIC), noted that the consortium has already benefited nine African countries and stresses the importance of future work in this area.
Read more here.
Domestic rice and wheat production in Bangladesh has more than doubled in the last 30 years, despite declining per capita arable land. The fact that the country is now almost self-sufficient in staple food production is due in large part to successful and rapid adoption of modern, high-yielding crop varieties. This has been widely documented, but less attention has been paid to the contribution of small-scale irrigation systems, whose proliferation has enabled double rice cropping and a competitive market system in which farmers can purchase irrigation services from private pump owners at affordable rates.
However, excess groundwater abstraction in areas of high shallow tube-well density and increased fuel costs for pumping have called into question the sustainability of Bangladeshâs groundwater irrigation economy. Cost-saving agronomic methods are called for, alongside aligned policies, markets, and farmersâ incentives.
A recent study by researchers at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) examines the different institutions and water-pricing methods for irrigation services that have emerged in Bangladesh, each of which varies in their incentive structure for water conservation, and the level of economic risk involved for farmers and service providers.
Using primary data collected from 139 irrigation service providers and 556 client-farmers, the authors assessed the structure of irrigation service types as well as the associated market and institutional dimensions. They found that competition between pump owners, social capital, and social relationship between of pump owners and client farmers, significantly influence the structure of irrigation services and irrigation water pricing methods. Greater competition between pump owners, for instance, increases the likelihood of pay-per-hour services while reducing that of crop sharing arrangements.
Based on these and other findings, authors made policy recommendations for enhancing irrigation services and sustainability in Bangladesh. As Bangladesh is already highly successful in terms of the conventional irrigation system, the authors urge taking it to the next level for sustainability and efficiency.
Currently Bangladeshâs irrigation system is based on centrifugal pumps and diesel engines. The authors suggest scaling out the energy efficient axial flow pump, and the alternate wetting and drying system for water conservation and irrigation efficiency. They also recommend further investment in rural electrification to facilitate the use of electric motors, which can reduce air pollution by curbing dependency on diesel engines.
Read the full article:
âUnderstanding clients, providers and the institutional dimensions of irrigation services in developing countries: A study of water markets in Bangladeshâ in Agricultural Water Management, Volume 222, 1 August 2019, pages 242-253.
This study was made possible through the support provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA). Additional support was provided by the CGIAR Research Programs on Maize (MAIZE) and Wheat (WHEAT).
Read more recent publications by CIMMYT researchers:
Agricultural researchers, who have teamed up to boost harvests and fight the major blight of wheat rust are now forming an international consortium in a bid to make wheat stand up to worsening heat and drought.
“There was a real shift in terms of the intensity of what we do together when we became aware of climate change,” said Hans-Joachim Braun, who heads the global wheat program for the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), based in Mexico. For each 1 degree Celsius global temperatures rise above pre-industrial times, wheat harvests drop 5-8%, he said. That means the world will likely see a 10% drop in harvests even if governments hold global warming to “well below” 2C, as they have agreed, he said – and that drop would come even as the world’s population grows and demand for food rises.
Finding ways to breed wheat that can cope better with heat could help farmers from Australia to India and China, as well as the people who depend on their grain, he said. “It doesn’t matter where you use this trait – it will have an impact,” Braun said. Read more here.
Most African countries have good potential for boosting wheat production if they are supported with technology, innovation and research, said Bekele Abeyo, a senior scientist with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).
Abeyo, who is based in Ethiopia, which is one of the top wheat-producing countries in Africa, was speaking to BBC Newsday from the International Wheat Congress in the city of Saskatoon in Canadaâs western wheat growing province of Saskatchewan.
Interview starts at 31:00:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w172wpkb45wc459
In Ethiopia, a third of local demand is satisfied by imports, Abeyo said, adding that to reduce import bills, the government is trying to expand wheat production and irrigation in the lowlands where there is high potential for wheat production.
Climate change in Ethiopia and across sub-Saharan Africa is affecting yields, so scientists are working on producing drought-tolerant varieties of wheat. They are also producing biofortified varieties of wheat to help meet nutritional demand for zinc and iron.
More than 800 delegates, including researchers from the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat, CIMMYT, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), the International Wheat Yield Partnership (IWYP), Cornell Universityâs Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat project (DGGW), the University of Saskatchewan and many other organizations are discussing the latest research on wheat germplasm.
The CGIAR Research Program on Wheat (WHEAT), led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), is a founding member of the G20 Wheat Initiative, a co-host of the conference.
Wheat provides 20% of all human calories consumed worldwide. In the Global South, it is the main source of protein and a critical source of life for 2.5 billion people who live on less than $2 a day. Wheat is central to conversations about the rural environment, agricultural biodiversity and global food security.
In the Green Revolution era, the focus for wheat breeders was on boosting yields to feed more people, but today the challenge is not only to increase production on smaller plots of land, but also to improve nutritional quality, said CIMMYT wheat breeder Velu Govindan, during an interview on BBC Newsday.
Interview starts at 43:23:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w172wpkb45wcm4t
Govindan was speaking from the International Wheat Congress in the city of Saskatoon in Canadaâs breadbasket province on the prairies, Saskatchewan.
At the opening session of the International Wheat Congress 2019 in Saskatoon, the director general of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Martin Kropff, told a gathering of 900 wheat scientists that, with CIMMYT support, Bangladesh developed blast resistant wheat in the quickest possible time. Read more here.