NEW DELHI (CIMMYT) — Ram Kanwar Malik, senior agronomist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), has received the 2015 Derek Tribe Award from the Crawford Fund, for his “outstanding contributions to making a food secure world by improving and sustaining the productivity of the rice-wheat system of the northwestern and eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains.”
The award recognizes Malik’s more than 30 years of work in agricultural research and development dedicated to improving the livelihoods of millions of small and marginal farmers in India. He led the development of a management solution for herbicide resistant Phalaris minor, a major wheat weed. This pioneering research is estimated to have prevented farmers from losing nearly 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of wheat and to have raised wheat productivity in the grain basket states of Haryana and Punjab, between 1992 and 2000.
“For developing countries like India where farmers are smallholders and marginalized and investment in research is low, the development of new technologies and the process of delivery are inseparable,” said Malik, highlighting his life-long passion for understanding the need for farmer participation in research. “In fact, a top-down approach could put up barriers to the adoption of new technologies. Listening to farmers and tailoring technologies to serve their needs thus become paramount.”
Malik’s collaborative work with national and international partners and farmer participatory approaches has also led to achievements in the adoption and spread of climate-resilient technologies such as zero-tillage, laser land leveling and direct-seeded rice, as well as policy changes at the government level.
Recently, Malik played an instrumental role in advocating for the early sowing of wheat in Bihar, which can double a farmer’s yield and avoid crop failure caused by higher temperatures and an early summer. Malik’s team has created a network of more than 2,000 service providers to provide easy access for smallholder farmers to machinery and modern farming technologies.
To learn more about the Crawford Fund and Derek Tribe award read the full press release here.
Traditional maize storage in Tete province in Mozambique, April 27, 2015. CIMMYT/Tsedeke Abate
NAIROBI, Kenya (CIMMYT) – At least 40 million smallholder farmers throughout sub-Saharan Africa are profiting from more than 200 new drought-tolerant varieties of maize produced as part of the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa (DTMA) Project, according to scientists at the Center for International Maize and Wheat Improvement (CIMMYT).
The project, underway between 2007 and 2015, led to the development of varieties with traits preferred by farmers that have successfully made smallholders in 13 countries more resilient to the erratic effects of climate change on growing conditions.
“Smallholder farmers in this region plant maize varieties that are obsolete and end up getting poor harvests, but that’s changing now thanks to the gallant efforts of the DTMA team that has released and commercialized a large number of modern varieties,” said Tsedeke Abate, the CIMMYT scientist who led the project. “Thanks to the new drought-tolerant varieties, many families have managed to overcome harsh growing conditions and boost yields substantially.”
“The adoption of the improved drought tolerant seed varied from one country to another and each county had unique challenges that made it difficult for some farmers to take up the new varieties. Some farmers were not aware of the availability of the seed in their markets, for some the seed was not available or the price was high,” Abate said. “We worked with national seed companies in these countries to increase production of certified seed so that many more farmers can buy the seed at an affordable price as well as demonstrating the benefits of the new varieties.”
Anthony Mwega, a farmer and leader in Olkalili village, in Hai district a semi-arid area in northern Tanzania about 600 kilometers (370 miles) from the capital Dar es Salaam, beat the price constraint by mobilizing 66 farmers from his village and neighboring villages Makiwaru and Ngaikati to pool resources and buy 5 metric tons of HB513 – a drought-tolerant and nitrogen-use efficient variety – at a very affordable price from Meru Agro Tours and Consultant Seed Company.
“The overall purchasing price we bought the seed for was about 50 percent less than the market price because we bought it in bulk,” said Mwega. “I saw how good the maize performed in demonstrations organized by Meru Agro during the 2014 planting season with extremely low rains, and knew this is a variety that my people would definitely benefit from.”
Scientists project that millions more farmers will gain access to and plant the new varieties due to collaborations with more than 100 national seed companies, which continue to make a significant contribution to the improvement of seed systems in Angola, Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
“Collaboration with CIMMYT through the DTMA project has been extremely instrumental in facilitating me to release my own varieties,” said Zubeda Mduruma of Aminata Seed Company in Tanga, Tanzania who has collaborated with CIMMYT both in maize breeding and production work since 1976.
“I was able to get some of the best germplasm, evaluate them through on-farm and on-station trials, and successfully released three of the best drought tolerant varieties in the market, including one quality protein DT variety that is very popular among women because of its nutritional value. With the quality of maize we get from CIMMYT, it’s very possible to release new improved varieties every year with much better yield compared to popular commercial varieties in our shops.”
The story of this success is told through a series of pictures and profiles of DTMA target countries. Each country profile illustrates the context of national maize production and the changes underway thanks to released drought-tolerant varieties.
The DTMA project will continue, first as the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa Seed Scaling (DTMASS) initiative. Under the project, which is funded by USAID, CIMMYT scientists aim to facilitate the production of close to 12,000 metric tons of certified seed for use by about 2.5 million people, in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
In partnership with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture who partnered with CIMMYT in DTMA work, the new Stress Tolerant Maize for Africa project will also carry forward the success and invaluable lessons from DTMA and CIMMYT’s Improved Maize for Africa Soils project, to develop new stress tolerant varieties to help farmers mitigate multiple stresses that occur concurrently in farmers’ fields.
Climate change is likely to have a huge impact on cereal farmers in India. CIMMYT/Emma Quilligan
EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) – Developing cereal crops that can withstand the effects of climate change will require global, integrated efforts across crops and disciplines, according to a recent research paper published in the journal “Global Food Security.”
The authors of “An integrated approach to maintaining cereal productivity under climate change” argue that cropping systems could become more resilient in the face of climate change through better coordination. Needs include characterizing target agro-ecosystems, standardization of experimental protocols, comparative biology across cereals (and possibly other crops) and data sharing.
Better integration of research effort across the major cereal crops – including wheat, rice, maize, pearl millet and sorghum – is expected to boost productivity under heat and drought stress, thus helping to increase food security for people in less developed countries, many of which will be severely affected by climate change.
“Most of the big challenges in crop improvement are transnational, therefore a better globally integrated research effort is a triple win scenario,” according to Matthew Reynolds, head of wheat physiology at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), and lead author of the paper. “It’s more efficient since duplication of effort is reduced, it’s synergistic since we learn simultaneously from multiple crops and environments [or cropping systems], and it’s fasterto achieve impacts because outputs are disseminated more broadly.”
The paper itself is the result of a workshop held in New Delhi in November 2013, which was the first of its kind to bring together researchers from leading universities, CGIAR agricultural research centers, national agricultural research systems and the private sector – working across the five crops – to discuss areas of common interest and potential collaboration.
Wheat, rice, maize, pearl millet, and sorghum make up nearly 45 percent of calories consumed per capita worldwide and about 55 percent in least developed countries, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. Cereal production is under threat from climate change, which subjects crops to heat and drought stress. Diminishing water supplies, increasing populations, urbanization, shifting diets and increasing demand for fodder and fuel is also putting pressure on cereal production. Taking all these factors into account, researchers project that yield growth rates of 1.2 percent to – 1.7 percent will be required to meet global demand and reduce malnutrition.
The authors of the paper, including representatives from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, identified priority traits for heat and drought tolerance across the cereal crops, and also called for more effective collaborations so that these traits can be modelled, tested at common phenotyping platforms and the resulting data shared with other researchers worldwide as global public goods.
“This paper has provided a baseline about what needs to be done,” said O.P. Yadav, director of the Central Arid Zone Research Institute at the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. “It has also shown what is achievable, once various institutes decide to work together with a common goal and become collaborative stakeholders in increasing the resilience of diverse cropping systems.”
EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — Almost half the world’s wheat land is sown to varieties that come directly or indirectly from research by a longstanding, global network of crop scientists, according to a new report by CIMMYT.
Yearly economic benefits of that research ranged from $2.2 to 3.1 billion (in 2010 dollars), and resulted from annual funding of just $30 million, a benefit-cost ratio as high as 103:1, the study shows.
Published to coincide with CIMMYT’s 50th anniversary, the new study tabulates and analyzes the pedigrees of 4,604 wheat varieties released worldwide during 1994-2014, based on survey responses from public and private breeding programs in 66 countries.
Fully 63 percent of the varieties featured genetic contributions from the breeding research of CIMMYT or of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), both members of CGIAR, a publicly-funded agricultural-research-for-development consortium.
“The fourth in a series of wheat impact assessments first published in 1993, the latest report highlights impressive CGIAR contributions in all wheat-growing regions,” Baum said. “In South Asia, for example, which is home to more than 300 million undernourished people and whose inhabitants consume over 100 million tons of wheat a year, 92 percent of the varieties carried CGIAR ancestry.”
FREE SEED, FUNDING CRUCIAL
CIMMYT and ICARDA depend on donor assistance and national partnerships to achieve meaningful farm-level impacts, but national co-investments do not figure in the current study, according to Hans Braun, director of CIMMYT’s global wheat program. “In 2014 alone, CIMMYT distributed free of charge more than 12 tons of seed of experimental lines for testing and other research by 346 partners in public and private breeding programs of 79 countries,” Braun said. “The partners return performance data to us, but can freely use lines they choose for their own breeding and varietal development efforts.”
“Started in the 1950s by the late Norman Borlaug, this global wheat improvement pipeline has been the main source of new genetic variation for wheat yield increases, adaptation to climate change, and resistance to crop pests and diseases,” Braun added. “The latest impact study attests to its continued worth, but reliable and consistent funding is critical, if global wheat breeding is to satisfy rising demand for the crop in developing countries.”
Led by Borlaug, who won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions and worked at CIMMYT until 1979, wheat breeding advances during the 1960s-70s helped to spark the Green Revolution from which the 15-member CGIAR arose and to keep food prices at historically low levels for decades.
But by 2050 the current global population of 7.3 billion is projected to grow 33 percent to 9.7 billion, according to the United Nations. Demand for food, driven by population, urbanization, and increasing global wealth, will rise more than 60 percent, according to a recent report from the Taskforce on Extreme Weather and Global Food System Resilience.
Experts say that wheat farmers must meet this rising demand from the same or less land area, while confronting more extreme and erratic rainfall and temperatures and using inputs like water and fertilizer much more effectively.
Developing countries received the greatest benefit from CGIAR contributions, particularly in spring bread and spring durum wheat areas, an outcome that aligns with CGIAR’s mandate to help resource-poor farmers and alleviate poverty and malnutrition. Still, adoption of CGIAR-related cultivars was not limited to developing countries and the study highlights significant spill-overs:
In Canada, three-quarters of the wheat area was sown to CGIAR-related cultivars.
In the U.S., nearly 60 percent of the wheat area was sown to CGIAR-related varieties.
In Western Australia, CGIAR-related varieties were used on more than 90 percent of the wheat area.
To view or download a copy of the study, click on the title below:
EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) – Scientists battling to increase wheat production by more than 60 percent over the next 35 years to meet projected demand are optimistic that they have begun to unravel the genetic mysteries that will lead to a more productive plant.
A recent study conducted at 26 international sites with a new generation of improved wheat breeding lines crossed and selected for superior physiological traits, resulted in yields that were on average 10 percent higher than other wheat varieties.
In the study, scientists identified many useful traits in the wheat plant suited to heat and drought adaptation, including: cooler canopy temperature indicating the ability of the plant to access subsoil water under drought and root proliferation under hot irrigated conditions.
They also discovered the plants have the ability to store sugars in the stem when conditions are good and the capacity to remobilize them to the grain when needed for seed filling if conditions do not permit enough photosynthesis. Leaf wax also plays a role by reflecting excess radiation and reducing evaporation from the leaf surface, lowering the risk of photo-inhibition and dehydration.
Additionally, scientists discovered that total aboveground biomass, a trait, which indicates overall plant fitness and with the right crossing strategy can be converted to produce higher grain yield.
“What we have revealed is a proof of concept – namely that designing crosses on the basis of wheat’s physiology results in a range of novel genotypes with significant improvements in yield and adaptation,” said Matthew Reynolds, a distinguished scientist and wheat physiologist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).
“We have a long road ahead, but we hope eventually this work will lead to the discovery of the best combinations of genes suited to specific heat and drought profiles.”
HEAT STRESS
Climate change poses considerable risks to food security and political stability. Wheat is a vital food staple providing 20 percent of the calories and protein consumed by people worldwide.
Projections indicate that it is very likely that rainfall will be more unpredictable and that heat waves will occur more often and last longer throughout the 21st century, according to a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Mean surface temperatures could potentially rise by between 2 to 5 degrees Celsius or more, the report said.
A recent comprehensive modeling exercise, which incorporated data from international heat stress trials led by CIMMYT’s wheat physiology team in the 1990s, shows that for each degree increase in average temperature, there is a 6 percent reduction in wheat yield, so an increase of 5 degrees would lead to a 30 percent reduction or more.
“A 30 percent yield reduction would be very harmful to food security because we know that wheat production must increase by 60 percent just to keep up with population projections,” Reynolds said. “Combined with predicted climate risks, the challenge increases – if this happens, we’ll need to double the yield capacity of our current varieties.”
While demand for wheat is projected to increase at a rate of 1.7 percent a year until 2015, global productivity increases at only 1.1 percent. Conventional breeding approaches achieve less than 1 percent per year, a yield barrier that scientists aim to break.
“If the relative rate of improvement in yields continues at its current pace, there will be a large gap between the amount of available wheat and the amount we need to feed the global population,” Reynolds said.
Under IWYP and HeDWIC scientists will be redesigning the wheat plant for adaptive traits relating to temperature extremes, photoperiod, soil depth, and other environmental factors. Other goals will include attempting to drastically increase radiation-use efficiency, and to understand how plants use signaling to coordinate their activities and respond to environmental fluxes.
Such crops as rice and triticale can be used as potential models for wheat redesign. Rice is similar to wheat in terms of its basic metabolism, but tolerates much higher temperatures, Reynolds said. Triticale could also be used as a model, since it almost never lodges – or falls over – and its spikes have a very high grain number, he added.
Scientists also aim to increase their understanding of the role of roots and their potential to boost yield and ability to adapt to stress.
Because roots are hidden and messy to work with their physiology has been largely ignored in comparison to the parts of the plant above ground, but new technologies are helping to overcome these disadvantages, Reynolds said.
Such challenges are now more feasible to tackle due to a new generation of genomics tools and other biotechnologies which become more powerful each year.
“The revolution in phenomics – work that the Wheat Physiology Group helped pioneer – especially remote sensing for temperature and spectral indices, which indicate specific physiological properties of the plant-, means that we can now evaluate a much larger numbers of lines than in the past,” Reynolds said.
“We’ve already screened 70,000 accessions from the World Wheat Collection in the CIMMYT Genebank, and have identified a veritable powerhouse of novel material to support this work related to breeding and gene discovery for decades to come. So although the challenge is enormous, we remain optimistic.”
This story is one in a series of features written during CIMMYT’s 50th anniversary year to highlight significant advancements in maize and wheat research between 1966 and 2016.
EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) – The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) stepped onto the global stage during the “Swinging Sixties.” The decade was defined by social upheaval dominated by left-right political tensions provoked in large measure by Cold War rivalries between the United States and the former Soviet Union.
It was 1966 when Mexico’s Office of Special Studies, formed in the 1940s as an agency of the country’s Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation to improve bean, maize, potatoes and wheat crops, became CIMMYT.
That same year, civil war exploded in Chad, China’s cultural revolution began, Indira Gandhi became India’s first woman prime minister and musician John Lennon met his future wife Yoko Ono. In the United States, the feminist National Organization for Women (NOW) was formed. Throughout the decade, as the Vietnam War rumbled and more than 30 countries declared independence in Africa, women in many developing countries struggled to gain basic human rights, including the chance to vote.
In wealthy western nations, the “Women’s Liberation Movement,” ultimately known as second-wave feminism, emerged, supplanting women’s suffrage movements and deepening debates over women’s rights.
At CIMMYT, efforts to meet agricultural needs of women farmers and those in charge of nutritional wellbeing within the household to bolster global food security took shape.
Women make up 43 percent of the agricultural labor force in developing countries, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). However, rural women suffer systematic discrimination with regard to their ability to access resources for agricultural production and socio-economic development.
Now referred to as “gender issues” and “gender relations,” debates over how to address inequity on farms and in the workplace are ongoing at CIMMYT. Rather than focusing specifically on women’s rights, gender studies focus on how notions of women or men are determined through characteristics societies attribute to each sex. Gender relations consider how a given society defines rights, responsibilities, identities and relationships between men and women.
As staple foods, maize and wheat provide vital nutrients and health benefits, making up close to one-quarter of the world’s daily energy intake, and contributing 27 percent of the total calories in the diets of people living in developing countries, according to FAO.
Globally, if women had the same access to agricultural production resources as men, they could increase crop yields by up to 30 percent, which would raise total agricultural output in developing countries by as much as 4 percent, reducing the number of hungry people by up to 150 million or 17 percent, FAO statistics show.
SCIENTIFIC CONTRIBUTIONS
From the outset, women scientists played a key role as maize and wheat researchers at CIMMYT.
Evangelina Villegas, who in 2000 became the first woman to win the World Food Prize, joined CIMMYT in 1967. She shared the prestigious award with CIMMYT colleague Surinder Vasal for efforts and achievements in breeding and advancing quality protein maize to improve productivity and nutrition in malnourished and impoverished areas worldwide.
Maize scientist Marianne Bänziger joined CIMMYT in 1992. When she was transferred to Zimbabwe in 1996 to lead the Southern African Drought and Low Soil Fertility Project (SADLF), she became the first woman scientist at CIMMYT posted to a regional office.
“In the good old days, women scientists were considered an oddity – women were considered something special, even though a scientist like Eva Villegas was very well integrated into CIMMYT,” said Bänziger, who now serves as CIMMYT’s deputy director general.
Bänziger’s work was centered on eastern and southern Africa, where the livelihoods of about 25 million people depend directly on agriculture and maize is the staple crop of choice. Drought and poor soil quality often erode food security and increase socio-economic pressures in the region.
Bänziger became known as “Mama Mahindi,” Swahili for “Mother Maize,” for her work developing stress-tolerant maize and for fostering the widespread access of seed producers and farmers to improved drought-tolerant maize now grown by at least 2 million households.
Denise Costich manages the world’s biggest maize gene bank at CIMMYT headquarters near Mexico City. She joined CIMMYT to work closely with farmers. She now holds farmer field days to help improve seed distribution. Her aims include understanding how best to move genetic resources from gene bank to field through breeding, so they become products that help improve food security.
“I was always encouraged to go as far as I could,” Costich said. “The way I prove that women can be scientists is by being a scientist. Let me get out there and do what I can do and not spend a lot of time talking about it.”
Wheat physiologist Gemma Molero spent two years inventing a hand-held tool for measuring spike photosynthesis, an important part of the strategy for developing a high-yielding plant ideotype. Now, Bayer Crop Science is interested in joining a collaborative project with CIMMYT, which will focus around use of the new technology.
Wheat scientist Carolina Saint Pierre has made important contributions towards obtaining the first permits for growing genetically modified wheat in open field trials in Mexico. The trials have allowed the identification of best-performing genetically modified wheat under water stress and helped understand the genetic control of physiological mechanisms related to drought.
WORKPLACE EQUITY
Despite a daycare at headquarters and other efforts to encourage gender equity, women scientists at CIMMYT continue to face different burdens than men in maintaining a work-life balance.
“Whether you are a western woman in a white-collar job worrying about a daycare or a woman farmer in a developing country worrying about her aging parents, women have a different level of responsibility,” said Jenny Nelson, manager of the Global Wheat Program.
A lot of women drop out of agricultural science after earning their doctoral degrees once they have a family, said Costich, acknowledging a challenge many women working in agricultural science face related to long hours and travel requirements.
“As a young woman I have to work very hard – I have to work even harder than men in the field to demonstrate my abilities and gain respect,” Molero said.
Overall, economists concur that gender inequity and social disparities have a negative impact on economic growth, development, food security and nutrition.
Through various projects, CIMMYT aims to address the challenges of gender equity to improve development potential. For example, CIMMYT researchers are among the leaders of a global push to encode gender into agricultural research in tandem with other international research partnerships.
In more than 125 agricultural communities in 26 countries, a field study of gender norms and agricultural innovation, known as “Gennovate,” is underway. The aim is to help spur a transformation in the way gender is included in agricultural research for development. Gennovate focuses on understanding how gender norms influence the ability of people to access, try out, adopt or adapt new agricultural technology.
When designing and implementing agricultural development projects, it is difficult to ensure that they are responsive to gender dynamics. For Mulunesh Tsegaye, a gender specialist attached to two projects working on the areas of nutrition and mechanization in Ethiopia, participatory approaches are the best way forward.
“I have lived and worked with communities. If you want to help a community, they know best how to do things for themselves. There are also issues of sustainability when you are not there forever. You need to make communities own what has been done in an effective participatory approach,” she said.
Maize dish prepared with QPM maize with cook Amina Ibrahim at NuME field day, Sayo village, Dano district. Photo: P. Lowe/CIMMYT
Including both men and women
The CIMMYT-led Nutritious Maize for Ethiopia (NuME) project uses demonstrations, field days, cooking demonstrations and messaging to encourage farmers to adopt and use improved quality protein maize (QPM) varieties, bred to contain the essential amino acids lysine and tryptophan that are usually lacking in maize-based diets. The Ethiopian government adopted a plan to plant QPM on 200,000 hectares by 2015-2017.
NuME’s project staff, and donor Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (DFATD), are highly committed to gender-based approaches, meaning that Mulunesh’s initial role was to finalize the gender equality strategy and support implementation with partners.
By involving partners in an action planning workshop, Mulunesh helped them to follow a less technical and more gender-aware approach, for example by taking women’s time constraints into account when organizing events.
This involved introducing some challenging ideas. Due to men’s role as breadwinners and decision-makers in Ethiopian society, Mulunesh suggested inviting men to learn about better nutrition in the household in order to avoid perpetuating stereotypes about the gender division of labor.
“For a project to be gender-sensitive, nutrition education should not focus only on women but also on men to be practical. Of course, there were times when the project’s stakeholders resisted some of my ideas. They even questioned me: ‘How can we even ask men farmers to cook?’”
Now, men are always invited to nutrition education events, and are also presented in educational videos as active partners, even if they are not themselves cooking.
“Nutrition is a community and public health issue,” said Mulunesh. “Public involves both men and women, when you go down to the family level you have both husbands and wives. You cannot talk about nutrition separately from decision-making and access to resources.”
Faxuma Adam harvests green maize Sidameika Tura village, Arsi Negele Photo: Peter Lowe/ CIMMYT
Empowering men and women through mechanization
The Farm Power and Conservation Agriculture for Sustainable Intensification (FACASI) project is involved in researching new technologies that can be used to mechanize farming at smaller scales. Introducing mechanization will likely alter who performs different tasks or ultimately benefits, meaning that a gender-sensitive approach is crucial.
Again, Mulunesh takes the participation perspective. “One of the issues of introducing mechanization is inclusiveness. You need to include women as co-designers from the beginning so that it will be easier for them to participate in their operation.”
“In general, the farmers tell us that almost every agricultural task involves both men and women. Plowing is mostly done by oxen operated by men, but recently, especially where there are female-headed households, women are plowing and it is becoming more acceptable. There are even recent findings from Southern Ethiopia that women may be considered attractive if they plow!”
Women and men are both involved to some extent with land preparation, planting, weeding, harvesting or helping with threshing. However, women do not just help in farming, they also cook, transport the food long distances for the men working in the farm, and also take care of children and cattle.
A study by the Dutch Royal Tropical Institute, Gender Matters in Farm Power, has already drawn some conclusions about gender relations in farm power that are being used as indicators for the gender performance of the mechanization project.
These indicators are important to track how labor activities change with the introduction of mechanization. “My main concern is that in most cases, when a job traditionally considered the role of women gets mechanized, becomes easier or highly paid, it is immediately taken over by men, which would imply a lot in terms of control over assets and income,” said Mulunesh.
Front row, from left to right: Mulunesh Tsegaye, FACASI gender and agriculture specialist; Katrine Danielsen KIT; Elizabeth Mukewa consultant; Mahlet Mariam, consultant; and David Kahan CIMMYT, business model specialist. Back row, from left to right: Anouka van Eerdewijk KIT; Lone Badstue CIMMYT strategic leader, gender research and mainstreaming; and Frédéric Baudron, FACASI project leader. Credit: Steffen Schulz/CIMMYT
Community conversations
In order to foster social change and identify the needs of women and vulnerable groups, Mulunesh initiated a community conversation program, based on lines first developed by the United Nations Development Programme. Pilots are ongoing in two districts in the south of Ethiopia; a total of four groups are involved, each of which may include 50-70 participants.
“You need to start piece-by-piece, because there are lots of issues around gender stereotypes, culture and religious issues. It is not that men are not willing to participate; rather it is because they are also victims of the socio-cultural system in place.”
When asked about the situation of women in the community, many people claim that things have already changed; discussions and joint decisions are occurring in the household and women are getting empowered in terms of access to resources. Over the coming year, Mulunesh will compare how information diffuses differently in gender-segregated or gender mixed groups.
NuME is funded by DFATD and managed by CIMMYT in collaboration with Ethiopian research institutions, international non-governmental organizations, universities and public and private seed companies in Ethiopia.
Purity has journeyed with women farmers in her village for last three years helping them access land to plant food for their families. Photo: B.Wawa/CIMMYT.
NAIROBI, Kenya — Purity Wanjiku lives in Mirera village in Naivasha County, about 90 kilometers from Nairobi. Like most women in her village, for years she has depended on farming to meet her family’s basic needs, mainly through selling banana flour and maize.
Having farmed for 40 years, the 68-year old mother of 10 – and grandmother of 20 – is not just a guru in agricultural matters but has been a pillar for women in her village who depend on her land to grow food for their families.
Wanjiku owns a six-acre farm, which she describes as too big to grow food just for her husband and youngest son. Her other children are adults and have their own homes; the youngest is currently a college student. With all this land at her disposal, Wanjiku leases out part of it to seven women neighbors who farm it to grow food for their families.
“I only plant on a one-acre plot, which is enough to grow food for my family and extra to sell,” Wanjiku said. The seven women join forces to pay her US$400 (KES 4000) each to access five acres for the full planting and harvesting seasons.
Maize is among the important crops Wanjiku and her neighbors grow. And though she has seen good years in maize farming, Wanjiku confessed that the last three years have been most difficult because of the outbreak of Maize Lethal Necrosis (MLN) that has devastated farmers in the Naivasha area. “Before the disease struck, I used to harvest a minimum of 50 bags of 90 kilograms from one acre. But now the harvest has really gone down,”she said.
However, regardless of the MLN menace and huge losses, Wanjiku’s resilience and commitment to keep planting maize is admirable. This resilience has inspired the seven women farming her land, who also plant maize despite the very high risk of losing their crop to MLN. They all remain optimistic that a lasting solution to MLN will be found through research being conducted at the MLN screening site, just five kilometers away from Wanjiku’s farm.
Most of these women prefer maize over other crops because it can be consumed in different forms, as flour, roasted, boiled or cooked with beans or other crops.
“Regardless of the little maize we harvest from the farm, it becomes a precious commodity, because of the many ways we consume it even in little amounts,” Wanjiku added.
If this resilience is anything to go by, then women farmers in Africa are pillars of the transformation Africa is searching for to address food security, which is marred by an array of constraints ranging from climate change, low fertility soils, insect pests and other stresses.
Their involvement in the production, post-harvest storage and processing of maize contributes directly to the maize economy in Africa, and is therefore a key contributor to a stronger food system at the household, national and continental levels.
CIMMYT has for the past 50 years prioritized gender as essential for enhancing agricultural growth and food security for smallholders. It continues to address gender equality and equity to bridge the gap between men and women so that women can play bigger roles in farming and food production.
After wheat seeds are planted in the greenhouse, the samples are then harvested and prepared to be sent to the laboratory for DNA extraction and genotyping. Photo: Carolina Sansaloni/CIMMYT
EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) – With Syria torn apart by civil war, a team of scientists in Mexico and Morocco are rushing to save a vital sample of wheat’s ancient and massive genetic diversity, sealed in seed collections of an international research center formerly based in Aleppo but forced to leave during 2012-13.
The researchers are restoring and genetically characterizing more than 30,000 unique seed collections of wheat from the Syrian genebank of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), which has relocated its headquarters to Beirut, Lebanon, and backed up its 150,000 collections of barley, fava bean, lentil and wheat seed with partners and in the Global Seed Vault at Svalbard, Norway.
In March 2015, scientists at ICARDA were awarded The Gregor Mendel Foundation Innovation Prize for their courage in securing and preserving their seed collections at Svalbard, by continuing work and keeping the genebank operational in Syria even amidst war.
“With war raging in Syria, this project is incredibly important,” said Carolina Sansaloni, genotyping and DNA sequencing specialist at the Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), which is leading work to analyze the samples and locate genes for breeding high-yield, climate resilient wheats. “It would be amazing if we could be just a small part of reintroducing varieties that have been lost in war-torn regions.”
Treasure from wheat’s cradle to feed the future
Much of wheat seed comes from the Fertile Crescent, a region whose early nations developed and depended on wheat as the vital grain of their civilizations. The collections could hold the key for future breeding to feed an expanding world population, according to Sansaloni.
“An ancient variety bred out over time could contain a gene for resistance to a deadly wheat disease or for tolerance to climate change effects like heat and drought, which are expected to become more severe in developing countries where smallholder farmers and their families depend on wheat,” she explained.
Cross-region partners, global benefits
Sansaloni’s team has been sequencing DNA from as many as 2,000 seed samples a week, as well as deriving molecular markers for breeder- and farmer-valued traits, such as disease resistance, drought or heat tolerance and qualities that contribute to higher yields and grain quality.
They are using a high-end DNA sequencing system located at the Genetic Analysis Service for Agriculture (SAGA), a partnership between CIMMYT and Mexico’s Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food (SAGARPA), and with the support of a private company from Australia, Diversity Arrays Technology.
The sequencer at SAGA can read 1600 samples of seed at once and develops more data than ever before. The HiSeq 2500 boils down data and shows the information at a “sequence level”, for example, height variations among wheat varieties.
Worldwide, there are few other machines that produce this kind of data and most are owned by private companies, explained Sansaloni. This was the first non-Latin American based project used by the HiSeq 2500.
“The success of this project shows what a fantastic opportunity for international collaboration we now have,” Sansaloni said. “I can’t even put a value on the importance of the data we have collected from this project. It’s priceless.”
After data has been collected, seed samples will be “regenerated” by ICARDA and CIMMYT. That is, the process of restoring old seed samples with healthy new seeds.
ICARDA and CIMMYT will share seed and data from the project and make these results available worldwide.
“With these new seeds, we hope to reconstruct ICARDA’s active and base collection of seeds over the next five years in new genebank facilities in Lebanon and Morocco,” said Fawzy Nawar, senior genebank documentation specialist, ICARDA.
Funded through the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat, the effort benefits both of the international centers, as well as wheat breeding programs worldwide, said Tom Payne, head of CIMMYT’s Wheat Germplasm Bank. “ICARDA is in a difficult situation, with a lack of easy access to their seeds and no facilities to perform genotyping,” he explained. “This was the perfect opportunity to collaborate.”
M.L. Jat shows resilient cropping system options for eastern Indo-Gangetic plains at BISA farm
CIMMYT Senior Scientist M.L. Jat has received India’s National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) fellowship in Natural Resource Management for his “outstanding contributions in developing and scaling” conservation agriculture-based management technologies for predominant cereal-based cropping systems in South Asia.
Research such as M.L.’s is more important every day, as we learn to do more with less on a planet with finite resources and changing climate. Sustainable innovation, including climate-smart agriculture, is a major theme at the ongoing COP21 climate talks where global leaders are gathered to decide the future of our planet. M.L. tells us below how CA can play a part in climate change mitigation and adaptation, and the future of CA in South Asia.
What are the major threats global climate change poses to South Asian agriculture?
South Asia is one of the most vulnerable regions in the world to climate change. With a growing population of 1.6 billion people, the region hosts 40% of the world’s poor and malnourished on just 2.4% of the world’s land. Agriculture makes up over half of the region’s livelihoods, so warmer winters and extreme, erratic weather events such as droughts and floods have an even greater impact. Higher global temperatures will continue to add extreme pressure to finite land and other natural resources, threatening food security and livelihoods of smallholder farmers and the urban poor.
How does CA mitigate and help farmers adapt to climate change?
In South Asia, climate change is likely to reduce agricultural production 10‐50% by 2050 and beyond, so adaptation measures are needed now. Climate change has complex and local impacts, requiring scalable solutions to likewise be locally-adapted.
Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices such as CA not only minimize production costs and inputs, but also help farmers adapt to extreme weather events, reduce temporal variability in productivity, and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, according to numerous data on CA management practices throughout the region.
What future developments are needed to help South Asian farmers adapt to climate change?
Targeting and access to CA sustainable intensification technologies, knowledge, and training – such as precision water and nutrient management or mechanized CA solutions specific to a farmer’s unique landscape – will be critical to cope with emerging risks of climate variability. Participatory and community-based approaches will be critical for scaled impact as well. For example, the climate smart village concept allows rural youth and women to be empowered not only by becoming CA practitioners but also by serving as knowledge providers to the local community, making them important actors in generating employment and scaling CA and other climate-smart practices.
Where do you see your research heading in the next 10-15 years?
Now that there are clear benefits of CA and CSA across a diversity of farms at a regional level, as well as increased awareness by stakeholders of potential challenges of resource degradation and food security in the face of climate change, scaling up CA and CSA interventions will be a priority. For example, the Government of Haryana in India has already initiated a program to introduce CSA in 500 climate smart villages. Thanks to this initiative, CA and CSA will benefit 10 million farms across the region in the next 10-15 years.
Climate-Smart Villages
Climate-Smart Villages are a community-based approach to adaptation and mitigation of climate change for villages in high-risk areas, which will likely suffer most from a changing climate. The project began in 2011 with 15 climate-smart villages in West Africa, East Africa and South Asia, and is expanding to Latin America and Southeast Asia. CIMMYT is leading the CCAFS-CSV project in South Asia.
The creation, development and strengthening of farmers’ and technicians’ capacities are a pillar of the MasAgro strategy. For this reason, besides investing in research and technological development, SAGARPA and CIMMYT are also investing in building the capacities of agents of change to foster testing and implementation of new technologies with farmers. To this end, as part of the MasAgro Productor (Take It to the Farmer) extension strategy, in 2013, they set up a network of trainers responsible for detecting areas of opportunity for the technicians they supervise and designing a training plan to develop their technical and social skills, which will enable them to innovate together with farmers.
Thanks to this information and their efforts, a book titled Options Available for Implementing MasAgro Technologies has been published which analyzes the options available for implementing sustainable agricultural practices and technologies in 23 Mexican entities where MasAgro instructors have supported, mentored, followed up and evaluated the agents of change who have provided technical backup to farmers involved in this strategy.
This systems focus of agricultural innovation fosters interaction among different actors with the purpose of developing new technologies, better practices, new processes and new ways of organizing and managing. This in turn promotes learning and sets aside the old innovation paradigm––which considers innovation to be the result solely of scientific research and technological development––and regards innovation as a collective event for which everyone is responsible.
This option includes the hubs’[i] physical infrastructure and technological tools, agronomic management solutions and the human capital that has developed within the framework of MasAgro’s extension activities. The book also talks about various constraints and the potential for implementing the technologies promoted by MasAgro in different states of Mexico. This information is organized into five regions based on the distribution of MasAgro trainers: North (Chihuahua, Durango, San Luis Potosí and Zacatecas), Center (Estado de México, Guerrero, Hidalgo and Morelos) and West (Aguascalientes, Colima, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacán and Querétaro).
This document will undoubtedly be useful to farmers, technicians, researchers, decision makers, input suppliers, development organizations, traders and other actors involved in MasAgro’s innovation network.
[i] A hub is an agricultural innovation node and a model of agricultural extension where farmers interact with technicians and technicians interact with researchers. These innovation nodes usually have similar agroecological conditions for establishing production systems where different technologies promoted by the MasAgro program are developed, disseminated, adapted and improved (for more information, go to http://conservacion.cimmyt.org).
“CIMMYT is famous for helping farmers all over the world, but what fewer people know is that they also help Mexican researchers and students who will become the next generation of researchers through the courses and workshops they offer,” said Alejandro Ledesma, maize researcher at Mexico’s National Forestry, Agricultural and Livestock Research Institute (INIFAP). Above, Ledesma (L), receives certificate from CIMMYT Director General Martin Kropff, Juan Burgueño Ferreira, Head of CIMMYT’s Biometrics and Statistics Unit, and Kevin Pixley, Head of the Genetic Resources Program at a course on statistical analysis of genetic and phenotypic data for breeders held at CIMMYT. Photo: CIMMYT
The Seeds of Discovery (SeeD) project seeks to empower the next generation of Mexican scientists to use maize and wheat biodiversity to effectively meet the needs of Mexican agriculture in the future. By providing professional agricultural research and development opportunities for current and future maize and wheat scientists, SeeD works to ensure that the materials they develop will reach those who need it most. For this reason, SeeD is developing a platform of publicly available data and software tools that enable the efficient use of maize and wheat genetic resources. These genetic resources, or biodiversity, include more than 28,000 maize and 140,000 wheat samples, known as accessions, that are conserved in CIMMYT’s seed bank and available to researchers worldwide.
Genetic resources are the raw materials or building blocks used to develop new maize and wheat varieties needed to meet the demands of a growing population in a changing climate. Many of these maize and wheat accessions contain positive traits such as drought tolerance or disease resistance, which if bred into new varieties have the potential to improve food security and livelihoods in countries such as Mexico in the global south.
However, the specific potential impact of SeeD on Mexican agriculture and society will only be realized if breeders and scientists effectively use the products resulting from the project. By inviting researchers, professors and students to participate in workshops, training courses and diverse research projects, a growing cadre of scientists is learning how to use the databases and software tools developed by SeeD and validating their utility.
Cynthia Ortiz places DNA samples into a thermal cycler in the CIMMYT Biosciences laboratory. Photo: Jennifer Johnson
“Sharing the knowledge generated by SeeD and making it available to the scientific community will help accelerate the development of new varieties that will benefit long-term food security in Mexico and the world,” said Cynthia Ortiz, a graduate student in biotechnology at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute (CINVESTAV) in Mexico City.
Ortiz is conducting research for her Master of Science thesis mentored by SeeD scientist Sukhwinder Singh, who is helping her map the quantitative trait loci (QTL) for phenological and grain yield-related traits in wheat varieties created by crossing synthetic wheat varieties with elite lines. She has participated in two SeeD workshops focusing on wheat phenotyping for heat, drought and yield as well as on the use of the maize and wheat molecular atlas, where she learned to use SeeD software such as Flapjack and CurlyWhirly to visualize the results of genetic diversity analyses.
“The materials SeeD has developed have opened the door for identifying genetic resources with positive traits such as heat and drought tolerance, or resistance to pests and diseases that affect crops all over the world,” Ortiz said. “And the best part is that at the same time, they have sought to protect the genetic diversity of these crops, using the native biodiversity we have in Mexico and the world to confront the challenge of ensuring food security.”
David Gonzalez, a recent graduate of the Chapingo Autonomous University in Texcoco, a city about 30 km (20 miles) from Mexico City, agrees. He worked with SeeD scientists Sarah Hearne and Terence Molnar on his Master of Science thesis, identifying genetic resources with resistance to the maize leaf disease “tar spot complex” (TSC) by using genome-wide association study (GWAS) and genomic selection.
David Gonzalez (L) scores maize plants for signs of tar spot disease alongside SeeD scientist Terence Molnar (R) in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. Photo: Jennifer Johnson
“The software and databases SeeD develops for analyzing genotypic and phenotypic data are novel tools that can be used for research as well as academic purposes,” Gonzalez said. “They are a valuable resource that can be utilized by academic institutions to train students in genetic analysis.”
Gonzalez attended the CIMMYT training course “Technologies for Tropical Maize Improvement,” where he learned about new tools for field trial design, data analysis, doubled haploid technology, molecular markers, GWAS and genomic selection.
“This training, as well as the valuable help and support from CIMMYT scientists, really helped me develop myself professionally,” he said. “It was exciting to work with such an ambitious project, doing things that have never been done before to discover and utilize maize and wheat genetic diversity for the benefit of farmers. I look forward to using what I’ve learned in my future career to develop varieties that meet the needs of farmers in Latin America.”
SeeD is a joint initiative of CIMMYT and the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture (SAGARPA) through the MasAgro project. SeeD receives additional funding from the CGIAR Research Programs on Maize (MAIZE CRP) and Wheat (WHEAT CRP), and from the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).
A farmer uses a mini-tiller in the midwestern region of Nepal. Photo credit: CIMMYT/CSISA
The recent 7.6 magnitude earthquake that struck Nepal on 25 April, followed by a 7.3 magnitude aftershock on 12 May and several hundred additional aftershocks, has had huge negative impacts on the country’s agriculture and food security. Around two-thirds of Nepal’s population rely on agriculture for their livelihoods, and agriculture contributes 33% of Nepal’s GDP. It is estimated that about 8 million people have been affected by the earthquakes, with smallholders in hilly regions being the hardest hit.
The earthquakes damaged or destroyed agricultural assets, undermining the longer-term food production capacity of farm families and disrupting critical input supply, trade, and processing networks. Farmers lost grain and seed stocks, livestock, agricultural tools and other inputs, and are facing significant labor shortages. Widespread damage to seed and grain storage facilities has affected smallholder farmers’ ability to secure their harvested crops during the rainy season.
In response to the devastation, USAID-Nepal has provided US$1 million to the CIMMYT-led Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia in Nepal (CSISA-NP) for earthquake relief and recovery. The Earthquake Recovery Support Program will be implemented for a period of 13 months in close coordination with the Ministry of Agricultural Development (MoAD), Department of Agriculture, Department of Livestock Services, Nepal Agricultural Research Council, and District Disaster Relief Committee. The districts that will receive support include Dolkha, Kavre, Khotang, Makwanpur, Nuwakot, Ramechap, Sindhupalchowk, and Solukhumbu, which suffered particularly high levels of damage.
According to Andrew McDonald, CIMMYT Principal Scientist and CSISA Project Leader, “Even if seed is available, farmers’ ability to plant and harvest crops has been severely diminished due to the loss of draft animals and the exacerbation of labor shortages.” To aid them, the earthquake recovery program will provide more than 33,000 farming households with 50,000 grain storage bags, 30 cocoons for community grain storage, 400 mini-tillers and other modern agriculture power tools (e.g., seeders, reapers, and maize shellers), 800 sets of small agricultural hand tools, and 20,000 posters on better-bet agronomic practices for rice and maize.
“First we will focus on getting horse-powered mini-tillers into affected communities, and subsequently broadening the utility of these machines to power a host of essential agricultural activities including seeding, reaping, threshing, and shelling, as well as driving small pumps for irrigation,” said Scott Justice, Agricultural Mechanization Specialist, CSISA-NP.
CIMMYT scientists train farmers on how to use a power tiller in Dadeldhura, Nepal. Photo credit: Lokendra Khadka/CSISA-Nepal
At the program’s inception workshop on 28 August, Beth Dunford, USAID-Nepal Mission Director, remarked that USAID-Nepal has arranged for a special fund to help earthquake-affected people. Beyond the devastation of houses and public infrastructure such as roads, the earthquake has seriously disrupted agriculture and the rural economy in the impacted districts. Re-establishing vital agricultural markets and services is key to how quickly these communities will recover from the earthquake, underlined Dunford.
To coordinate and monitor program activities effectively, management committees at the central, district, and local levels have been formed with the purpose of identifying the earthquake-affected areas within a district and ensuring efficient and transparent distribution of aid items.
MoAD Joint Secretary Rajendra Adhikari highlighted that the Ministry feels a real sense of ownership over this program and is committed to implementing program activities through its network. The farm machinery support program will be a perfect platform for MoAD to expand its farm mechanization program into other areas of the country. The Earthquake Recovery Support Program also aligns with the Nepalese Government’s agricultural development strategies, which focus on community-wide inclusive development.
El BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) – Post-doctoral fellow Soumya Gupta is the winner of the inaugural Paula Kantor Award for Excellence in Field Research, the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) announced on Thursday.
Gupta was recognized for research that “systematically and empirically assesses the empowerment of women in India as it relates to agricultural determinants and nutritional outcomes,” the group said in a statement.
The ICRW praised Gupta’s doctoral research at Cornell University for revealing that when women are empowered, they are better positioned to make their own choices in agriculture and help influence their own nutritional outcomes.
Gupta’s research showed that while diversification of production systems and diets is an important pathway to improved nutrition, the outcome is conditional on women’s status, the statement said.
Gupta found that empowered women tend to have better access to diet diversity and improved iron status.
“I could not imagine a more deserving researcher upon which to bestow the honor of the inaugural Paula Kantor Award,” said ICRW President Sarah Degnan Kambou. “Dr. Gupta’s work truly embodies the spirit and passion that Paula brought to her work every day. I see so many parallels between the important work that Paula was doing to better integrate gender into agriculture and rural development and Dr. Gupta’s field research.”
This is the first year that ICRW bestowed the award, which was designed to honor the legacy of the group’s former colleague Paula Kantor who died at age 46 in the aftermath of a Taliban attack in Pakistan last year.
At the time of her death, the prolific gender and development specialist was working at the Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) on a project focused on understanding the role of gender in the livelihoods of people in major wheat-growing areas of Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Pakistan.
Kantor was widely recognized in the international development community as an established and respected professional and writer, who pushed the realms of gender research to engage men more effectively. She published more than a dozen peer-reviewed academic publications, 10 peer-reviewed monographs and briefs, 15 other publications and 10 conference papers during her lifetime.
“I am honored to be the first recipient of the Paula Kantor Award,” Gupta said. “There is a great need for better data (and metrics) in the field of agriculture, nutrition and women’s empowerment. In light of that, the Paula Kantor Award acknowledges the importance of gathering primary data for evidence-based research.”
“At the same time the award also recognizes the tremendous effort that goes into designing a field-based data collection activity that is methodologically robust, contextually relevant, and ethically sound,” she said.
“I am inspired by Paula’s work and life, and with this award look forward to continuing my research on the linkages between nutrition and agriculture with a focus on women’s empowerment, and contributing to policy reform in a meaningful way.”
Gupta will receive the award at ICRW’s 40th Anniversary celebration in New Delhi, India on January 20th.
Gupta will receive a commemorative plaque and the opportunity to meet with organizations, government officials, leaders of non-governmental organizations, and others in Delhi to discuss her work and the importance of understanding the connections between women’s empowerment, agricultural practices and nutritional outcomes.
Maize is a stable crop that requires less water, has lower input costs and earns farmers greater profit thanks to its growing demand as food and feed for livestock. Tribal farmers in Odisha are increasing maize yields with the use of new technologies and improved agronomic practices. Photo: Ashwamegh Banerjee/CIMMYT
Badbil is a remote and deeply impoverished tribal village in the plateau region of Mayurbhanj in the east Indian state of Odisha. The village is home to 200 families belonging to four indigenous tribes who have traditionally grown a local rice called Sathia.
Due to regularly occurring droughts and declining rainfall, families have started giving up rice cultivation. The rice crop’s high demand for water has resulted in about a 40% decline in total rice production in India’s eastern states during severe droughts, with an estimated loss of US$ 800 million. As a result, Mayurbhanj’s plateau area is now considered unsuitable for growing rice and remains fallow for most of the year.
“Farmers also face the problem of nutrient-depleted lateritic and acidic soils, which are dominant in these areas and commonly dismissed as degraded and unproductive by the local population,” said R.K. Malik, CIMMYT Senior Agronomist.
NEW DELHI (CIMMYT) — Ram Kanwar Malik, senior agronomist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), has received the 2015 Derek Tribe Award from the Crawford Fund, for his “outstanding contributions to making a food secure world by improving and sustaining the productivity of the rice-wheat system of the northwestern and eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains.”
