AWARENESS-RAISING ON ISSUES AFFECTING AGRICULTURE, FOOD AND CULINARY ARTS

International Women’s Day on March 8, offers an opportunity to recognize the achievements of women worldwide. This year, CIMMYT asked readers to submit stories about women they admire for their selfless dedication to either maize or wheat. In the following story, Amanda Niode writes about her Super Woman of Maize, Asriani Anie Annisa Hasan of the Gorontalo Corn Information Center and Food Security Agency.

Asriani Anie Annisa Hasan is my maize superwoman.

Anie is a beautiful and warm-hearted woman, who is currently head of the Dissemination and Information Division at the Gorontalo Corn Information Center and Food Security Agency.

Gorontalo is a province located on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia on the Wallacea, borderline islands situated between the Asian and Australian bio-geographical regions characterized by great biodiversity of flora and fauna.

Anie is not known as an official who works behind her desk. She is very much involved in the cornfields and the livelihoods of farmers, taking pictures of newly harvested cornfields, driving a truck, or sitting on the floor chatting with corn farmers.

She informs farmers about native corn varieties found in Gorontalo, including those on the brink of extinction such as momala, motorokiki, bonia/badia and pulut (binthe pulo).

Additionally, Anie is very active on social media networks and always explains her corn-related activities in a fun way, One of her Facebook posts features two decorated corn cobs saying: “Corns fall in love today. Love maize.”

In another post, she wrote: “Sunday morning is usually laundry time, but now I should be chummy with the corn field.”

She is always on the forefront on any major corn-related activity, including the International Maize Conference, which was held in Gorontalo in 2012, and attended by corn experts from all over the world.

She works very hard to assist the Omar Niode Foundation, an organization working to raise public awareness about issues affecting agriculture, food and culinary arts. This work included attending an exhibition of Gorontalo local corns in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital.

Anie Annisa, is a passionate maize superwoman.

RESEARCH IMPROVES MAIZE PRODUCTION AND PROTECTS GERMPLASM

International Women’s Day on March 8, offers an opportunity to recognize the achievements of women worldwide. This year, CIMMYT asked readers to submit stories about women they admire for their selfless dedication to either maize or wheat. In the following story, Vivian Bernau writes about her Super Woman of Maize, Candice Gardner, a research leader with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Candice Gardner serves as research leader for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s North Central Region Plant Introduction Station (USDA-ARS NCRPIS), one of the 20 gene banks of the U.S. National Plant Germplasm System, where she is responsible for overseeing both fiscal and operation management, as well as guiding the execution of research.

Dr. Gardner’s interests have guided her through several research positions. She worked in industry as a maize breeder and later as a technology trait developer, and now oversees two premier public maize research programs in the United States.

In her current role, Dr. Gardner chaperones both the conservation of the U.S. maize collection (including more than 20,000 accessions, held in a gene bank in Ames, Iowa) and the Germplasm Enhancement of Maize (GEM) project, a collaboration between USDA-ARS, and both public and private research scientists.

No one will deny that germplasm conservation is important for preserving genetic diversity, but in recent years research funding for the USDA-Agriculture Research Service has not necessarily kept up with the increase in demand for germplasm. Dr. Gardner has helped to guide the research station through many transitions and works as an advocate for all of the programs she oversees.

Additionally, while her expertise is in maize breeding and genetics, she has served as an excellent mentor to many students and young researchers who have worked at the research station – including me. Her passion for quality research to improve maize production and protect the world’s germplasm is inspiring to say the least.

Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center

PROMOTION, ADOPTION, AND EVALUATION OF HIGH PROTEIN CORN VARIETIES

International Women’s Day on March 8, offers an opportunity to recognize the achievements of women worldwide. This year, CIMMYT asked readers to submit stories about women they admire for their selfless dedication to either maize or wheat. In the following story, Haley Kirk writes about her Super Woman of Maize, Jennifer Brito, food security coordinator at Semilla Nueva.

As the Food Security Coordinator at Semilla Nueva, Jennifer Brito works with women in 10 coastal Guatemalan communities to improve the livelihoods, nutrition, and all-around well-being of their families.

Jen has been with Semilla Nueva, a non-governmental organization developing locally-led farmer education programs to alleviate poverty and boost food security, for almost a year and a half.

During that time, her work has involved promoting several varieties of quality protein maize (QPM) with families in our communities. High-yielding QPM, which was developed at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in the 1990s, contains almost double the protein of other maize varieties grown in the tropics.

Additionally, Jen is leader of a study Semilla Nueva is undertaking an evaluation of the impact of QPM on malnutrition in Guatemala.

Jen has taught her participants how to make various recipes, including green tortillas, which use local herbs and QPM to transform the nutritionally empty tortilla into a vessel containing extra protein and vitamins.

To create “tortillas verdes” she worked with locally-grown, micronutrient-rich chaya, chipilín, and hierbamora leaves. She boiled a large amount of leaves and mixed the cooked leaves together with a nixtamal alkaline solution, which helps improve nutritional value. At the mill, the corn was combined with the herbs to create green corn dough.

Jen’s work with women in rural Guatemalan communities is key to the successful promotion, adoption, and evaluation of high protein corn varieties that could potentially lift Guatemala out of its position as the most malnourished country in the western hemisphere.

Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.

ZINC DEFICIENCY IS ATTRIBUTED TO 800,000 DEATHS EACH YEAR

International Women’s Day on March 8, offers an opportunity to recognize the achievements of women worldwide. This year, CIMMYT asked readers to submit stories about women they admire for their selfless dedication to either maize or wheat. In the following story, scientist Velu Govindan writes about his Super Woman of Wheat, Chhavi Tiwari, a senior research associate at Banaras Hindu University.

Zinc deficiency is attributed to 800,000 deaths each year and affects about one-third of the world’s population, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

It can lead to short stature, hypogonadism, impaired immune function, skin disorders, cognitive dysfunction and anorexia. Additionally, it causes approximately 16 percent of lower respiratory tract infections, 18 percent of malaria cases and 10 percent of diarrheal disease cases worldwide, WHO statistics show.

Enhancing the micronutrient content in wheat through biofortification is increasingly seen as an important tool to help improve the livelihoods of the most vulnerable, poorest and least educated sectors of society.

That is why Dr. Chhavi Tiwari, senior research associate from Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, India, is my super woman of wheat.

She has been working with the HarvestPlus program with active collaboration and support from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) to empower women farmers by making them aware of the value of micronutrient-rich wheat.

Her on-farm training programs increase their understanding of crop and soil management techniques, aiding in the improved production of wheat varieties high in zinc content.

Working closely with women’s self-help groups, she demonstrates the importance of wheat varieties high in zinc content through a participatory variety-selection approach, increasing the potential agronomic and nutritional benefit of these varieties for fast-track adoption.

Through her inclusive approach, a great deal of interest in high zinc wheat varieties has been generated among women farmers. Her efforts have contributed to the adoption of nutritious wheat varieties the eastern part of India’s state of Uttar Pradesh, leading to the potential for technology dissemination in neighboring states.

Engaging with rural women farmers is a core interest of Chhavi’s. She consults women farmers on their views and gives them the opportunity to participate in a decision-making process that increases their investment in agriculture and nutrition.

Her activities play a crucial role in uplifting women by alleviating malnutrition and hunger through nutritious wheat.

Chhavi is the recipient of the 2010 CIMMYT- Cereal System Initiative of South Asia (CSISA) research fellowship and the Jeanie Borlaug Laube Women in Triticum Award from the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative in 2014.

Any views expressed are those of the author and not of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center

GENETIC VARIATION AND DIVERSITY TRANSFER ACROSS DIFFERENT GRASS SPECIES

International Women’s Day on March 8, offers an opportunity to recognize the achievements of women worldwide. This year, CIMMYT asked readers to submit stories about women they admire for their selfless dedication to either maize or wheat. In the following story, wheat breeder Jessica Rutkoski writes about her Super Woman of wheat, Julie King, a research fellow at Britain’s University of Nottingham.

Wild relatives of wheat are of particular importance to wheat breeders trying to develop disease-resistant and high-yielding varieties that can tolerate various environmental stresses, including drought and poor quality soils.

These wild grasses, cousins to the ancestors of modern-day wheat, provide a vast and largely untapped source of genetic variation for almost all traits important for wheat growers.

Plant geneticist Julie King, a research fellow with the University of Nottingham, has developed a new strategy for transferring genetic variation and diversity across different grass species. This strategy is now being used to transfer genetic variation into wheat from its distant relatives, which carry key disease resistance and stress tolerance genes. Very few people in the world are capable of this work, and so Julie plays a key role in adding new variations.

By crossing wheat with its wild relatives, a painstaking process, Julie and her research team aim to improve the ability of wheat to tolerate heat, drought, and salt – of key benefit in a world where freshwater is going to become even more scarce amid changing climate and population pressures.

Working with wild relatives is very difficult and not many people can do it – it’s like magic. It almost takes super powers to overcome the many barriers that can prevent hybridization of the species – so many crosses fail.

Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.

DIETARY DEPENDENCE ON MAIZE PUTS SOME PEOPLE AT RISK FOR MALNUTRITION

For International Women’s Day I would like to honor Dr. Evangelina Villegas, one of CIMMYT’s original “superwomen,” not only for the breakthroughs she made in her field, but for the positive impact she made on the world.

Villegas was born in Mexico City in 1924 and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry and biology at the National Polytechnic Institute at a time when higher education for women was still a novelty.

In 1950, she began her career as a chemist and researcher at Mexico’s National Institute of Nutrition and at the Special Studies Office, an initiative funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican Secretary of Agriculture and Livestock (SAGARPA) that would later become the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

She returned to the center in 1967 after having earned a Master of Science degree in cereal technology from Kansas State University and a 1967 doctoral degree in cereal chemistry and breeding from North Dakota State University.

Villegas was both a maize and wheat superwoman, working in both the industrial wheat quality and maize nutritional and protein quality labs.

While in charge of the lab investigating protein quality she formed a fruitful partnership with Surinder Vasal, a CIMMYT maize breeder, in an attempt to develop a variety of maize with higher levels of two key amino acids.

A staple food in many developing countries, maize is deficient in the amino acids lysine and tryptophan, which are key protein building blocks. This means that people whose diets depend heavily on maize, without access to more varied food, are at risk for malnutrition.

After countless hours in the laboratory testing samples, sometimes up to 25,000 a year, their hard work culminated in the creation of quality protein maize (QPM). Grain of QPM features enhanced levels of lysine and tryptophan and the kernels have the texture and flavor that consumers like.

As an ingredient in pig and poultry feeds, QPM has been shown to enhance animal growth and health. QPM has shown to be particularly effective in improving the nutritional status of young children.

A 2002 study in Ethiopia found that children fed a QPM diet had a 15 percent increase in the rate of weight growth over those who consumed conventional maize, and a 2005 study found that QPM consumption in children led to a growth rate in height 15 percent greater than children fed conventional maize. Villegas and Vasal thus created a product that offers better nutrition for millions of consumers.

They received the World Food Prize in 2000 for their work developing QPM, making Villegas the first woman to receive the prestigious award. She was also named “Woman of the Year” in Mexico that year for her accomplishments.

In addition to her work improving lives and livelihoods around the world, Villegas changed the lives of many local “bird boys,” young men hired by CIMMYT to prevent birds from eating experimental crops, by helping to create a scholarship fund that allowed many of them to complete their education and go on to accomplish great things.

Without “Eva,” the world would be a hungrier and poorer place, and her hard work and dedication should be remembered by all.

Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center

FOCUS ON WOMEN CAN INADVERTENTLY END UP ALIENATING MEN

Gender research and outreach should engage men more effectively, according to Paula Kantor, CIMMYT gender and development specialist who is leading an ambitious new project to empower and improve the livelihoods of women, men and youth in wheat-growing areas of Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Pakistan.

“Farming takes place in socially complex environments, involving individual women and men who are embedded in households, local culture and communities, and value chains — all of which are colored by expectations of women’s and men’s appropriate behaviors,” said Kantor.

“We tend to focus on women in our work and can inadvertently end up alienating men, when they could be supporters if we explained what we’re doing and that, in the end, the aim is for everyone to progress and benefit.”

Funded by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the new project will include 14 village case studies across the three countries. It is part of a global initiative involving 13 CGIAR research programs (CRPs), including the CIMMYT-led WHEAT and MAIZE.

Participants in the global project will carry out 140 case studies in 29 countries; WHEAT and MAIZE together will conduct 70 studies in 13 countries.

Kantor and Lone Badstue, strategic leader for gender research at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, are members of the executive committee coordinating the global initiative, along with Gordon Prain of CIP-led Roots, Tubers and Bananas Program, and Amare Tegbaru of the IITA-led Program on Integrated Systems for the Humid Tropics.

“The cross-CRP gender research initiative is of unprecedented scope,” said Kantor. “For WHEAT, CIMMYT, and partners, understanding more clearly how gendered expectations affect agricultural innovation outcomes and opportunities can give all of our research more ‘ooomph’, helping social and biophysical scientists to work together better to design and conduct socially and technically robust agricultural R4D, and in the end achieve greater adoption and impact.”

To that end, outcomes will include joint interpretation of results with CRP colleagues and national stakeholders, scientific papers, policy engagement and guidelines for integrating gender in wheat research-for-development, according to Kantor.

Another, longer-term goal is to question and unlock gender constraints to agricultural innovation, in partnership with communities. Kantor said that male migration and urbanization are driving fundamental, global changes in gender dynamics, but institutional structures and policies must keep pace.

“The increase in de facto female-headed households in South Asia, for example, would imply that there are more opportunities for women in agriculture,” she explained, “but there is resistance, and particularly from institutions like extension services and banks which have not evolved in ways that support and foster the empowerment of those women.”

Kantor has more than 15 years of experience in research on gender relations and empowerment in economic development, microcredit, rural and urban livelihoods, and informal labor markets, often in challenging settings. She served four years as Director and Manager of the gender and livelihoods research portfolios at the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) in Kabul.

Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.

El BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — A nutritionist who is outspoken about the negative consequences of gluten-free diets said in an interview that she wants to dispel myths generated by claims that the protein found in wheat is unhealthy.

“Wheat has recently been under attack by people who’ve made claims about it that simply can’t be verified by science,” said Julie Miller Jones, professor emeritus of nutrition at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota.

“Gluten-free” has become a big money maker for the food industry. Sales have soared 63 percent since 2012, with almost 4,600 products introduced last year, according to the January 2015 issue of Consumer Reports magazine.

Retail sales of gluten-free foods in the United States were estimated at $12.2 billion in 2014, and by 2020 the market is projected to be valued at $23.9 billion, Statistica reports.

The popularity of gluten- and wheat-free diets has grown in part due to claims published in such books as “Wheat Belly” by William Davis and “Brain Grain” by David Perlmutter. These publications say that wheat products are the cause of most health problems, views rebutted by Miller Jones.

Such claims counter current medical and nutritional advice in international dietary guidelines established in conjunction with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization (WHO).

“Apart from the approximately 1 percent of people who suffer from celiac disease, the fewer than 1 percent of people who suffer from wheat allergies and the few who suffer from non-celiac gluten sensitivity, prominent celiac experts and health professionals discount the many supposed benefits of going gluten-free, urging those who do not have these conditions not to adopt such a diet,” Miller Jones said.

As a food staple, wheat plays a vital role in global food security, providing 20 percent of the overall total amount of calories and protein consumed worldwide.

Miller Jones, who delivered a talk at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico, shared her views on the controversy surrounding fad diets that urge the elimination of wheat and its protein complex, gluten, in the following interview.

Q: What worries you about negative attacks on wheat consumption?

I’m very concerned about it. One of the attacks is based on the fact that wheat has been bred by people – that this breeding somehow has done something very evil to the grain. I really want to dispel the myth that wheat is somehow bad for you and that modern wheat is somehow different from the wheat that existed years ago. It’s different because we can grow more of it, it’s higher yielding, but it’s not different in terms of the nutrition that it delivers. In fact, we get more nutrition per acre, which I think is a good thing rather than a bad thing.

Q: Critics have suggested that scientists are creating new proteins in wheat. Is this true?

You can’t create a new protein without creating a mutation, and plant breeding doesn’t normally create new mutations. There are hundreds of varieties of wheat that exist in the world – what Norman Borlaug (the late CIMMYT wheat breeder and Nobel Peace Prize winner, known as the father of the Green Revolution) did was cross these wheats to develop grains that would grow under a variety of conditions. The glutenins and gliadins that were there have been there ever since wheat has been grown as a crop. He claims that new, modern wheat has more gluten than it did before. A lot of research is showing that the level has not changed. In fact, in his book, Dr. Davis suggests that gliadin is a new toxic protein. That is patently false because you can go back into the early chemical literature – that mentions gliadin early in the 1800’s.

Q: Critics have also said that gluten-free fad diets are marketed towards a more western, wealthy culture. If so, what are the implications for the developing world?

Obviously, these doctors are trying to sell books in affluent countries where obesity is a big problem. We would all love to find a solution to obesity. All the simplistic solutions like eliminate a particular food or food group or eat in the ancient way – all of those solutions are really quite simplistic. There are a number of things that we need to do in order to address obesity – It’s aimed at an obese population concerned about chronic disease and diseases that are associated with obesity. The tragedy in that is that if, as we’ve seen with other issues, when developed nations say that they are not going to eat something because of a particular issue with that food then that food has been rejected as food aid in some developing countries. So this has some really amazingly potentially harmful results that no one really initially intended – these unintended consequences are really problematic. It could also mean that people switch their diets to foods that are less sustainable. We’re really facing a problem with feeding the additional two-and-a-half billion people that will exist on this planet in 2050. Clearly, it’s not a viable or sustainable strategy for feeding the world. I’m very concerned about it and these sort of second-order consequences.

Q: How credible are reports that wheat consumption is bad?

Dr. Davis suggests that if we didn’t eat wheat we would cure diabetes. Well, the data simply say completely the opposite. We have studies of large populations from all over the world where people who ate about three servings of whole-grain cereals and bread a day had a 25 percent reduced risk of diabetes. They have a 25 percent reduced risk of coronary heart disease. A study just published out of Harvard University in January of this year showed that the people who ate whole grains had reduced mortality for age. So the idea that taking wheat and grains out of the diet makes you healthier simply flies in the face of the scientific literature.

Q: Is there a simple goal you want to achieve?

I think that what we do know about healthy diets is that healthy diets are ones that are balanced. If we look at those diets, which support brain health, heart health, help prevent diabetes – they’re the ones such as the Mediterranean diet, which has breads and cereals as a base. It includes meat, poultry, fish but relatively small amounts of meat. It asks you to eat some legumes. The dietary approach to stop hypertension called the DASH diet has been studied on a large cohort of men and women who initially had high blood pressure. What they showed was that when people ate this diet, which has lots of fruits and vegetables, servings of whole grain, low-fat dairy – this mix that we need – those people had a lower risk of cancer and coronary disease. We actually have data on brain health, and diets such as the Mediterranean and the DASH diet showed the least loss of cognitive functioning in the elderly.

Q: In general, should people avoid specific food groups?

Instead of eliminating a food group, what we ought to do is eat it in the right amounts. That does not give you the excuse to eat large numbers of servings of what I call doodles, dingdongs and doughnuts. What we need to think about is those kinds of staple foods that have nourished the Aztecs in the past, nourished the pioneers coming across to the New World and that will nourish us today – eat those in the right amount. I’d also like to say exercise would be a good idea, too.

RELEASE OF 26 COMMERCIAL MAIZE VARIETIES DURING CAREER

International Women’s Day on March 8, offers an opportunity to recognize the achievements of women worldwide. This year, CIMMYT asked readers to submit stories about women they admire for their selfless dedication to either maize or wheat. In the following story, Judith Oyoo writes about her Super Woman of Maize, Jane Ininda, an agricultural scientist.

Dr. Jane Ininda is an agricultural scientist who has been making great strides in agricultural research with remarkable results.

She was born in humble surroundings, in Mbeere District, in Kenya. Her parents were farmers whose crop yields were far from satisfactory.

“I remember as I was growing up that there wasn’t enough food; we used traditional methods and you could never be sure there would be enough food in the year,” Ininda recalled.

A graduate of Iowa State University, she began her academic journey in Eastern Province, Kenya at Kaaga Girls High School, University of Nairobi where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees before joining Iowa State University to study for her doctoral degree.

Dr. Ininda has released 26 commercial maize varieties during a career that spans more than 30 years. In collaboration with other partners she has released more than 180 hybrid maize varieties that have been commercialized.

She has contributed to food security, employment and wealth creation to smallholder farmers in Africa.

Dr. Ininda believes in the saying: “Give a hungry person a fishing hook and they will never be hungry again in their lifetime.”

In this case, the “fishing hook” is crop varieties, especially disease-resistant, high-yielding maize with improved taste and the ability to mature early.

In addition to her professional excellence, she has mentored many upcoming young scientists without considering gender.

She is hardworking, determined, focused, intelligent, humble and soft spoken, although she is a giant in the world of research.

She believed in me when I was naïve, having recently graduated from Kenya’s Egerton University. She involved me in her project, taught me how to carry out experiments, data collection and team work.

I gained invaluable research experience under her mentorship, although informal. One way to sum her up: “Priceless gem to Africa.”

Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.

NEW FARMING TECHNIQUES IN MEXICO LOWER COSTS AND INCREASE PRODUCTION

International Women’s Day on March 8, offers an opportunity to recognize the achievements of women worldwide. This year, CIMMYT asked readers to submit stories about women they admire for their selfless dedication to either maize or wheat. In the following story, Julio Cesar Gonzalez Marquez writes about his Super Woman of Maize, Dolores Robles González, a farmer in Mexico.

Nestled in the Morones mountain range, at about 230 kilometers southwest of the city of Zacatecas, within the community known as La Lobera and the municipality called Teul de Gonzalez Ortega, lies the 8-hectare property known as El Ranchito.

El Ranchito is the home of Mrs Dolores Robles Gonzalez, who uses the property to produce native maize in temporal conditions.

Gonzalez, who has spent her entire lifetime farming, and who recently adopted conservation agriculture techniques, said:

“With the implementation of this technology we risk becoming lazier, now that we don’t need to till the soil. Although we start to work later than we would in conventional agriculture, we finish more quickly.

“We’re adopting this conservation tillage technology out of necessity. This change is an example for people who think that if we sow directly, the seed will not germinate. We have already seen that this is not true. Additionally, by implementing these practices we save money because we don’t have to pay to turn the soil. However, assimilation and accommodation are difficult.

“In our case, even watching the practices in the field, we don’t dare to use new technologies as soon as we get them. Generally, these practices require less labor, which translates into more income for us as producers. Thanks to conservation agriculture, we have succeeded in lowering our costs and increasing our production.

“Previously, we had very poor systems with which to work the land, but thanks to the good technical assistance that we have received, we have been able to improve our soil, which is our primary resource.

“The challenge now is to keep increasing our returns at a low cost, and reduce the degradation of our ecosystem as much as possible.”

Dolores Robles Gonzales is an enthusiastic woman who receives support from the Programa Estratégico de Seguridad Alimentaria (PESA), SECAMPO-Zacatecas, SAGARPA and CIMMYT-MasAgro.

At first, the men decided to just be spectators, but thanks to her drive to “push more people to benefit,” and thanks to the good results of her plot, there are about thirty farmers from La Lobera and the rest of the Morones mountain range who participate in training courses.

Everyone wants to establish more innovation models, which gives Doña Lola, as she is known in the village, much satisfaction.

“You see, they said that they were not interested, and now they don’t want to leave.”

Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.