EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) – Globally, an estimated 800 million people do not get enough food to eat and more than 2 billion suffer from micronutrient deficiency, or “hidden hunger,” according to U.N. food agencies.

As staple foods, maize and wheat provide vital nutrients and health benefits, making up close to two-thirds of the world’s food energy intake, and contributing 55 to 70 percent of the total calories in the diets of people living in developing countries, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

Scientists at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) are working to ensure the ongoing production of high-yielding, disease-resistant varieties of maize and wheat to improve both the quantity and nutritional quality of these key crops.

These measures include biofortification, a process by which scientists combine conventional plant breeding and lab work to improve the micronutrient content of maize and wheat. At CIMMYT, this process is being used to boost pro-vitamin A and zinc levels in maize and iron and zinc concentrations in wheat.

Boosting the micronutrient content of crops through biofortification can help tackle hidden hunger, simultaneously improving human health and economic growth leading to improved international development.

In order to shed light on the important role maize and wheat play in global nutrition, CIMMYT is celebrating the dietary value of these food staples — and we need your help.

Send us your favorite wheat or maize-based recipe. We’ll feature original recipes on our website and in our “A Grain a Day” cookbook to be published this summer.

Be sure to provide us with information about the dish, in addition to the recipe itself. What is its country of origin? When and how is it eaten? Does it have any cultural or historical significance? Has climate change or other external factors affected the ingredients?
If your recipe isn’t your own concoction, but has nutritional benefit, we’ll share the link on Twitter.

Please submit your recipe by June 15, 2015, to be included in the cookbook.

Looking to participate but lacking an original recipe? Tweet a picture or a copy of your recipe to @CIMMYT using the #GrainaDay hashtag Any questions? Write to Brittany Pietrzykowski (b.pietrzykowski@cgiar.org)

On May 6, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Government of Malawi jointly launched five projects on food security, fisheries and environment. The USD-141-million-worth projects will be implemented by USAID in 13 districts over a five-year period.

These complementary projects are designed to work together to strengthen resilience to climate change, increase production and improve nutrition in targeted communities. The projects also connect with other USAID–Malawi activities in these areas.

More than 1,000 people attended the launch, representing farmer associations, USAID, local communities, non-governmental organizations, research institutions, Malawi government departments, seed companies, and CGIAR.

Officiating the launch held in Machinga District were Ms. Virginia Palmer, the United States Ambassador to Malawi; Dr. Allan Chiyembekeza, the Minister of Agriculture, Irrigation, and Water Development; and Mr. Bright Msaka, the Minister of Natural Resources, Energy and Mining.

Through the USD-21-million Feed the Future Malawi Improved Seed Systems and Technologies project, a consortium of agricultural research centers led by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) is working to increase the supply and distribution of quality seed for maize, groundnuts, pigeonpeas, soybeans and sweet potatoes, and on developing an aflatoxin control product in seven focus districts in South-central Malawi. Other members of this consortium are CIMMYT, the International Potato Center, and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture.

Partnerships for progress

Feed the Future is the U.S government’s global hunger and food security initiative.

ICRISAT and its partners are working closely with the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation, and Water Development. USAID support will promote the production and multiplication of breeder, basic and certified seed by skilled seed growers to ensure smallholder farmers have greater access to improved seed.

Winds of change in a changing world
Much of southern Malawi can no longer depend on traditional rain cycles in the face of climate change. Some districts, such as Machinga in the Southern Region, live under rain shadows – areas on the leeward side of the mountains where winds push the dry heat upward and drive promising rain clouds away, resulting in chronic droughts.

Ambassador Palmer’s speech focused on integrating development programs to enhance community resilience and lead to better outcomes. “We think this strong focus on co-location, coordination and collaboration will allow us to advance sustainable livelihood opportunities at a greater scale – and with greater impact – than would otherwise be possible.”

She also said this integration of USAID development projects in Malawi might soon become a model for development worldwide.

Seeds for needs, now and in the future
Dr. Peter Setimela, CIMMYT–Southern Africa Regional Office Seed Systems Specialist, observed: “To popularize drought-tolerant maize varieties, CIMMYT will support pre-basic and basic seed production, field days and demonstration plots to benefit smallholder farmers. We will support capacity building of both private-sector seed companies and government seed inspectors to improve overall quality and seed marketing in Malawi.”

At only 25 percent, use of improved seeds is still very low among smallholders in Malawi. Maize yields are below 2 tonnes per hectare, whereas there are varieties available that can yield as much as 10 tonnes per hectare.

Over the next three years, CIMMYT hopes to reach 50,000 households with drought-tolerant maize varieties. This will ultimately reduce poverty and help farmers adapt to the impacts of climate change.
A seed system in a well-linked value chain is very important and had been missing in previous development efforts in the country.

“The design of the Improved Seed Systems and Technologies Project addresses these issues. My ministry is also keen to further work with the US government to ensure that these research activities reach Malawi’s smallholder farmers,’’ said Dr. Chiyembekeza.

In a country where more than half the population lives below the poverty line, the Southern Region has the highest percentage of poor households. Malawians are mainly farmers, and with 85 percent of the population depending on rain, these recurring droughts make it harder to feed the family – nearly one-quarter of Malawians cannot meet their daily food needs.

Good news from Africa! Policy breakthroughs on transgenic research in Mozambique and Tanzania have led to approval of confined field trials (CFTs) and a more research-friendly regulatory framework, respectively.

Mozambique’s CFTs will be at the Instituto de Investigação Agrária de Moçambique (IIAM; Agricultural Research Institute of Mozambique) research station at Chokwe, some 200 kilometers north of the country’s capital, Maputo.

Next door in Tanzania, an erstwhile stringent policy that was prohibitive in terms of the onerous liability it placed on researchers has been favorably revised. What all this means is that the two countries – which have been somewhat lagging behind on account of policy constraints – can now more substantively engage in the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) project to a fuller extent, and be more in step with other WEMA partners.

 These momentous breakthroughs were revealed at the 7th WEMA Project Review and Planning Meeting in Maputo, Mozambique, which took place February 8–12, 2015. In his opening remarks, Dr. Inacio Mapossé (pictured left), IIAM’s Director General, said that Mozambique’s Ministry of Agriculture had been renamed to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security. This, he emphasized, was not just an exercise in words, but also underscored the importance of projects such as WEMA. In his words, “In Mozambique, you cannot talk about food security without talking about maize.” True. Statistics show that nearly all (95 percent) of Mozambique’s smallholders grow maize (report forthcoming), and that maize covers nearly half (40 percent) of the land devoted to annual crops. Hence, the ministry could well have been renamed to ‘The Ministry of Maize’ and the cap would have fitted!

But back to policy and regulatory frameworks, despite the recent breakthroughs, more remains to be done. In Kenya, the 2012 ban on importation of genetically modified organisms is still in force. And while there has been remarkable progress in Tanzania and the policy is less stringent on transgenic research, there is still more ground to be covered. Uganda is yet to pass the Biosafety Bill.

The menace posed the maize lethal necrosis (MLN) disease was high and hot on the agenda, given its threat to Africa’s food security. MLN diagnostics and management call for concerted action by all players in the maize value chain, with regulatory frameworks playing a key role. CIMMYT has an open call for MLN screening for the cropping season starting at the end of this month.

CIMMYT participants at the WEMA annual meeting included, among others, Dr. B.M. Prasanna, CIMMYT’s Director of the Global Maize Program and a member of WEMA Executive and Advisory Board, and Dr. Stephen Mugo, Coordinator of CIMMYT activities in WEMA.

Led by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation, the WEMA project is now in its second phase, which will end in 2017. Aside from WEMA, CIMMYT has had a long and fruitful engagement with Mozambique, as this brief dating back to 2008 attests.

Maize lethal necrosis (MLN) has rapidly emerged as one of the deadliest maize diseases in eastern Africa capable of causing complete yield loss under heavy disease pressure. This means that Kenya and neighboring countries which largely depend on maize as their main staple food and source of income are on the verge of a looming food and economic crisis.

The disease is difficult to control for two reasons: firstly, it is caused by a combination of viruses; secondly, it can be spread through seed and by insect vectors that may be carried by wind over long distances. Affected crops suffer various symptoms such as severe stunting, tassel abnormality, small ears with poor seed set, chlorotic leaf mottling, leaf necrosis and premature plant death.

Much more than CIMMYT and East Africa

Sixty phytosanitary regulators and seed industry scientists from 11 countries in eastern and southern Africa attended an MLN diagnostics and screening workshop from March 17–19, 2015, in Naivasha, Kenya. The objective of the workshop was to train scientists on the latest MLN diagnostics and screening methods and to share knowledge on how to control the spread of MLN. Besides DR Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania where the disease has been reported, other participants were from South Sudan and southern Africa (Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe) that have no confirmed cases of MLN, but where maize is an important crop.

CIMMYT organized the workshop in response to the high demand for development of appropriate diagnostics methods and harmonization of regional protocols. Hence, facilitation by agencies like the Food and Agricultural Organization provided a much-needed regional overview of the MLN threat, in addition to perspectives from the International Centre of Insect Physiology Ecology and the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Services (KEPHIS) on MLN insect vectors and diagnostics methods respectively.

The workshop was conducted at the MLN screening facility in Naivasha, the largest of its kind established in response to the MLN outbreak in eastern Africa in 2013. It supports countries in the sub-Saharan region to screen seeds under artificial inoculation. The facility is managed jointly by the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) and CIMMYT, and was established with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Sygenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture. Biswanath Das, a maize breeder at CIMMYT, noted that “the site has evaluated more than 20,000 accessions since its inception in 2013 from over 15 multinational and national seed companies and national research programs.” This, he added, “has become a primary resource in the fight against MLN regionally.”

Collective pre-emptive actions for prevention: seeds of hope
Participants received hands-on training to identify symptoms of MLN-causing viruses and how to score disease severity by screening germplasm at the site. For some participants, this was a first. “This is my first time to see an MLN-infected plant. Now I understand the impact of MLN on maize production and the need to set up a seed regulatory facility. South Sudan has no laboratory to test planting materials. My first step will be to talk to my counterparts in the ministry to set up one,” said Taban James, a regulator from the Ministry of Agriculture in South Sudan.

The tragic reality is that almost all commercial maize varieties in East Africa are highly susceptible to MLN, based on evaluations done at the screening facility. Therefore, stronger diagnostic and sampling capacity at common border-points was agreed to be a key step towards controlling inadvertent introduction of MLN through contaminated seeds. This was particularly important for participants from southern Africa countries who noted an urgent need for surveillance at seed import ports and border areas to contain the spread.

Currently, Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe are the only countries that require imported seed to be certified as free of MLN-causing viruses. KEPHIS and CIMMYT have worked closely to restrict movement of germplasm from Kenya to countries in East Africa with reported MLN cases. Seed production fields are inspected thrice by KEPHIS, in addition to analysis of final seed lots. Plans are underway for CIMMYT in collaboration with the ministries of agriculture in Mexico and Zimbabwe to establish quarantine sites to ease germplasm movement in and out of these countries. Speaking on KEPHIS’ role, Francis Mwatuni, the officer-in-charge of Plant Quarantine and Biosecurity Station said, “We ensure all seed fields are inspected and samples tested for MLN resistance including local and imported seed lots from seed companies, to ensure that farmers get MLN-free seeds.”

The latest trends and options for diagnostics on MLN-causing viruses were covered as well, giving participants hands-on training using ELISA diagnostics systems. They were also briefed on polymerase chain reaction based diagnostics and the latest lateral flow diagnostic kits that are under development that will enable researchers to obtain diagnostic results in the field in minutes.

What next for MLN?
The rapid multiplication of the disease coupled with uncertainties over its spread is the biggest hurdle that scientists and other stakeholders are grappling with. KALRO Chief Researcher, Anne Wangai, who played a key role in discovering the disease in Kenya in 2011 observes that “The uncertainties over the transmission of MLN is a worrying phenomenon that requires stakeholders to urgently find a control point to manage and ensure seeds being given to farmers are MLN-free.”

Breeding remains a key component in the search for long-term solution for MLN, and several milestones have been covered to develop MLN-resistant varieties in East Africa. “CIMMYT has developed five hybrids with good MLN tolerance under artificial inoculation, which have either been released or recommended for release in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Thirteen hybrids are currently under national performance trials in the three countries,” noted Mosisa Regasa, a maize seed system specialist at CIMMYT. He further added that it is critical for the MLN-tolerant hybrids to also have other traits important to farmers, so farmers accept these new hybrids.

Open information sharing forums like the diagnostics workshop are an important step to raise awareness and seek solutions to manage the disease. Sharing best practice and lessons learnt in managing the disease are major steps towards curbing MLN. In pursuit of this end, a major international conference on MLN opens next week.

Links: Slides from the workshop | Workshop announcement |Open call for MLN screening – May 2015

WHEN FERTILIZER IS LIMITED, BREEDING SOLUTIONS FOR THE STAFF OF LIFE IN AFRICA

Among the major crops produced and consumed in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), maize leads, consumed by more than 650 million Africans. Therefore, maize and Africa’s food security and socioeconomic stability are inseparably intertwined. Poor maize productivity has contributed to food shortages, high prices and has pushed more Africans to extreme poverty. Low-fertility soils are part of the problem, and maize varieties specially bred for poor soils offer a partial solution.

Maize and Soil—Chemical Solution, Socioeconomic Problem, Nitrogen in Sips Not Gulps
After water, poor soil nitrogen is the single most critical constraint for Africa’s maize production. Lack of, or inadequate, soil nitrogen leads to low yields and crop failure. Farmers therefore need nitrogen fertilizers to improve yields when soils are depleted or infertile. However, for most smallholder farmers, the harsh reality is that chemical fertilizers—or adequate amounts of them—remain out of their reach, unaffordable owing to the high costs.

To address this, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and its partners are working through the Improved Maize for African Soils (IMAS) Project to develop maize varieties that are more efficient at using the small quantities of fertilizer that smallholder farmers can afford, typically less than 30 kilograms per hectare. This means that farmers obtain up to 50 percent more from the limited fertilizer applied.

From problems to solutions: everybody wins!
IMAS focuses on improving the genetics of maize varieties to better match the typical soil profiles of smallholder maize farms in eastern and southern Africa. Different maize varieties respond very differently to soil nitrogen stress. ‘In complement to improved agronomy and soil management, selection of appropriate maize varieties for specific soil conditions can play an enormous role in improving productivity and food security in Africa,’ observes Biswanath Das, a maize breeder at CIMMYT. By packaging nitrogen-use efficiency in the seed, IMAS hopes to improve maize yields efficiently and economically for small holder farmers in Africa.

At this year’s Global Soil Week (GSW) running from April 19–23 in Berlin, Germany, it is important that tangible solutions be formulated for farmers to nurture and sustain healthier soils. Engagement and dialogue forums like GSW and the recent #TalkSoil tweet chat initiated by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture and Shamba Shape Up (a Kenyan television show targeting smallholder farmers) are critical for inclusive discussions to help farmers in Africa.

Such dialogues must continue throughout 2015—the UN International Year of Soils—but also beyond. Why? Because soil is the staff of life, and the Substance of Transformation, as the Global Soil Week theme this year reminds us.

Links

• IMAS messages for Global Soil Week and International Year of Soils | Press release
• More on the IMAS project
• Videos: Maize for hungry soils | Maize that thrives in poor soils
• 2015 International Year of Soils | Global Soil Week

CIMMYT Day activities included a session on seed preparation and distribution, including standard procedures of CIMMYT’s Seed Inspection and Distribution Unit (SIDU), which shipped over 45 tons of seed in the last year.

Preparing seed for distribution is a multi-step process. First, the seed must undergo rigorous testing in CIMMYT’s Seed Health Laboratory (SHL). This testing ensures that seed distributed by CIMMYT is disease free, and of exceptional quality. Once the seed is approved, it is then prepared for distribution.

Before packing, the seed is washed in a sterilizing solution in preparation for its treatment. For maize, the treatment consists of both a fungicide and an insecticide, which prepare the seeds to thrive under diverse environmental conditions. For wheat, the treatment is just a fungicide. Once the seeds have been treated and dried, they are ready to be packaged for shipment.

The next step in the seed preparation process consists of labeling and packaging. Machines automatically print the packet labels and measure the seed required for each package. Maize seeds are counted individually with a counting machine (pictured), wheat seeds are measured by weight.

Next, boxes containing the seed packets, legal paperwork and field books are prepared. According to Efren Rodriguez, Head of Data Processing and Seed Distribution, field books are the “gold” that CIMMYT reaps through its efforts. CIMMYT requests that seed recipients utilize the field books to record data, which helps CIMMYT to continuously better the quality of its seeds.

CIUDAD OBREGON, Mexico (CIMMYT) — Martin Kropff, who will take the helm as director general of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in June, joined scientists, and other members of the global wheat community at the CIMMYT experimental research station near the town of Ciudad Obregon in Mexico’s northern state of Sonora for annual Visitors’ Week.

Following a tour of a wide range of research projects underway in the wheat fields of the Yaqui Valley made famous around the world by the work of the late Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug, who died in 2009 at age 95, Kropff shared his views.

Borlaug led efforts to develop high-yielding, disease-resistant, semi-dwarf wheat varieties in the mid-20th century that are estimated to have helped save more than 1 billion lives in Pakistan, India and other areas of the developing world.

“I’m very impressed by what I’ve seen in Obregon,” said Kropff, who is currently chancellor and vice chairman of the executive board of Wageningen University and Research Center in the Netherlands.

“From the gene bank in El Batan, the breeding and pre-breeding and the work with farmers on a huge scale, it’s extremely high quality and innovative,” added Kropff, who with his wife Nynke Nammensma also visited CIMMYT’s El Batan headquarters near Mexico City earlier in the week.

“The MasAgro program is very impressive because it takes the step of integrating scientific knowledge with farmers’ knowledge – it’s a novel way to aid farmers by getting new technology working on farms at a large scale. It is a co-innovation approach,” Kropff said.

The Sustainable Modernization of Traditional Agriculture, led by country’s Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food (SAGARPA) and known locally as MasAgro, helps farmers understand how minimal soil disturbance, permanent soil cover and crop rotation can simultaneously boost yields and sustainably increase profits.

“The program is an example of how farmers, scientists and other stakeholders can think about and create innovations through appropriate fertilizer applications, seed technologies and also through such instruments as the post-harvesting machines,” Kropff said.

“This is fantastic. That’s what the CGIAR is all about.”

“The HarvestPlus program, which adds more zinc and iron into the crop through breeding, also plays a key role in CIMMYT’s research portfolio,” Kropff said.

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. Enhancing the micronutrient content in wheat through biofortification is seen as an important tool to help improve the diets of the most vulnerable sectors of society.

The climate change adaptation work he observed, which is focused on drought and heat stress resilience is of paramount importance, Kropff said.

Findings in a report released last year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change state it is very likely that heat waves will occur more often and last longer throughout the 21st Century and that rainfall will be more unpredictable.

Mean surface temperatures could potentially rise by between 2 to 5 degrees Celsius or more, the   report said.

“To safeguard food security for the 9 billion people we’re expecting will populate the planet by 2050, we need innovations based on breeding, and solid agronomy based on precision farming,” Kropff said.

“There’s no other organization in the world that is so well designed as the CGIAR to do this type of work. CIMMYT is the crown jewel of the CGIAR together with the gene banks. No other organization can do this.”

“We’ve done a lot of work in getting higher yields, but not much through increased yield potential, and that’s what we have to work on now,” he added.

“If you raise the yield through agronomy, you still need to enhance yield potential and there’s very good fundamental work going on here.”

“The partnerships here are excellent – scientists that are here from universities are as proud as CIMMYT itself about all the work that is being done. I’m really honored that from 1 June, I have the opportunity to be the director general of this institution. I cannot wait to get started working with the team at CIMMYT and I’m extremely grateful for the warm welcome I’ve received – a smooth transition is already underway.”

Follow Martin Kropff on Twitter @KropffMartin

A testament to increased climate variability and risk for farming systems already operating on the razor’s edge, the 2014-15 cropping season will be recognized as a sad write-off by most farmers in Central Mozambique. The rains started six weeks late and most of the rainfall fell in only two months (normally it’s distributed over four), followed by a long drought and some few showers at the end.

But with funds from the CGIAR Research Program on Maize, partners from the Instituto de Investigação Agrária de Moçambique (IIAM) and CIMMYT are working with farmers in Manica Province, Mozambique, to test and promote conservation agriculture practices that better capture and retain precious precipitation, among other advantages.

As part of this, they have revived “mother-baby” trials, a participatory methodology pioneered over a decade ago by CIMMYT for testing drought tolerant maize in Africa and which was subsequently adapted for diverse agronomic practices and is used by researchers worldwide.

Comprising field experiments grown in farming communities, mother-baby trials feature a centrally-located mother trial that is set up with researchers’ support. Baby trials, which contain subsets of the mother-trial treatments, are grown, managed and evaluated by interested farmers.

Moving from “business as usual” to innovation

In Machipanda, a small village in Manica on the border with Zimbabwe, IIAM maize breeder Dr. David Mariote established three mother trials, each with two conservation agriculture-based systems and a conventional control plot, combined with four maize varieties from the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa (DTMA) project, which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and a traditional variety, in full rotation with cowpeas.

Farmers then put up the baby trials from a menu of practices that included direct seeding with no tillage, crop rotations, residue retention, herbicide applications, fertilizer use and improved varieties. Interest was high: 54 farmers grew baby trials and some even extended their plots beyond the designated areas, in the excitement of trying something new, according to Mariote.

“Conditions are changing fast; business as usual is no longer an option,” Mariote said. “We have to offer improved technologies that farmers can use to mitigate negative effects from climate change and improve their lives.”

Mariote witnessed first-hand the synergistic benefits of combining conservation agriculture and drought tolerant maize, as part of work in the Platform on Agriculture Research and Technology Innovation (PARTI), a project funded through the US Agency for International Development (USAID) via Feed the Future and implemented by CIMMYT in Central and northern Mozambique.

With training from CIMMYT’s global maize program and technical backstopping from the CIMMYT global conservation agriculture program, Mariote sought new and stronger ways to spread these technologies. That’s when he hit upon mother-baby trials, which had never been used before with drought tolerant maize and conservation agriculture in tandem.

Farmers who grew baby trials unanimously agreed that new ways of farming are needed and that the trials had been eye-openers. In a community meeting, some said: “We often do not have money to buy expensive fertilizers but we have seen that with good agronomic practices and good maize varieties we can already increase our maize yields.”

More farmers in Machipanda have signed up for future baby trials and, as a clear indication of commitment and excitement about conservation agriculture and improved maize, they will use their own inputs to grow them.