A stakeholders consultation meeting co-organized by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, The FAO Subregional Office for Southern Africa and CIMMYT on the Fall Armyworm in Africa will be held April 27 and 28, 2017 in Nairobi, Kenya. Delegates will discuss status and strategy for effective management.

NAIROBI, Kenya (CIMMYT) – Smallholder farmers in eastern and southern Africa are facing a new threat as a plague of intrepid fall armyworms creeps across the region, so far damaging an estimated 287,000 hectares of maize.

Since mid-2016, scientists with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and national agricultural research partners have been monitoring reports of sightings of the fall armyworm in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Surveys conducted in farmers’ fields last year confirmed its presence in Kenya. The threat of the pest spreading into other eastern Africa countries is a significant risk due to similar planting seasons across the region.

To date, Zambia has confirmed reports that almost 90,000 hectares of maize have been affected, Malawi reports some 17,000 hectares have been hit, Zimbabwe reports a potential 130,000 hectares affected, while in Namibia, approximately 50,000 hectares of maize and millet have been damaged, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations.

FAO hosted an emergency meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe, last week to determine the best possible ways to manage the pest, which is native to the Americas and was first reported in Africa in January 2016.

In consultation and closely aligned with national partners in eastern and southern Africa, CIMMYT advises that Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is the best possible solution to effectively tackle the pest in both the short and long term.

A range of measures, including host plant resistance, chemical control, pheromone traps, biological control, habitat management, intercropping with legumes and diversification of farming systems can be effective. Fall armyworm infestations have been reduced by 20 to 30 percent on maize intercropped with beans compared to maize alone, research shows.

“Urgent collaborative efforts from CGIAR centers, national research partners and other research and development institutions in Africa must be deployed to design and develop an integrated pest management strategy, which can provide sustainable solutions to effectively tackle the adverse effects of the fall armyworm,” said Martin Kropff, CIMMYT’s director general. “The strategy should also include early warning systems that track the movements of the pest.”

“Scientists at CIMMYT are currently researching available breeding resources characterized with potential resistance to fall armyworm and screening elite maize germplasm to identify possible sources of resistance,” said B.M. Prasanna, director of CIMMYT’s Global Maize Program and the CGIAR Research Program MAIZE. “Maize lines with partial resistance to fall armyworm were developed in the past, but the work was not scaled-up given the need to focus breeding programs on other high priority traits, including drought tolerance, heat tolerance, and resistance to major diseases, such as maize lethal necrosis (MLN).”

“Breeding for fall armyworm resistant elite maize hybrids adapted to sub-Saharan Africa would require intensive germplasm screening and collaborative work with public and private sector partners,” Prasanna added, explaining that CIMMYT can mobilize its vast germplasm resources as well as modern breeding tools to speed up the breeding process, in a similar manner to the efforts being undertaken to tackle the menace of MLN in eastern Africa.

Why is the Fall Armyworm so destructive?

The fall armyworm – Spodoptera frugiperda – was first reported on the African continent in Nigeria. It subsequently appeared across parts of West and Central Africa, before extensively invading farmers’ fields in southern Africa in December 2016. The destructive activities of the fall armyworm have only served to add to devastation caused by the native African armyworm (Spodoptera exempta) and severe drought caused by an El Nino weather system in 2015-2016.

The larvae of the pest proliferate mainly due to wind dispersal and on host plants from eggs laid by moths. The pest can cause crop losses of up to 73 percent and once it is at an advanced larval development stage can become difficult to control with pesticides.

In the United States, the fall armyworm ranks second among seven of the most damaging agricultural pests leading to significant economic losses both on crops and wild plant species. A study estimates that total losses in the United States range from $39 million to $297 million annually and that related annual maize yield loss is 2 percent.

How the pest was introduced in Africa from its native habitat in the Americas is unclear. However, such invasive pests as the fall armyworm are known to cross continents either through infested commercial grain or through jet streams across oceans. Many fall armyworm moths have been collected in the Gulf of Mexico as far as 250 km from land, indicating the possibility of seasonal trans-Gulf migration between the United States and the tropics.

“We need to understand better the behavioral ecology of the fall armyworm in the Africa context. How it breeds, travels and feeds on crops, as this is critical for effectively managing the devastation this pest can cause and its major risk to food security,” Martin Kropff cautioned.

It is particularly hard to control, as the moths are strong flyers, breed at an exponential rate, and the larvae can feed on a wide variety of plant species. In addition, it can quickly develop resistance to pesticides if they are not used judiciously. The larvae burrow into the growing point of the maize plants and destroy the growth potential of plants or clip the leaves. They also burrow into the ear and feed on kernels.

CIMMYT scientists respond to some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) regarding fall armyworm:

Q: Is the presence of fall armyworm confirmed in Kenya?

A: Yes. A survey carried out from June to August 2016 in Embu and Kisii counties showed fall armyworm infestation. Although the infestation is still low in comparison to other parts of the region, the situation could change. Scientists from the University of Nairobi also reported sightings of fall armyworm maize damage in Machakos County. Anani Bruce, CIMMYT Maize Entomologist, Nairobi, Kenya

Q: Does CIMMYT have fall armyworm-resistant maize varieties?

A: We do have a few CIMMYT maize inbred lines that can potentially offer partial resistance to the fall armyworm, but intensive breeding efforts are needed to identify more sources of resistance and to develop Africa-adapted improved maize hybrids with resistance to fall armyworm, including other relevant traits required by smallholders in the continent. B.M Prasanna, director of CIMMYT’s Global Maize Program & CGIAR Research Program MAIZE.

Q: There are reports of transgenic maize with resistance to fall armyworm; has this been confirmed?

A: A transgenic maize trial (under Confined Field Trials) was attacked by the fall armyworm in Namulonge and Kassesse (Uganda) during the first and second cropping seasons in 2016. The MON810 Bt maize entries showed resistance to the fall armyworm compared to non-transgenic maize materials. This however, needs to be further confirmed through additional experiments. Anani Bruce, CIMMYT Maize Entomologist

(Editing by Julie Mollins)

ISLAMABAD (CIMMYT) – For the first time, Pakistan will release quality protein maize (QPM) varieties for commercial consumption, which could help boost nutrition across the country where nearly half of all children are chronically malnourished.

In January 2017, Pakistan’s maize variety evaluation committee approved QPHM200 and QPHM300, two QPM hybrids, for large-scale cultivation in Pakistan. Developed by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Colombia and evaluated and selected in Pakistan by the National Agricultural Research Center (NARC), these QPM hybrids can potentially yield up to 15 tons per hectare (ha) – over three times the national average – and can be provided to farmers for less than half the price of currently imported hybrid seeds.

Maize is Pakistan’s third most important cereal following wheat and rice, producing one of the highest average grain yields in South Asia. While the majority of Pakistan’s maize is used for poultry feed, it is a major food source in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit Baltistan and the territories of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK). These areas experience some of the highest rates of child malnutrition.

Normal maize is deficient in essential amino acids lysine and tryptophan, key protein building blocks that can’t be synthesized by human body and must be acquired from food sources. As a result, when human diets are comprised mainly of maize, consumers face a risk of malnutrition, particularly those with high protein requirements like young children, pregnant or lactating women. Conventionally bred QPM grain, which has been shown to improve nutritional status, has enhanced levels of lysine and tryptophan while the kernels have a favorable texture and flavor.

QPM was recently introduced to Pakistan through the CIMMYT-led Agricultural Innovation Program (AIP) in collaboration with national partners with support from the United States Agency for International Development. The commercialization of the two QPM hybrids was aimed at boosting nutrition by alleviating protein deficiency, particularly for low income communities where affording protein rich diets is difficult.

In addition, providing low cost feed like QPM to the poultry industry can also enhance the nutritional status of the country, an industry that is growing 8 to 10 percent annually.

“The taste of the cob is unique, it’s good quality,” said Muhammad Hafiz, a QPM grower from Pindi Bhattain area in central Punjab who participated in pre-commercialization trials of the hybrids.

The QPM hybrids were primarily selected based on their yield advantage. Farmers were open to adopting them since they performed better in many locations than normal commercial hybrids. The added benefit of quality protein will also help promote the hybrids while combating malnutrition.

The continued production of quality seed through retention of protein quality complemented by effective delivery mechanisms to farmers are important steps to scale up use of the hybrids. An active role by NARC and other value chain actors in Pakistan can help make seeds more easily accessible and available.

KABUL (CIMMYT) – Inadequate access to new disease-resistant varieties and short supplies of certified seed are holding back wheat output and contributing to rising food insecurity in Afghanistan, according to more than 50 national and international wheat experts.

Wheat scientists and policymakers discussed challenges to the country’s most-produced crop during a two-day meeting at Agricultural Research Institute of Afghanistan (ARIA) headquarters in Kabul, as part of the 5^th Annual Wheat Researchers’ Workshop in November 2016. They took stock of constraints to the 2017 winter wheat crop, including dry autumn weather and rapidly-evolving strains of the deadly wheat disease known as yellow rust.

“Old wheat varieties are falling prey to new races of rust,” said Qudrat Soofizada, director for Adaptive Research at ARIA, pointing out that the country’s 2016 wheat harvest had remained below 5 million tons for the second year in a row, after a record harvest of more than 5.3 million tons in 2014.

The workshop was attended by 51 participants belonging to several ARIA research stations and experts from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the Australian Center for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) and World Bank’s Afghanistan Agriculture Input Project (AAIP).

Afghanistan has been importing around 2.5 million tons of cereal grain — mainly wheat — in the last two years, with most of that coming from Kazakhstan and Pakistan, according to recent reports from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.

“Most wheat farmers save grain from prior harvests and use that as seed, rather than sowing certified seed of newer, high-yielding and disease resistant varieties,” said Rajiv Sharma, CIMMYT senior scientist and representative at the center’s office in Afghanistan. “This is holding back the country’s wheat productivity potential.”

Sharma explained that CIMMYT has been supporting efforts of Afghanistan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL) to boost supplies of certified seed of improved varieties and of critical inputs like fertilizer.

“CIMMYT has worked with Afghanistan wheat scientists for decades and more than 90 percent of the country’s certified wheat varieties contain genetic contributions from our global breeding efforts,” Sharma explained.

Since 2012, the center has organised more than 1,700 wheat variety demonstrations on farmers’ fields and trained over 1,000 farmers. CIMMYT scientists are also conducting field and DNA analyses of Afghan wheats, which will allow faster and more effective breeding.

The FAO reports showed that the government, FAO and diverse non-governmental organizations had distributed some 10,000 tons of certified seed of improved wheat varieties for the current planting season. With that amount of seed farmers can sow around 67,000 hectares, but this is only some 3 percent of the country’s approximately 2.5 million-hectare wheat area.

“We have been informing the National Seed Board about older varieties that are susceptible to the rusts,” said Ghiasudin Ghanizada, head of wheat pathology at MAIL/ARIA, Kabul, adding that efforts were being made to take such varieties out of the seed supply chain.

After discussions, Ghanizada and MAIL/ARIA associates M. Hashim Azmatyar and Abdul Latif Rasekh presented the technical program for breeding, pathology and agronomy activities to end 2016 and start off 2017.

Zubair Omid, hub coordinator, CIMMYT-Afghanistan, presented results of wheat farmer field demonstrations, informing that grain yields in the demonstrations ranged from 2.8 to 7.6 tons per hectare.

T.S. Pakbin, former director of ARIA, inaugurated the meeting and highlighted CIMMYT contributions to Afghanistan’s wheat improvement work. M.Q. Obaidi, director of ARIA, thanked participants for traveling long distances to attend, despite security concerns. Nabi Hashimi, research officer, CIMMYT-Afghanistan, welcomed participants on behalf of CIMMYT and wished them good luck for the 2016-17 season.

Wheat breeding trial results were presented by Zamarai Ahmadzada from Darulaman Research Station, Kabul; Aziz Osmani from Urad Khan Research Station, Herat; Shakib Attaye from Shisham Bagh Research Station, Nangarhar; Abdul Manan from Bolan Research Station, Helmand; Said Bahram from Central Farm, Kunduz; Najibullah Jahid from Kohkaran Research Station, Kandahar; and Sarwar Aryan from Mulla Ghulam Research Station, Bamyan.

Agronomy results from the research stations of Badakhshan, Herat, Kabul, Kunduz, Helmand and Bamyan were also presented and summarized by Abdul Latif Rasikh, head of Wheat Agronomy, ARIA headquarters, Badam Bagh, Kabul

ISLAMABAD (CIMMYT) — Public and private sector maize stakeholders came together to discuss the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center’s (CIMMYT) maize interventions and innovations in Pakistan during a recent radio talk show hosted by the Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation.

The radio talk show was organized by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and focused on maize development under the CIMMYT-led Agricultural Innovation Program (AIP), supported by USAID in collaboration with national partners. The Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation conducted the show in Urdu and English and aired it throughout the country.

One of the show panelists, Zahid Shafique, program leader from Pakistan’s National Agricultural Research Center, gave an overview of AIP’s interventions and expressed the hope that the program will help Pakistan develop affordable hybrid maize seed, which is currently sold for $6-8 per kilogram, one of the highest prices in South Asia.

Faisal Hayat, deputy manager of the seed company Jullundur Private Limited, noted that CIMMYT’s joint evaluation of hybrids and open-pollinated varieties (OPVs) with AIP maize partners has helped the private sector develop improved hybrids and OPVs that are better adapted to Pakistan’s diverse climates. Capacity building efforts to ensure quality seed production is key to ensuring the sustainability of AIP after its completion said Nazim Ali, an agricultural economist with USAID.

CIMMYT was represented by maize improvement and seed systems specialist AbduRahman Beshir, who briefed the panelists about the introduction and nationwide testing of diverse germplasm and the allocation of well adapted maize hybrids and OPVs to partners.

MEXICO CITY (CIMMYT) – Timothy Krupnik, systems agronomist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), has assumed leadership of the recently formed Sustainable Intensification community of the American Society for Agronomy’s (ASA) Environmental Quality section.

Krupnik founded the community in 2016 with the previous leader, Cameron Pittelkow, assistant professor at the Department of Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Vara Prasad, professor at the Department of Agronomy at Kansas State University and director of the university’s Sustainable Intensification Innovation Lab, joined Krupnik in 2016 as vice leader of the community.

ASA is a scientific society dedicated to promoting the transfer of knowledge and practices to sustain global agronomy. The society’s goals include understanding how agriculture affects the environment and how agricultural management can be improved to promote air, soil and water quality through its environmental quality section. The ASA currently has over 8,000 members.

“The sustainable intensification community provides a forum for advancing interdisciplinary science to improve the  productivity of the world’s crop and livestock systems through studies that utilize agronomic, economic, environmental and social sustainability criteria to develop actionable recommendations,” says Krupnik.

Sustainable intensification (SI) is a key agricultural policy priority in both developing and developed nations. SI farming puts methods into place that increase food production from existing farmland while minimizing pressure on the environment. Farmers using these approaches in turn minimize agricultural land expansion, and consequently biodiversity loss, while maximizing the use and flow of ecosystem services to and from farmlands.

The SI community is one of six communities of scientists under the society’s Environmental Quality section. The community brings together members from across the ASA to examine the challenges, limitations and opportunities for SI in agronomic production systems across the globe.

“The work we do tackles the trade-offs between increased farming systems productivity and the risk of environmental pollution, or undesirable social outcomes,” according to Krupnik. “The community is a platform for advancing these issues within the ASA, while also advocating for solutions to some of agriculture’s most pressing sustainability problems.”

The ASA’s first SI session was held in November 2016 at the ASA’s annual meeting in Phoenix, Arizona. Symposia speakers included David Cleary, director of agriculture at The Nature Conservancy, Achim Dobermann, director and Chief Executive at Rothamsted Research, Bruno Gerard, director of the Sustainable Intensification program at CIMMYT, Sieg Snapp, professor of soils and cropping systems ecology at Michigan State University and Pablo Tittonell, director of the natural resources and environment program at the National Agricultural Technology Institute in Argentina and former chair professor of the Farming Systems Ecology group  at Wageningen University.

Another SI symposium and interactive breakout discussion section on how to assess synergies and tradeoffs between indicators for SI will be held at an upcoming ASA meeting in Tampa, Florida.

More information about the ASA’s SI community can be found here.

JESSORE, Bangladesh (CIMMYT) — USAID’s Deputy Administrator Gary Lindon visited Bangladesh in November 2016 to learn how the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) engages with partners to help smallholder farmers uptake sustainable agriculture practices, as well as to observe the private sector’s role in producing farm machinery that is faster, more environmentally friendly and affordable for smallholder farmers.

One example of sustainable, smallholder-friendly machinery being promoted by CIMMYT with national partners is the two-wheeled mechanical reaper, a tool that’s proven to save farmers time and money, and helps them cope with increasing labor scarcity in Bangladesh — a trend that has continued to rise as Bangladesh develops economically and more people leave rural areas for off-farm employment, according to Timothy Krupnik, systems agronomist at CIMMYT.

“Mechanical harvesting also allows farmers to more quickly clear the field and sow the next crop, which has yield advantages for planting crops like wheat,” said Krupnik.

Lindon also met with service providers — entrepreneurial farmers turned businessmen — who have purchased the two-wheeled mechanical reapers and are now offering their harvesting services to smallholder farmers at an affordable fee.

“The local service provision business model is key to unlocking agricultural and entrepreneurial capacity in rural Bangladesh,” said Kevin Robbins, director of programs at International Development Enterprises, one of CIMMYT’s partners in Bangladesh. “We’ve seen just over 1,000 local service providers provide agricultural machinery services to over 40,000 farmers — catalyzing a level of impact that would not have been possible if we had promoted a traditional model where every farmer buys his or her own machine.”

Shafiqul Islam, CIMMYT’s Jessore hub coordinator, also explained that through mechanical harvesting, farmers save $48 per hectare, while service providers earn approximately $31 per hectare.

“In Bangladesh, private sector companies are working hard to promote agricultural machinery that develops the sector,” said Mohammad Jamil, managing director at Metal Pvt. Ltd., a leading private company in Bangladesh that sells reapers. “We want to do more business — the kind of business that changes the lives of farmers through increasing the sales of appropriate agricultural machinery. There’s a strong incentive for us to endorse the adoption of new technologies, which in turn increases food production, boosts farmer income and supports our economy. It’s a win-win business model and a sustainable way to develop our country.”

The team later visited lentil and maize fields that had been seeded directly with seeders, affordable machines that can attach directly to two-wheeled tractors, which are increasingly being used by farmers in Bangladesh. Farmers attending the USAID field visit commented that through the use of two-wheel tractor attachable seeders they can save $60 per hectare by avoiding recurring tillage and manual seeding costs.

“This machine also helps farmers to sow seeds on time, as recommended by agronomists, because direct sowing saves farmers’ 7-10 days compared to full tillage and manual sowing systems,” explained Islam.

CIMMYT launched the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) program in 2009 to promote durable change at scale in South Asia’s cereal-based cropping systems. Through this program, CIMMYT is operating rural “innovation hubs” in Bangladesh, India and Nepal to increase the adoption of various resource-conserving and climate-resilient technologies, and to improve farmer access to market information and enterprise development. Learn more about CSISA’s impact here.