Ameer Sani, a local manufacturer, produces push row planters in his workshop in Mardan. Photo: CIMMYT
ISLAMABAD — Last year, the CIMMYT-Nepal office helped to introduce push row planters for small maize farmers in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province (KP) in Pakistan. After a successful evaluation of these planters on more than 50 farmer fields in the districts of Nowshera, Mardan and Peshawar, CIMMYT collaborated this year with the Cereal Crops Research Institute (CCRI) and Petal Seed, a local seed company, for the local production of these planters.
In KP, maize is planted on 0.42 million hectares, and more than 60,000 farmers plant hybrid maize through traditional methods like broadcast and line sowing. These traditional methods are less precise – a lot of seed is wasted – and very labor intensive.
Push row planters have a vertical seed metering system that helps to place the maize seed at a proper plant-to-plant distance. They can also apply fertilizer and seed in one operation in tilled fields, thus saving labor costs, reducing planting time, and improving plant population and maize productivity.
Farmers with push row maize planters in Mardan. Photo: CIMMYT
The push row planters are manufactured and distributed locally on a cost sharing basis. Ameer Sani, a local manufacturer, assembles the planters in his workshop in Takht Bhai, in the district of Mardan. Farmers were satisfied with the performance of these locally manufactured planters, and on 21 July, 30 push row planters were distributed among smallholder maize farmers from the KP province during a farmer gathering in Mardan.
On this occasion, Iqbal Hussain, Director General of Agriculture Extension Services in KP, appreciated the efforts of USAID and CIMMYT, and advised the farmers that sharing the push row planters for maize planting would help to maximize benefits among the farming community in the village. Dr. Muhammad Imtiaz, Project Leader of the Agricultural Innovation Program for Pakistan (AIP), told the farmers that AIP would support the distribution of another 100 planters among KP farmers.
Raham Dil, a farmer from the village of Per Sadi in the district of Maran, not only used the planter on his own farm, but also offered it to 40 fellow farmers in his village and the surrounding areas, which resulted in more than 200 acres of maize planting.
EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) – Effective partnerships involving research, public and private sector institutions are key to unlocking the potential of smallholder agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, said Shamie Zingore, a director at the International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI), who oversees the region.
Cross-sector partnerships that deliver the results of agricultural research to smallholder farmers, who produce 80 percent of food consumed in the developing world, improve productivity and are essential to providing food security in Africa, said Zingore who will speak at a conference to mark the 50th anniversary of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in September.
IPNI is a non-for-profit, science-based organization dedicated to the responsible management of plant nutrition.
Zingore said partnerships that bring together national governments, agricultural research institutes and industry underpin his organizations’ work to support sustainable crop production intensification in the region.
IPNI’s cross-sector efforts to encourage fertilizer use within integrated soil fertility management (ISFM), which involves the use of locally adapted agricultural practices that can maximize the efficiency of nutrient and water use and improve agricultural productivity, shows the power of partnership combined with the development and dissemination of technologies that have increased yields and protected soil fertility, he said. The role of the private sector in addressing challenges that smallholder farmers face in accessing inputs at affordable prices and the knowledge for their appropriate use must be encouraged, he added.
Zingore will participate in a panel discussion during a session titled “Technical Innovations into Context to Achieve Greater Impact” at the CIMMYT 50th anniversary conference which will be held from Sept. 27 to Sept. 29 in Mexico City.
He shared some views on the future of agriculture in the following interview.
Q: What do you hope to contribute to the CIMMYT conference?
The theme of the conference is relevant and timely in the context of the increasingly urgent need to translate agricultural science into practice to support agricultural development and poverty alleviation in the developing world. I’m honored to participate at the conference to share knowledge and insights on the critical role of soil fertility management research in sustainable crop production intensification in sub-Saharan Africa — as well as the processes to achieve impact by adapting agronomic technologies to highly variable and complex conditions on smallholder farms. Effective partnerships between research, public and private sector institutions will be the key to unlock the potential of smallholder agriculture. Representing IPNI, as a fertilizer industry science-based research organization, I also hope to highlight the role of the private sector in addressing the challenges that smallholder farmers face in accessing inputs at affordable prices and the knowledge for their appropriate use.
Q: What is significant about CIMMYT? What role has CIMMYT played in your area of work?
CIMMYT has for many decades conducted innovative and transformational research to improve maize and wheat productivity through the plant breeding, agronomy, farming systems and conservation agriculture and socioeconomic programs. My institution has effectively collaborated with CIMMYT in several initiatives including the CGIAR program on MAIZE and Taking Maize Agronomy to Scale (TAMASA) initiative that have supported wide-scale dissemination of site-specific nutrient management in both conventional and conservation agriculture maize production systems. CIMMYT has played a key role in building effective research and extension partnerships and capacity for delivering agronomic solutions to smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Q: What are the key challenges the world faces into the future?
The overarching challenge is the question of how agricultural productivity can be increased to meet the food requirements by a rapidly increasing world population that will reach over 7 billion by 2050. Developing countries that are food insecure, including those in sub-Saharan Africa, will contribute most to the increasing population. Technological innovations will need to be increasingly robust to sustainably increase crop productivity and nutrient quality of food produced in the face of land degradation and climate change challenges.
Q: How does your area of specialization address these challenges?
Poor soil fertility, low fertilizer use and inappropriate fertilizer management practices are some of the key factors limiting crop productivity in sub-Saharan Africa. Yields have remained low despite advances made in developing high yielding crop varieties adapted to growing conditions in the region. Strong partnerships on developing ISFM are focusing on the development and dissemination of technologies that contribute not only to increased yields but also pay attention to maintenance of soil organic matter and soil fertility in the long-term. Our research results have shown that appropriate ISFM technologies enhance nutrient and water use efficiency, increasing crop productivity and resilience to moisture stress. We are addressing the issue of balanced nutrient management, with a focus on micronutrient fertilization, to increase productivity in vast agricultural soils that are deficient in micronutrients. Balanced fertilizer, focusing on the applying the right types of fertilizer at the right rate, time and place will be the basis of increasing yield in an economically viable manner and improving the nutrient contents of food produced by smallholder farmers.
A QPM field demonstration in East Wollega, Ethiopia, showing the performance of BHQPY545, a QPM variety with yellow grain. Photo: CIMMYT
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (CIMMYT) — The Nutritious Maize for Ethiopia (NuME) project was selected as a key actor in agricultural and rural innovation in Ethiopia by the Capacity Development for Agricultural Innovation Systems project (CDAIS).
Funded by the European Commission and implemented by AGRINATURA and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), CDAIS is a global partnership on capacity development for agricultural innovation systems (AIS), or collaborative arrangements that bring together several organizations working toward technological, managerial, organizational and institutional change in agriculture. CDAIS aims to make AIS more efficient and sustainable in meeting the demands of farmers, agri-business and consumers.
CDAIS identified NuME as one of the most successful projects in Ethiopia in its scoping study, largely based on its ability to demonstrate how multi-sectoral networks facilitate and speed-up the dissemination of quality protein maize (QPM) technologies and strengthen innovation. The QPM technology promoted is a biofortified type of maize with improved protein quality due to its enhanced amino acid profile that makes it more useful in human and animal nutrition.
QPM technology is a biofortified type of maize with improved protein quality due to its enhanced amino acid profile that makes it more useful in human and animal nutrition. Photo: CIMMYT
NuME is founded on a network of key implementing partners from Ethiopian research institutions, national agricultural research and extension systems, international non-governmental organizations, universities and public and private seed companies and is implemented in 36 woredas (districts) of the four major maize producing and consuming regions of Ethiopia. Such multi-sectoral networking of actors has proved to be one of the most important factors that can bring remarkably high rates of adoption of technologies bya large number of farmers in different countries.
All partners work together to ensure QPM spreads to as many farmers as possible. For example, Farm Radio International (FRI) collaborated with local radio stations, designing an appropriate multilingual participatory radio campaign on nutrition, protein and QPM benefits. Universities and Agricultural Technical and Vocational Education Training (ATVETs) produce agricultural experts with technical knowledge and skills in the field of QPM production and management. Meanwhile private sector seed companies produce and market QPM to meet the growing demand for the technology across the country.
The project has also brought the issue of QPM to the attention of policy makers and national agricultural development planners. As a result, Ethiopia’s Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources (MoANR) and the Agricultural Transformation Council have included QPM as a priority commodity in the national agricultural development plan. In 2014, MoANR set the target to increase the QPM production area to 200,000 ha within three years (2015-17), an area that is approximately 10 percent of the total land area devoted to maize production in the country.
NuME is funded by Global Affairs Canada (GAC) and implemented by CIMMYT-Ethiopia in collaboration with various stakeholders from agriculture, nutrition and health sectors. The project is designed to contribute to the reduction of malnutrition, especially among women and young children, and to increase food security for resource-poor smallholder farmers in Ethiopia through the widespread adoption, production and utilization of QPM varieties and crop management practices that increase farm productivity.
Farmers and seed company personnel observing RCRMH-2 in an on-farm demonstration during the spring season in Gulbarga district of Karnataka, India. Photo: UAS, Raichur
RAICHUR, India (CIMMYT) — Two hybrids from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) developed under the Heat Tolerant Maize for Asia (HTMA) project were ranked first and third among over 100 hybrids during the 2015 All-India Coordinated Maize Program (AICMP) trials. The trials took place during the summer-rainy season (commonly known as the “Kharif” season) – the major maize growing season in South Asia – which covered about 70 percent of South Asia’s total maize area.
AICMP, managed by the Institute of Maize Research in New Delhi, is one of the largest maize variety testing networks in South Asia. New maize hybrids from both the public and private sector are evaluated in over 30 locations across India’s different ecologies.
The two hybrids RCRMH-1 and RCRMH-2 – were submitted by the University of Agriculture Sciences (UAS), Raichur, one of the key partners with CIMMYT in developing heat tolerant maize varieties in the region. The hybrids showed good performance by performing well across agro-ecologies, including stressed and un-stressed locations, competing well against both public and private sector varieties tested in the AICMP trials.
CIMMYT seeks to develop maize varieties that are tolerant to a range of stresses that South Asia experiences. For example, heat resilience is necessary in a region which experiences temperatures of over 400C in the spring season, right when the crop needs to reproduce. The summer-rainy season in South Asia brings monsoon rains. However, in drought years (such as year 2015) the temperature may rise close to 400C, and therefore maize crops face combined drought and heat stress. The selection strategy used by HTMA focuses on developing broad temperature resilience rather than tolerance to heat stress by exposing the hybrids across temperature regimes during selection process, which explains the success of the two hybrids in the AICMP trials. The performance of CIMMYT hybrids in these trials clearly indicate that the hybrids have wider adaptation to many stresses including areas with no stresses.
These two hybrids are among the first 18 hybrids licensed to CIMMYT partners for deployment and scale-out in stress-prone ecologies of South Asia.
University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS), Raichur, India is one of the collaborators in CIMMYT’s Heat Tolerant Maize for Asia (HTMA) project. Funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the Feed the Future (FTF) initiative HTMA is a public-private alliance that targets resource-poor maize farming communities in South Asia who face weather extremes and climate change effects.
Want to learn more about CIMMYT’s activities in Pakistan? Check out our news feed here. Photo: CIMMYT
EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — A new paper by scientists from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) highlight important risks to farmers’ yields in Pakistan due to climate change and call for current climate adaptation policies across South Asia to be revised in response.
Rice and wheat are the principal calorie sources for over a billion people in South Asia. Both of these crops are extremely sensitive to climate and agronomic management conditions under which they are grown.
Which is why climate change – projected to increase heat stress and variability across the region – is a huge threat to farmers growing these crops.
And while the influence of climatic conditions on crop growth have been widely studied, empirical evidence of the link between climate variability and yield risk in farmers’ fields is comparatively scarce.
Using data from 240 farm households, the paper “Climate variability and yield risk in South Asia’s rice–wheat systems: emerging evidence from Pakistan” responds to this gap and isolates the effects of agronomic management from climatic variability on rice and wheat yield risks in eight of Pakistan’s twelve agroecological zones. The authors’ results highlight important risks to farmers’ ability to obtain reliable yield levels for both crops, finding season-long and terminal heat stress have a negative effect on rice and wheat yields, with heat being particularly damaging to wheat.
The study also finds farmers have limited capacity to adapt to respond to climactic changes within a crop season, concluding that current climate change adaptation policies must be reviewed to increase resilience for Pakistan’s and South Asia’s cereal farmers, suggesting avenues for investment in improved crop research and development programs.
Read more about this study and more recent publications from CIMMYT researchers, below:
A direct comparison of remote sensing approaches for high-throughput phenotyping in plant breeding. 2016. Tattaris, M.; Reynolds, M.P.; Chapman, S. Frontiers in Plant Science 7: 113
Baseline simulation for global wheat production with CIMMYT mega-environment specific cultivars. 2016. Gbegbelegbe, S.D.; Cammarano, D.; Asseng, S.; Robertson, R.; Chung, U.; Adam, M.; Abdalla, O.; Payne, T.S.; Reynolds, M.P.; Sonder, K.; Shiferaw, B.; Nelson, G. Field Crops Research. Online First.
Climate variability and yield risk in South Asia’s rice–wheat systems: emerging evidence from Pakistan. 2016. Muhammad Arshad; Amjath-Babu, T.S.; Krupnik, T.J.; Aravindakshan, S.; Abbas, A.; Kachele, H.; Muller, K. Paddy Water Environment. Online First.
Genome wide association mapping of stripe rust resistance in Afghan wheat landraces. 2016. Manickavelu, A.; Joukhadar, R.; Jighly, A.; Caixia Lan; Huerta-Espino, J.; Ahmad Shah Stanikzai; Kilian, A.; Singh, R.P.; Ban, T. Plant Science 252: 222-229.
EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) – In developing countries, 43 percent of income-earning farmworkers are women – a percentage that is even higher if unwaged farm work is included, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Despite the large numbers of women working on farms, their voices are not heard by international development policymakers and funders, which handicaps global efforts to achieve food security, said the 2003 World Food Prize laureate and former head of the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP).
“When policymakers or grant-makers look at community needs, the dearth of women in leadership or spokesperson roles, prevents them from learning what is really required to best support the community,” Catherine Bertini wrote in a special issue of Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
“Feedback comes from men, and it predictably centers on what men need,” she added, pointing out that the role of women in the fight for food security is vital not only because they are farmers, but also because they typically oversee nutrition and meal management in the household.
Women and men do not have the same access to agricultural inputs – to seeds and fertilizer, land and extension services, and FAO estimates that if they did, women’s agricultural production would increase up to 20 percent, said Bertini, who will speak at a conference on September 29 in Mexico City to mark the 50th anniversary of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).
Additionally, financial resources controlled by women are more likely to be spent on household needs in contrast to financial resources controlled by men, which are more likely to be used outside the household, Bertini said.
In her essay titled “Invisible Women,” Bertini, currently a professor at Syracuse University, cites a gender-specific mix-up with hoes as an example of how things can go terribly wrong when women farmers are not consulted about their needs.
During her tenure at WFP, Bertini visited a rural area in Angola, which was recovering from more than a quarter century of civil war. Farmers said they could not work the fields because they had no farm implements, although there were about a hundred hoes leaning against a nearby fence.
It turned out that the non-governmental organization (NGO) that ordered them was unaware that hoes in Angola were gender differentiated.
“The NGO had not talked to the women,” Bertini said. “In that region of Angola, women were the only people who tilled the fields, but they did not use the long-poled hoes. Women’s hoes, it turned out, had shorter wooden handles and shovel-like spades at the end.”
Women squat to use their hoes because they usually have a baby strapped to their back and it is less cumbersome and causes less stress on the back, unlike the men who stand.
“For me, this story became a metaphor for the importance of always speaking with the people who know what their needs are, and that those who do not specifically seek out women in order to understand their needs may waste their entire contribution to the good they seek to accomplish,” Bertini said.
“It also reminds me that women are generally not in community leadership roles and are too often politically invisible.”
She says for women to be seen and heard, and for society to benefit from their knowledge, changes must occur, including:
Educating girls
Starting research with women’s needs in mind
Enhancing women’s health support
Supporting breastfeeding
Improving women’s literacy
Creating agricultural extension programs that include women
Expanding micro-bank loans and insurance
Creating legal rights for women to own and inherit land
Considering societal gender roles in all development thinking
HYDERABAD, India (CIMMYT) – The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center’s (CIMMYT) Director General Martin Kropff visited the CIMMYT office at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Hyderabad, India, on 26 August 2016, along with a delegation that included Mrs. Nynke Nammensma Kropff, John Snape (Chair, CIMMYT Board of Trustees), Nicole Birrell (CIMMYT Board Member), Denis Huneault (Director of Business Services), Pramod Aggarwal (Regional Program Leader, CCAFS), Michelle Guertin (Senior Manager, Project Management), Jean-Flavien Le Besque (Global Human Resources Manager) and Arun Joshi (Country Representative).
ICRISAT Director General David Bergvinson welcomed the delegation and emphasized the continuing need for system-level synchronization among CGIAR centers. An introductory presentation highlighted the activities of the CIMMYT-Hyderabad team, ranging from upstream marker discovery and phenotyping and informatics tool development to mid-stream adaptive research to downstream hybrid deployment through seed partners and engagement with farmers through on-farm trials and demonstrations.
Observing water logging in maize. Photo: CIMMYT
The key to this success is strong partnerships with national partners, the seed industry and other CGIAR centers. The ensuing discussion centered around the need for a CIMMYT center of excellence (or CIMMYT Academy) in the region as a way to systematize, strengthen and sustain partnerships. The need for “out of the box” solutions to drive CIMMYT’s agenda through cost recovery models of research expenses, within the “not-for-profit” mandate of the CG, also stimulated a lot of discussion.
Martin Kropff’s presentation highlighted the relevance of CIMMYT’s work, the new “ONE CIMMYT” strategy and the interesting feedback from CIMMYT’s recent staff survey. Kropff also had an exclusive meeting with the female staff of CIMMYT-Hyderabad. The delegation was given a tour of CIMMYT facilities and fields, and had the opportunity to interact with national staff. This intense and important visit concluded with a meeting with ICRISAT’s Management Group.
CIMMYT Delegation in Hyderabad, India, 26 August 2016. Photo: CIMMYT
Martínez displays her award at the Autonomous University of Chapingo. Photo courtesy of Tania Martínez.
EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — Tania Martínez, Ph.D. fellow with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), received the Mexican National Youth Award for her outstanding performance in academic achievement from Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.
Established in 1975, the award recognizes Mexican youth whose dedication inspires peers and exemplifies the values of personal growth and community development.
Martínez is at CIMMYT studying for her doctorate with the Knowledge, Technology, Innovation Group at Wageningen UR University in the Netherlands. She follows technology trajectories and processes of social inclusion/exclusion within them. As part of her research she is studying conservation agriculture, a set of farming practices based on minimal soil disturbance, permanent soil coverage and use of crop rotations, in Mexico’s Bajio region. Under MasAgro – a large Mexico-CIMMYT initiative – she is involved in work that helps smallholder farmers in breeding to improve their prized local maize varieties, and also looks at how farmers can access information through information and communications technology.
In 2001 at the age of 14, Martínez left her home of Tamazulápam Mixes, an indigenous village in the northern mountains of Oaxaca, to study at the Autonomous University of Chapingo in Central Mexico.
Her achievements are noteworthy. Of the more than 15 million indigenous Mexicans – about 15 percent of the country’s population – over a quarter of adults don’t have a single year of education and only 26 percent of women work or take part in other economic activities. Mexico’s indigenous citizens are among the country’s poorest and most marginalized.
“I decided to study agronomy because I was raised in the countryside and rooted to the land,” Martínez said. “In Chapingo, though, I met people who didn’t know there were places in Mexico without electricity, drinkable and sanitary drainage systems or even access roads. “Yes, they exist!’ I would reply. ‘I actually have been in places, they exist in many regions of Mexico”’
Nearly 30 percent of indigenous peoples in Mexico live without running water and 66 percent of households cook with wood and charcoal.
Prior to undertaking Ph.D. studies, she received a Fullbright scholarship to study at the University of Arizona, where she obtained a master’s degree in agricultural and biosystems engineering focusing on water management, irrigation and bioethanol production from sweet sorghum. Martínez then went on to work at CIMMYT as an intern and consultant before beginning her doctoral research with the organization’s socioeconomics program in 2013. Martínez credits meeting Conny Almekinders – her current professor and supervisor at Wageningen – and Carolina Camacho, a postdoctoral fellow with CIMMYT’s socioeconomic program, who specializes in social analysis of agricultural technologies, as the source of inspiration for pursuing her Ph.D. in the same topic.
“I hope more people are willing to help those who’ve not had the same opportunities and support I have had, to help change their reality,” Martínez said. “I’m grateful to all those who’ve helped me along the way, especially CIMMYT and the many researchers and people I have met in this long journey.”
As part of her National Youth Award, Martínez plans to donate books to libraries in marginalized communities and help develop policies that help these communities.
Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of CIMMYT
EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) – Sustainable agriculture must be adopted globally if natural ecosystems are to be protected as food production increases to feed a projected population of 9.7 billion by 2050, said author and environmentalist Mark Lynas.
An immediate move to transform overall agricultural practices is needed to overcome the challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss, said Lynas who will speak at a conference to mark the 50th anniversary of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in September.
A former critic of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) Lynas changed his mind when he said it became clearer to him that there was a scientific consensus that genetic engineering was safe. In his current role at Cornell University, he now advises on public sector biotechnology in developing countries.
Lynas will deliver a presentation during a session entitled “Future Landscapes” at the CIMMYT 50th anniversary conference on Sept. 29, 2016.
He shared some views on the future of agriculture in the following interview.
Q: What are the key challenges the world faces?
Well, it’s become something of a cliche now to talk about how we need to double world food supply by 2050 in order to feed the growing human population. I’m keen to add an environmental perspective to this statement. We need to double world food production but at the same time to shrink the area of cultivated land in order to protect natural ecosystems. With the ongoing crises in climate change and biodiversity loss, we cannot afford to plow up the rain forests or other ecologically valuable areas, so the only viable option is to sustainably intensify existing cultivated areas, hopefully with “rewilding” of spared lands. Obviously, this is a broad-brush assertion, and there is a lot of geographical complexity and nuance underlying this, that we should not forget.
Q: How does your area of specialization address these challenges? What innovation do you see improving agriculture?
I’m particularly focused on biotechnology in agriculture, which can help improve sustainability in many ways. Basically, if you can move from chemistry to biology in addressing challenges, from water use to yield to pest control, so much the better for the environment. An example would be the use of the Bt gene, which produces a protein in the plant that is toxic only to the pest itself and harmless to everything else, including us. That’s a much more sustainable option than indiscriminate insecticide sprays that have serious environmental and health impacts. However, because of their total opposition to genetic engineering, anti-GMO campaigners end up defending continued pesticide use, which is a very strange place for supposedly green activists to be. I’ve seen this at first hand in Bangladesh with the campaign against Bt brinjal. Anti-science superstition of this sort can end up being very environmentally damaging.
Q: What outcomes would you like to see from the CIMMYT conference?
CIMMYT experts were co-authors on a recent paper, “Reducing emissions from agriculture to meet the 2 °C target” in Global Change Biology, that challenged the agriculture sector to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions significantly — by 1 billion tons a year — in order to contribute to meeting the 2 degrees C international climate change target. I thought this was a great initiative and I would love to see more attention given to it by other stakeholders at the CIMMYT conference. I really hope it becomes a talked about target that ends up being matched with real commitments and actions in the field.
Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of CIMMYT.
EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) – Leading nutritionist Julie Miller Jones aims to bust myths about biotechnology
U.S. nutritionist Julie Miller Jones
by educating the general population on the benefits she believes genetically engineered (GE) crops can play in ending extreme hunger and malnutrition.
A shift away from the perception that GE crops are unsafe for the environment and human health is needed if they are to live up to their potential to increase food production and improve nutrition to meet the needs of growing global population, said Miller Jones who will speak at a conference to mark the 50th anniversary of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in September.
A recent report released by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine said there is no substantiated evidence that foods from GE crops are less safe than foods from non-GE crops. Miller Jones said the general public must be educated about how biotechnology can safely improve food crops and contribute to nourishing a global population projected to grow by more than 2 billion by 2050 to more than 9.7 billion.
GE technologies enable the insertion from one species to another of genetic material (DNA) responsible, for example, for the production of vitamin precursors, such as pro-vitamin A carotenoids. Specific genes from maize, daffodil or carrot, placed in a staple grain, can help address vitamin A shortages in many regions, said the nutritionist. Conventional breeding does not have this ability to insert desirable genes from one species to another, and GE technologies can therefore enhance the contribution of plant breeding in addressing significant public health problems, she said.
Miller Jones has followed wheat-breeding developments over the years. She is a big fan of Norman Borlaug, the late CIMMYT wheat breeder and 1970 Nobel Peace Prize laureate known as the Father of the Green Revolution for the high-yielding wheat varieties he produced, which are credited with saving more than a billion lives in the developing world.
Miller Jones is outspoken about the negative consequences of gluten-free diets and has written several research papers that dispel myths generated by claims that the protein found in wheat is unhealthy.
She is a certified nutrition specialist who is also a distinguished scholar and professor emeritus of nutrition of nutrition at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Interested in all aspects of nutrition science, she is actively involved in educating consumers against myths about nutrition and food safety. Currently, she is a scientific advisor to a number of groups such as the Healthy Grains Institute and the Grains Food Foundation that promote healthy diets and educates consumers on the benefits the right balance of grain-based foods.
Jones, who will speak during Session Five on “Future Landscapes” at the CIMMYT 50th anniversary conference on Sept. 29, 2016, shared some insights on the future of agriculture in the following interview.
Q: What is significant about CIMMYT: What role has CIMMYT played in your area of work?
CIMMYT and Norman Borlaug have always been inspirations to me ever since I began my graduate work at the University of Minnesota nearly 50 years ago. I’m interested in nutrition and feeding the world, I taught students about the Green Revolution and the achievements of Borlaug and CIMMYT in the world food supply section of my class on current issues throughout my entire academic career.
Q: What are the key challenges the world faces?
Producing enough food and communicating about the risks and benefits of anything we do. Communicating that there are risks to using GE crops, but these are assessed on a case-by-case basis.. What hasn’t been communicated effectively, so that the average person can understand and not fear the technology, is the risk of not using GE and other agricultural advancements. It’s ironic to me that those claiming to be interested in the environment often reject technologies that enable the use of fewer inputs and scarce resources and they do it in the name of the environment. All must communicate this in a non-defensive, clear way.
Q: How does your area of specialization address these challenges?
As a nutritionist and communicator, I want to work with breeders to ensure that nutrients are one of the aspects that are included in breeding programs. Further, I want to work with others to develop effective strategies to explain advancements in agriculture and plant breeding to reduce consumers’ fears and ease their acceptance and adoption.
China’s Vice Premier Liu Yandong (right) with CIMMYT Director General Martin Kropff. Photo: A. Cortes/CIMMYT
TEXCOCO, Mexico (CIMMYT) — A new collaborative program promising to train Chinese Ph.D. and postdoctoral students annually at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) builds on the three decade relationship the organization holds with China.
The memorandum of understanding was signed during China’s Vice Premier Liu Yandong’s visit to CIMMYT on 9 August by the Secretary General of the Chinese Scholarship Council Liu Jinghui and CIMMYT Director General Martin Kropff.
“In the face of climate change, water shortages and other challenges, innovative strategies to agricultural development are necessary for China’s future development,” Yandong said. “We hope to strengthen cooperation with CIMMYT — this will have a tremendous effect on both China and the world.”
Since 1970, more than 20 Chinese institutes have been involved in germplasm exchange and improvement, conservation agriculture and capacity building, with 56 Chinese researchers receiving their doctoral degrees with CIMMYT. Since the CIMMYT-China Office was opened in 1997, 26 percent of wheat grown in China has derived from CIMMYT materials.
Secretary General of the Chinese Scholarship Council Liu Jinghui (left) with CIMMYT Director General Martin Kropff during the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding to train 10 PhD and Postdoc students at CIMMYT each year. Photo: A. Cortes/CIMMYT
During the visit, the vice premier discussed China’s new five-year plan (2016 – 2020) that focuses on innovation, international cooperation and green growth, to modernize agriculture in an environmental friendly way over the next 20 to 30 years.
Benefits of three decades of international collaboration in wheat research have added as much as 10.7 million tons of grain – worth $3.4 billion – to China’s national wheat output. Eight CIMMYT scientists have won the Chinese Friendship Award – the highest award for “foreign experts who have made outstanding contributions to the country’s economic and social progress.”
Local service provider Yunus operates various kinds of machinery that he offers to farmers in Barisal district, Bangladesh. Photo: S. Storr/CIMMYT
El Batan, MEXICO (CIMMYT) – A new study by scientists at The International Wheat and Maize Improvement Center (CIMMYT) looks at large-scale adoption practices of agricultural machinery appropriate for smallholder farmers in Bangladesh, concluding that sustained emphasis on improving infrastructure, services and assuring credit availability is necessary to facilitate adoption.
There is strong advocacy for agricultural machinery appropriate for smallholder farmers in South Asia. Such “scale-appropriate” machinery can increase returns to land and labor, but high capital investment costs make it hard for farmers to own these machines. Increasing machinery demand has resulted in relatively well-developed markets for rental services for tillage, irrigation, and post-harvest operations.
Studying households that own machinery can provide insights into the factors that facilitate or limit adoption, which can help development planners, policy makers and national and international banks to target investments more appropriately. The study “Factors associated with small-scale agricultural machinery adoption in Bangladesh: census findings,” is the first recent study to examine these practices at large scale, using the case of Bangladesh.
The paper examines the adoption information gap in Bangladesh by reviewing the country’s historical policy environment that facilitated the development of agricultural machinery markets. It then uses recent Bangladesh census data from over 800,000 farm households to identify variables associated with the adoption of the most common smallholder agricultural machinery like irrigation pumps, threshers and power tillers.
Results of the study indicate that machinery ownership is positively associated with household assets, credit availability, electrification, and road density. These findings suggest that donors and policy makers should focus not only on short-term projects to boost machinery adoption, but also emphasize improving physical and civil infrastructure and services, as well as assuring credit availability to facilitate the adoption of scale-appropriate farm machinery.
Check out this study and other recent publications from CIMMYT researchers, below:
13C Natural Abundance of Serum Retinol Is a Novel Biomarker for Evaluating Provitamin A Carotenoid-Biofortified Maize Consumption in Male Mongolian Gerbils. 2016. Gannon, B.; Pungarcher, I.; Mourao, L.; Davis, C.R.; Simon, P.; Pixley, K.V.; Tanumihardjo, S.A. The Journal of Nutrition 146 : 1290-1297.
Does closing knowledge gaps close yield gaps? On-farm conservation agriculture trials and adoption dynamics in three smallholder farming areas in Zimbabwe. 2016. Cheesman, S.; Andersson, J.A.; Frossard, E. Journal of Agricultural Science. Online First.
Factors associated with small-scale agricultural machinery adoption in Bangladesh : census findings. 2016. Mottaleb, K.A.; Krupnik, T.J.; Erenstein, O. Journal of Rural Studies 46 : 155-168.
Fertilization strategies in Conservation Agriculture systems with Maize-Legume cover crops rotations in Southern Africa. 2016. Mupangwa, W.; Thierfelder, C.; Ngwira, A. Experimental Agriculture. Online First.
High temperatures around flowering in maize: effects on photosynthesis and grain yield in three genotypes. 2016. Neiff, N.;Trachsel, S.; Valentinuz, O.R.; Balbi, C.N.; Andrade, H.F. Crop Science 56 : 1-11.
Kenyan Isolates of Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici from 2008 to 2014 : virulence to SrTmp in the Ug99 race group and implications for breeding programs. 2016. Newcomb, M.; Olivera Firpo, P.D.; Rouse, M.N.; Szabo, L.J.; Johnson, J.; Gale, S.; Luster, D.G.; Wanyera, R.; Macharia, G.; Bhavani, S.; Hodson, D.P.; Patpour, M.; Hovmoller, M.S.; Fetch, T.G.; Yue Jin. Phytopathology 106 (7) : 729-736.
Targeting drought-tolerant maize varieties in Southern Africa : a geospatial crop modeling approach using big data. 2016. Kindie Tesfaye Fantaye; Sonder, K.; Cairns, J.E.; Magorokosho, C.; Amsal Tesfaye Tarekegne; Kassie, G.; Getaneh, F.; Abdoulaye, T.; Tsedeke Abate; Erenstein, O. The International Food and Agribusiness Management Review 19 : 75-92.
The adoption problem; or why we still understand so little about technological change in African agriculture. 2016. Glover, D.; Sumberg, J.; Andersson, J.A. Outlook on Agriculture 45 (1): 3-6.
The effect of major income sources on rural household food (in)security : evidence from Swaziland and implications for policy. 2016. Mabuza, M.L.; Ortmann, G.F.; Wale, E.; Mutenje, M. Ecology of Food and Nutrition 55 (2) : 209-230.
Weed management in maize using crop competition: a review. 2016. Mhlanga, B.; Chauhan, B.S.; Thierfelder, C. Crop Protection 88: 28-36.
EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) – Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation CEO Sue Desmond-Hellmann visited the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation CEO Sue Desmond-Hellmann toured CIMMYT headquarters in Mexico. Photo: Alfonso Cortes/ CIMMYT
International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) this week to learn more about how research reaches smallholder farmers.
During her visit, Desmond-Hellmann spoke with scientists and researchers on how CIMMYT is working to develop new and innovative solutions to end poverty through agriculture. Through a hands-on tour of CIMMYT’s germplasm bank, Desmond-Hellmann saw how the world’s most diverse collections of maize and wheat are providing genetic diversity to breeding programs worldwide to tackle food security and climate change. The science was then put into practice in the field, where the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation CEO pollinated maize and learned about the complexity of breeding for tolerance to heat and drought and resilience to diseases.
Remote sensing technologies, that make it possible to observe the dynamics of anything from single plants to entire landscapes as they change over time, were also showcased during the visit as an effective and adaptable tool for breeding and crop management including nutrient use efficiency, climate resilience and irrigation systems.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation CEO Sue Desmond-Hellmann pollinates maize. Photo: Alfonso Cortes/ CIMMYT
Nutrition and quality were also emphasized as keystones of CIMMYT’s work. Desmond-Hellmann tasted different types of bread, and learned how CIMMYT wheat varieties meet market demands for flour and wheat products globally. A demonstration on how CIMMYT is improving the nutritional quality of crops by enhancing the pro-vitamin A, iron and zinc concentrations of maize and wheat grains showed how agricultural and nutritional sciences are working together to fight “hidden hunger.”
Also joining the visit were Rodger Voorhies, the organization’s managing director of global development, Tony Cavalieri, senior program officer of agricultural development, and Casey Hanewall, the director of the CEO and chief staff office. The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation is one of CIMMYT’s major donors with funding for key projects including Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) and Stress Tolerant Maize for Africa (STMA). CIMMYT also receives funding for important work like that of developing and deploying maize that resists the deadly Maize Lethal Necrosis disease and projects to develop micronutrient rich maize and wheat varieties.
ESKISEHIR, Turkey — The 5th International Master Class on Soil Borne Pathogens of Wheat held at the Transitional Zone Agricultural Research Institute (TZARI), Eskisehir, Turkey, on 11-23 July 2016, brought together 45 participants from 16 countries of Central and West Asia and North Africa.
During the opening ceremony, participants were welcomed by Yusuf Aslan, head of Field Crop Research, Turkish Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (MFAL), Suat Kaymak, Plant Health Department head, MFAL, Sabri Cakir, TZARI director, and Amer Dababat, leader, Soil Borne Pathogens Program, CIMMYT-Turkey.
This intensive residential master class built on the success of previous Crawford Fund Master Classes on SBP (Turkey 2000 and 2010; China 2005; and Tunisia 2008). Its key objectives were to: (1) expand the existing soil borne pathogen (SBP) capacity of researchers from Central and West Asia and North Africa to help them better understand and work with SBP of cereals; (2) help these politically and food insecure regions — in particular, Syria, Iraq, North Africa, and Afghanistan — to re-build SBP capacity; and (3) refine and publish the existing Master Class Theoretical Manual for this Master Class and create an electronic version to be used in future training activities.
This year’s master class was taught by a total of 15 specialists, including three renowned experts from abroad: Timothy Paulitz, Research Plant Pathologist, USDA-ARS, Pullman, WA; Grant Hollaway, cereal plant pathologist, Australia; and Ian Riley, nematologist, Australia. The quality of the scientific program and the participation of SBP specialists from various countries made it a highly successful course.
Among other things, class participants learned how to isolate, extract and identify SBP in order to properly diagnose their SBP problems, as well as use host resistance and other environmentally friendly control methods to control the pathogens. They also focused on how to incorporate SBP resistance breeding into a cereal breeding program and apply molecular biology to identify and breed SBP resistant germplasm.
The class helped to further develop participants’ research management, technical and personal capacities, and hone their proposal writing skills. Finally, it fostered the establishment of a regional network of pathologists (including key CGIAR pathologists) to work on SBPs.
Upon returning to their home countries, participants will become involved in researching SBPs, which will ultimately benefit farmers and the industry. This will also forge better linkages between the master class and other national institutes in the region and enable them to jointly combat SBPs, alleviate hunger and contribute to food security.
This latest course was organized and coordinated by Abdelfattah Dababat, SBP Specialist, CIMMYT-Turkey, as part of the ICARDA CIMMYT Wheat Improvement Program (ICWIP), and funded by CIMMYT, MFAL, Syngenta, The Crawford Fund, ACIAR, and GRDC.
For more information, please contact Abdelfattah A. Dababat at a.dababat@cgiar.org
NAIROBI, Kenya (CIMMYT) – The recent inauguration of a new seed storage cold room at the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) research center at Kiboko in Makueni County, about 155 kilometers from the capital, adds to the top notch research establishments managed by the national partners in Africa together with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). This successful partnership continues to help farmers overcome crippling challenges in farming and to realize the yield potential of improved varieties.
Since its establishment in Africa, over 40 years ago, CIMMYT has prioritized high quality research work in state-of-the-art research facilities developed through long-standing partnerships with national research organizations, such as KALRO.
“If CIMMYT were to be established today, it would be headquartered in Africa because this is where smallholder farmers face the biggest challenges. At the same time, this is the place where outstanding work is being done to help the farmers rise above the challenges, and with great success,” said Martin Kropff, CIMMYT Director General during his recent visit to Kenya.
The cold room jointly inaugurated by Kropff, and KALRO Director General, Eliud Kireger will help store high value maize seeds with an array of traits including resilience to diseases, insect-pests and climatic stresses as drought and heat, for up to 10 years, without the need for seed regeneration every year, thereby avoiding risk of contamination and use of scarce resources. It will also help make seed readily available for distribution to national partners and seed companies to reach the farmers much faster.
Kireger conveyed his appreciation for the cold room and other research facilities established on KALRO sites, terming these achievements as “rewarding not just to KALRO and to the seed companies, but to many smallholders in Africa, who continue to be the inspiration behind every effort put into maize research and development work by KALRO and partners like CIMMYT.”
In addition to the seed storage cold room, Africa hosts the maize lethal necrosis (MLN) disease screening facility in sub-Saharan Africa. The MLN screening facility was established in 2013 at KALRO Naivasha Center in Kenya in response to the outbreak of the devastating MLN disease in eastern Africa. The facility since then has supported both the private and public institutions to screen maize germplasm for MLN under artificial inoculation and in identifying MLN tolerant/resistant lines and hybrids.
Combating MLN: • Over 60,000 entries have been tested at the MLN screening site in Naivasha, Kenya since 2013. • 16 private and public institutions including seed companies and national research organizations have screened their germplasm for MLN. Photo: K. Kaimenyi/CIMMYT
“The MLN screening facility (also a quarantine site) has been supporting the national partners in sub-Saharan Africa, key multinational, local and regional seed companies and CGIAR centers. This facility has become a major resource in the fight against MLN regionally,” added B.M. Prasanna, Director of CIMMYT’s Global Maize Program as well as the CGIAR Research Program MAIZE. “Tremendous progress has been made through this facility in the last three years. Several promising maize lines with tolerance and resistance to MLN have been identified, and used in breeding programs to develop improved maize hybrids. Already five MLN-tolerant hybrids have been released and now being scaled-up by seed companies for reaching the MLN-affected farmers in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. As many as 22 MLN-tolerant and resistant hybrids are presently undergoing national performance trials in east Africa,” remarked Prasanna.
Another major focus of CIMMYT and partners in the region is to prevent the spread of MLN from the endemic to non-endemic countries in Africa. “This is a strong message to convey that we not only work hard to develop MLN resistant maize varieties for the farmers, but we are also very keen to control the spread of the disease” remarked Kropff during a visit to the site.
In Zimbabwe, an MLN quarantine facility has been established in 2016, in collaboration with the government. This facility is key for safe transfer of research materials, including those with MLN resistance into the currently MLN non-endemic countries in southern Africa, before they get to the partners.
In order to keep up with the emerging stresses and to accelerate development of improved maize varieties, the maize Doubled-Haploid (DH) facility was established in 2013 by CIMMYT and KALRO at the KALRO research center in Kiboko. This facility helps the breeders to significantly shorten the process of developing maize parental lines from 7–8 seasons (using conventional breeding) to just 2–3 seasons.
Over 92,000 Doubled-Haploid (DH) maize lines have been developed from CIMMYT bi-parental crosses. Photo: B. Wawa/CIMMYT
“Through the facility at Kiboko, we have been able to develop over 60,000 DH lines in 2015 from diverse genetic backgrounds. The DH facility also supports the national agricultural research organisations and small and medium enterprise partners in sub-Saharan Africa to fast-track their breeding work through DH lines,” said Prasanna.
For wheat research-for-development work in Africa, the largest stem rust phenotyping platform in the world sits at KALRO research center in Njoro, Kenya. The facility screens at least 50,000 wheat accessions annually from 20-25 countries. Following the emergence of the Ug99 wheat rust disease pathogen strain in Uganda, the disease spread to 13 countries in Africa. Close to 65 wheat varieties that are resistant to Ug99 stem rust disease have been released globally as a result of the shuttle breeding that includes selection from the screening site at KALRO Njoro.
“CIMMYT’s yearly investment of USD 37 million in Africa through various projects has translated into a success story because of the strong collaboration with our partners across Africa,” said Stephen Mugo, CIMMYT’s Regional Representative for Africa. He further added that “research work in Africa is not yet done. No institution, including CIMMYT, cannot do this important work alone. We need to, and will, keep on working together with partners to improve the livelihoods of the African smallholders.”
CIMMYT DG Martin Kropff studying an MLN affected plant. Photo: K. Kaimenyi/CIMMYT
Key funders of CIMMYT work in Africa include, the USAID, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Sygenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture, Australian Centre for International Research, CGIAR Research Program on Maize, Foreign Affairs Trade and Development Canada.
ESKISEHIR, Turkey — The 5th International Master Class on Soil Borne Pathogens of Wheat held at the Transitional Zone Agricultural Research Institute (TZARI), Eskisehir, Turkey, on 11-23 July 2016, brought together 45 participants from 16 countries of Central and West Asia and North Africa.
