The rates of growth of staple crop yields in South Asia are insufficient to meet the projected demands in the region. With 40 percent of the world’s poor living in South Asia, the area composed of eastern India, Bangladesh and Nepal has the largest concentration of impoverished and food insecure people worldwide. At the same time, issues of resource degradation, declining labor availability and climate change (frequent droughts and rising temperatures) pose considerable threats to increasing the productivity of farming systems and rural livelihoods. Thirty percent of South Asia’s wheat crop is likely to be lost due to higher temperatures by 2050, experts say.

“These ecologies are regionally important for several reasons,” said Andrew McDonald, Project Leader, Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia, CIMMYT. “First, they have a higher density of rural poverty and food insecurity than any other region. Second, yield gaps for cereal staples are higher here than elsewhere in South Asia – highlighting the significant growth potential in agriculture.”

According to McDonald, there has been some successes due to increased investment and focus on intensification in these areas over the past 10 years. A CIMMYT-led initiative, the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) has contributed to major outcomes such as rapid uptake of early-planted wheat, the use of zero-tillage seed drills and long-duration, high-yielding wheat varieties in eastern India.

CSISA, in close collaboration with national partners, has been working in this region since 2009 to sustainably enhance the productivity of cereal-based cropping systems, as well as to improve the livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers.

“Climate-resilient practices are gaining confidence in the areas we are working. More than 500,000 farmers adopted components of the early rice-wheat cropping system in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh last year,” said R.K. Malik, Senior Agronomist, CIMMYT. “Early sowing can protect the crop from late-season heat damage and increase yields. It’s a non-cash input that even smallholders can benefit from and is one of the most important adaptations to climate change in this region.”

To increase the spread of these innovations and increase farmers’ access to modern farming technologies, CSISA is working to strengthen the network of service providers.

“This region has a large number of smallholder farmers and ownership of machines by smallholders is often not economically viable,” highlighted Malik. “In Indian states of Bihar, Odisha and eastern Uttar Pradesh, CSISA has facilitated more than 2,100 progressive farmers to become local entrepreneurs through relevant skills, information and training during the last three years.”

The U.S. Agency for International Development and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have recently approved Phase III of CSISA, running from December 2015 to November 2020. Building on the momentum and achievements of Phase I and II, Phase III will work to scale up innovations, strengthen local capacity and expand markets to support the widespread adoption of climate-resilient agricultural technologies in partnership with the national and developmental partners and key private sector actors.

“CSISA has made its mark as a ‘big tent’ initiative that closes gaps between research and delivery, and takes a systems approach that will continue to be leveraged in Phase III through strategic partnerships with national agricultural systems, extension systems and agricultural departments and with civil society and the private sector,” said McDonald.

Implemented jointly with International Rice Research Institute and International Food Policy Research Institute, the main four outcomes of Phase III focus on technology scaling, mainstreaming innovation into national systems, development of research-based products and reforming policies for faster technology adoption.

Photo Feature: Major Impacts of CSISA

On Thursday, 5 November, a delegation of Kenyan scientists and government officials visited CIMMYT, concluding a fact-finding mission to see if Mexico can help Kenya to find new, and safer, ways to eat maize.

Leading the delegation was Sicily Kariuki, principal secretary of Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Fisheries. “Our objective is to meet with experts who face common challenges in the area of agriculture, in particular, maize, safety, and specifically nixtamalization,” she said.

CIMMYT and INIFAP have been developing a project to improve the traditional process of maize nixtamalization and show that it can dramatically reduce contamination by harmful aflatoxins. At the invitation of Mexico’s Ambassador to Kenya, Erasmo R. Martínez, CIMMYT and Kenya are now exploring the potential for Mexican technologies to improve food security in Kenya.

Maize is the main staple food in Kenya, but the supply chain remains vulnerable to aflatoxin contamination caused by fungal infections. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 25% of global food production is affected by mycotoxins (aflatoxin is a type of mycotoxin), and this contamination is thought to cost Africa US $670 million in lost exports to the European Union alone.

Sicily Kariuki was joined by CIMMYT’s Natalia Palacios and representatives from the Unga Ltd & Chairman Millers Association in Kenya, the Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO), Mexico’s National Institute of Forestry, Agriculture, and Livestock Research (INIFAP), and the Mexican Agency for Development Cooperation (AMEXCID).

The visiting delegation observed the process of nixtamalization at an INIFAP experiment station, visited a tortilla maker, and even tried their hands at making tortillas themselves.

Charles Bett, senior research officer at KALRO Katumani, believes that Mexican methods of eating maize could soon catch on in Kenya. “Right now wheat chapattis are very popular, but as they are expensive they are only for celebrations,” he explained. The next big thing could well be a Mexican taco.

In Pakistan, maize is planted on 0.97 million hectares, of which 0.42 million are located in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). The maize crop in KP is sown predominantly by hand and farmers practice a variety of methods such as broadcast and line sowing. Small farmers broadcast the maize seed and then do a shallow cultivation; however, seed is wasted with this method.

Maize is also line-planted, which involves placing rope or string lengthwise with marks at specific distances. The maize seed is then planted with a hoe in what is known as the Thapa method, which is very labor intensive.

WPEPs Annual Planning Meeting-3The Wheat Productivity Enhancement Program (WPEP), funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), held its annual wheat planning meeting organized by Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) and CIMMYT on 8-10 September 2015 in Islamabad.

WPEP aims to improve wheat productivity in Pakistan through rust surveillance, breeding, pre-breeding, seed multiplication, agronomy, and capacity building. The meeting highlighted the progress of research institutes across the country during 2014-15, the production challenges they face, and the way forward to improve wheat productivity.

Acknowledging the efforts of WPEP during the inaugural session, Sikander Hayat Khan Bosan, Federal Minister for National Food Security and Research, said that Pakistani farmers have been able to double their wheat yields during the past few years. The USDA, international experts, PARC, and CIMMYT have brought a new development paradigm to Pakistan’s agricultural sector in the form of the WPEP.

PARC Chairman Iftikhar Ahmad commended the efforts of researchers to successfully combat the wheat rust diseases. He also emphasized that policies should be more farmer-friendly so that farmers could make the most of their hard work.

Briefing participants on WPEP’s successes, David Marshall, USDA/ARS-Plant Science Research Unit, mentioned its research activities, inter-institutional collaboration, development of greenhouse and rust inoculation facilities, laboratories, and agricultural machinery. He added that the Karnal bunt (KB) problem in wheat is spreading in Pakistan and hindering seed exports. If, for several years, collaborating institutions take actions such as treating seed with fungicides, breeding KB resistant varieties, and providing KB-free seeds, this would greatly decrease the inoculum load and help control the disease.

David Williams, Agricultural Counselor, U.S. Embassy, acknowledged the efforts of CIMMYT, PARC, and all the national organizations involved in improving wheat productivity.

CIMMYT Country Representative Imtiaz Muhammad summarized WPEP’s achievements over the past five years and the support it has provided to improve wheat production. He updated the participants on the rust races that have been identified, including 4 stem rust, 28 yellow rust, and 14 leaf rust races. He assured them that CIMMYT will continue to work towards enhancing wheat production in Pakistan in close partnership with national and international partners.

Farmer representatives from across Pakistan attended the meeting and described the challenges they face, mainly, purchasing quality seed at an affordable price and being able to market their agricultural products. Participants expressed their appreciation for the support of USDA, PARC, and CIMMYT in enhancing wheat production.

In October CIMMYT Director General Martin Kropff, BOT Chair John Snape, GWP Director Hans-Joachim Braun, and IWWIP Head Alex Morgunov were received by Minister Kutbeddin Arzu, who was accompanied by Masum Burak, Director General of Turkey’s General Directorate of Policy and Agricultural Research.

Turkey-CIMMYT bilateral relations hark back to the 1980s, with the establishment of the cooperative winter wheat program, which has been highly successful in the areas of germplasm development, research, and variety release. The Cooperative Soil-Borne Pathogen program established in the early 2000s produced practical outcomes and developed into a recognized leader in its field. Turkey, as host country and partner, contributed substantially to its success. The results of this bilateral cooperation were discussed during the meeting with Minister Arzu.

Both Turkey and CIMMYT are driven by food security concerns and both contribute to enhancing crop production through the application of new technologies. There is great potential for future collaboration targeting maize germplasm development, conservation agriculture, and socioeconomic research. Minister Arzu and the CIMMYT delegation agreed to develop the vision and concepts that will define their future collaboration.

The Wheat Productivity Enhancement Program (WPEP) held a training course on national seed technology, organized by CIMMYT in partnership with Pakistan’s Federal Seed Certification and Registration Department (FSC&RD), on 10-12 September 2015 in Islamabad.

During the opening session, CIMMYT Country Representative Imtiaz Muhammad informed the participants on the WPEP’s mandate for accelerated wheat seed multiplication of rust resistant varieties including stem rust resistant varieties with a focus on Ug99, its constraints, and early generation seed multiplication of newly released varieties.

The training covered variety maintenance including head rows, progeny rows, progeny blocks, breeder seed production, variety registration, seed multiplication of pre-basic, basic, and certified seed, plant breeders’ rights, seed enterprises and up-scaling of varieties resistant to Ug99 and other rusts.

The course was attended by 60 participants including seed certification officers, seed analysts, and seed growers, as well as representatives of public and private seed companies, agriculture training institutes, the agriculture extension department, and research institutes. Also in attendance were women seed analysts from the seed regulatory department.

Accelerated seed multiplication of pre-release varieties is needed to produce seeds of varieties resistant to Ug99 and other rusts and deliver them to the farming community. WPEP facilitates the screening of wheat breeding lines for both seedling and adult plant resistance to Ug99. This training will enable the participants to better assist wheat breeders during variety maintenance activities and accelerated pre-basic seed multiplication and will provide a sound base for multiplying basic and certified seed. Participants also held extensive discussions on quality seed production, improved agronomic practices, seed diseases, seed storage, and seed handling during transport.

CIMMYT-WPEP has already provided pre-basic and basic seed to public seed corporations, private seed companies, and farmers throughout the country in order to have large quantities of quality seed available, with the expectation that seed certification will be arranged locally. This training will facilitate testing of crop and seed purity, which is required for crop and seed certification.

At the closing, Seerat Asghar, Federal Secretary, Ministry of National Food Security and Research, and FSC&RD Director General Shakeel Ahmad Khan acknowledged CIMMYT’s continuous contributions and its cooperation in holding such a valuable training course in Pakistan. These types of courses create awareness of variety maintenance and early generation seed multiplication, which are essential for achieving sound certified seed production in Pakistan.

SYDNEY, Australia, October 9 (CIMMYT) – A recent gathering of more than 600 international scientists highlighted the complexity of wheat as a crop and emphasized the key role wheat research plays in ensuring global food security now and in the future.

Specialist scientists and other members of the global wheat community attended two back-to-back wheat symposiums stretching over nine days from September 17 to 25 in Sydney, Australia. The first, a workshop hosted by the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI), focused on Ug99 wheat rust disease. At the second, the five-day International Wheat Conference, which is held every five years, scientists dissected topics ranging from the intricate inner workings of the wheat genome to nutritional misrepresentations of wheat in the popular media.

Hans Braun, head of the Global Wheat Program at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the CGIAR Wheat Research Program, delivered a keynote presentation focused on new research, which shows that about 70 percent of spring bread and durum wheat varieties released in developing countries over the 20-year period between 1994 and 2014 were bred or are derived from wheat lines developed by scientists working for the CGIAR consortium of agricultural researchers. On a global basis, more than 60 percent of the released varieties are related to CIMMYT or International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) germplasm.

Benefits of CGIAR wheat improvement research, conducted mainly by CIMMYT and ICARDA, range from $2.8 billion to $3.8 billion a year, he said, highlighting the economic benefits of international collaboration in wheat improvement research.

“Investment in agricultural research pays a huge dividend,” said Martin Kropff, CIMMYT’s director general, during a keynote address. “Investment in public research is a ‘triple win,’ leading to more food and income for the rural poor, lower prices for the urban poor, and extra stability and income for farmers in developed donor countries such as Australia, where gains are tens of millions a year.”

Bram Govaerts, who heads sustainable intensification efforts for CIMMYT in Latin America and leads the MasAgro project, demonstrated how minimal soil disturbance, permanent soil cover, and crop rotation can simultaneously boost yields, increase profits and protect the environment. Under MasAgro, some 400,000 hectares have been planted using improved technologies and agronomic practices; more than 200,000 producers are involved, of which 21 percent are women.

Sanjaya Rajaram, former CIMMYT wheat program director and 2014 World Food Prize laureate, described how wheat production must increase from the current 700 million metric tons a year to 1 billion metric tons a year by 2050 in order to keep up with population growth. Wheat currently provides 20 percent of calories and 20 percent of protein in the global human diet, he said, adding that the world’s food supply also faces the threat of climate-change related global warming.

“To date, scientists have been unable to sufficiently increase yields to meet demand through hybridization,” Rajaram said. “It’s time to invest in biotechnology to ensure yields can provide nourishment for an ever-hungrier planet. Simultaneously, we must maintain balance in the food chain and restore depleted carbon in the soil. Such concerns as disease resilience, seed diversity, water management and micronutrient imbalance must also be tackled.”

Ethiopia-based CIMMYT scientist David Hodson provided a retrospective on 10 years of Ug99 stem rust surveillance, while Kenya-based CIMMYT scientist Sridhar Bhavani provided an overview of progress made in breeding durable adult plant resistance to rust diseases and combining rust resistance in high yielding backgrounds over the past decade.

The Ug99 virulent disease threatens food security as it creeps steadily from its origin in Uganda towards the breadbasket regions of Asia.

“Technology can help us fight Ug99 stem rust, but we’re always going to need good field pathologists and researchers on the ground,” said Hodson, who also runs the Rust Tracker website.

Despite efforts to develop wheat that is resistant to damaging stem, stripe, and leaf rusts, these diseases, which have existed for 10,000 years, will continue to thwart scientists, said Philip Pardey, a professor in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota, adding that the annual global investment in wheat rust research should be $108 million a year in perpetuity.

Pardey determined in a recent study that global losses from all three rusts average at least 15.04 tons a year, equivalent to an average annual loss of about $2.9 billion.

Jessica Rutkoski, a quantitative geneticist who works as an adjunct associate scientist at CIMMYT and an assistant professor at Cornell University, discussed the implications of new technologies for more durable resistance to rust.

Wheat physiology was also under discussion, with CIMMYT physiologists Matthew Reynolds and Gemma Molero delivering presentations on phenotyping, pre-breeding strategies, genetic gains, and spike photosynthesis. Their work also involves the use of ancient landraces, which may hold the secret to creating wheat resilient to global warming caused by climate change.

CIMMYT’s Alexey Morgunov demonstrated how a number of ancient landrace genotypes grown by farmers in Turkey have shown signs that they are resistant to abiotic and biotic stresses, which could help in the development of heat and disease resistant wheat varieties.

CIMMYT’s Zhonghu He discussed progress on wheat production and genetic improvement in China, while Sukhwinder Singh described his work characterizing gene bank biodiversity and mobilizing useful genetic variation – pre-breeding – into elite breeding lines. Bhoja Basnet covered hybrid wheat breeding at CIMMYT.

A session on nutrition and wheat targeted some of the myths swirling around wheat and gluten. CIMMYT’s Velu Govindan gave an update on his research into breeding and delivering biofortified high zinc wheat varieties to farmers. Zinc deficiency limits childhood growth and decreases resistance to infections.

Kropff also delivered a keynote presentation on wheat and the role of gender in the developing world, which preceded the BGRI Women in Triticum Awards, presented by Jeanie Borlaug Laube, daughter of the late Nobel Peace Prize laureate and CIMMYT wheat breeder Norman Borlaug.

Kropff explained that each component of the strategy for research into wheat farming systems at CIMMYT includes a gender dimension, whether it is focused on improving the evidence base, responding to the fact that both women and men can be end users and beneficiaries of new seeds and other technologies, or ensuring that gender is considered part of capacity-building efforts.

Bekele Abeyo, CIMMYT wheat breeder and pathologist for sub-Saharan Africa, won a $100 prize in the BGRI poster competition for his poster explaining the performance of CIMMYT-derived wheat varieties in Ethiopia.

A team of Kenyan scientists were recognized for their contribution to the protection of the global wheat supply from Ug99 stem rust disease. Plant pathologist Ruth Wanyera and wheat breeders Godwin Macharia and Peter Njau of the Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Research Organization received the 2015 BGRI Gene Stewardship Award.