News – Page 156

Growing more: sustainable intensification in southern Africa

Written by on March 4, 2014. Posted in Features.

By Christian Thierfelder/CIMMYT

The “double-up legume system” improves food security in Malawi by increasing yield and farmers’ incomes. Photos: Christian Thierfelder

Gently undulating plains and green maize fields dominate the landscape of central Malawi as far as the eye can see. The ridges, furrows and bare soil in between, resulting from traditional land preparation, are common. Heavy rainfalls and accelerated soil erosion turn the Chia Lagoon, connected to Lake Malawi, brown and murky. The continued loss of soil fertility and the need to adapt to climate variability led CIMMYT and its partners to introduce conservation agriculture (CA) in Malawi in 2005.

The Nkhotakota district, where conservation agriculture systems have been widely adopted, shows changes in the landscape, such as residue-covered soil surfaces along the roadsides. Farmers are embracing the new CA concepts and are successfully growing maize directly planted with a pointed stick. CIMMYT and partner organizations including Total LandCare and the Ministry of Agriculture, funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development, support these efforts. The impacts of CA in Malawi are obvious. More than 30,000 farmers in the central part of the country have been informed about the practices and now use them on their own fields, which is a direct result of CIMMYT science and the concerted efforts of private, governmental extension and national research organizations.

Farmer Christopher Helima shows a new drought-tolerant maize variety grown using conservation agriculture.

Farmer Belemoti Sikelo, from the Mwansambo Extension Planning Area, has participated in the program for more than eight years. “I used to be a farmer that always ran out of maize grain in February or March and had to work for other farmers in the area to enable my family and me to survive,” Sikelo said. “Since I started using conservation agriculture practices, we have always had enough food during the critical months. I have expanded the land area under conservation agriculture on my farm and I have also tried conservation agriculture without expensive herbicides; I believe it is possible to apply conservation agriculture techniques without chemical weed control, but it needs good management and residue cover to reduce the weed pressure. Farmers around me come and visit my demonstration plots and ask me about my secrets for a good-looking maize crop. They admire the fields where I have planted groundnuts and maize under conservation agriculture.”

Disease pressure on traditionally monocropped maize has forced farmers to rotate maize with cowpeas, groundnuts and pigeonpea. Through diversified crop rotations, they have managed to control the parasitic weed striga (Striga asiatica L.), fungal diseases and damage from white grubs, the larvae of the black maize beetle (Phyllophaga ssp. and Heteronychus spp.). As an added advantage, they have improved family nutrition and have surplus produce to sell in local markets.

A team of researchers from Brazil, Malawi, Mexico and Zimbabwe visited longterm on-station and on-farm CA trials and demonstrations in central Malawi during 4-8 February to monitor progress and impact, in their quest to sustainably intensify smallholder farming systems.

The use of conservation agriculture multiplies these benefits. Legumes such as groundnuts, cowpeas and soybeans can be grown on flat soil with half the row spacing, which is not possible under the conventional ridge and furrow system. The increased plant population has more than doubled grain yield, provides better ground cover and reduces soil erosion. The need to grow more food on the same land area has spurred innovation. To increase legume production, farmers have started to adopt the “double-up legume system.” Growing legumes with different growth habits side-byside – for example pigeon pea with cowpea or groundnuts – increases farmers’ yields and incomes even more, while also improving food security.

Lastly, drought-tolerant maize varieties provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa (DTMA) project were recently introduced and are being tested under different crop management systems. With the new stress-tolerant maize cultivars, farmers can now overcome seasonal dry spells and to grow longer season varieties. The risk of crop failure is reduced under conservation agriculture due to better moisture retention on residue-covered fields. This important benefit will be key in the coming years, as temperatures will likely increase and rainfalls become more erratic.

The Borlaug Summit on Wheat for Food Security: worldwide celebrations

Written by on March 3, 2014. Posted in News.

By Brenna Goth/CIMMYT

CIMMYT isn’t the only organization recognizing what would have been the 100th birthday of scientist and hunger fighter Dr. Norman E. Borlaug. There’s about one month to go until Dr. Borlaug’s birthday on 25 March but the celebrations will continue throughout the year.

We’ve mapped them out below, based on this list compiled by the World Food Prize.

View the interactive version here.

There’s still time to participate. CIMMYT is collecting stories and photos in advance of the Borlaug Summit on Wheat for Food Security in March while the World Food Prize is asking how you’ll help feed the world in honor of Dr. Borlaug. Submit your response here.
Follow #Borlaug100 on social media for the latest celebration news.

Training builds research skills

Written by on February 26, 2014. Posted in News.

By Rajiv Sharma /CIMMYT

CIMMYT-Afghanistan organized a training event for staff from the Agricultural Research Institute of Afghanistan (ARIA) of the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL) from 26-29 January in Kabul. Entitled “Experimental Design: Constitution, Analysis and Interpretation,” the event helped identify constraints to improving the quality of research and strengthen the capacity to integrate statistical procedures in research methodologies. Agricultural research deals with variability stemming from both controllable and uncontrollable sources.

Partitioning out the two and determining whether observed variation originates from real differences or are from chance is central to field experimentation. When Ram Sharma, cereal breeder for the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Area (ICARDA) and instructor of the event, asked participants what they expected to learn from the training, they responded that they were interested in how to design an experiment as well as how to interpret and write scientific reports. Sharma is also part of the CGIAR Program for Central Asia and Caucasus, Tashkent.

CIMMYT-Afghanistan organized an experimental design training in Kabul. Photo: CIMMYT-Afghanistan

The event was attended by 35 participants from ARIA, the Department of Plant Protection and Quarantine (PPQD), the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Joint Development Associates, MAIL, Kabul University and the MAIL Department of Irrigation. Sharma emphasized the importance of statistics in agricultural research as well as the use of replication, randomization and local control. Completely randomized designs (CRD) and factorial designs were also covered. Sharma explained that CRD can be used to analyze a farmer’s field after cultivation to determine in-field variance. He also taught the participants how to use crop statistic software and make a field book using computer programs. Example analyses showed attendees how to analyze their own data and interpret them. Qasem Obaidi, director of ARIA, closed the program and said it was helpful for the researchers and agronomists.

He thanked CIMMYT-Afghanistan, Sharma and CIMMYT’s Rajiv Kumar Sharma for their help. CIMMYT-Afghanistan also used the occasion to congratulate three of its staff members, Abdul Qayum, Shafi Ahmad and Mohammad Nasim, for completing 10 years of service to CIMMYT.

Innovative farm machinery transforms agriculture in Bangladesh

Written by on February 25, 2014. Posted in News.

By Anuradha Dhar/CIMMYT

A new CIMMYT book, Made in Bangladesh: Scale-appropriate machinery for agricultural resource conservation, highlights the innovative machinery that can be used with two-wheeled tractors (2WT) for sustainable farming and gives detailed technical designs to help standardize production quality, making the machines more accessible to farmers.

A local service provider uses a 2WT-based seed drill. (Photo by Color Horizon)

Agricultural mechanization in South Asia is helping conserve natural resources, improve productivity and increase profits, but many small-scale farmers have yet to benefit. Factors such as high costs and farmers’ lack of access to credit make the machinery unaffordable for resource-poor farmers. However, Bangladesh leads by example and has been a hotbed of innovation, particularly with the 2WTs that are more appropriate for small-scale farmers than the four-wheel variety. Bangladesh has a strong agricultural tradition – nearly twothirds of its population works in agriculture. It has achieved near self-sufficiency in rice production and has rapidly developed its agricultural sector over the past 20 years, despite being ranked 146th on the global human development index and having roughly half the per capita income of India. Bangladesh’s agriculture sector contributes 19 percent to the country’s gross domestic product. This is the bright side.

The other side, however, is that farmers’ land-holdings are very small – an average farming household owns just 0.2 hectares or less – and Bangladesh is home to intensive cropping rotations. Every square centimeter of arable land is used 1.8 times a year, putting intense pressure on natural resources and making the system unsustainable in the long term. Farmers have to continually adapt to challenges including climate change, rising temperatures and increasing fuel prices to sustain productivity.

Many farmers are using innovative agricultural machinery to improve the precision and speed of planting and harvesting operations while reducing fuel, irrigation water and labor requirements. With the introduction of cheap, easy-to-operate and easy-to-maintain 2WTs, agriculture in Bangladesh has become highly mechanized during the last decade. Nearly 80 percent of farmers use 2WTs because they are versatile and can be fitted with a variety of innovative auxiliary equipment for planting, threshing and irrigation.

Made in Bangladesh highlights these innovations and includes reviews and designs of the machinery used with 2WTs for resource-conserving practices, including zero tillage and strip tillage seed and fertilizer drills, bed planters, axial flow irrigation pumps, strip tillage blades, improved furrow openers and seed metering mechanisms. Each chapter has scaled technical designs of the machinery, developed with computer-aided drafting to allow manufacturers in Bangladesh and beyond to reproduce and make improvements on the machines. “Many of the machines in the book are inspiring innovations,” said Timothy Krupnik, CIMMYT cropping systems agronomist and one of the book’s authors. “Bangladesh is often seen in a negative light – most international media focuses on its political tragedies, grinding poverty and pressing environmental concerns. But, if you live in Bangladesh, you get inspired every day by the creative ways that many of the world’s poorest people come up with creative solutions to the problems they face. All of the machines in the book were either designed and made in Bangladesh, or borrowed from other machines in South and Southeast Asia and then were manufactured in Bangladesh.”

CSISA-MI is helping increase the adoption of resource-conserving machines by farmers. (Photo: Timothy Krupnik)

The book’s technical designs can be easily replicated by machinery manufacturers, scientists or farmers. “The drawings were developed in a reverse engineering process, where I measured the machines manually and immediately sketched them on paper by hand,” said co-author Santiago Santos Valle. “Once back in the office, I produced the computer-aided drawings using the hand-made sketches.” Spending hours of work recreating these sketches on the computer, Santos Valle painstakingly created all the technical designs in the book.

A learning module on technical drawing interpretation and instructions on how to use the drawings have also been included. Standardization and Affordability There is a great need for small-scale farmers to adopt new machinery to overcome rural labor shortages in places like Bangladesh. “Wheat and maize yields decline between 1 and 1.5 percent per day when planted late, so you can imagine the effect if you use the machines to reduce tillage,” Krupnik explained. “Applying seed and fertilizer in one go can save seven to eight days that farmers would have otherwise spent plowing and preparing the land.” One of the most significant problems confronting mechanization in South Asia is design standardization. “Bangladesh has been a ‘hot bed’ of innovation, particularly for the two-wheel tractor,” said Andrew McDonald, CIMMYT cropping systems agronomist and co-author. “But much of this innovation has not reached farmers at scale because commercialization has been impeded by the lack of standardization. Essentially, most workshops create a unique machine every time a new piece is fabricated, which drives up costs to both manufacture and repair the machinery. Quality control is also an issue.”

He emphasized that CIMMYT is playing a catalytic role to ensure high-quality machinery is available at a reasonable cost in Bangladesh. The organization is helping formalize the design elements of innovative machinery and working with workshops and industrial houses to implement these designs. In the USAID-Bangladesh Mission funded project, Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia – Mechanization and Irrigation (CSISA-MI), CIMMYT works with the NGO International Development Enterprises (iDE) to develop and execute business models to encourage companies and agricultural manufacturers to produce and distribute the machines through commercial mechanisms.

In turn, agricultural service providers are linked to finance entities and farmers to purchase machines and to assure demand in the field. These efforts receive technical backing from CIMMYT scientists, who assure that land is planted with reduced tillage implements or irrigated with energy efficient pumps. As a result, the adoption of these machines has significantly increased in the last few months – the machinery is now being used on over 2,000 hectares of new land in southern Bangladesh alone – more than a four-fold increase compared to the year before.

The machines included in the book have wide applicability outside of Bangladesh, such as in smallholder farming contexts in Asia and Africa. “We want the work done in Bangladesh to inspire agricultural machinery manufacturers to reproduce and improve machines in other countries,” Krupnik said. “For this reason the book is free and available through open access and can be downloaded, printed and shared with others as widely as possible.” The PDF version of the book is available from the CIMMYT repository.

The Borlaug Summit on Wheat for Food Security: speaker spotlight

Written by on February 24, 2014. Posted in Features.

By Brenna Goth/CIMMYT

Rachel Laudan learns how to use a grindstone (a Mexican metate). Photo courtesy of Rachel Laudan.

Food historian Rachel Laudan will explain wheat’s impact on world history at the Borlaug Summit on Wheat for Food Security. The Summit, which will be held in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, Mexico, in March, will feature Laudan’s lecture “Wheat: The Grain at the Center of Civilization.”

Wheat, used in many of the most popular dishes across the globe, has changed the world, according to Laudan.

“No one would have predicted this of the hard-to-process seeds of this finicky, low- yielding grass,” she writes in a preview to her talk. “Nor would they have predicted that processing wheat would have encouraged new forms of economic organization, expressed political and social status and symbolized moral and religious beliefs.”

She recently released the book Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History, a story of how food is interconnected with economies, beliefs, social structures and politics throughout time and across the world. The book is a finalist for the International Association of Culinary Professionals 2014 Food Writing Awards. Laudan describes her inspiration on her blog.

Here, Laudan has provided us with an excerpt of the book focused on the difficulties of grinding wheat:

When I was a little girl, my father decided to make some flour from the wheat we had grown on the farm. He tried pounding it with a pestle and mortar but all he got was broken grains, not flour. He put it through the hand mincer screwed to the edge of the table with the same result. Finally, he attacked it with a hammer on the flagstone floor. After he gave up, defeated, my mother cleared up the mess. It was sobering to realize that if the commercial millers vanished, we could have starved even with barns full of sacks of wheat.

To turn wheat into flour, you have to shear, not pound, the hard grains, which requires a grindstone, as the people of Lake Kinneret had discovered. A friend in Mexico, where hand grinding still goes on, showed me how it worked. She knelt at the upper end of a grindstone, called a metate – a saddle-shaped platform on three inverted pyramidal legs, hewn from a single piece of volcanic rock. She mounded a handful of barley, took the mano, a stone shaped like a squared-off rolling pin, in both hands with her thumbs facing back to nudge the grain into place, and, using the whole weight of her upper body, sheared the mano over the grain. After half a dozen passes, she had broken the grains, which now clustered at the bottom end of the metate. Carefully scraping them up with her fingertips, she moved them back to the top, and started shearing again, this time producing white streaks of flour. By the time she had sheared the grain from top to bottom five or six times, she had produced a handful of flour.

Grinding may look easy, and it is, for the first ten minutes. To grind a quantity of grain, though, as I found out when I tried, takes skill, control, physical strength, and time. I was quickly panting, sweaty, and dizzy, my hair in my eyes, and the mano slipping at awkward angles. Grinding is hard on the knees, hips, back, shoulders, and elbows, causing arthritis and bone damage. Grinding is lonely, too exhausting to allow for chatter. Kneeling to grind with the breasts swinging can be seen as submissive, demeaning, and sexually provocative, as lascivious eighteenth- and nineteenth-century illustrations of Mexican women grinding make clear. The heavy labor was relegated to women, convicts, and slaves, called “grinding slaves” in the technical language of seventh-century English court documents. Even today Mexican women in remote villages grind five hours daily to prepare enough maize for a family of five or six. For generation upon generation of grinders in the bread-eating parts of the world, the author of Genesis (3:19) had it nailed. “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

You can purchase the book through the University of California Press or Amazon. For more thoughts from Rachel Laudan, check out her website and read her blog.

See all of the Summit speakers here.

CIMMYT scientist attends global forum in Middle East

Written by on February 19, 2014. Posted in News.

DTMA seed systems specialist Peter Setimela (right) with BBC journalist Stephen Sackur, who chaired the meeting’s opening session. Photo: Peter Setimela

By Peter Setimela/CIMMYT

CIMMYT Seed Systems Specialist Peter Setimela participated in the Global Forum for Innovations in Agriculture from 3-5 February in the United Arab Emirates. The theme of the conference was “driving innovation for an agricultural revolution.” More than 1,800 delegates and 120 exhibitors were hosted by Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF).

Hill Maize Research Project IV welcomes new leader

Written by on February 18, 2014. Posted in News.

By K.C. Dilli /CIMMYT

The Hill Maize Research project (HMRP) commends the commitment, dedication and service of Guillermo Ortiz-Ferrara, who retired on 31 January after leading the project for nearly nine years.

Maize interventions discussed in Pakistan

Written by on February 17, 2014. Posted in News.

By AbduRahman Beshir/CIMMYT

Partners with the Agricultural Innovation Program for Pakistan (AIP) are working to enhance availability and access to maize seeds and varieties. The AIP maize working group discussed problems and shared recommendations to help improve maize production and productivity during its inception meeting from 3-4 February in Islamabad.

Dr. Iftikhar Ahmad, chairman of PARC, leads a group discussion. On his left is Shahid Masood, a member of the plant sciences division of PARC. On his right are Michael Wyzan, USAID representative, and Imtiaz Muhammad, AIP interim project leader and CIMMYT country representative.

Maize follows wheat and rice as Pakistan’s third most important cereal crop and is first in productivity. Covering 1.14 million hectares with a national average grain yield of about 4.0 tons per hectare (t/ha), maize area, production and productivity increased by 14.5 percent, 26 percent and 13.6 percent, respectively, from 2010-11 to 2013, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. The high demand for feed and food are the main forces driving the increased production of maize in Pakistan. Punjab and KPK provinces are the leaders in maize production. Most maize production receives irrigation, and the majority of maize farmers produce the crop in rotation with wheat and rice.

Borlaug Summit on Wheat for Food Security: wheat research roundup

Written by on February 14, 2014. Posted in Features.

By Brenna Goth/CIMMYT

What do you know about wheat?

The crop is the focus of the Borlaug Summit on Wheat for Food Security, an event CIMMYT is hosting in March to celebrate what would have been the 100th birthday of Dr. Norman Borlaug. Topics of the summit range from the history of wheat, to the work of Dr. Borlaug, to climate change and world grain policy.

Here are a few things you might not know about wheat and wheat research. Take a look and then test your knowledge by taking our wheat quiz!

CIMMYT partners to combat parasite

Written by on February 13, 2014. Posted in News.

By Brenna Goth/CIMMYT

A partnership launched on 3 February by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Feed the Future Partnering for Innovation and led by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) will help CIMMYT and other partners to fight a parasitic plant affecting maize production.

Known locally as “witchweed,” the parasitic plant Striga spp. casts no spells but uses needle-like tendrils to suck nutrients from maize roots. The weed is prevalent in Nyanza and Western Provinces of Kenya, where it grows on some 200,000 hectares and causes crop damage worth an estimated US$ 80 million per year. Photo: CIMMYT

The three-year, performancebased grant of US$ 3 million is the largest grant awarded by Feed the Future Partnering for Innovation to date, according to an AATF press release. Feed the Future Partnering for Innovation supports projects increasing the productivity of smallholder farmers while AATF promotes sustainable agricultural technology for smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The funding will help improve maize production in east Africa by “upscaling the commercialization of StrigAway^TM – an herbicidetolerant seed and treatment that controls the infestation of Striga – a parasitic weed that often results in total crop loss and even abandonment of arable land,” the press release said. Striga – commonly known as witchweed – can cause 20 to 80 percent crop loss in maize and affects 1.4 million hectares in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, according to the release.

CIMMYT helped develop the StrigAway^TM technology package along with partners including the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. An herbicide-tolerant maize variety is coated with an herbicide that kills Striga when the seed is sown and sprouts.

Other partners, including the agrochemical company BASF and six local seed companies, will promote the project in the three target countries. The project aims to create 4,000 demonstration plots and sell 1,000 metric tons of seed to 20,000 smallholder farmers. Partners will also offer technical support on how to use the seed and launch campaigns and promotion of StrigAway^TM.

Nutrient management tool wins award

Written by Sam Storr on February 12, 2014. Posted in News.

A tool developed by CIMMYT and the International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI) offering site-specific nutrient management (SSNM) advice to help farmers achieve higher yields more efficiently recently won an innovation award.

Nutrient Expert^TM decision support tools received the best innovation award in the information and communications technology category at the Bihar Innovation Forum II, which recognizes innovations to improve rural livelihoods in India. These tools were in development by CIMMYT and IPNI for five years and were launched in June 2013.

In South Asia, 90 percent of smallholder farmers do not have access to soil testing. The computer-based support tools aim to provide them with simple advice on how to get the most from fertilizer inputs. An IPNI study funded by the CGIAR Research Program on Maize (MAIZE CRP) Competitive Grant Initiative (CGI) found that farming practices and the resources available to farmers vary hugely in east India.

The cutting-edge value of Nutrient Expert^TM is that it offers specific information at the farm level, where it can provide the greatest benefits. Nutrient Expert^TM is especially relevant because it was developed through dialogue and participation with stakeholders, which also raises awareness and eventual adoption by users.

It is now used by the Indian National Agricultural Research System and is a key intervention used by the CRP on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) in its Climate Smart Villages. The Nutrient Expert^TM approach is also being applied to maize and wheat in other areas of Southeast Asia, China, Kenya and Zimbabwe.

CIMMYT seed heads to the frozen north

Written by on February 11, 2014. Posted in News.

By Miriam Shindler/CIMMYT

CIMMYT’s Wellhausen-Anderson Gene Bank sent its fifth shipment of seed to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway last week for safeguarding.

Thirty-four boxes containing about 420 kilograms of seed left from CIMMYT’s El Batán headquarters on 7 February for the vault, which is deeply embedded in the frozen mountains of Svalbard. Isolated on the Norwegian Island of Spitsbergen, halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, the Global Seed Vault is keeping the genetic diversity of the world’s crops safe for future generations by storing duplicates of seeds from gene banks across the globe.

Tom Payne (left), Denise Costich and Miguel Ángel López help load the seed shipment from the CIMMYT Germplasm Bank, on its way to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway. Photo: Xochiquetzal Fonseca/CIMMYT

CIMMYT sent 1,946 accessions of maize and 5,964 of wheat accessions to add to that collection. Over the past several years, CIMMYT has sent 123,057 accessions of maize and wheat, which is essential for protecting valuable genetic diversity. CIMMYT is working with the Norwegian government and the Global Crop Diversity Trust, who manage the Global Seed Vault, to keep maize and wheat seed safe against a global catastrophe.

CIMMYT will continue to send backups of regenerated seed to Svalbard each year until its entire maize and wheat collection is represented in the vault, according to Denise Costich, head of the Maize Germplasm Bank. “Our goal is to have 100 percent of our collection backed up at Svalbard by 2021,” she said. “We continually compile a list of accessions that still need to be backed up; these are new introductions or new regenerations of accessions with low seed count or low germination.”

With more than 27,000 accessions of maize and 130,000 of wheat, CIMMYT’s gene bank is a treasure chest of genetic resources for two of the planet’s most important crops. Nonetheless, the Wellhausen-Anderson Gene Bank does not just help insure against seed loss – CIMMYT actively makes use of these collections, distributing seed, free of charge, to more than 700 partner organizations in almost every country across the globe.

In addition, through the Seeds of Discovery (SeeD) project, CIMMYT scientists are unleashing the genetic potential of thousands of landraces and improving understanding of traits utilized in current varieties. It is providing scientists and breeders worldwide with new building blocks to develop climate-smart varieties for resource-poor farmers that will safeguard valuable natural resources and provide affordable and more nutritious food to current and future generations.

Borlaug Summit on Wheat for Food Security: Ciudad Obregón, Mexico

Written by on February 10, 2014. Posted in News.

By Brenna Goth/CIMMYT

Fotor0207111350

CIMMYT will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dr. Norman Borlaug with the Borlaug Summit on Wheat for Food Security from 25 to 28 March. We’re recognizing his legacy and considering its future with an event held where some of Borlaug’s most important work first began – Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, Mexico.

Ciudad Obregón is deeply embedded in the history of Dr. Borlaug and CIMMYT and continues to be shaped by the wheat research taking place there. It has been referred to as “The Town That Wheat Built.”

October 2014 will mark 70 years since Dr. Borlaug first came to Mexico as part of a Mexico-Rockefeller Foundation program. His work started in Ciudad Obregón, in northwest Mexico’s Yaqui Valley. He worked closely with the farmers in the area, a relationship CIMMYT maintains today.

When Dr. Borlaug started his research in Mexico, 60 percent of the country’s wheat was imported. He wrote in a preface to Wheat Breeding at CIMMYT: Commemorating 50 Years of Research in Mexico for Global Wheat Improvement, “Unfortunately, inexperience in breeding for disease resistance by those left in charge led to disastrous stem rust epidemics in 1939-41 that essentially wiped out the whole crop. This was the environment in which I found myself when I arrived to establish a wheat breeding program in Sonora.”

Facing stem rust epidemics, Dr. Borlaug started shuttle breeding to expedite wheat improvement and utilized different locations to grow two generations of wheat in one year. By 1956, Mexico was self-sufficient in food production. Borlaug’s subsequent world travels inspired him to bring young scientists to Mexico for intensive plant breeding courses and send them back to their home countries with wheat samples.

Dr. Borlaug often said the Yaqui Valley was where he most felt at home. His memory lives on in Obregón – one of the city’s main streets is named after him and, in March 2010, the CIMMYT research station was renamed Campo Experimental Norman E. Borlaug. This center continues to be a hub of wheat research and training.

The Borlaug Summit on Wheat for Food Security will recognize the work done at Ciudad Obregón and the impact it had worldwide. The summit will also start new conversations about wheat’s role in food security and what Dr. Borlaug might have done today.

Behind the science: researcher helps remote sensing soar

Written by on February 7, 2014. Posted in Features.

By Brenna Goth/CIMMYT

Members of the wheat physiology group pose with a blimp used for aerial remote sensing.

Since Maria Tattaris began working at CIMMYT two years ago, the blimp used by the wheat physiology group in Ciudad Obregón, Mexico, went from sitting in a box to being a main component of the group’s aerial remote sensing platform.

Maria Tattaris and Ph.D. student Jared Crain place a camera on the blimp in Ciudad Obregón, Mexico. Photos: Courtesy of the wheat physiology group.

Tattaris brought her background in mathematics and experience using remote sensing to study forest fires to contribute to this developing field at CIMMYT. Remote sensing allows researchers to obtain information about an area without physical contact. In terms of crops, remote sensing can be used to observe plant characteristics and dynamics over time and is particularly useful when applied to large areas that are inaccessible or may be otherwise difficult to monitor.

A London native, Tattaris didn’t have much experience with crops before coming to CIMMYT. Nonetheless, her position’s focus on research-based field work struck her interest. “It had everything I was looking for,” she said. She went straight to Ciudad Obregón and began research using the helium-filled blimp, which is tethered and floats as high as 70 meters above the fields to help analyze the physiological properties of wheat.

In addition to the blimp, the team uses an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). This small, remotecontrolled remote helicopter has a thermal camera and multispectral camera attached to it. Images taken by the cameras can identify healthy versus stressed plants, Tattaris said. The resolution of the images can be as high as 4 centimeters – meaning each pixel is 4 meters on the ground – and hundreds of plots can be measured in one take. The airborne remote sensing platform has the potential to be applied as a tool to select the best performing lines.

Images taken by the cameras attached to this unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) can identify healthy versus stressed plants.

Tattaris spends several months of the year in Ciudad Obregón, where she’s in the field researching as early as 5 a.m. or showing her work to visitors. In El Batán, she focuses on data analysis.

Remote sensing is being used across CIMMYT and was recently the focus of a conference organized in Mexico City. The technology can be used to increase efficiency, allow researchers to screen larger trials and reduce error.