September, 2004

The introduction, testing, and promotion of bed planting technologies in Kazakhstan is one aspect of a project between CIMMYT and the German Agency for Technical Cooperation. Partners also aim to create a regional network in Central Asia and to identify, multiply, and promote high-yielding and disease-resistant wheat varieties that will increase productivity and profitability in farmers’ fields.

At first, some traditional farmers told farmer Alexander Merzlikin he was wasting his time experimenting with planting on raised soil beds. New technologies might seem risky to poor farmers who are afraid of losing yields. Merzlikin, who began farming in 1996 to feed his family, bites off the end of a green wheat stalk he is holding, chews it, and spits it out. These cautious farmers have short-term goals, he says, while he is looking to the future and to a sustainable harvest.

“They’re afraid to takes risks,” says Merzlikin, a former driver with light blue eyes, a sunburned face, and gray buzz-cut hair who lives near Almaty, Kazakhstan. He is wearing a yellow and red baseball cap and a blue striped polo shirt with sweatpants. “When land is the only source of income, you have to be sure.” He wants to show cautious farmers that planting with CIMMYT is fruitful, he says.

Merzlikin is excited about the results he has seen after growing wheat on permanent beds for three years. Making fewer passes with machinery in the field saves him almost 50% in fuel, he says. Also, his yields increased from about 2 tons per hectare to almost 4 tons per hectare in 2003. With bed planting, farmers might plant about half as many seeds as they would with conventional planting. In 2002, the project bought five bed planters from Turkey, and five more are being engineered and manufactured in Almaty. Merzlikin says the bed planting furrows allow for even water distribution, help prevent lodging, and make the usually difficult and labor-intensive process of water channeling unnecessary.

Increasing Productivity and Profitability

Merzlikin’s experience with beds is just one aspect of the project “Regional Network for Wheat Variety Promotion and Seed Production,” a collaboration between CIMMYT and the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ). Participants are aiming for a regional network in Central Asia to identify, multiply, and promote high-yielding and disease-resistant wheat varieties. As part of this, they have encouraged communication and collaboration in variety testing among breeders. At institutes in Central Asia, CIMMYT provided training for researchers and breeders, along with courses on agronomy and farm management. Farmers, agronomists, and administrators also attended field days where they learned about new varieties and soon-to-be available technologies. In 2003, 250 participants from 22 countries attended the first Central Asian Wheat Conference, which helped establish and strengthen links between scientists in the region and around the world. Also, the 40 scientists from Central Asia who have had training in wheat breeding and agronomy at CIMMYT’s headquarters in Mexico since 2000 currently contribute to the development and adoption of new varieties and technologies in their home countries.

Promoting Varieties and Seed

In collaboration with regional research institutions, project partners supported the testing of 5,750 experimental varieties between 2002 and 2003. Of those, they selected 790 that are tolerant to lodging and resistant to stem rust, which is the most common disease in the region. A small number of those varieties have already been released for farmer use.

One of the project’s objectives was to strengthen regional institutions that work on wheat breeding, research, and seed production. The partners helped establish private seed companies and supported the creation of a company that provides consulting services to farmers, sells seed, tests and promotes technologies, and submits varieties for official testing. Working with the project and bed planting technologies, this company supported five small-scale farmers in 2003 and 10 farmers in 2004, and it will support 15 farmers in 2005.

Driving a Road Far from Poverty

Economist Toni Rogger, who is funded by the German Development Agency and GTZ to work on the project’s poverty alleviation component, would like to get an overall picture about the constraints farmers in the region are facing and provide information to combat these problems. He also hopes that farmers see the benefits of new technologies and would like them to become more aware of all the components of farming, from A to Z, from soil to sales.

Merzlikin, who has an education in mechanics, epitomizes awareness. He found out that bed planting could be a cost-saving option while attending a CIMMYT-organized course that taught farmers how to calculate production costs. He and two partners combined each of their four hectares with land rented from other people to farm a total of 200 hectares. Even some cautious farmers have asked Merzlikin to help them introduce bed planting on their land, he says. For example, one poor farmer who needed a crop that would be easy to grow independently wanted to grow wheat instead of tobacco. Merzlikin helped him cultivate bed planting and says the resulting wheat looks good.

“To renovate a bicycle is an unnecessary job,” says the translator quizzically, uncertain if the expression the farmer used makes sense in English. Merzlikin thinks that because research and experiments have proven the success of certain farming methods, farmers do not need to reinvent the wheel to improve yields. He waves and chops his hands for emphasis as he talks. “I already knew when I was a driver that science was good and that scientists would help and give advice,” he says.

CIMMYT E-News, vol 5 no. 5, May 2008

CIMMYT is adapting an advanced technology—the doubled haploid approach—to develop inbred lines of tropical maize for sub-Saharan Africa. It promises to reduce costs and speed the arrival of better-adapted maize for resource-poor farmers in the world’s toughest environments.

CIMMYT scientists have begun developing drought tolerant varieties of tropical maize for places like sub-Saharan Africa using a high-tech approach—known as doubled haploids—previously applied principally by commercial seed companies working mostly on temperate maize.

“Haploid” refers to the number of chromosomes in a reproductive cell, like sperm or ovum. In grasses like maize, the reproductive cells—pollen and ovules—contain half the chromosomes of a full-grown individual. Fertilization joins the genetic information from the two parents, and offspring carry paired sets of chromosomes, reflecting the diversity of each parent.

“Maize breeders working on hybrids—the most productive type of maize variety and the one marketed by most seed companies—must at some point create genetically-stable and pure lines of desirable, individual plants, for use as parents of hybrids,” says CIMMYT maize physiologist Jose Luis Araus. Conventionally, breeders get the lines by repeatedly fertilizing selected, individual maize plants with the plant’s own pollen. The process requires expensive field space, labor, and time—normally, seven or more generations, which represents at least three years, even in settings where it’s possible to grow two crops per season.

Purer, faster, cheaper

In the latter part of the 20th century, crop scientists developed a quicker, cheaper path to genetically-uniform parent lines—though a technically intricate method. The first step involves crossing normal maize with special maize types called “inducers,” whose pollen causes the normal maize to produce seed containing haploid embryos. The haploid embryo carries a single set of its own chromosomes, rather than the normal paired sets. The embryos are planted, and subsequent treatment of the seedlings with a particular chemical causes them to make “photocopies” of their haploid chromosomes, resulting in a fertile plant endowed with a doubled set of identical chromosomes and able to produce seed of 100% genetic purity. “The actual treatment, as well as getting from the embryo to a reasonable amount of seed of the pure line, is very complicated,” says Ciro Sánchez Rodríguez, CIMMYT technician in charge of doubled haploid field trials, “but when the process is perfected, it only takes two generations—about one year—and the logistical advantages are tremendous.”

First extensive use in the tropics

CIMMYT is implementing the doubled haploid technology on a research station in Mexico, using drought tolerant plants adapted to sub-Saharan Africa. “CIMMYT’s use of the practice is another example of how we put advanced technologies at the service of disadvantaged, small-scale farmers,” says Araus. “Among other things, this represents a significant opportunity to increase the availability of improved, drought tolerant maize varieties for sub-Saharan Africa,” he says.

Commercial seed companies in Europe and North America have been the main users of the doubled haploid technology, and the inducer genotypes available are of temperate adaptation. “The inducers perform very poorly in the tropical conditions of our Mexico stations,” says Vanessa Prigge, a PhD student from the University of Hohenheim working at CIMMYT to perfect the technique. To generate inducers that work better in tropical settings, Prigge and colleagues are crossing temperate inducers from Hohenheim with CIMMYT maize from Mexico, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. “We expect to have tropical versions of the inducers in a couple years,” she says.

Reaching farmers’ fields

Maize lines from this work will be used initially in the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa (DTMA) and the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) projects.

“This is a very exciting technology,” says Aida Kebede, an Ethiopian PhD student from Hohenheim helping to establish the doubled haploid technology at CIMMYT. “It holds the key to addressing more quickly the persistent problems of African maize growers: drought, disease pressure, and low productivity. I’m happy to contribute!”

Maize is grown as a staple crop often under highly variable, stress-prone conditions by some of the world’s poorest farmers.

They often have few options other than to obtain their food and income from agriculture. Achieving food security is the incentive for many to allocate a disproportionately large part of their land to maize, leaving little area to other crops such as legumes or cash crops. Human malnutrition and soil degradation are frequent and few escape the “poverty trap.”

CIMMYT is already seeing successes in implementing innovative approaches that generate stress tolerant, nutritious maize strains with significantly increased productivity under such harsh conditions.

They permit farmers to produce more and healthier food on a smaller land area, leaving more labor and land for growing soil-replenishing legumes or cash crops. We are enhancing this pioneering work and deploying it to a wide range of stress environments worldwide.

CIMMYT E-News, vol 3 no. 9, September 2006

The Nepal Hill Maize Research Project, supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), reaches out to Nepal’s poorest farmers with new varieties and farming practices selected by the farmers themselves.

Coca Cola, arguably the world’s most ubiquitous commercial beverage, has not yet reached the villagers and farmers who live on top of the cloud-shrouded hills of eastern Nepal. That’s how remote they are. There is a road, but it is 600 meters below in the valley and the only way in and out of the village is via a precarious, rubble-strewn and sometimes terrifyingly steep foot-path. Everything must be carried up and down this track on people’s backs. Here the staple food for centuries has been maize but many farmers in the region cannot grow enough maize to last the year. Their needs have provided a focus for work in which CIMMYT, the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC), SDC, and other partners, reach these “unreached” people.

One of them is Bishnu Maya. She is a single mother of three who farms 0.6 hectares of terraced land on the steep slopes. She is a very good farmer but it takes every penny she earns to make sure her children can go to school. “With education they can get jobs and have a better life,” she says. Bishnu Maya is a ‘dalit’; the poorest of the poor in Nepal, an untouchable often shunned by better-born villagers. Nevertheless, her tiny farm is a marvel. She grows maize, millet, tomatoes, and cucumbers on her land. She has a water buffalo, two cows, some chickens, and goats. A year ago electricity came to the village and now she has a small radio and a light bulb. What she has not had until now is enough maize to last the year. The traditional varieties have small ears, one per plant, and the maize plants themselves grow very tall and often fall down in the wind, not only reducing the maize yield but also damaging the intercropped plants below them.

Maya agreed to help in participatory evaluations of maize varieties developed with material from CIMMYT and NARC that could overcome the main barriers to production on her land. She uses some of her land for a demonstration plot of the variety she has selected as the best replacement for her traditional maize. It is shorter with a sturdier stalk, has two large ears per plant and matures earlier than the maize she has been used to growing. On top of that the new variety stays green after the maize is mature, so it makes a better feed for her livestock.

The project has intentionally focused on women farmers and those who cannot produce enough food to feed their families, testing and promoting technologies that can be implemented by the farmers themselves. While the initial trials are conduced at the NARC research station at Pakhribas, an hour’s drive away once you reach the road in the valley, vital research work is conducted with farmers like Maya on their farms. In the past recommendations about varieties and agricultural practices were based on trials conducted exclusively at research stations, rarely taking into account the real world in which the hill farmers like Maya live and work. “Even on-farm research tended to try to create conditions on farms that matched the research stations, rather than finding solutions to existing farm problems,” says CIMMYT’s Memo Ortiz-Ferrara, who leads the project.

The new approach has helped farmers choose more appropriate varieties based on their own criteria from a “basket of choices” (5-10 varieties are offered in one season). It has also helped to expand areas growing new varieties on one hand, and improve crop management practices on the other. Depending on the location, farmers have observed 20-50% higher grain yield with the new varieties.

“Now I have enough and can sell some surplus to pay for my children’s education,” Bishnu says.

The second phase of the project is just coming to an end and an evaluation team has begun a series of in depth interviews with participating researchers and farmers to determine the overall impact.

Participatory research is a vital part of many CIMMYT projects around the world (see the companion story: CIMMYT researchers say participatory research supports their achievements).

For information contact Memo Ortiz-Ferrara (g.ortiz-ferrara@cgiar.org)

March, 2005

Now that all of CIMMYT’s new program directors have been officially installed, it is time to get acquainted with them, as well as their ideas and plans for the programs. This month we feature Rodomiro Ortiz, director of the Intensive Agro-Ecosystems Program.

What would it take for an accomplished scientist to move to Mexico? For Rodomiro Ortiz, director of the Intensive Agro-Ecosystems Program, all took was a new strategy for CIMMYT. In the new plan he saw a change and a challenge, and he knew that the Intensive Agro-Ecosystems Program could empower research to improve lives. “Science can really impact development—this program interests me because of the relevance it has on livelihoods.” Ortiz comes to CIMMYT, his fourth CGIAR Center, with much experience and a strong tradition for sharing science. “We want to encourage local production in ways that create wealth and reduce risk for farmers and both the rural and urban poor,” he says.

A source of food and income security for rural and urban households in Asia, North Africa, and Latin America, intensive agricultural systems feature large areas of maize and wheat, often accompanied by a combination of other crops. “A large number of the world’s poor live in densely populated, rural areas where their crops sustain local communities and neighboring cities, but they face many problems,” says Ortiz. Production limitations include unsustainable exploitation of water and soils, inefficient use of chemical inputs, and emerging or worsening disease and pest problems. Looking to the future, he says, “While continuing our success in wheat breeding, we want to enhance our maize research and pursue the science behind conservation agriculture.”

Balancing productivity with healthy cropping systems in key areas is a priority for this program. “Enhanced and sustained productivity will help improve human health and rural household food security, and natural resource management is an integral part of this goal,” recognizes Ortiz. With technology such as zero tillage and retained residues, systems can be both productive and ecologically sound. “Together with the Rice-Wheat Consortium, we’ve shared conservation agriculture with over 250,000 farmers in the Indo-Gangetic Plains who now are saving water and decreasing fuel use, all of this while increasing their yields,” he says. Ortiz would like to mirror this momentum in the Mediterranean littoral (coastal region), the Yellow River Basin, and northwestern Mexico, other focus areas for the program.

A Peruvian national, Ortiz holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin in plant breeding and genetics and received his BSc and MSc degrees from UNALM (Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina, Peru). Having worked abroad in the USA, Nigeria, Denmark, India, and most recently in Uganda as director of Research-for-Development at IITA, he carries knowledge of 15 different food crops, maize and wheat included. This background has given him vast experience in cropping systems and management. Ortiz, with hundreds of publications to his name, loves intellectual discourse and discovering how old problems can be solved using innovative approaches. “This new strategic plan continues in CIMMYT’s tradition to excel serving the resource poor,” Ortiz says.

CIMMYT E-News, vol 2 no. 9, September 2005

Techniques from maize may make better wheats.

Wheat farmers do not want their crop to fall over before the grain can be harvested. This condition, lodging, happens when grain weight becomes too heavy for the plant to support, bending the whole plant and limiting yields. In high yielding systems where farmers are able to input nitrogen fertilizer and water, the grain spike gets heavy and the plant can fall over. Big wheat spikes and resistance to lodging are both CIMMYT wheat breeding goals.

David Bergvinson specializes in insect pests in maize, where lodging is also a constraint and insects can exacerbate the problem by damaging a plant’s root system. Scientists have developed several techniques to measure the strength of the roots in maize. Bergvinson decided to try a maize technique on wheat.

“Variety is the spice of life,” says Bergvinson, regarding his shift from maize to wheat for this experiment, “Often we take for granted established techniques within our own crop of research without looking beyond to see how these can be applied to address important issues in other crops.”

With wheat breeder and colleague Richard Trethowan, Bergvinson used an electronic balance or scale to measure the strength of the crown, where the roots branch out into the soil, by pulling vertically on the plant until it is uprooted. In addition, they tested the stem toughness at the base of the plant.

In this literally ground-breaking experiment, Bergvinson and Trethowan hypothesize that wheat which performs well, that is takes the most force to uproot it, should also resist lodging. So far, they have tested fifty wheat lines at three of CIMMYT’s wheat stations in Mexico, all with different environmental and soil conditions. Next season, they hope to confirm the results with further tests at CIMMYT’s field station near Ciudad Obregon.

Although the results are not final, synthetic wheats, bred from durum wheat and wild relatives of wheat, appear to have stood up well in both tests. Synthetics are also known for their ability to withstand drought stress. Wheat lines known to fall prey to lodging performed poorly in the tests, indicating that this relatively straightforward measurement can potentially be used to screen and eliminate lodging susceptible wheats in the breeding program.

April, 2004

Visiting family farms in Punjab this month, US Ambassador to India Dr. David C. Mulford learned how conservation agriculture benefits farmers and the local economy.

For four years, farmer Tara Singh and his family have experimented with zero tillage and bed planting, two techniques promoted by the Rice-Wheat Consortium for the Indo-Gangetic Plains. After meeting with Singh and other farmers, Ambassador Mulford said he was “impressed” to see that the techniques “work in fields and farmers are using them to their advantage.” The techniques have potential to conserve water, improve the quality of the soil, reduce the use of fuel in farming, and improve weed control.

Singh and his family run an intensive and complex farming operation that highlights the pressures and opportunities that are transforming agriculture in this region. Water, especially for agriculture, will become increasingly scarce. Demanding new markets for horticultural crops are emerging. Farmers cannot predict how increasing competition and changing export markets might affect their production of rice and wheat, which are India’s traditional staples but also potentially valuable exports.

On half of the farm, Singh grows rice and wheat in rotation. Wheat covers the ground from November to May, and then rice is planted. On the other half of his land, he has diversified production considerably. After growing rice in the monsoon season, he produces lettuce, broccoli, mustard, and tomato in winter. In spring, Singh’s fields are planted to leeks, bitter gourd, cucurbits, tomatoes, radishes, onions; and mint. Most of these crops are grown in combinations or as relays. Some are grown on raised beds to leave the soil undistributed and to make weed and water control much easier.

Singh’s experimentation is helping researchers to learn how conservation agriculture and diversification might benefit smaller farms with fewer resources.

Ambassador Mulford and others at the field visit discussed some of the challenges and concerns shared by farmers and researchers, such as the need for appropriate field equipment for conservation agriculture, the effects on local labor markets, the role of equipment manufacturers, and the need to cope with large amounts of crop residue without plowing and burning. Despite the challenges, the projected benefits of conservation agriculture are promising. In 2002, researchers at Australia’s Centre for International Economics calculated that the increased use of zero-tillage techniques promoted by the Rice-Wheat Consortium offered a gain of 1.8 million Australian dollars per year to the Indian economy.

The Rice-Wheat Consortium for the Indo-Gangetic Plains was founded in 1994 by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Its goal is to improve the productivity of rice- and wheat-based farming while protecting natural resources. The Consortium receives support from the governments of Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, UK, and USA, as well as from the Asian Development Bank, International Fund for Agricultural Development, and World Bank. Partners include five CGIAR international agricultural research centers, numerous advanced research institutes, equipment manufacturers, NGOs, and farmer groups. CIMMYT is currently the convening CGIAR Center for the Consortium’s work.

Ambassador Mulford was accompanied in the field by his wife and by Embassy staff, including Drs. Larry Paulson and Chad Russell; several farmers from Jalbera Village; Dr. Amjer Singh (Director), Er. B.S. Sidhu (Jt Director), Tarsem Singh (Chief Agriculture Officer), all of the Department of Agriculture, and S.K. Ahluwalia (Deputy Commissioner), Punjab Government; and Dr. Raj K. Gupta and other staff working with Rice-Wheat Consortium. The Ambassador and his delegation also met with the Vice Chancellor of Punjab Agricultural University and with the Governor and Chief Minister of Punjab.

September, 2004

CIMMYT maize breeders Dave Beck and Hugo Cordova organized and led a seed production course on 6-14 September at CIMMYT headquarters in El Batan, Mexico. The course, entitled “Production of High Quality Seed with an Emphasis on Quality Protein Maize,” was funded in part by the Mexican national organization SAGARPA.

This was the first seed course in which Beck and Cordova targeted mainly small seed companies from Mexico. They hosted 38 participants from universities, the public research sector, private companies, farmer associations, and other institutes involved in maize seed production. Seed courses of this type are offered about once a year at CIMMYT headquarters and several times a year at outreach offices, particularly in Africa.

Beck says he hopes to have an impact on small-scale farmers. “We’re trying to balance our training course between the formal and informal seed sectors with the principal goal of getting more improved seed into the hands of small-scale farmers,” he says. “I hope that participants gain a better understanding of the key aspects involved in quality seed production and that they can walk away with new, practical ideas on how they can technically improve the quality of the seed they’re producing.”

The course focused on quality protein maize (QPM), which some participants were learning about for the first time. Beck wants participants to see that QPM products developed by CIMMYT and partners are competitive with commonly used varieties. “This is an important step in the chain of getting materials to farmers,” says Beck. “We can develop excellent varieties, but if they’re not quality produced in sufficient quantities, our breeding research work is going to have minimal impact.”

The course covered technical issues and field aspects relating to quality seed production. Course instructors included CIMMYT staff members and a professor from the Colegio de Postgraduados, Montecillo, Mexico. They discussed post-harvest handling, seed conditioning, technology transfer, marketing, and seed distribution, among other topics. Participants visited fields at El Batan and at CIMMYT’s Agua Fria research station in the state of Veracruz, where they looked at seed production blocks, breeding work, and demonstration blocks.

“The participants were really impressed with what they saw at the field level,” says Cordova. “We know that QPM can alleviate hunger and malnutrition in the coming years, so we are promoting the use of this germplasm.”

Many participants wanted to know more about marketing seed. Because the private sector often keeps knowledge about producing genetically pure seed confidential, Beck stresses the importance of assisting small seed companies, the public sector, and farmer associations. Cordova says information provided in the course will hopefully help small companies compete better with big ones.

Beck hopes that the course will help strengthen relationships with CIMMYT collaborators, many of whom sent participants to the course. He also envisions that the participants will build relationships with each other and find opportunities to work together.

For more information: David Beck or Hugo Cordova

What is diversity worth? That is the issue addressed by “Economic Analysis of Diversity in Modern Wheat,” a new collaborative publication that explores the economics, policies, and complications of modern wheat diversity.

Everyone wants the best, and farmers are no different. But when a large number of wheat farmers opt to sow the same improved varieties on large extensions of cropland, long-term diversity could be sacrificed for relative short-term gains.

Bold Initiative Tackles Hunger in Developing World

Washington, July 6, 2011 – The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)—the world’s largest international agriculture research coalition—today announced a USD 170 million global alliance and program to expand and accelerate research into maize, the preferred staple food source for more than 900 million people in 94 developing countries, including one third of the world’s malnourished children.

“This program aims to double the productivity of maize farms, while also making those farms more resilient to climate change and reducing the amount of land used for growing the crop,” said Carlos Perez del Castillo, CGIAR Consortium Board Chair.  “As a result, farmers’ incomes are expected to rise and their livelihood opportunities to increase, contributing to rural poverty reduction in developing countries.”

The CGIAR applies cutting-edge science to foster sustainable agricultural growth that benefits the poor. The new crop varieties, knowledge and other products resulting from the CGIAR’s collaborative research are made widely available, at no cost, to individuals and organizations working for sustainable agricultural development throughout the world.

Under the research program, 40 million smallholder farm family members are expected to see direct benefits by 2020 and 175 million by 2030.  The program is expected to provide enough maize to meet the annual food demands of an additional 135 million consumers by 2020 and 600 million by 2030.

The program will be implemented by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), and the International Institute of Tropic Agriculture (IITA).

The announcement came as the CGIAR celebrated its 40th anniversary at a ceremony in Washington attended by the President of the World Bank Group, as well as the heads of several of the 15 research centers that make up the CGIAR Consortium of International Agriculture Centers.

Inger Andersen, Vice President of Sustainable Development at the World Bank, and Chair of the CGIAR Fund Council, said the first target group to benefit from the enhanced maize research program would be smallholder farmers who live in environments prone to stress and who have poor access to markets.

“Small holder farmers are among the most vulnerable people in developing countries.” she said. “They should be among the first we seek to help. Enabling these people to produce more and better maize quickly and reliably will help to ensure their well being, as well as that of their communities.”

Studies carried out by CIMMYT show that the demand for maize in the developing world is expected to double between now and 2050.

“This is a highly ambitious project to address world hunger,” said Thomas Lumpkin, Director General of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). “It will take an enormous amount of work and cooperation between public and private sector institutions to meet the goals. The global challenges facing mankind are immediate and chronic; the time to act is now. Millions of lives depend on our ability to develop sustainable solutions to feed more people with fewer resources than ever before.”

The global alliance that will carry out the research program includes 130 national agricultural research institutes, 18 regional and international organizations, 21 advanced agricultural research institutes, 75 universities worldwide, 46 private sector organizations, 42 non-governmental organizations and farmer associations, and 11 country governments that will host offices dedicated to the program.

The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is a global partnership that unites organizations engaged in research for sustainable development with the funders of this work. The funders include developing and industrialized country governments, foundations, and international and regional organizations. The work they support is carried out by 15 members of the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers, in close collaboration with hundreds of partner organizations, including national and regional research institutes, civil society organizations, academia, and the private sector. www.cgiar.org – www.consortium.cgiar.org

The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, known by its Spanish acronym, CIMMYT® (staging.cimmyt.org), is a not-for-profit research and training organization with partners in over 100 countries. The center works to sustainably increase the productivity of maize and wheat systems and thus ensure global food security and reduce poverty. The center’s outputs and services include improved maize and wheat varieties and cropping systems, the conservation of maize and wheat genetic resources, and capacity building. CIMMYT belongs to and is funded by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) (www.cgiar.org) and also receives support from national governments, foundations, development banks, and other public and private agencies.