“We were created to help the poor people of the world who live on maize and wheat… about a billion people who live on less than 10 or 20 pesos per day, and CIMMYT has a tremendous responsibility,” said director general Tom Lumpkin at a meeting with national staff in Mexico on 20 July 2011. Whilst the meeting was held at El Batán, national staff at the experimental stations also had the opportunity to participate via remote linkups.

Speaking of CIMMYT’s achievements over almost 50 years, now recognized throughout the world, he said “it’s been CIMMYT staff who have been reliable in delivering improvements in maize and wheat. It’s your work.” He thanked all the national staff for their
contributions, and welcomed the new generation who have recently become part of the team as CIMMYT continues to grow rapidly.

Before a full auditorium, Lumpkin gave an inspiring introduction to CIMMYT’s mission and how the center works on a global scale. He talked about challenges for the future in terms of food security, climate change, and new technologies, and new initiatives including the MAIZE and WHEAT Research Programs, BISA in India, and MasAgro in Mexico. “While we have great challenges, there are also many great opportunities, and we have to grab those opportunities,” said Lumpkin.

Scott Ferguson, deputy director general for support services, talked about new Mexican donors, who are becoming increasingly important as CIMMYT’s partnerships with Mexico grow ever stronger. He also discussed construction and maintenance work planned for El Batán, for example the modernization of laboratories, and introduced some new work teams.

Miriam Mora from Human resources revealed a new plan for organizational development, a step-by-step initiative, to be known as DNC, proposed by the DG’s office. This will map staff talents, enabling managers to make sure the capabilities available within CIMMYT are being used effectively, and indicating how people can be helped to grow professionally and personally according to their backgrounds and needs. She also introduced her work team, as did MasAgro leader Karen García, who gave an introduction to the MasAgro initiative.

The final part of the meeting was set aside to address general questions submitted by staff; a further meeting will be organized by Human Resources to answer pending questions that could not be covered due to time constraints.

The meeting ended in a feeling of shared trust and confidence as both national and international staff go forward to build CIMMYT’s future together.

In a “Global Food for Thought” article focusing on the recent drought in Kenya, prominent journalist and policy advisor Roger Thurow tells of how CIMMYT-bred maize crops have thrived where their neighbors have shriveled. In the post, published on 17 June 2011, the former Wall Street Journal correspondent describes how, despite only having three short bursts of rain since February, the drought tolerant maize variety produced by the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa project has “fairly uniformly produced large ears of corn”.

Local farmer Philip Ngolania grows the drought tolerant maize variety. He tells Thurow that his neighbors “ask me for my secret, why I have cobs and they have none, and I tell them, ‘It is the variety I use.’ I’m always telling them they must change from the Mbembasitu to this new variety.” Despite having to pay for the new seed variety, Ngolania thinks it’s worth it. “You pay nothing, you get nothing,” he says.

Now, it appears that the word is spreading. Dryland Seed Ltd., a company multiplying the drought tolerant variety, sold out of stock before the beginning of the last two seasons. Farmers are already buying seeds for this October’s planting season in the hope that, unlike this year, they will have not only enough maize to feed their family, but enough to provide a small income too.

Read the full blog post here

The diversity and progress of conservation agriculture (CA) was emphasized during a regional training course at Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ludhiana, India during 28 June–11 July 2011. Organized in partnership with the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) and PAU, the course attracted male and female participants from varying regions, age groups and agricultural backgrounds, and was the second in a series of regional CA courses. In addition to experts from PAU, CGIAR and private sector partners, the key mentors in the training course were Ken Sayre, CA Consultant, CIMMYT, Patrick Wall, Director of the Global Conservation Agriculture Program, CIMMYT, ML Jat, Sr. Cropping Systems Agronomist, CIMMYT, HS Sidhu, CSISA hub coordinator, Punjab, and Mahesh Gathala, Cropping Systems Agronomist, CIMMYT. ML Jat also coordinated the course.

Training was mostly field-oriented, with participants practicing key CA principles in the field. The diverse makeup of the group also meant that some participants were less experienced in CA, therefore encouraging regional cross-learning, increasing capacity and helping to promote CA.

In the closing ceremony, Raj Gupta, South Asia Coordinator, CIMMYT, and Patrick Wall highlighted the benefits of the strong and longterm partnership between PAU and CIMMYT, for both organizations and for the Punjab. It is hoped that collaborations between PAU, CIMMYT, and other national organizations will facilitate in developing CA in the region and assist farmers to improve the quality of their natural resources and livelihoods.

Chief guest of the closing ceremony, BS Dhillon, Vice Chancellor of PAU, further stressed that CA is the best way to address the emerging challenges of South Asian farmers, particularly in view of the issues associated with a second generation of the Green Revolution. PAU is becoming a CA hub in the region and Dhillon added that more agricultural universities should include CA in their graduate and postgraduate curriculums, as PAU is beginning to do. Dhillon, who is also helping to lay the groundwork for the Borlaug Institute of South Asia, reiterated that there is still a long way to go, but that “for accelerating the pace of adoption of CA in the region, capacity building on CA is an immediate action and hence this course is a timely and important step.”

Following on from the story “Improved seed reaches the Pacific” in issue 1750 of the Informa, we would like to recognize the hard work of all those involved in the project “Modernization of maize production in Oaxaca with adapted maize cultivars to increase yields”. The project aims to help farmers in the coastal, Papaloapan and Mixtecas regions of Oaxaca to access and produce improved maize cultivars through a participatory maize breeding (PMB) initiative, and to ensure the in situ conservation of maize diversity. The project was initiated in 2009 and is a collaboration between CIMMYT and the research extension services of the Autonomous University of Chapingo’s South Regional Center (CRUS-UACh) in Oaxaca. It is led by Suketoshi Taba in CIMMYT and Humberto Castro in CRUS-UACh, with the participation of Víctor Chávez of CIMMYT and Eliud Oliva and Iván Vásquez of CRUSUACh, and other staff of both institutions.

Drawing on a diverse gene pool, pre-breeding work at CIMMYT’s maize germplasm bank produced breeder seed of improved open pollinated varieties (OPVs) and inter-variety hybrids (IVHs). Project partners at CRUS-UACh produced declared seed (an intermediate category in the national seed system with less purity than certified seed) of these cultivars and delivered them to farmers, along with promising cultivars from other Mexican institutions and landraces collected from the communities. In addition to evaluation at CIMMYT, many trials, demonstration plots, and seed increase nurseries have been planted in farmers’ fields in different maize-producing regions in Oaxaca. The best-performing cultivars have been increased to make seed available to farmers and to the germplasm banks for conservation and enhancement. Unlike landraces, the improved varieties have genetic traits that allow mechanization and adoption of modern maize production practices, and high yield potentials similar to commercial hybrids.

The PMB approach has captured the attention of many farmers, students, extension workers, and government personnel who have participated in the project. It has proved its worth as an alternative approach to providing useful exotic germplasm to small-scale farmers in Oaxaca, linking them with public maize research and breeding without generating intellectual property rights claims. It can help in the evolution and conservation of local cultivars through crossing with new germplasm by farmer breeders as well as participating researchers. Farmers’ systems of seed exchange within social networks can operate for the adapted cultivars produced through PMB just as they do for other varieties. As a mark of the project’s rapid success, in the last two years 74 tons of seed have been produced and delivered to farmers for grain, forage, and elote (green ear) production.

After a successful 37-year career and living on 4 continents, most people welcome retirement with open arms. Wayne Haag is not most people. Mission-oriented since childhood, the only question is, where will he end up next?

Assigned to CIMMYT as a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow in 1973, Haag first worked in Mexico alongside Dr Ernest Sprague and the maize team, and later as a maize specialist representing the center in Egypt, Turkey, the Middle East, and the South American region, where he continued until leaving CIMMYT’s employ in 1989. Since that time, and through the end of 2009, he worked with the Sasakawa Global 2000 program, an effort begun by Ryoichi Sasakawa and enlisting the participation and leadership of US President Jimmy Carter and Nobel Peace Laureate Dr. Norman Borlaug, to offer sub-Saharan African farmers technology options for improving their productivity and food security.

During that tenure, in addition to other responsibilities, Haag focused on and promoted quality protein maize (QPM) in 12 project countries. Recently retired from SG 2000, Haag shows no sign of slowing down.

“I’m not ready for full retirement,” says Haag. “I hope to continue to be involved in international agriculture development. What form that will take? I’m not sure quite yet, but am in the process of exploring possibilities.”

Haag served in the US Peace Corps’ first project in Guatemala during 1963-64, an agricultural extension project, at the decree of President John F. Kennedy. Inspired by that experience, he later pursued studies in agricultural development and science at Michigan State University and Pennsylvania State University.

Throughout his long travels and career, Haag has preserved close linkages with CIMMYT friends and partners. “Every national maize program I worked with had a very strong partnership with CIMMYT,” he says. “Even though I may have not been employed by CIMMYT for many years, it is almost as if I have never left.”

This week Haag and his wife Maria were in Mexico to touch base with long-time coworker, friend, and retired CIMMYT Distinguished Scientist, Surinder K. Vasal. Vasal and retired CIMMYT cereal chemist Evangelina Villegas shared the 2000 World Food Prize for their work in the 1970-80s to develop QPM, seen as a breakthrough in maize breeding by Haag and maize scientists around the world. During a visit to El Batán, Haag said he is certain the center’s work with QPM is not done.

“It is my sincere hope that CIMMYT will strengthen its activities in quality protein maize. This can be done by increasing the numbers of maize breeders and concentrating on germplasm maintenance, improvement, and development,” he says. Haag believes CIMMYT can produce QPM open-pollinated varieties and hybrids that also contains enhanced levels of methionine, provitamin A, iron, and zinc. “This seed would revolutionize global maize production and add tremendous value to the crop both in terms of human and animal nutrition,” he says.

The Government of Kenya Prison in Machakos, Kenya, is not your average prison. Here, the inmates have their food security in their hands—quite literally. This is because they work the prison farm, which grows, among other food crops, three new CIMMYT maize varieties.

The prison is situated in a droughtprone area and with 1,000 inmates there at any one time, the prison management needs all the help it can get to feed its inmates. “We need 5 bags of maize daily—for the three meals—for all the inmates.

These new varieties give good yields even when rain is scarce,” says Paul Mukiti, the prison farm manager.

He refers to KDV1, KDV4 and KH500-21A—drought tolerant maize varieties developed by CIMMYT and the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), marketed by Dryland Seeds Ltd in eastern Kenya.

The prisoners till the maize fields planted with these varieties under the watchful eye of Mukiti and their wardens.

It all began when Dryland Seeds contacted Mukiti to grow KDV1 and KDV4 on his personal farmland. Impressed by their performance and business potential, Mukiti convinced his superiors to allow him try the grain varieties on the prison farm. Mukiti and his men grew KDV1 in April 2010 and KH500-21A in October of the same year.

“KH-500 needs more rain and takes longer but gives very good yields and that’s why we grew it in October,” says Mukiti. Last year, the prison’s maize farm yielded 170 bags of the two varieties. The prison had enough maize to feed the inmates and a surplus which it sold for extra income.

“This maize has helped us to save a lot of money which we would have been using to buy maize for the inmates,” says Mukiti. Currently, a 90-kilogram bag is retailing at KSh 2,700 (USD 30) and the prison would have spent at least  KSh 13,500 (USD 150) per day to feed the prisoners.  Last April, Mukiti and his men planted three acres to KDV 1 and two acres to KDV 4 and in June the crop was doing well, despite the prevailing drought. Mukiti is thankful for the new seed and confidently awaiting next month’s harvest.