From 01-06 July 2010 two courses took place at the Colombian National Agricultural Research Organization Colombian Corporation for Agricultural Research (CORPOICA) La Libertad Research Center in the city of Villavicencio.

There were more than 30 participants from different public and private sector organizations, including FENALCE, CORPOICA, UNILLANOS, SEMIVALLE, CENICAFE, CIMMYT, and Universidad ICESI. Both courses were possible thanks to the support of the Colombian Agriculture Ministry, as part of the project “Development of maize germplasm tolerant to acid soils for the Oriental Plains of Colombia,” in partnership with CIMMYT.

An advanced maize breeding course covered subjects such as doubled haploid technologies, screening, quantitative genetics, hybridization, molecular markers, and precision agriculture, and was taught by CIMMYT’s George Mahuku and Luis Narro, FENALCE’s José Ever Vargas Sánchez, and Argemiro Miguel Moreno Berrocal of CENICAFE. A statistics workshop, given by Norbey Marín Arredondo, consultant statistician and professor at Universidad ICESI, introduced participants to the use of SAS in experimental design    and analysis.

Both events received favorable reviews from the participants. FENALCE’s Luis Hernando Arévalo said that for him, and for several of his colleagues, the course had been like an “accelerated graduate degree” and that more courses like these should be given. CORPOICA’s Claudia Calderón reported that the new breeding and statistics tools she learned will enable her to work more efficiently. Finally, FENALCE’s general manager Henry Vanegas suggested that similar courses should be organized in more locations in Colombia to benefit more people.

In addition to being a major staple food, maize is important in many indigenous Mexican cultures. Staff at CIMMYT-El Bátan had the opportunity to learn about the relationship between maize and native culture during a fascinating on-campus presentation on 02 July 2010. Anthropologists Carmen Morales of the National Institute of Anthropology and History, and Catalina Rodíguez-Lazcano of the National Museum of Anthropology and History jointly presented “Knowledge and festivals around native corn,” which was translated from Spanish into English so everyone could attend.

The seminar drew on the presenters’ studies of three very distinct indigenous groups—the Chen, Mayan descendents who live in the state of Campeche; the Purépecha, who live in Michoacán State; and the inhabitants of Milpa Alta, an entity within the borders of Mexico City. The two experts outlined traditions and festivals based around maize, complemented by color photographs from each location illustrating local settings and customs, grain storage methods, variety types, end-use products, and indigenous nomenclature for the maize plant and its parts. As is common in south-central and southeastern Mexico, farm settings are diverse and challenging, and most producers are subsistence smallholders who grow maize more for tradition and home use than for income.

Among the points highlighted were the close connections between native maize races and local foods and traditions, and the importance of culture in the preservation of those races. In Purépecha villages, the crop cycle coincides closely with the calendar of Catholic religious ceremonies: seed is brought to the church to be blessed before sowing, and on one religious feast day after harvest, seed is thrown to the sky beseeching God to rain bounty back down upon the community. The value of kernel color for the Purépecha was depicted through beautiful and informative photographs of brightly-colored maize cobs from the region.

There were several surprises as well. In northern Campeche, the influence of Menonite immigrants has led many maize farmers to grow commercial hybrids with agrochemicals, bringing them yields as high as seven tons per hectare. It was interesting to learn that part-time farmers in Milpa Alta, a semi-rural, high-altitude zone of the swelling metropolis (18 million inhabitants!) of Mexico City, still conserve the Aztec language Nahuatl and grow native maize races.

The seminar concluded with a question and answer session, and Director General Tom Lumpkin expressed hope of further collaboration between CIMMYT and Mexico City’s Anthropology Museum.

On 28 June 2010, 15 participants from various CIMMYT units and departments attended a one-day workshop given by the CIMMYT web team. Held at El Batán, the event covered the basic uses of Joomla—a content management system for websites and Intranets. Content management systems are designed primarily for interactive use, potentially by a large number of contributors.

With the new CIMMYT website, interior pages will be maintained by unit-selected managers and administrators with support from Corporate Communications. Additionally, the Intranet is now integrated within the new CIMMYT website and will be accessible to those with CIMMYT credentials.

The workshop was designed to equip these persons with the knowledge and tools to manage their unit’s information. Exercises covered uploading or updating information, inserting images and documents, creating links, and editing existing information. Participants also learned how to keep the website running smoothly by only uploading “clean” text and images of appropriate size.

Several participants said that the knowledge gained will allow them to manage web information in the future. A few requested additional training on menu and table management. To address these and other issues, more training sessions will be scheduled, including events for web section administrators outside of El Batán. The web team offered their ongoing assistance.

United for sports: this was the theme of Sports Day held at CIMMYT’s El Batán campus on 18 June 2010. Teams from the Mexican CIMMYT stations (Agua Fría, Obregón, Tlatizapán, Toluca, El Batán) congregated for a day of team competition in volleyball, soccer, and basketball. Individuals also competed in a 5 km walking race, a mini-marathon, cycling, and swimming. A tennis tournament was also held, with the double sets displaying CIMMYT’s multicultural nature at its best.

Away from the mainstream sports, there were recreational games: wrap the mummy, egg and spoon race, pop-the-balloon, sack race, egg-tossing, a dizzy race, and an interesting twist on the three-legged race using a four-man team. The competitors in these games formed international teams and united in silly fun. Aerobics and zumba (a type of dance) performances were held in the gymnasium, cheered on by an animated audience.

Even cleaning up was fun! Environmentally aware two-member teams competed to see who could fill up a sack with plastic bottles in the shortest amount of time. The winning team was awarded, and everyone else was a winner for contributing to the impromptu clean-up campaign.

After all that activity, everyone was hungry and enjoyed a provided lunch, which was accompanied by an award ceremony for the winners of the day’s events. Dancing followed dining. There were various performances, including salsa and Los Chinelos, a traditional dance from the state of Morelos, Mexico. Then it was time for everyone else to take to the dance floor, where they grooved to the beats of the band Adrián y sus teclados (Adrian and His Keyboard), which featured CIMMYT’s very own Ricardo De La Rosa (head of audiovisuals) on the bass. And at the end of the day, there was more dancing, accompanied by a live Cuban band, at El Rincón.

Norman Borlaug may be gone, but his teachings and spirit live on. On May 21 2010, Ohio State University (OSU), USA, dedicated its “Scarlet and Gray Ag Day” to the late CIMMYT agronomist and hero. “Scarlet and Gray Ag Day” (named after the university’s colors) is designed to educate local fourth and fifth graders about agriculture and its importance to society. It is one of the university’s largest outreach events.

This year, over 600 students descended upon OSU’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences campus for hands-on activities designed to teach them about wheat production, the Irish potato famine, plant diseases, and many other agriculture-related topics.

Julie Borlaug, the granddaughter of Norman Borlaug, was a guest of honor and spoke to the children during lunch. “It’s been fabulous to see fourth and fifth graders who are so far removed from agriculture experience it and enjoy learning about it,” she said. “My grandfather felt it was important to invest in today’s youth, who will be tomorrow’s leaders. I know that my grandfather would be proud of this amazing program.”

With the words “congratulations for the good work of your teams,” on 18 June 2010 the Consortium Board returned its feedback on the MAIZE and WHEAT Mega-Program proposals recently-submitted by CIMMYT, in conjunction with IITA and ICARDA. Consisting of comments from three external reviewers and the Board itself, the critiques praise the proposals but lay out suggestions for improvement that include clarifying impact pathways and interactions and boundaries with other CGIAR initiatives; elaborating on partnership strategies; further analyzing gender issues; finalizing management approaches; and defining how the Mega-Programs will be monitored and evaluated.

One reviewer of the MAIZE proposal said: “The strategic vision presented in the proposal’s 10 Strategic Initiatives (SIs) is admirably comprehensive…. the conceptual structure of the presentation under each SI is excellent, and represents a model that could be followed in other Mega-Programs.” In the opinion of another: “The outcomes of the proposed work are clearly described and highly relevant…. the SIs concerning breeding and genetic diversity are highlights in excellent science.” The Board characterized WHEAT as an ambitious Mega-Program: “Its major strength is the relevance and…complementarity of the SIs. Together, they appear to work on achieving a common goal of boosting farm level wheat production while building resilience into the system.”

The MAIZE and WHEAT draft proposals were built on diverse partner feed-back, as expressed in direct day-to-day interactions and communications. For further refinement, the proposals went out for comment to more than 700 representatives in over 350 institutions, including national agricultural research programs, universities, advanced research institutes, non-governmental organizations, donor agencies, private companies, and farmer associations. To date, CIMMYT has received several dozen offering support or suggestions for improvement. Center staff have also taken advantage of individual visits and meetings like the International Wheat Conference held in St. Petersburg, Russia, during 01-04 June 2010, or the establishment of the Asia Hybrid Maize Consortium, to seek partners’ engagement and feedback.

CIMMYT is revising the proposals and will return the new versions to the Consortium Board in July 2010. Budgets, arrangements, and many operational details are under development, and in many cases implementation will be defined with partners when work gets underway.

Some 600 scientists from 77 wheat-producing nations gathered in the historic city of St. Petersburg for the 8th International Wheat Conference (IWC), 01-04 June 2010. The IWC is held every five years, the last conference taking place in La Plata, Argentina, in 2005. Opening sessions included a presentation by Hans-Joachim Braun, director, Global Wheat Program. The famous Vavilov Institute—one of the oldest and most comprehensive collections of germplasm—was also the focus of the introductory papers. CIMMYT was very well-represented, with presentations in different sessions by Tom Lumpkin, Susan Dreisigacker, Matthew Reynolds, Ivan Ortiz-Monasterio, Tom Payne, and retired CIMMYT wheat agronomist Ken Sayre, as well as poster presentations from many other global wheat program staff. “Every major wheat-producing country was represented and there was a strong private sector presence,” says Braun. “This really showed that wheat is back on the research agenda.”

Scientists join to combat new threat to world wheat crop.

Just prior to the IWC, leading wheat experts from Australia, Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas gathered for two days in St. Petersburg to address the threat of four new mutations of Ug99 wheat stem rust which are virulent against two important stem rust-resistance genes—SR24 and SR36—used widely in the world’s wheat breeding programs. “Most wheat varieties of the world are vulnerable to the original form of Ug99,” says CIMMYT distinguished scientist Ravi Singh. “We will now have to make sure that every new wheat variety we release has resistance to both Ug99 and the new races.” Participants included specialists from CIMMYT, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), and the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI), which organized the event.

The “Second Week of Conservation Agriculture (CA),” in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, which ran from 28 May to 03 June 2010, consisted of a series of activities coordinated by the CA-Mexico team to encourage communication among farmers who have adopted CA techniques, authorities, and members of organizations that support CA.

Communication panels with farmers and tractor drivers, an awareness event about the negative effects of burning field residues, and a day of maize harvesting were all designed for participants to share experiences and learn more about CA. There was also an official ceremony that included farmers, various authorities, engineers, researchers, and representatives of the private sector.

Bram Govaerts and María Cárdenas of the CA program both gave presentations on sustainable agriculture. Govaerts explained the basics of CA and the results obtained so far from using it, while Cárdenas gave a report on the use of the GreenSeeker technology. These presentations were followed by a day spent at local modules, which are plots owned by farmers who have adopted CA. Participants also saw experiments that compared CA productivity and profitability with traditional agricultural practices.

The events were covered by local press and television channels. One topic that generated a lot of interested was stubble burning. The demonstration burning was performed at the Norman E. Borlaug Experiment Station (CENEB) in long-term, experimental plots to show the negative effects this practice has on the environment. This activity was made possible with the permission of the Environmental Management Department of Ciudad Obregón. CA team member Jesús Mendoza gave several interviews on this subject.

The “Second CA Week” was an initiative of CIMMYT; the Mexican National Institute of Forestry, Agriculture, and Livestock (INIFAP); Mexico’s national wheat marketer’s organization (CONATRIGO); Patronato for Research and Agricultural Experimentation of the State of Sonora (PIEAES); the Association of Agriculture Organizations of Southern Sonora (AOASS); the CIMMYT-ASGROW project; and several other institutions interested in promoting sustainable farming techniques.

During the week, Antonio Gándara Aztiazarán, president of the PIEAES southern zone, announced that for the 2010-11 crop cycle his organization will begin to use CA in one of their seed multiplying plots. The plan is to start in an experimental area, and then expand after gaining experience.

The agenda for day 3 of the event (03 June 2010) was content-lighter, with an afternoon visit to Catherina’s Palace in Carskoe Silo (Pushkin village) , near St. Petersburg. The morning, however, was dedicated to presentations of the 6th session – ‘Biotechnological and genomics tools in wheat improvement.’ Presenters included E. Akhunov, R. DePauw, P.M. Chandler, S. Dresigacker, T. Lumpkin, K. Eversole, P. Sourdille, W. Daowen, and R. Trethowan).

The last day of the confrerence started with plenary session 7 – ‘Wheat genetics and breeding for grain quality.’ Among the presenters appeared P.Shewry, I. Ortiz-Monasterio, S.L.K.Hsam, N.Litvinenko, W. Tao, and D. Vazquez. After lunch and poster presentations, the last session (8) of the conference began, focusing on  Global research initiatives and international co-operation presented by M.Reynolds, A.van Gastel, T. Payne, D. Cornes, E. Runge, and H.J. Braun.

The organizing commitee (newly compiled of 29 memebers) is collecting applications for the organization of the 9th IWC in 2015. Applications will be accepted up until 01 October 2010.

Follow the event at Twitter: #globalwheat

More aggregated information: http://tinyurl.com/2w53xom

Photos at: http://www.flickr.com/groups/8iwc/

Day 2 of the event (02 June 2010) was indeed the busiest day of the whole conference full with rich presentations. Plenary sessions included:

• Wheat genetics and breeding for abiotic stresses (Presenters: S. Baenziger, M.Lopez, R.Norton, O.Abdala, M. Parry, Y. Shavrukov)
• Wheat genetics and breeding for biotic stresses (Presenters: R.Loughman, S.Goodwin, P.K.Singh, L.Tamburic-Ilincic, R.McIntosh, P.Faccio, S.Chakraborty, N-O.Bertholdsson)
• Wheat breeding for yield potential (Presenters: D. Calderini, S.Qixin, F.Gonzales, A.Pask, S.S.Singh)

The day closed with a  Gala dinner with a dance & light performance in Show Hall “Atmosphere.”

Follow the event at Twitter: #globalwheat

More aggregated information: http://tinyurl.com/2w53xom

Photos at: http://www.flickr.com/groups/8iwc/