At its Annual Business Meeting in Washington, DC, on 07-08 December 2009, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) announced the selection of Uruguayan Carlos Pérez del Castillo as Chair of the new Consortium of CGIAR centers. Pérez del Castillo has served as special advisor on International Trade Negotiations to the President of Uruguay and permanent representative of Uruguay to the United Nations. He has also worked for the World Trade Organization (WTO) and carried out various consultancy and advising assignments with the Inter-American Development Bank, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and the Latin American Association for Integration (ALADI). In 1990 he was awarded “The Dr. Raul Prebisch Award in Economics” by the Association of Latin American and Caribbean Economists, and he is a permanent member of the Harvard University Trade Group. CIMMYT Board Chair Julio Berdegué chaired the Search and Selection Committ ee for the appointment.

Nearly 20 Mexican students from the Instituto Tecnológico Superior de San Miguel el Grande in Oaxaca visited CIMMYT El Batán on 01 December 2009. Hosted by the Global Conservation Agriculture (CA) Program, the students spent half a day at the center learning about CA practices, CIMMYT, and Norman Borlaug. The day included a tour of the germplasm bank and experimental fields. “Several of the students were from marginalized communities, and with training, they have the capacity to be CA promoters and technicians in these vital areas,” said Andrea Chocobar, a member of CIMMYT CA team. Also assisting in the event were Víctor Chávez Tovar, Caritina Durán, Ricardo Romero, and Humberto González.

Nearly 60 world-renowned scientists and wheat experts gathered at El Batán during 10-13 November 2009 for the intensive workshop “Complementary strategies to raise wheat yield potential.” The event was divided into four main topics: imperatives for raising wheat yield potential; improving crop photosynthesis; optimizing adaption, yield, and lodging resistance; and combining complementary traits through breeding. The ultimate aim is to get new, high-yielding wheat varieties to farmers as quickly as possible.

“This consortium is hugely valuable because we bring together expertise from very different areas and direct it toward one goal: improving wheat yield potential,” says Xinguang Zhu, and workshop participant and principal investigator from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “By working on things together, we greatly improve our chance of realizing this goal.”

The week was also an opportunity to further establish a consortium that will continue collaboration to improve wheat yields, says Matthew Reynolds, wheat physiologist and initiator of the consortium. A fullyfunctional consortium will require an estimated USD 25-30 million for five years.

As an international center, CIMMYT unites people of various nationalities, cultures, and backgrounds. Sensitivity and respect are key to the way we work. During 3-6 November 2009, El Batán hosted a Dignity Advisors Training workshop that stressed the importance of cross cultural communication and of maintaining a workplace free of harassment and unacceptable behavior.

“A dignity advisor is a trained staff member who is aware of what the different types of inappropriate behavior are and what the appropriate institutional channels are for dealing with them,” said Marco Noordeloos, Gender & Diversity Program (G&D) executive officer. “They are there to listen and help a person who is experiencing harassment decide what to do next.”

Nearly 30 CIMMYT staff attended the workshop, including members of regional offices in Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Turkey. On the last day of the course, several of the participants took part in a seminar open to all CIMMYT staff. Topics included the four main types of harassment (general, abuse of power, sexual, and discrimination) and why victims often don’t report incidents.

“About 99% of the time, a problem can be fixed by staff development and improving supervisor skills. But the egregious things are never accidents,” said Vicki Wilde, G&D leader. “Neither situation is acceptable. When you sign a CGIAR center contract, you sign up to maintain the highest levels of standard possible; even one person acting poorly can negatively affect an institution and those working for it.”

The Diversity Advisor workshop is one of several offered by the CGIAR’s Gender & Diversity Program. For a decade G&D has been visiting CGIAR centers to “leverage rich staff diversity to increase research and management excellence.” This is the first time G&D has visited CIMMYT in over seven years.

The following colleagues have completed Diversity Advisor training, have an open-door policy, and will maintain confidentiality: Scott Ferguson; Marisa De la O; Manuel Martínez; Paty Villaseñor; Leonor Herradura; Óscar Bañuelos; María Paula De León; Jonalyn Gumafelix; Teresa Rodríguez; Sridhar Bhavani; Petr Kosina; Gerardo Carstens; Pedro Aquino; Víctor Hernández; Ciro Sánchez; Germán Mingramm; Caritina Venado; Fabiola Mendoza; Fred Kanampiu; Sarah Kibera; Dan Makumbi; Seher Turkyilmaz; Julie Nicol; Cosmos Magorokosho; Peter Setimela; Mulugetta Mekuria.

A farmer-led organization in Punjab, India co-organized a course with the Cereal System Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) in response to farmers’ demands for more information about sustainable cropping practices. The course was held at the Agricultural Co-Operative Staff Training Institute in Jalandhar on 20 October 2009 and focused on efficient rice residue management techniques and related machinery. Over 200 participants attended.

Kamaldeep Singh Sangha, joint registrar cooperative, opened the event by pointing out two negatives of burning crop residues: it increases air pollution and decreases the amount of beneficial organic material in the soil. Several agricultural scientists and extension workers then contributed additional facts about the shortcomings of the practice.

“To save our atmosphere and improve our air quality we must stop the practice of burning residues,” said H.S. Sidhu, Punjab hub manager from CSISA, adding that to increase rice-wheat system yields, at least 50% of straw should be left on the field. With the added biomass, rice yields increase in three to four years, and with only one tractor pass needed, the cost of maintaining wheat fields is reduced USD 100 per hectare. Additionally, the straw maintains soil moisture; suppresses growth of the grass Phalaris minor; minimizes the negative aff ect on yield that high temperatures during wheat maturity cause; and allows a rotation of the short-duration crop saathi moong between the rice and wheat crops.

Sidhu then introduced participants to residue-friendly seeding machinery, such as the Turbo Happy Seeder. In one pass this machine uses direct drilling into a combine-harvested field and allows farmers to plant wheat immediately after their rice harvest, eliminating the eight to nine days of lag common when sowing under conventional practices.

Only five participants said they had known about the Turbo Happy Seeder before the course, but those who had seemed satisfi ed. “After a year with straw-managed fields and using the Turbo Happy Seeder, my rice crop was in bett er condition than those that were managed with burnt residues,” said Praduman Singh from the village Nagar, one of the five. By the end of the course, 22 co-operative farming societies expressed interest in purchasing one of the machines so that their member farmers could experiment with new technology.

“A farmer-led initiative like this that is demand-driven, contemporary, and organized to solve a specific problem is part of a revolutionary shift in Indian agriculture,” said Raj Gupta, CIMMYT South Asian coordinator, delivery and adaption cereal technology.

The course also highlighted fertilizer application and irrigation management. Toward the end, course leaders answered any final questions and distributed contact details for Turbo Happy Seeder manufacturers. Course participants included local agriculture development officers and farmers from the districts of Amritsar, Jallandhar, Kapurthala, Hosiarpur, and Gurdaspur.

For several years wheat farmers in Sonora State, Mexico, have used infrared sensors to target nitrogen applications more effi ciently. Now, farmers in other major commercial farming regions in Mexico— Guanajuato State, the Mexicali Valley in Baja California, and Sinaloa— also want to experience these savings.

During 21-22 October 2009 partners from these four northern states gathered in Ciudad Obregón to discuss sensor technology transfer through a project funded by the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture. The process has three one-year steps: planting experimental plots with various nitrogen rates and taking readings with the sensor; testing the sensor technology in one hectare sized farmer plots; and finally applying the technology to larger areas. Farmers in Guanajuato State and the Mexicali Valley will work with their wheat fields while those in Sinaloa and Sonora (the first Mexican state to embrace the technology) will work with maize. A corresponding meeting on 22 October highlighted the results of a technology transfer program in southern Sonora with GreenSeeker, the brand name of the infrared sensor used.

In the last crop cycle, 6,400 hectares of wheat across 271 plots in Sonora were managed using GreenSeeker. Of these 101 were evaluated to show an average savings of 70 kg of nitrogen per hectare, which equaled a monetary savings of US$ 90 per hectare. These plots produced the same yield as those under conventional nitrogen management.

Farmers and farmers’ associations received recognition for providing support to the program. Major contributing associations include the technology adoption leader Union of Industrial and Agricultural Credit “Colonos de Irrigación” (UCAICISA) with 1,700 hectares last cycle; the Agricultural Credit Union of Huatabampo (UCAH) with 1,000 hectares; and Agricultural Credit Union of Mayo (UCAMAYO) with 900 hectares. The goal is to increase the total number of hectares of wheat cropped with GreenSeeker in Sonora to 15,000 in the fall-winter 2009-10 cycle.