Jon Hellin, acting director of the Impacts, Targeting and Assessment Unit (ITAU), recently spoke with the staff of the BBC World Service Trust in London, England. His topic was Agriculture, Poverty, and Livelihood Security in Sub- Saharan Africa and it was designed to help the World Service Trust better understand the meaning and methodologies involved in livelihood approaches to poverty reduction in rural settings.

The World Service Trust is the BBC’s international charity and development organization. It uses the creative power of media to address poverty, health, human rights, livelihood, and humanitarian needs in developing countries and countries in conflict. It has offices in 20 countries and carries out projects in nearly 40.

In introducing Hellin, David Mowbray, the Africa director for the World Service Trust, said he knew the talk would contribute to the Trust’s development of a coherent, forward-thinking strategy for livelihood broadcasts and multi-media interventions. After the seminar, Hellin joined the World Service Trust’s livelihoods task force for a working lunch to further the discussion. Traditionally, rural or farm radio broadcasts have been top-down, expert-driven programs. As an outcome of the London discussions, Hellin and Mowbray agreed to continue a dialogue that might lead to better integration of broadcast outreach into agricultural research for development projects.

A total of 16 breeders, agronomists, physiologists, and socio-economists from public and private sectors attended a workshop on abiotic stress tolerant maize on 11-12 November 2008 at the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), Gazipur, Bangladesh. The workshop was given by CIMMYT’s Asian Regional Maize Program (ARMP) and BARI and organized under the GTZ-funded project “Abiotic Stress Tolerant Maize for Improving Maize Productivity in Eastern Indian and Bangladesh.” The German Society for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) is an international cooperation enterprise with a corporate objective to improve people’s living conditions on a sustainable basis.

“Maize has emerged as the second most important crop after rice,” said Dr. Azizur Rahman, BARI research director. “But more than 80% of maize is grown during the winter cycle, strongly competing with our main food staple crop, rice,” he said. Thus, the GTZ project aims to develop new maize varieties suitable for cultivation during the summer as most of the cultivated land goes fallow during this time. “Abiotic stress tolerant maize suitable for growing during the summer season will certainly be a boon for the food security of Bangladesh,” said Rahman.

During the workshop participants listened to lectures and learned tools and techniques for stress breeding, conservation agriculture (CA), and socio-economics. P.H. Zaidi, maize physiologist from CIMMYT-Hyderabad, India and coordinator of the GTZ project, spoke about abiotic stress breeding, stress management, screening techniques, selection criteria, breeding methodology, and demonstrated basic tools and techniques involved in developing drought and waterlogging tolerant maize germplasm. Other speakers included Ken Sayre, CIMMYT agronomist, Enam-ul Haq, senior program officer for CIMMYTBangladesh, and Olaf Erenstein, CIMMYT-India economist.

Participants agreed that the right cultivar under the right agronomic management is a strong concept, and that stress tolerant maize grown with resource-efficient agronomic practices will certainly result in multiplicative outcomes. “I am confident that by next year we will be able show output of this training, which will certainly be translated into outcomes,” said Mr. Salimuddin, BARI maize breeder, who participated in the course.

Several CIMMYT breeders, pathologists, students from the Colegio de Postgraduado (Mexico), and Monsanto researchers from Argentina and the USA attended a statistical data analysis course on three-way interactions at El Batán 15-18 November. Analysis of plant performance in different locations is typically arranged in two-way tables of plant genotype and location. Taking this a step further, the workshop introduced participants to a statistical model and new computer software that can add another factor, such as the year, into the equation.

“The program will help us to determine a genotype’s stability across different environments and years,” says José Crossa, head of Biometrics and Statistics of the Crop Research Informatics Lab of CIMMYT and coordinator of the course, which was jointly funded by CIMMYT and Monsanto.

The technology, adapted for agricultural analysis by Dr. Mario Varela of the Department of Mathematics at the National Institute of Agriculture Science in La Havana, Cuba and the main instructor of the course, builds upon previous multiplicative models, such as the Additive Main effect and Multiplicative Interaction Model (AMMI) and the Sites Regression model (SREG). Course participants spent two days learning the statistical theory behind the program and the following two days testing real data in the 3-way software.

The software, though fully-functional, is still a work in progress. “The practical component isn’t commercial software, but rather software that simply exemplifies the theoretical part that was given in the course,” says Varela, who until recently was only using the program in his personal research. Expressed interest by Monsanto and CIMMYT researchers prompted Varela and Crossa to update the program and organize the 3-way course. Both have expressed plans to further improve the program.

“During the course, questions came up that will help us improve the software. The idea is not to commercialize it; but once it’s improved, it will be sent to those interested,” says Varela. “I think the proper dissemination of the course will depend on the participants who are going to transmit it to other colleagues.” Alberto Pepper, manager of development strategies for Monsanto- Argentina and course participant, said he gained valuable information that will benefit his company. “We’re going to be using this program with our databases that cover different years and trials, allowing us to run more efficient analysis. This is going to help us to better position our materials and identify in each zone the advantages our materials have in comparison to other materials, enabling us to better advise farmers.”

Jorge Artee, the outgoing president of the Agricultural Research and Experimentation Board of the State of Sonora (Patronato), was honored on 30 October at a special dinner in Obregón organized by CIMMYT, along with Manuel Valenzuela, Patronato’s manager. Patronato is a group of private farmers that have significantly contributed to CIMMYT’s research through resources and financial support. Hans Braun, director of the Global Wheat Program, gave a speech on behalf of CIMMYT praising and thanking Artee for his support and contributions to CIMMYT and agriculture in general over the years.

He also read out a card from CIMMYT DG Tom Lumpkin. Before the honored guests, some of the former presidents of Patronato, Braun presented Artee with a figure of a Yaqui Indian that he said the figure was “… a symbol that we in the wheat program have chosen to honor our employees and colleagues, and as a way to show how close we feel to Obregón.” The Yaqui Valley Indian is a symbol of pride for Sonorans, and Artee is the first non-CIMMYT employee to receive this important recognition.

Among the guests were Homero Melis, president of the Asociación de Organismos de Agricultores del Sur de Sonora (AOASS) which is the umbrella institution for farmer unions in the South of Sonora; Erasmo Valenzuela, northeast regional director of the Mexican National Institute of Forestry, Agriculture, and Livestock Research (INIFAP); and the presidents of all the farmer unions that make up AOASS.

CIMMYT’s Mexico-based cropping systems management team has developed a plan to set up decentralized learning hubs in different farming systems and agro-ecological zones in Mexico. Each hub will provide a benchmark site for research on the impacts of conservation agriculture (CA) on crops and the environment in the prevalent cropping systems of these regions, furnish a focal point for agro-ecological capacity-building and scalingout of research applications and innovation systems, and foster the emergence of regional CA networks. As part of this, they will engage multiple actors— farmers, scientists, machinery manufactures, decision-makers, and input suppliers, among others.

The hub in the Yaqui Valley, an intensive irrigated commercial farming region in northwestern Mexico, is in full swing. Three seasons ago farmers were using CA practices on only 25 hectares in the Yaqui Valley in Sonora State. One such practices is zero-tillage with residue retention, whereby wheat is sown directly into the residues from the previous crop without plowing. Today the practice is being used on 1,000 hectares. The cropping systems management team has established six CA modules in the region, and is preparing for work in the winter cycle promoting and testing with farmers and farmer unions the practice of cropping on permanent beds, employing a multi-use/multicrop seeding implement designed by CIMMYT. Local media have begun running stories on these efforts and farmers’ responses.

As part of a joint project with ASGROW seed company in central Mexico, CIMMYT research assistants Dagoberto Flores, Adrian Martinez, and Andrea Chocobar, together with Toluca station superintendent Fernando Delgado, cropping systems expert Bram Govaerts, and ASGROW representatives, established more than 20 farmer modules this summer in the Mexican highland states of Hidalgo, Mexico, and Pachuca, as well as organizing several events including the following recent ones:

• (24 Sept) Farmer day at El Batán, involving 35 Texcoco farmers, with help from station superintendent Francisco Magallanes and the cropping systems management team.
• (03 Oct) Farmer day in Toluca, with over 100 farmers from 3 Mexican states.
• (15 Oct) First of several capacitybuilding course modules for ASGROW technicians in Toluca.
• (23 Oct) Discussion day in Toluca with farmers regarding modules for harvesting, winter planting, and fallow preparation.

Team members are regularly visiting a local machine shop in Hidalgo State that is producing the multi-use/ multi-crop direct seeding implement, and will discuss advances with the machine builder and the local ASGROW seed distribution outlet. In addition to the CIMMYTASGROW initiative, the team is interacting with and supporting farmers and researchers in various other states of Mexico, with support from special Mexican production foundations, and is seeking additional funding from public and private partners in the country to further strengthen the effort.

Professor Lene Lange, CIMMYT Trustee since 2002 and Board Chair as of 2005, has stepped down from the Board, after chairing the meetings in India during 6-10 October 2008. On that occasion she received the best wishes of fellow Trustees and of the center’s Management Committee, and in a small ceremony was given a commemorative plaque signed by incoming Chair Julio Berdegué and by Pedro Brajcich and Tom Lumpkin, with the following text: “The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center wishes to recognize and thank Professor Lene Lange…for her positive and energetic contribution to the role of CIMMYT in working for the resource-poor and her commitment to building a better and more effective Center; for her sincere concern in helping to improve CIMMYT as a place where staff—especially younger scientists—can develop their careers; for her leadership of the Center during a challenging period of change; for her warm and inclusive style of chairing the Board, ensuring that the views and opinions of all Trustees were heard; and, for her vision, clarity of purpose, strength of character, and ability to stimulate debate in the best interests of the Center, the people for whom we work, and the CGIAR.”

Lange has informed CIMMYT that she will pursue two new positions in Denmark: Vice Dean of Research for the Faculties of Engineering, Natural Sciences and Medicine at Aalborg University (AAU), and Professor of Biotechnology in the Copenhagen Institute of Technology, a new branch of AAU, with a new unit on Biotechnology and Bioenergy. All the best, Lene!