CIMMYT research staff, colleagues from IRRI, GCP, and other special guests, as well as a few members of the Board of Trustees and DG designate, Thomas A. Lumpkin, gathered in El Batán from Monday 03 to Friday 07 March 2008 for the latest edition of CIMMYT Science Week.

Science Week is a forum for exchanges among staff on progress, key issues, and new opportunities related to the Center’s role in science and development for maize and wheat systems. Staff also assess progress in ongoing projects, the delivery of flagship products and adjust the Medium-Term Plan.

Masa welcomed everyone on the first day and spoke of the challenges facing agriculture, including rising food prices, climate change and variability, food (and feed) demands and supply chains, the degradation of soils, and the lack of water. He also stressed that CIMMYT’s core business is science, and that its impacts are based on solid science performed by dedicated and committed staff at all levels. Addressing CIMMYT staff and special guests, Thomas A. Lumpkin spoke of his longtime admiration of the Center’s work, his excitement about leading CIMMYT, and the importance of team work and future partnerships.

Presentations covered the material being prepared for the publications “Maize and Wheat Facts and Futures,” as well as all Projects and flagship products. Questions after the presentations and a panel discussion gave participants a chance to share their views on the Center’s role in work with NARS, NGOs, and the private sector, as well as on many other issues.

Tom Payne touched on his trip to Svalbard, Norway, during his presentation and caused amusment when he said he’d felt warmer inside the -20ºC seed vault than outside it! In between all the presentations and discussions, participants assembled for dinner on Monday and Friday evening and tasted some typical Mexican food before heading home.

Many thanks to all those who organized and participated in Science Week and made it a success.

January 2008 marked the launch of the Cereal Knowledge Bank (CKB) (http://www.knowledgebank. irri.org), an online repository of learning materials related to cereals and cereal production. The CKB was created through the collaboration of CIMMYT and IRRI (the International Rice Research Institute).

The CKB was developed as a tool for enabling the fast and effective transfer of technologies from the researcher to the farmer’s field, a long-time challenge for those working in agricultural development. It provides a number of different extension materials related to the production of maize, rice, and wheat, together with materials on other aspects of cropping systems. Through an easy-to-navigate website, users can access extension resources in a variety of formats: fact sheets, field diagnosis and management tools, reference manuals, training materials, and eLearning courses.

An essential feature of the CKB is the development of country knowledge banks, which contain comprehensive country-specific materials collected from local research. Though they are based upon the same principles of knowledge sharing as the CKB, the country knowledge banks are directed and managed by the countries themselves, though the IRRI-CIMMYT alliance can provide guidance and technical assistance.

Further plans for CKB development include bringing the concept of country knowledge banks to Africa, diversifying formats of content (mp3, video, online user interaction), applying content management systems, and extensive impact assessment. For more information on the CKB, please contact Petr Kosina (p.kosina@cgiar.org), Knowledge Sharing and Capacity Building Coordinator.

Farmers in the State of Mexico, which borders the country’s capital, Mexico City—a potential market of nearly 20 million inhabitants— have struggled to make a profit growing maize. The state accounts for 10% of the national maize production, but improved varieties occupy no more than 10-15% of its maize area. Nearly all (97%) of the maize they produce is white grained and of varieties ideal for local foods but that don’t meet quality requirements for largescale, commercial tortilla production nor fit demand for feed or industrial uses.

As part of a project launched in 2007 between the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Mexican Agriculture Secretariat (Secretaria de Agricultura, Ganadería, Desarrollo Rural, Pesca y Alimentación, or SAGARPA), CIMMYT is working with counterparts in the State of Mexico to increase the productivity and profitability of maize farming. The focus is on value-added white and colored maize for food, but partly in response to rising interest from farmers since the biofuels boom, participants are developing, testing, and promoting yellow grain maize suited for feed and industrial markets. To plan those and other activities, to assemble a database of maize varieties—both improved and landrace—grown in the State, and to build the team, 11 maize scientists gathered for a workshop at El Batán during 19-21 February 2008.

Participants came from the Mexican National Institute of Forestry, Agriculture, and Livestock Research (INIFAP), Mexico State’s Institute of Agriculture, Livestock, Water, and Forestry Research and Training (ICAMEX), the Colegio de Postgraduados (a graduate-level agricultural research and learning institution), and CIMMYT. They were introduced to CROPSTAT, a software package for analyzing multi-location trial data, by CIMMYT maize breeder and project leader Gary Atlin, and discussed ways to foster farmer participation in trials.

“We’ll be doing three types of trials in 2008,” says Silverio García, CIMMYT maize researcher working on the project. “One involves experimental varieties that are crosses between improved and local materials, another is an evaluation of pre-commercial varieties in 20 or more environments in the State, and the last comprise on-farm demonstrations of commercially available white and yellow hybrids, to get farmers’ feedback.” Former CIMMYT maize breeder and distinguished scientist, Hugo Cordova, is serving as a consultant to the project.

On 06 and 07 of February 2008, Julio Flores and Samuel Frías of APER gave a course at El Batán on “Proper management of dangerous materials,” to staff from the laboratories, greenhouses, ICT, and germplasm bank. The course was given as part of the preparations for an evacuation drill that will shortly take place in these areas. A total of 29 staff participated in the simulation. During the course, the group learned about the necessary protective equipment for emergencies in areas where dangerous materials are stored, and how to use protective equipment, especially when handling hazardous materials. There was a simulation where two people had to be “helped” after coming into contact with toxic products. The group applied the skills learned during the session, and used protective overalls, boots, helmets, masks, and oxygen equipment.

As part of on-going efforts to facilitate the use of DNA markers in maize breeding and diversity studies, during 01-06 February 2008 CIMMYT El Batán held a workshop on “The analysis of molecular data generated from genetic bulked heterogenous populations.” Coordinated by CIMMYT molecular biologist Marilyn Warburton and visiting biometrician Jorge Franco, of the Universidad de la República, Uruguay, the course drew six participants from six different countries, in addition to CIMMYT participants. According to Warburton, the workshop turned out to be of great interest to CIMMYT scientists. “We had three people signed up from outside when we started, and gave certificates to another ten or twelve CIMMYT people in the end,” she says. Participants included Allen Oppong (Ghana), Tunde Golinar (Hungary), Niclas Freitag (Switzerland), Yusuf Mansir (Nigeria), Marlen Huebner (Germany), Guy Davenport (CIMMYT), Trushar Shah (CIMMYT), Miguel Anducho (CIMMYT), Eduardo Hernández (CIMMYT), Jianbing Yan (CIMMYT), Shibin Gao (CIMMYT), Maria Zaharieva (CIMMYT), Claudia Bedoya (CIMMYT), and Aida Zewdu Kebede (Ethiopia).

On 28 January, Roberto La Rovere, CIMMYT Impact Specialist, launched two new tools recently developed by CIMMYT’s ITAU “Operational guidelines for assessing impacts of agricultural research on livelihooods”, and the “Manual to conduct socioeconomic surveys through Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs)”, with participants from various CGIAR centers, during a session themed “Tools to capture impacts of our work on livelihoods,” organized by CIMMYT Kenya at the ICRAF campus in Nairobi.

Impact assessment (IA) is changing, with the focus shifting from calculating rates of return to measuring impacts on the livelihoods of those targeted by agricultural R&D projects. The Operational Guidelines, coauthored by La Rovere and John Dixon, are aimed at practitioners in impact assessment, particularly at managers who want to write IA projects or projects with an IA component, and at our partners in the field. The Guidelines provide a step-by-step guide on how to plan for and conduct an IA, considering aspects such as cost, capacity, and team composition, and indicators of how to measure impact. Participants held engaging discussions on how to attribute the roles of different partners, how to build IA into program design, and how to discern the effects of confounding factors in determining impact on livelihoods.

The second tool, the PDA Manual, jointly developed by La Rovere and Federico Carrion, guides users on the applications of these devices for collecting quality socio-economic data more quickly. The manual shows how to download the program and how to enter and analyze data, and provides sample surveys. The tool can also be used for agronomic or other types of surveys. The potential for using PDAs in various circumstances and types of surveys raised the interest of participants. Useful for quantitative surveys, the PDA has already been used in IA studies in multi-country surveys in Africa. Its advantages and disadvantages and areas of application were discussed in the seminar.

A similar seminar will be given at El Batán to launch the tools internally. The manuals are available on the CIMMYT website under the “Impacts and impact evaluation” sub-heading of the ITAU page, and users are encouraged to provide feedback for improving them.

On Friday 25 January, representatives from the Texcoco office of John Deere gave a demonstration at El Batán of mid-size tractors and other equipment for intermediate-scale farmers. The event was organized by the Mexico State Secretary of Agriculture and Livestock Development (SEDAGRO), with support from station superintendent Francisco Magallanes, and drew 50 participants.

From 28-30 January 2008, the Genration Challenge Programme (GCP) lived up to its middle name and organized a workshop on an intricate challenge— drought phenotyping. Held at CIMMYT’s El Batán facilities, the workshop brought together experts from diverse disciplines—crop physiologists, GIS specialists, model developers, to name several—to address more effectively the increasing phenotyping needs from genomic studies and breeding programs. During the workshop, several options for tackling the complexity of drought phenotyping in GCP projects were discussed, centering on:

• Improving environment characterization, based on GIS, water balance models, and their combination.
• Improving phenotypic data collection through better experimental designs, protocols, and data capture.
• Selecting potential hubs, based on climatic representativeness and existing facilities and expertise.
• Common activities were agreed upon by the participants, who developed a workplan to be further refined and implemented in the coming
  months.

The participants were: Gregory Edmeades (Consultant), Abraham Blum (Consultant), Glenn Hyman (CIAT, Colombia), Sam Geerts (Leuven University, Belgium), Robert Koebner (Consultant), Paul Brennan (Consultant), Reinaldo Gomide (EMBRAPA, Brazil), John O’Toole (Consultant), Guy Davenport (CIMMYT), Rosemary Shrestha (CIMMYT), Eduardo Hernández (CIMMYT), Humberto Gómez (GCP), Jean-Marcel Ribaut (GCP), and Philippe Monneveux (GCP).

Mr. Qingqing Zhao, head of Science and Technology issues in the Chinese Embassy in Mexico, visited CIMMYT on 29 January 2008 to broaden his knowledge of China and CIMMYT’s long-time, fruitful partnerships. This was his first visit, and fulfilled an intention he’d had since his arrival in Mexico in September 2007. Zhao was welcomed by Director General Masa Iwanaga, and also met with staff including Thomas Payne, Kevin Pixley, Erika Meng, Peter Ninnes, and Suketoshi Taba to learn more about China-CIMMYT collaboration and discuss how the Chinese Embassy can support the efforts. Highlights of his tour of the facilities included the germplasm bank and the Applied Biotechnology Center, and he also met with CIMMYT staff from China: Huixia Wu, Jianbing Yan, Shibin Gao, Xiaoyun Li, and Yunbi Xu.

During 21-25 January, 29 persons attended a course at El Batán on Fieldbook and MaizeFinder. Organized by Eduardo Hernández, of the CRIL, with support from Marianne Bänziger and Kevin Pixley, director and associate director of the Global Maize Program, the aim was to train maize workers in orderly data management. Fieldbook is an application used to prepare seed for trials, manage trial data, print labels, record data, manage breeding program inventories, conduct statistical analyses, and implement selection indexes.

Instructors were Fredy Salazar (CIMMYT-Colombia), Juan Carlos Alarcón, and Eduardo Hernández (CIMMYT-Mexico), who demonstrated the advantages and functionality of Fieldbook, a package developed by Bänziger and perfected by CIMMYT maize breeder, Bindiganavile S. Vivek. Participants included maize breeders and technicians, as well as others who might find the application useful. The course also covered MaizeFinder, a database that permits advanced searches for germplasm with particular traits of interest, and CropFinder, a prototype program that will allow the same functions for rice, wheat, and maize. Petr Kosina, Jennifer Jones, and Ricardo de la Rosa recorded the event on video for future training uses.

Participants were: Víctor Chávez, Luciano Juárez, Marcial Rivas, Martín Rodríguez, Simón Pastrana, Eva Huerta, Carlos Martínez, María Zaharieva, Martha Hernández, Natalia Palacios, Adolfo Basilio, Andrés Corona, José Luis Torres, Hilda Hernández, Fernando Juárez, Silverio Ávila, George Mahuku, Carlos Muñoz, Efrén Rodríguez, Daniel Fernández, Gerónimo Ortega, Israel Sánchez, Manuel Lorenzo López, Mayolo Leyva, Ciro Sánchez, Óscar García, Sotero Rivas, Beatriz Morales, Silverio García y Mansir Yusuf.