This week SIDU staff started to prepare the first International Wheat Trial (2nd Stem Rust Resistance Screening Nursery). The process includes selection of the best materials from those that arrived from Mexicali last week, taking samples for analysis at the Seed Health laboratory, and washing, treating and packing the seeds.
A delegation from the National Nature Science Foundation of China (NNSFC) visited CIMMYT El Batán on 11-12 July. The group of seven was led by Zhu Daoben, the Vice-President of NNSFC. During their visit they were briefed on all of CIMMYT’s programs and visited the Wellhausen-Anderson Plant Genetic Resources Center, the Crop Research Informatics Laboratory (CRIL) and saw the biotech facilities.
Norman Borlaug will receive the highest civilian honor the United States of America can bestow at a ceremony in Washington DC this coming Tuesday, 17 July. The Congressional Gold Medal will be presented by President Bush and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. An original gold medal has been created by the United States Mint commemorating Borlaug’s achievements.
The United States Senate first passed the legislation on September 27, 2006. The United States House of Representatives voted to honor Borlaug with the Medal, on December 6 last year in the final days of the 2006 legislative session.
The first Congressional Gold Medal was awarded in 1776 to General George Washington. Borlaug will join an illustrious list of recipients that includes Thomas Edison, Pope John Paul II, and Martin Luther King Jr.
Eight biology students from Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco visited CIMMYT El Batán on Wednesday. They had a special interest in the management and conservation of seeds. The students were accompanied by their professor, M.C. Georgina Vargas Simón. They toured the Wellhausen- Anderson Genetic Resources Center and the Seed Health laboratory and had a chance to visit the library and publications distribution unit.
CIMMYT Board member and Professor at Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey, Ismail Çakmak, has received the prestigious 2007 Derek Tribe Award of Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) Crawford Fund, in recognition of his outstanding work and leadership in identifying zinc deficiency as the underlying cause of poor wheat yields in the calcareous soils of the Central Anatolia in Turkey. The award announcement appears on the 29 June 2007 update of the ATSE-Crawford Fund website.
Çakmak’s research led to the rapid uptake of Zn-containing NP and NPK fertilizers (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium) by farmers in the region and their development by fertilizer industries. Use of the enhanced fertilizers rose from nothing in 1995 to a record 350,000 tons per annum in Turkey in recent times. In some locations with extremely low plant-available zinc, their use has raised grain yields six-fold. In addition to boosting cereal productivity and farmers’ profits, the fertilizers improve zinc density in the grain, which should better the health, productivity, and mental development of members of resource-poor farm households who depend heavily on wheat in their diets.
The ATSE Crawford Fund Derek Tribe Award was inaugurated in 2001 to mark the outstanding contributions of Emeritus Professor Derek Tribe, founding director of the Crawford Fund, to the promotion of international agricultural research. The award is made biennially to a citizen of a developing country in recognition of distinguished contributions to the application of research in agriculture or natural resource management in a developing country or countries. The recipient of the inaugural 2001 Crawford Fund Derek Tribe Award was Sanjaya Rajaram, former Director of the CIMMYT Wheat Program.
It’s an annual event at El Batán, the arrival of the shipment of wheat seed from the multiplication site near Mexicali in North West Mexico. The seed is grown in Mexicali because that area is free of a fungal disease called karnal bunt that can be carried on seeds. This is vital if CIMMYT is to distribute the seed to partners around the world. The newly arrived seeds will now be washed, treated, and bagged in preparation for shipment to their final destinations.
During 19-29 June 2007, eight students from the Faculty of the Soil and Crop Science Department, Texas A&M University toured CIMMYT-El Batán and talked with center staff as part of an introductory trip to learn about international agricultural research. Accompanied by Ronald Cantrell, former Director of the CIMMYT Maize Program and Director General of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), and Steve Hague, Texas A&M Professor in Cotton Breeding, the students are expected among other things to develop an understanding of the challenges and opportunities in underdeveloped agriculture systems. Their program included visits to the facilities of Mexico’s National Institute of Forestry, Agriculture, and Livestock Research (INIFAP) and of Pioneer-Hibred in Mexico, as well as interacting with subsistence farmers in Tlaxcala State.
The trip came about when Cantrell was invited to give a seminar for Soil and Crop Science Department graduate students. “Participants expressed interest in study abroad,” Cantrell says, “and this coincided with a grant from Dr. Norman Borlaug for this purpose. They decided to use the grant to visit an international center, and asked me to coordinate it. Students applied for this ‘scholarship,’ and these are the ones chosen.” The group includes students from the undergraduate through PhD levels, and crop breeders, agronomists, and molecular biologists.
Dhananjay Mani, arrived at the University a year and a half ago from Muzaffarpur, Bihar, India, and is studying for an MSc in plant breeding. He likes the emphasis on breeding at Texas A&M and the opportunity for contact with the University’s Distinguished Professor, Norman Borlaug. “Regarding CIMMYT, I observe one thing,” he says. “Everyone here is talking and thinking about the whole world, not just local issues, and especially people who really need agriculture.”
Jennifer Winn, an MSc student from Denton, Texas, USA, became interested in crop breeding after reading an autobiographical account of a medical missionary in Africa who was treating the major diseases that affect the poor. “He’d give his patients medicine, then hear a couple of days later that they died from malnutrition,” she says. “The book makes the point that malnutrition is the main cause of death in the developing world, and this emphasizes the importance of agriculture and agricultural research.” She has been impressed with the level of organization she observes in CIMMYT: “Programs are collaborating on a wide range of work—biofortification at the molecular level, then there’s Ken Sayre’s work at the field level. You cover every aspect of the plant!”
Harvest Choice, a partnership between the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the University of Minnesota, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, held a workshop this week at CIMMYT El Batán. The goal of the meeting was to test and refine a method for assessing the impact on cropping system productivity of key pests within sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, especially with respect to the rural poor.
Participants from CIMMYT included Dave Hodson, John Dixon, Julie Nicol (via a link to Turkey), Etienne Duveiller, and Jonathan Crouch.For the second year in a row CIMMYT has been giving a ranking of “outstanding” in the annual performance measurement conducted by the CGIAR. CIMMYT was one of only two CGIAR centers to reach this, the highest performance level. The indicators look at a center’s overall performance in a very comprehensive way and include criteria about science quality and delivery, partnership, stakeholder perceptions, management, and governance.
CIMMYT Board Chair, Lene Lange, said “Congratulations to CIMMYT and to all of us! This is really fantastic news.” Her sentiment was echoed by the Board’s Program Committee Chair, Julio Berdegue, when he said, “Considering that the quality of the science explains half of the result, congratulations also to each member of the staff all around the world and at every level of the Center. Your very good work is the firm foundation of CIMMYT.”
The outstanding ranking will mean additional funding from the World Bank, beyond what had been budgeted for this year. That is good news, says DG Iwanaga, as it will help offset some anticipated decreases in core contributions from other partners.
Afghanistan is still be in the midst of turmoil and conflict, but the work CIMMYT is doing to help rebuild the agriculture sector has won praise from the person responsible for coordinating agricultural research in that country.
“We are very pleased with the cooperation and help we have received from CIMMYT, right from the beginning,” said M. Aziz Osmanzai in an interview with Informa at his office in Kabul, Afghanistan. “I hope CIMMYT will be able to expand staff and operations in our country as the work you are doing has been particularly effective.”
Osmanzai is Director of Agriculture Research Institute (ARIA) of the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock of Afghanistan (MAIL). He was particularly pleased that two new wheat varieties, based on CIMMYT material were performing very well under local conditions and were being proposed for formal varietal release.
He hoped too that CIMMYT might find ways to help the government encourage and implement more conservation agriculture in the country. While wheat is the number 1 food crop, it is grown by share croppers and small holder farmers using traditional methods. Seeds are broadcast by hand into fields that have been plowed using draft animals and so more modern seeders do not exist in the country, making the transition to zero till more difficult.
Since 1995, staff from Ecuador’s National Institute of Agricultural and Livestock Research (INIAP) have worked with farmers in 17 communities in a remote Andean area to provide them seed of improved cultivars of several crops, mini-credit, and training about profitable and sustainable farming. Subsistence farmers in Saraguro now obtain several times their previous yields for small grains, potatoes, maize, and peas, and their average incomes have increased from US$1 to US$2 per day. With food security assured, farmers are requesting seed of varieties with enhanced market value and moving to cash crops such as onions, tomatoes, or fruits.
The project began when Hugo Vivar, former ICARDA barley breeder posted for many years at CIMMYT, worked with INIAP breeder Jorge Coronel, to introduce a new, highyielding barley variety to the area. On the heels of that barley’s success, Vivar has helped channel seed of improved drought-tolerant wheat from former CIMMYT wheat breeder Richard Trethowan’s research, and an excellent quality protein maize (QPM) variety now being used in food programs for children at two rural schools and sold as green ears by farmers for extra income.
Coronel, who grew up on a farm in Biblian, Cañar Province, Ecuador, studied at the University of Cuenca, in southern Ecuador, has been leading work in Saraguro since the project’s inception, and is a well-known and welcome figure in villages throughout the mountainous Andean valley. As a young researcher in 1991, Coronel took a six-month training course at CIMMYT in Mexico and was especially impressed by the Center’s philosophy concerning the need to work with and for farmers. “I really enjoy what I do here and the fantastic thing is that I get paid for it,” he says.
Often in life’s special moments, joy and sadness can co-exist in a strange mixture. Such was the case at El Batán on 18 May 2007, when CIMMYT bid formal farewell to retiring Distinguished Scientist, Hugo Córdova. First was a ceremony on the pyramid of the Borlaug Building, in which Hugo received a commemorative plaque from the hands of Director General, Masa Iwanaga. The text recognized his work during 1975-2007, leading to improved maize varieties and hybrids sown on several million hectares in developing countries, and closed with the words: “…through his commitment and advocacy (he) bore witness to the power of crop breeding to significantly improve the food security and livelihoods of developing country farmers.” Highland maize breeder, José Luis Torres, spoke on behalf of support staff, saying that “… all who worked with Hugo Córdova learned something.”
Afterwards the decorous tone turned festive, as staff moved to the Rincón Mexicano for a celebration with snacks, drinks, music, dancing, and camaraderie. Hugo, upon entering, was greeted immediately with the boisterous music of a live Mexican Mariachi band, which played for an hour. Party-goers were next treated to the considerable singing and guitar playing prowess of Maize Program administrator, Marcelo Pérez, with occasional and enthusiastic choruses from those present. The celebration then went on with dance music.
Hugo found the ceremony and festivities impressive and moving. “I want to thank all the directors and management staff, including Masa, Marianne, and Kevin, who have helped and supported me throughout the years to develop technologies that are used world-wide. I also want to recognize the contributions of national programs in this work and, finally, the Center’s support staff, who are the cornerstone of CIMMYT.” We wish you the best always, Hugo!
Seventy-four students graduated Friday, 18 May from an intensive, four-month English course at the Turkish-American Association in Ankara, Turkey. What makes the students and the course special is that they are all agricultural researchers with the government of Turkey and the course was organized by CIMMYT and ICARDA. It’s the second year in a row the course has been given. Turkey requires that its employees have proficiency in English before they can go abroad for advanced training, such as that offered by CIMMYT.
This course was designed to help bring as many young researchers to the required level as possible. Funding for the course was part of Turkey’s contribution as a member of the CGIAR. In addressing the graduates, Alexei Morgunov, the CIMMYT country representative in Turkey, congratulated them on the hard work they had done, pointing out that the knowledge and the friendships they had formed would stay with them throughout their careers. Morgunov was joined at the ceremony by Mesut Keser, the ICARDA country representative and by Masum Burak, the Director General of the General Directorate for Agricultural Research for Turkey. He thanked CIMMYT and ICARDA for their work in organizing the course. Morgunov said he hoped the course would become an annual event.
Ten wheat breeders from national agricultural research systems (NARSs) in Asia, Africa and Latin America have participated in the 2007 Intermediate Wheat Improvement course, which is drawing to a close after three successful months. “This course addresses the strong demand from our partners for comprehensive hands-on training for field breeders, and shows CIMMYT’s ongoing commitment to supporting capacity building in NARS partners,” says Petr Kosina, CIMMYT’s capacity building coordinator.
Course participants have been exposed to all aspects of CIMMYT’s multidisciplinary research approach. In addition to wide-ranging classes, they have spent most of their time in the field at Ciudad Obregón, Sonora State, in northern Mexico, getting involved in many of the activities of the breeding cycle. “Learning about CIMMYT breeders’ methodologies has been very useful,” says Stephan de Groot from South Africa, “and we’ve had the chance to see a wider perspective.” Adel Hagras of Egypt also values the experience of learning how the center works: “CIMMYT is a holy place for wheat breeding!” he says. At Obregón, the trainees selected germplasm that would be particularly valuable for the conditions in their countries and for their own research. They will receive seed of these lines next year, giving them direct and early access to promising materials.
Even more than the tangible benefits, they value the relationships they have built. In working here, the trainees have become part of the broad CIMMYT family and have created and strengthened links with other scientists. Luis Ponce Molina from Ecuador has appreciated the opportunity to share experiences and meet people working in the same area. “It’s important to have a good network,” he says. “The course has created possibilities for me for future collaboration.”
CIMMYT seems to have left a good impression: according to Stephan the highlight of the course was “the general positive mentality of all the breeders and researchers in working together, their professional attitude and their enthusiasm in the field.” There is still plenty to pack in before the trainees return home next week, and they will be leaving with new knowledge, new partners, and new inspiration. The course may be finishing, but their relationship with CIMMYT is just beginning: we’ll be in touch soon!
Indian Agricultural Economist and former Director of CIMMYT’s Economics Program, Prabhu Pingali, was among 72 new members and 18 foreign associates inducted into the United States National Academy of Sciences this week, in recognition of his distinguished and continuing achievements in research.
Pingali has devoted his entire career to research agriculture in developing countries. His research and advisory work has focused on technological change, environmental externalities, and agricultural development policy. Currently Director of FAO’s Agricultural and Development Economics Division, Pingali has confirmed that hunger reduction is a prerequisite for fast development and poverty reduction: “Hungry people cannot take full advantage of a pro-poor development strategy….for each year that goes by without reducing hunger, developing countries suffer a total loss of about 500 billion US dollars in terms of lifetime earnings foregone…. Investment in hunger reduction…has a potential for generating high economic rates of return.”