The 27th annual Texcoco Horse Fair opened on Saturday, 24 March and CIMMYT was there. The Corporate Communications design group has put together a display booth to show both CIMMYT’s flagship products and give examples of how the center works around the world. (It’s in the agricultural pavilions area, a hundred meters or so west of the Teatro del Pueblo.)

On Wednesday evening, Mike Listman, from Corporate Communications, and Natalia Palacios, from the Global Maize Program, gave a lively and well-received presentation that included a brief talk about what CIMMYT does and a demonstration of the extraction of DNA from a banana, using common household chemicals like salt, meat texturizer, dish soap, and alcohol.

Miguel Mellado, Ma. Concepción Castro, and the design team provided invaluable support for the presentation and in designing and mounting the booth.

Michael Yost, Administrator, of the Foreign Agricultural Service of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) paid a brief visit to CIMMYT El Batán on Saturday, 24 March. He was accompanied by Suzanne Heinen the Agricultural Minister-Counselor of the Foreign Agriculture Service at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City and Erich Kuss the Senior Agricultural Attache at the Embassy.

After an introduction to CIMMYT given by Peter Ninnes, the group toured both the Wellhausen-Anderson Plant Genetic Resources Center and the Applied Biotechnology Center (ABC). During the ABC visit Marilyn Warburton talked about the support role the lab plays in important CIMMYT research projects as well as the new research that comes out of the lab itself. She also highlighted the limitations imposed by the age of some of the equipment.

The visit was arranged by Victor Villalobos the General Coordinator for International Affairs of the Ministry of Agriculture of Mexico (SAGARPA).

CIMMYT’s Toluca field station has held another successful demonstration of reduced and zero till techniques to Mexican farmers. As superintendent of Toluca station, Fernando Delgado oversees the planting and evaluation of wheat. However, his knowledge of conservation agriculture and its potential for maize are also in demand. Wednesday 21 March saw more than 40 farmers come to Toluca from Calpulalpan, Tlaxcala, a journey of well over a hundred kilometers.

Fernando gave a presentation to farmers on the use techniques requiring little tillage in maize, which he turned into an in-depth discussion, answering searching questions on every aspect of production under the system.

There was also a field demonstration, where the farmers saw how the team has adapted conventional minimal tillage equipment to the soils of Toluca station, which lack organic matter and are hard and brittle when dry. They commented on the similarity with their own soils, and were surprised and excited to find the soil reduced tillage practices was soft and moist.

The farmers left Toluca with an understanding of the challenges of minimal tillage—and an enthusiasm to make it work for them.

Plant breeders and postgraduates majoring in genetics and breeding gathered at the Institute of Crop Science of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science in Beijing between 19 and 22 March to learn more about genotype by environment interactions and breeding simulations. Among the key speakers were José Crossa, Yunbi Xu and Jiankan Wang from CIMMYT. Topics covered by the CIMMYT scientists ranged from an overview of experimental designs in plant breeding given by José Crossa to a quick course in marker assisted breeding from publications to practice given by Yunbi Xu; and an introduction to a genetics and breeding simulation tool by Jiankang Wang. The four-day workshop was sponsored by CAAS and the Generation Challenge Program of the CGIAR.

The Minister of Agriculture of Chile, Alvaro Rojas Marín, spent Friday morning, 23 March 2007, touring CIMMYT’s germplasm bank and the biotech lab and talking with Masa Iwanaga, Director General. He was accompanied by ministry staff, the Agricultural Counselor of the Chilean Embassy in Mexico, Oscar Troncoso Muñoz, the president of the Chilean Exporters Association, and Fernando Valderrábano Pesquera, Subdirector for International Affairs of Mexico’s Ministry of Agriculture, SAGARPA. Among other topics, Rojas and Masa discussed Chile’s success in commercial agriculture and how that country’s farm sector model might hold relevance for other Latin American nations seeking opportunities in globalized markets.

Eight breeders from developing countries arrived in El Batán this week to attend the Advanced Wheat Improvement course. They come from India, Pakistan, Sudan, Egypt, Ecuador and South Africa and will study wheat improvement techniques in Mexico for the next three months. The new course is currently the longest being offered in the CG system. On Saturday, participants move to Ciudad Obregón, where the real work begins.

A new single-cross, quality protein maize (QPM) hybrid called “NutriPeru” and designated INIA 611 was released at the Donoso research station, 80 km north of Lima, Peru, on 09 February 2007. Its parents are two CIMMYT maize lines—CMLs 161 and 165—and it yields an average 12 tons per hectare in winter season in Peru’s coastal maize zone, with top yields there of more than 14 tons per hectare. Its intense yellow color is highly valued by the region’s poultry producers, who are the chief consumers of yellow maize in the country. It is also resistant to gray leaf spot (Cercospora zeae-maydis).

Presiding over the release ceremony was Augusto Sayan Gianella, Director General of Promoción Agropecuaria del Ministerio de Agricultura. Daniel Reynosos Tantalean, head of Peru’s Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Extensión Agraria (INIA), formally delivered the new hybrid to some 300 farmers who attended. This achievement occurs in the framework of the current research pact between the government of Peru and CIMMYT.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that the same hybrid has been released and is being commercialized in Vietnam, Bangladesh, and probably also India.

One of the questions Norman Borlaug often asks when talking about rusts in the major cereals is why rice is not susceptible to rust fungi but wheat, barley and other cereals are. That question inspired a workshop on rust immunity systems organized by Ronnie Coffman of Cornell University and held last week at the CIMMYT Obregón station. Among the participants were representatives of the United States Department of Agriculture, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Texas A & M University, Purdue University, the University of Minnesota and of course CIMMYT. Rob Horsch of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation also participated. As a result of the workshop, the participants have been asked to prepare a concept note for submission to the Foundation for potential funding for rust resistance work.

Seeking to review progress and plan future contributions to CIMMYT research, nine members of Project 11, “Knowledge, targeting and strategic assessment of maize and wheat farming systems,” met in El Batán during 19-20 February 2007. Reports and MTP planning covered the Project’s four “pillars,” which correspond to MTP project outputs: knowledge/capacity building; value addition; diversity/gene valuation; and targeting and impacts assessment. Participants reported that CIMMYT guides the thesis research of a large number of advanced degree students, that methods have been developed to measure household welfare effects from on-farm conservation and use of crop genetic diversity, and training on conducting impact studies was completed during 2006 in Turkey, Ethiopia, and Uganda. Achievements slated for 2007 include the launch of the IRRI-CIMMYT knowledge-sharing portal, renewal of the popular “Maize and Wheat Facts and Futures” publication series, analyses of maize and wheat value chains, publications on crop diversity and cereal intensification, and the completion of ex ante impact studies on diverse CIMMYT initiatives, including drought tolerant maize in sub-Saharan Africa.

You’ve heard of collateral damage, but this story is about collateral benefits, according to Iván Ortiz-Monasterio, CIMMYT wheat agronomist posted to Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, northern Mexico. “At 1 a.m. on February 19th, Rodrigo Rascón, superintendent of CIMMYT station operations, left his home to pick up a dose of Toxogonin from the station,” says Ortiz-Monasterio. “He delivered this to the General Hospital of Ciudad Obregón, and it helped save two lives.”

According to reports, three young girls in Chínipas—a small town in the canyons of the Western Sierra Madre of Chihuahua State and best accessed by air in emergencies—had accidentally consumed toxic agrochemicals. One died, and the other two were rushed to the toxicology unit of the Ciudad Obregón hospital. The nearest source they knew of for the antidote was eight hours away, so hospital officials contacted a local provider, who informed them that, given its work and the safety provisions promoted by its Security and Hygiene Committee, CIMMYT-Obregón was likely to have the needed medicine. The chain of urgent communications next led to Jorge Artee, representative of the Agricultural Research and Experimentation Board of the State of Sonora (“Patronato,” for short), a Mexican farmer association that has benefited from CIMMYT research and provided funding and other long-term support to the Center. Artee quickly got in touch with Ortiz-Monasterio, who called Rascón.

Because they take place behind the scenes, the efforts of units like CIMMYT’s Security and Hygiene Committee usually go unheralded, but an emergency like that described here helps remind us of the value of their work. Congrats to Committee members: Isidro Jiménez Olvera, Jorge Montoya Moroyoqui, Carlos González León, Manuel de Jesús Ruiz Cano, Rodrigo Rascón Gamez.

Lene Lange, chair of the CIMMYT Board of Trustees, recently visited the headquarters of our sister institute, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Patancheru, India. It was her first visit to the campus in 20 years and she was shown the ICRISAT lab facilities and germplasm bank and visited some field activities. Lange was particularly interested in discussing issues surrounding the new global interest in biofuels as well as public-private sector partnerships. Her hosts for the visit were ICRISAT Deputy Director General, Dyno Keatinge and former CIMMYT scientist, David Hoisington.

Sixteen members of the Illinois Farm Bureau paid a brief visit to El Batán on Wednesday. The group included maize, wheat, and soybean farmers and they are on a study tour to learn about Mexican agriculture. At CIMMYT they heard presentations from Kevin Pixley about CIMMYT’s Maize Program, Javier Peña about nutritional enhancement in maize, and Pedro Aquino about our impacts and targeting work in Mexico. The tour was capped with visit to the Wellhausen- Anderson Plant Genetic Resources Center with Tom Payne acting as guide. For many the tour was an eye-opener, and the visitors had many questions about agriculture in the developing world. After two and a half hours at CIMMYT, the group moved on to the University of Chapingo.

Staff of CIMMYT’s Global Wheat Program have just concluded a week of intense meetings at El Batán. For the first three days the scientific team presented highlights and research results from work over the past year. Three strong foci for the program emerged from the meetings, according to Hans Braun, the program director. “Increased wheat production needed for food security in many countries on, at best, constant but more likely declining acreage can only be met through higher yields,” he says. “Of course, at CIMMYT it has always been a priority and that will continue.” The other two important research challenges that must be faced are breeding new cultivars with resistance to stem rust, which has now spread from Africa into the Arabian Peninsula, and breeding wheat that is adapted to conditions due to climate change. Braun pointed out to the group that one of the long-standing pillars of the CIMMYT wheat breeding programs—wide adaptation—will contribute to developing germplasm to cope with climate change.

The group also worked on the program’s contribution to this year’s medium-term plan and on the last two days heard presentations that looked to the future. Dave Hodson from ITAU talked about the need and potential for a global wheat production atlas and wheat breeder Yann Manes explored the potential for rapid progress in wheat breeding using techniques such as doubled-haploids.