On Wednesday, 02 May 2007, representatives of the Mexico’s Agrarian Legal Office (La Procuraduría Agraria), Rubén Gallardo Zúñiga, Director of Agrarian Research in the General Direction of Research and Publications, Jaime Alejo Castillo, Director General of Social Communication, Fernando López Rojas, Director of Agrarian Organization, and Nicolás Edmundo Venosa Peña, Director General of Research and Publications, visited El Batán to learn about CIMMYT and explore areas of collaboration.
The Agrarian Legal Office was officially established in 1992 to help advise and protect farmers in affairs of land tenure, but its work builds on legal and administrative precedents of protecting and documenting land use and ownership that date back to when Mexico was still a Spanish colony. The visitors toured and met with staff of the Director General’s office, GREU, ITAU, SIDU, and Corporate Communications, and left enthused and impressed by what they learned of CIMMYT.
In the context of CIMMYT’s long-standing and fruitful partnerships with Chinese researchers and research organizations, CIMMYT wheat scientist He Zhonghu (far left) accompanied six key experts from three Chinese ministries and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) on a visit to CIMMYT and several Mexican research institutions during 20-23 April 2007. Members of the delegation were Liu Xu, Vice President, CAAS (to the left of Masa); Yang Chuan, Deputy Division Chief, National Development and Reform Commission; Zhou Wenneng, Division Chief Ministry of Science and Technology, Wang Jiuchen, Division Chief, Ministry of Agriculture; (not in the photo) Yang Jun, Deputy Division Chief, Ministry of Agriculture; and Dai Xiaofeng, Deputy Director General, CAAS.
Tlaltizapán station supervisor Francisco Magallanes, assistant supervisor Pedro Gálvez, and station staff are accustomed to attending visitors, but 24 April 2007 was one day they’ll not soon forget! That morning, no less than Mexican President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, Agriculture Minister Alberto Cárdenas Jiménez, Agriculture Undersecretary Francisco López Tostado, numerous other dignitaries, and some 3,000 other visitors descended upon the facility to hear the President announce a new national program for sugarcane producers, processors, and marketers. “
They called us the previous Thursday to say the station was being considered as a site for the event,” says Magallanes, “and on Friday, without further ado, we were informed that they were indeed coming!”
With the able help of station personnel, who assisted the highly professional staff of the agriculture secretariat and the President’s office, the event came off without a hitch. CIMMYT Director General Masa Iwanaga and Director of Resource Mobilization Rodomiro Ortíz were afforded courtesy invitations and front-row seats to greet the President and other dignitaries.
Distinguished scientist Hugo Córdova Orellana, who will retire in May 2007, received a rousing tribute during the 53rd annual meeting of the Programa Cooperativo Centroamericano para el Mejoramiento de Cultivos y Animales (PCCMCA), a long-lasting network of agricultural researchers from Central America and the Caribbean. The event took place in Antigua, Guatemala, during 23-27 April and was dedicated to Cordova. Presiding over the inaugural ceremony with Córdova were Hector Centeno, Guatemala’s Presidential Commissioner for Science and Technology; Bernardo López, Guatemala’s Minister of Agriculture; Mario Moscoso, PCCMCA President and Director General of Guatemala’s Instituto de Ciencia y Tecnología (ICTA); Octavio Menocal, Vice President of the PCCMCA; and the organization’s Executive Director, Mario Fuentes. As part of the ceremony, participants recalled Cordova’s life and work in global and Central American agricultural research and made humorous reference to the strong character and personal drive that have contributed to his success and marked his personal and professional relationships.
The Salvadoran native has worked 37 years in agricultural research, with achievements that include contributing to the development of improved maize varieties sown on 4 million hectares in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and, in latter years, the development and promotion of quality protein maize (QPM). He has indelibly marked the professional development of more than 60 undergrad and graduate students for whom he has served as advisor. During his keynote presentation for the event, Córdova commented that “…much remains to be done in Mesoamerica and I trust that international efforts will continue to address this.” Thanks and congratulations, Hugo!
Congratulations to Pat Wall (CIMMYT Zimbabwe). He has just been elected as chair of the international agronomy section of the American Society of Agronomy.
And Marilyn Warburton (GREU) is now the ANABAF/ REDBIO Mexico representative as CIMMYT is now part of RedBio Mexico. RedBio is a network for technical cooperation in agricultural biotechnology for Latin America and the Caribbean. It works under the auspices of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
After a lengthy and very detailed inspection process, the Seed Health Lab at CIMMYT has become the first in the CG system to receive International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certification. The Mexican Accreditation Entity (EMA) for the ISO was very thorough, said Monica Mezzalama, head of the Seed Inspection and Distribution Unit (SIDU). “It was sometimes tense, but I knew our procedures were already at a high level, so I wasn’t really worried,” she said.
Seed can carry pathogens— viruses, bacteria, or fungi—that reduce the viability of the seed itself or prevent the plants from growing well. When seed is consumed directly as food or feed, seed-borne organisms may cause chemical changes, degrade seed contents, or release powerful toxins that can harm humans and livestock. In the best of cases, food is simply wasted; in the worst, famine or poisoning can result. Certain seed-borne pathogens are endemic to specific areas of the world; great efforts are made to confine them.
Until recently, seed health standards at CIMMYT were self-imposed, in cooperation with the government of Mexico. The implementation of free trade agreements between Mexico and other countries—particularly the USA and Canada—brought a commitment from Mexico to ensure that all seed originating from the country conformed to international norms.
Congratulations to all who helped the Seed Health Lab achieve this important goal!
Ever heard of the terms “carbon trading” or “carbon inventories?” They are now routinely bandied about by governments seeking to balance economic development with reduced impacts on global climates. In the context of today’s report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which mentions agriculture as a key factor for mitigating climate change, this week CIMMYT hosted eight international experts as part of the workshop “New Technologies to Assess Soil Carbon Levels,” organized by wheat agronomist Ken Sayre and held at El Batán on Monday, 30 April 2007. After the workshop, participants spent the remainder of the week running tests on the station.
“CIMMYT’s long-term trials on conservation agriculture, which feature a range of practices and residue levels, provide a valuable platform for testing our instruments and methods for measuring soil carbon,” says Charles Rice, Professor of Soil Microbiology at Kansas State University, USA, and US National Director of the Consortium for Agricultural Soil Mitigation of Greenhouse Gases.
Also participating were César Izaurralde, leader of the USAID project on advanced soil carbon technologies, and Jorge Etchevers, Professor of Soil Fertility at the Colegio de Postgraduados, Mexico, who with former CIMMYT wheat director Tony Fischer helped launch the long-term conservation agriculture trial at El Batán.
Juan Izquierdo, Senior Crop Production Officer for Latin America and the Caribbean, FAO, visited CIMMYT’s El Batán research station on Thursday 19 April 2007. His discussions with center management and staff focused on the Drought Research Consortium of REDBIO, a technical cooperation network for agricultural biotechnology in Latin America and the Caribbean launched in 2005 with participation of CIMMYT. He expressed particular interest in the application of plant breeding and biotechnology tools within integrated plant breeding programs, work that CIMMYT is intensively pursuing at present. Among other things, Izquierdo extended a broad invitation for center staff to the upcoming REDBIO symposium, “VI Encuentro Latinoamericano de Biotecnologia Agropecuaria,” to be held in Viña del Mar, Chile, 22-26 October 2007.
The CIMMYT research station and the city of Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, in northwestern Mexico, had reason to celebrate over the last week. Norman Borlaug paid a five-day visit to the city in the Yaqui Valley where he did his original wheat research work. The Nobel Peace Prize winner, who celebrated his 93rd birthday just a few weeks ago, came to spend time with some of the farmers with whom he had worked in the early days when the Yaqui Valley was very poor.
He flew to Obregón directly from Texas, where he has been receiving medical treatment, and was both surprised and touched to see staff at the airport form a line to greet him as he stepped off the airplane. “It wasn’t quite a red carpet but it was the red carpet treatment,” said Chris Dowswell, Borlaug’s assistant.
In addition to attending social functions, Borlaug came to see and learn more about GreenSeeker, a technology that helps farmers fine-tune manage nitrogen fertilizer use. CIMMYT and Oklahoma State University (OSU) have actively participated in the development and promotion of the practice. More than 75 farmers, extension agents, and staff members of CIANO, the INIFAP research station in Obregón, attended a half-day symposium and field visit on the subject. In a 15- minute address in Spanish, Borlaug told participants about the difficulties of smallholder farmers in developing countries and how technologies like the GreenSeeker might help them to economize on fertilizer use, the most costly of production inputs. OSU engineer John Solie described the practice and its origins. The final speaker was Bill Raun, a prime developer of GreenSeeker, former CIMMYT agronomist, and currently OSU Regents Professor, who concluded his remarks with a poem he composed in Spanish for Borlaug. Both Raun and Borlaug received a standing ovation.
At a luncheon at the CIMMYT station, students from the Colegio Teresiano de la Vera Cruz in Ciudad Obregón presented Borlaug with a birthday cake. They had just completed a project for the school’s cultural week that focused on Borlaug and his work in the Yaqui Valley. Borlaug also met with the participants in the CIMMYT wheat improvement course.
Photo: Jorge Castro, a past president of El Patronato de Sonora, a key farmer association in the region that has benefited from and supported CIMMYT’s work, talks with Borlaug. Castro’s father and Borlaug contemporary, Óscar Castro Encino, looks on.
On 7 March 2007, Jesús González, of CIMMYT’s Agua Fría research station, talked of CIMMYT’s aims and achievements to an audience of 400 during the traveling exhibition “No maize, no country,” organized by the Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares of CONACULTA, Mexico’s public agency for cultural promotion. The exhibition, held in Huauchinango, Puebla, this year, is designed to foster reflection and discussion regarding the importance and potential of maize in Mexico, as well as the challenges and opportunities of globalization.
This is not the first time that Agua Fría colleagues have publicized CIMMYT’s work to outside audiences: like staff at CIMMYT research stations worldwide, for years they have taken part in promotional activities and attended visits from representatives of academic institutions, community support organizations (like the Fundación Miguel Alemán), and farmer associations from the states of Veracruz and Mexico. Agua Fría is located in Puebla State near the border of Veracruz, and is an ideal location to test and demonstrate maize of humid, lowland tropical adaptation.
Inaugurated formally in 2000, Agua Fría has grown and developed significantly. Those who work at the station are grateful for the contributions of CIMMYT management and the enormous dedication of staff who contributed to station development, including Raymundo López, Philippe Monneveux, Dan Jeffers, David Bergvinson, and Alejandro López. Up until 2002, for example, the station had only provisional offices, no telephone service, and no connection to Internet. The 3.5 kilometer road leading to the station from the highway was nearly impassible in the rainy season, making the station accessible only on foot, or by having the bus towed in with a tractor. Today, the access road is paved and facilities are fully functional for staff and visitors.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) announced Thursday that it would join CIMMYT and ICARDA in the Global Rust Initiative (GRI). “Global wheat yields could be at risk if the stem rust spreads to major wheat producing countries,” said FAO Director-General Dr Jacques Diouf. The statement also said that FAO had confirmed the findings announced in January by CIMMYT, ICARDA and the Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA-ARS) that the virulent wheat stem rust strain known as Ug99 had moved from Africa into the Arabian Peninsula. FAO went on to say that FAO, ICARDA and CIMMYT would support countries in developing resistant varieties, producing their clean quality seeds, upgrading national plant protection and plant breeding services and developing contingency plans. FAO urged countries in the potential path of the airborne fungus to increase their disease surveillance.
The FAO announcement follows close on the heels of the publication of two major stories about the wheat stem rust problem, one in Science and another in New Scientist and on visits to FAO by GRI coordinator, Rick Ward and by DG Iwanaga.
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.