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.
Eleven winners of the prestigious 2006 Nuffield Farming Scholarships in Australia visited CIMMYT during 5-7 March 2007, as part of a study tour covering three continents and diverse farming systems and market arrangements.
The Nuffield Foundation and Trust both derive from the Lord Nuffield (William Morris, 1877-1963), a British engineer and businessman who founded Morris Motors and donated substantial sums during his lifetime to charity. The Foundation initially supported health and social well-being but, in the years immediately following World War II, expanded its objectives to include agricultural advancement, and the first Nuffield Farming Scholarship was launched in 1947. The Trust now exists as a separate body, independent of the Nuffield Foundation, and promotes agricultural, horticultural, forestry, and countryside management education in the United Kingdom and abroad.
Nuffield scholars gain a deep understanding and global perspective of politics, cultures, and challenges associated with agriculture, and typically go on to become highly influential in their fields. Among the worldwide bodies that support Nuffield Scholars are associations in Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand, Republic of Ireland, and Zimbabwe. Their questions covered diverse and sometimes challenging topics, such as the purpose and nature of CIMMYT partnerships with private companies, or our methods for conserving diversity in seed collections.
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.
After years of battling illness, former CIMMYT scientist Bent Skovmand died on 06 February 2007 in Kävlinge, Sweden, at the age of 62. Born in Frederiksberg, Denmark, Skovmand did his undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Minnesota, USA, obtaining a PhD in plant pathology, with a minor in genetics and plant breeding, in 1976. That same year he joined CIMMYT as a postdoctoral fellow with the Wheat Program, working as a breeder and pathologist. After a four-year posting in Turkey, in 1988 he assumed leadership of the Wheat Genetic Resources Unit, where he remained until leaving CIMMYT in early 2004 for an appointment as Director of the Nordic Gene Bank. Known for his mordant humor and enthusiasm for science, Bent will be sorely missed by all who knew him. The CIMMYT community sends its sincere condolences to his wife, Eugenia, and their children.
During 30 January-03 February, members of CIMMYT Project 10, “Conservation agriculture for maize and wheat cropping systems,” held annual review and planning meetings in Harare, Zimbabwe.
“The work we reviewed furthers CIMMYT’s strong tradition of helping partners test and promote diverse resource-conserving practices with farmers, as well as backstopping those efforts with relevant research,” says John Dixon, Director of the Impacts Targeting and Assessment Unit, who presided over the meetings.
Scientists reporting on achievements, challenges, and plans included Pat Wall, who with the help of Christian Thierfelder is leading center projects on conservation agriculture in southern Africa; Paul Mapfumo and Mulugetta Mekuria, who work with partners through the Soil Fertility Consortium for Southern Africa (SOFECSA); Olaf Erenstein, who has coordinated surveys to assess the adoption and impacts of zero-tillage and other resource-conserving practices in South Asia; Mirjam Pulleman, who reported on her work and that of Bram Govaerts and Ken Sayre analyzing long-term conservation agriculture trials at El Batán and Ciudad Obregón; and Stephen Waddington, maize agronomist for many years in southern Africa and now leading CIMMYT efforts in Bangladesh.
Participants, in the company of extension and NGO partners, paid visits to farmers testing conservation agriculture practices in several villages of central and southern Zimbabwe. The region’s degraded and sandy soils and crop-and-animal farming systems are among the most challenging for efforts to keep protective, nourishing residues on the land, and work has been under way for only a few years—barely the blink of an eye for such initiatives. But farmer interest is evident and, particularly in Malawi, adoption of zero-tillage and residue retention for maize-based farming has begun.
On January 19, 2007, Raj Gupta stepped down as the CIMMYT Facilitator of the Rice-Wheat Consortium (RWC) based in New Delhi, India. When Raj assumed the leadership of the RWC, the technological foundation had been created for the new resourceconserving technologies (RCT) appropriate for the dominant ricewheat production system of the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP), such as zero-till seeding and bed planting of wheat and other crops. It was obvious that these new technologies offered a tremendous potential to benefit the livelihoods of farmers producing rice and wheat in the IGP and that they also offered pragmatic opportunities to enhance the long-term sustainability of this production system.
However, farmer adoption of these new technologies was still negligible. Teaming with former CIMMYT wheat agronomist Peter Hobbs, Raj brought together farmers, the private sector (especially machinery manufacturers), scientists, and extension agents in a partnership essential for the rapid adoption of the RCTs. When Raj began his efforts, the area in the IGP devoted to RCTs was not more than 10,000 ha. After less than seven years, it has reached nearly 3 million hectares. This tremendous achievement of the RWC partnership, led by Raj, was awarded the King Baudouin award in 2004 and represents the best example of the widespread adoption of RCT and conservation agriculture by small and mediumscale farmers in irrigated production systems anywhere in the world.
The CIMMYT community wishes to express a deep sense of gratitude for Raj’s remarkable efforts and wishes him all the best as takes on new challenges with ICAR in India.
The 53rd Annual Meeting of the Central American Cooperative Program for the Improvement of Crops and Animals (PCCMCA)—a network established by Edwin J. Wellhausen and L. Sterling Wortman with Rockfeller Foundation support in 1954—will be dedicated personally to CIMMYT maize breeder and Distinguished Scientist Hugo Cordova.
“This is a great honor and distinction for more than 30 years of support to maize research and development in the region,” says Cordova.
The meeting, entitled “Cambios globales: Tendencias, efectos y perspectives para la agricultura de Mesoamérica y El Caribe hacia el 2020,” will be held in Antigua, Guatemala, during 23-27 April 2007.
How do CIMMYT research products reach farmers, and how can we make that happen better, more quickly, and more often? Those are a few of the issues that CIMMYT staff, with logistical and technical support from the Impacts Targeting and Assessment Unit (ITAU), gathered to consider at a workshop in El Batán during 11-14 December 2006.
“We got together to specify pathways for the 8 CIMMYT projects, considering the problems they’re addressing and the networks within which they operate,” says Sofia Álvarez, impact assessment specialist from CIAT who facilitated the workshop.
Outputs included network maps and diagrams known as “problem and objective trees.” According to Álvarez, the trick was to strike the middle ground between too generic and too specific. “We hope that people will be able to use the tools and methodologies they acquired here to go deeper into specific products for specific regions.”
Álvarez was particularly impressed with the fact that CIMMYT staff were so concerned about achieving impacts in farmers’ fields. “I thought it would be less likely for, say, scientists in the Genetic Resources and Enhancement Unit to be thinking about impacts. That probably has to do partly with the pro-active work of the ITAU, which has gotten them thinking about things that I don’t know if even other centers are thinking about.”