Breeding research by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is generating not only higher-yielding maize and wheat varieties but also more nutritious ones, according to a recent post in the Thomson Reuters Foundation News.
The center’s mission to foster more productive, sustainable maize and wheat farming contributes directly to U.N. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2, “Zero Hunger. But decades-long work to develop biofortified versions of maize and wheat is now bearing fruit in the form of nutrient-enhanced varieties of particular benefit for people who rely heavily on staple crops in their diets.
Quality protein maize – developed by CIMMYT in the 1980s – is grown on 1.2 million hectares around the world, while pro-vitamin A maize is grown on at least 100,000 hectares in Africa and has been shown to be as effective as vitamin supplements. High-zinc wheat is also taking off in Asia, and the first high-zinc maize varieties for Latin America were released in February.
Click hereto read the entire post post in the Thomson Reuters Foundation News.
Last year’s maize-growing season in Pakistan yielded a record-breaking six-million tons, decreasing the country’s dependence on imported maize seed and boosting local sales and exports of maize-based products.
Officials and growers attribute this surge in yields extensive use of inputs such as fertilizer, high-yielding improved maize hybrid new varieties and collaborative programs that focus on targeting maize seed improvement to the local environment.
During the recently held 5th Annual maize working group meeting, partners representing 25 public and private institutions discussed what can be done following efforts to consolidate and sustain innovative interventions by AIP. Approximately 50 Participants from Pakistan attended this two-day meeting, where participants shared progress on their respective maize activities, updates on the status of seed production and product identification under AIP, and future prospects.
In a thematic group discussion, participants helped to identify gaps, recognize the role of stakeholders, and develop doable recommendations across the value chain.
Yusuf Zafar, chairman of the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC), said he appreciated the contributions of CIMMYT and USAID to Pakistan’s maize sector. “The collaboration and partnership of the public and private sectors under AIP is an exemplary one. We will continue supporting the continuation of this platform with all available means and resources” said Zafar while ensuring PARC’s commitment to this initiative after the completion of the project.
While presenting the annual review, Muhammad Imtiaz, CIMMYT Country Representative for Pakistan discussed the status of the project. AIP will continue under a no-cost extension until 2019 and the project is looking for assistance from the private sector in order to continue into the future.
In closing, Anjum Ali, Member Plant Sciences Division, Pakistan Agricultural Research Council, PARC, acknowledged the effort of CIMMYT in bringing all the stakeholders of maize including academia, public and private R&D institutions, policymakers under one umbrella. He further added, “PARC will channel all the deliberations from this meeting and will work with relevant government bodies to come up with amicable solutions for the problems faced by the private sector in products testing and marketing.” The timely and doable recommendations of the working group will serve as a working document for the government in the future, Ali added.
On April 11, 2018 representatives from the Embassy of Canada in Ethiopia, Ivan Roberts, Head of Development Cooperation and Carolyn MacLeod, Development Team leader for Human Development, Environment and Agriculture, visited the Ethio Veg Fru Farm, one of the main field sites of the NuME project.
“We were very much interested and happy to see such a success story as the Ethio Veg Fru Farm,” said MacLeod. Roberts and MacLeod both said they appreciated the efforts made by the NuME project in working collaboratively with private seed companies to fill the seed shortage of QPM varieties. They were also happy with the field performance of the crop under production.
MacLeod said she looked forward to continued collaboration with CIMMYT and indicated continued support to projects such as NuME under the International Assistance Policy of Canada, in which agricultural development must benefit women and girls.
The NuME project’s goal is to bring nutritious, quality protein maize (QPM) to rural maize producers in the Ethiopian maize belt and beyond.
Maize lacks two essential amino acids – lysine and tryptophan, making maize protein less useful for humans. In the southern region of Ethiopia, where maize accounts for more than 60 percent of the dietary protein intake, an estimated 85 to 90 percent of the population – especially young children and women – are at risk of inadequate lysine intake and protein deficiency.
In Ethiopia, maize now ranks first among cereals for production, and second in area planted. Ethiopian families increasingly rely on maize as a staple due to its higher productivity and lower production costs, compared to other cereals.
QPM looks and tastes the same as normal maize but contains up to twice as much lysine and tryptophan. Studies have shown that children who consume QPM grow roughly 10 percent more in both height and weight.
Over the last few years the Ethiopian government has been stepping up nutrition interventions targeting women and children, with aims for a 3 percent annual reduction in the number of stunted and underweight children. As part of this initiative, the Ethiopian government allocates around 10 percent of the total national budget to agriculture, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resource (MoANR) has officially made QPM part of their extension agenda.
The EthioVeg Fru Farm Plc., with the financial and technical support of the NuME Project, is multiplying parental lines of BHQPY545 under irrigation. BHQPY545, developed from CIMMYT lines, is a highly popular single cross QPM hybrid released by the Ethiopia Institute of Agricultural Research.
Although the variety has been quite popular, seed companies have been reluctant to produce and market the seed due to it low seed-yield potential, making it more difficult for seed companies to produce a sufficient supply. Due to the stigma of low seed-yield, NuME organized a high-level field day on March 27, 2018 to demonstrate the genetic potential of the parental lines and effectiveness offseason maize seed multiplication with irrigation.
Seed company managers briefed on QPM seed multiplication during visitors day. (Photo: CIMMYT)
Visitors to the field day included the state minister for agricultural development from MoANR, Tesfaye Mengiste, general managers of public and private seed companies and a Farmers’ Cooperative Union that work in partnership with the NuME project.
Mengiste stressed maize as the number one strategic food crop for the country as it is the most produced and consumed cereal. He thanked NuME for bringing QPM technologies to the country and said it has to be up to the extension system now to reach every farmer.
Impressed by the field performances he saw, Mengiste probed seed company managers about why they have not multiplied seeds during the offseason to overcome seed scarcity and help reach the annual target of 200,000 ha land planted with QPM, approximately 10 percent of land currently devoted to maize production.
Mengiste wondered why there seems to be a QPM seed paradox, where farmers criticize seed unavailability while seed companies complain about the lack of demand. He said that QPM is essential for the national food and nutrition security and urged seed companies to make all possible effort to produce and sell QPM seeds, as part of their responsibility to reach rural smallholder farmers in exchange for government support.
Most seed companies had considered the inbred lines incompetent and weak but the field visit made them realize the potential of the lines, even under high plant density. They were convinced that the poor field performance previously noticed was not due to lack of inherent potential, but to the agro-techniques applied.
The general manager of the South Seed Enterprise (SSE), Ato Belay Hariso said he learned a lot from the field day and will use the experience to produce seed using irrigation during the off-season to fill seed supply shortages.
After seeing the crop in the field and knowing that QPM is useful to curb malnutrition in the country, seed mangers expressed great enthusiasm to increase seed production of BHQPY545 and other QPM varieties.
Mengiste recommended a number of efforts to help increase the scalability of QPM seeds, starting with continued dissemination of QPM varieties by NuME and the governmental extension system until sustainable demand is created. He suggested that seed company managers must seriously plan QPM seed production for the coming main season and perhaps look for more private seed companies, who have the interest and capacity to produce QPM seed to partner with. Mengiste said that seed enterprises should be able to sell all the QPM seed they produce by promoting the nutritional advantages of QPM, with support of the NuME project and the extension system.
The Nutritious Maize for Ethiopia project is funded by Global Affairs Canada (GAC) and implemented by CIMMYT-Ethiopia in collaboration with various stakeholders from agriculture, nutrition and health sectors. The project is designed to contribute to the reduction of malnutrition, especially among women and young children, and to increase food security for resource-poor smallholder farmers in Ethiopia through the widespread adoption, production and utilization of QPM varieties and crop management practices that increase farm productivity.
Suraya Parvin (left), Senior Scientific Officer of BARC, discussing with the facilitator in the training. Photo: Jitendra Raj Bajracharya/ICIMOD.
The training strengthened the remote sensing capabilities of professionals from BARC and BARI in using satellite-based remote sensing tools and crop mapping to monitor drought risks. During the training, participants were exposed to a number of remote sensing and geographic information systems tools including SPIRITS, QGIS, ArcMap, GeoCLIM as well as a foundation course to Google Earth Engine. Additionally, open source platform to perform online and offline data collection using mobile application training was provided.This learning exchange took place in order to address the risks for agricultural drought in portions of north-western Bangladesh where farmers may lack access to, or cannot afford irrigation. This leads to bottlenecks in crop productivity and can impair the livelihoods of smallholder farmers reliant on variable and unpredictable precipitation. Access to quality drought monitoring and forecasting could assist farmers in adapting to these climactic risks. Meteorological and agricultural research institutions play a crucial role in providing improved information flow and drought risks advisories to farmers.
Mir Matin, theme leader of Geospatial Solutions, ICIMOD, organized the training on behalf of CSRD and ICIMOD, alongside Rajesh Bahadur Thapa, capacity building specialist, ICIMOD. ICIMOD’s Bhoj Raj also facilitated sessions on application of these tools.
“Bangladesh, especially the northern region, is most susceptible to drought and it is difficult to grow year-round crops here,” said Suraya Parvin, senior scientific officer of BARC. “To increase the cropping intensity in this region, drought monitoring is very essential. I think this training was extremely useful to prepare us for this challenge.”
The CSRD partnership and ICIMOD are working together to establish user-oriented platforms for the provision of easily accessible, timely and decision relevant scientific information, in the form of climate services. “This training, and the applied science products that will come from it, will be a crucial part of efforts to increase the resilience of Bangladesh’s smallholder farmers to climatic risks,” said Timothy J. Krupnik, systems agronomist, CIMMYT and CSRD project leader. “Working with the graduates of the training on a day-to-day basis, we expect to deepen BARC and BARI’s contributions to applied climate services in Bangladesh.”
What does the no-plastic initiative look like at CIMMYT?
The plastic initiative is a replacement of all one-use plastics for the dining areas, plus a review of what can be done to replace all plastic bottles.
Eventually we will look at any other use of one time plastic, but for now, we just want to look at what we can do differently and how we can reduce our use of one-time plastic in the containers we’re using every day in the food products.
CIMMYT is already involved in the no-plastic initiative in Nairobi because the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF) initiated such a program in their HQ, where our CIMMYT-Kenya office is located. The Government of Kenya has banned all use of disposable plastic, so now we are to follow suit here in Mexico.
Do you know what our current usage rates are for plastic here at CIMMYT?
Yes, we’re using around 140,000 pieces of plastic per month. So it’s a huge amount. It includes plastic bags, plastic containers, plastic utensils, plastic bottles of all kinds – it ends up being around 1,700,000 pieces of plastic per year.
So what’s the plan? How are we reducing this?
We’re going to introduce a permanent container that we will distribute to all CIMMYT employees. This container can be washed and reused. We’re going to introduce fresh, warm food at the café that we’re going to transport from the dining room, and there is a heating system being installed in the café to keep the food warm.
People will be served in their container, and then they will be responsible for washing their own container. We know that people may forget their container, or may not want to wash them, so we will have also environmentally-friendly disposable containers made from maize and wheat residues compressed into the form of a plate or a cup, and people who use these instead will be charged a little bit extra.
We are looking now at different types of containers and will ask people to vote on them. This is just in good time because we intend to use them for Science Week [an upcoming internal event that will bring roughly 200 visitors to CIMMYT].
Instead of boxed lunches at Science Week, we will provide reusable mesh bags that don’t disintegrate and that people can keep afterward to carry groceries, reducing the use of plastic bags there also.
When do you expect CIMMYT to be fully weaned off plastic?
We are looking at the end of the year because the biggest investment is in water. CIMMYT has a good well with good quality water that we test on a regular basis. It is free of pathogens and heavy metals and is actually already being used at the moment to refill the big water cooler jugs that we have. The water is treated and filtered, so now what we want to do is to install water fountains close to all the bathrooms. They will be connected directly to our wells, and there is an internal filter system in those fountains. We hope this will reduce the number of plastic water bottles used, plus we are going to introduce this into meeting rooms. So for like a Board meeting for example, instead of handing out water bottles, it would be cups of water and a pitcher.
We have to look at all these so it will take a bit of time. But we’ve already started with the warm food distribution; we already bought the equipment to provide the warm food, so we now need to install it. It should come together relatively quickly, but we need to have good communications to explain why we are doing this and what the impact is.
We will be accelerating in the next six months. Our goal is that by the end of the year we should have introduced all those measures. Installation of the fountains may take a bit longer since our campus is fairly large. In fact, once those are in place, we will have very good water — better than drinking from a plastic bottle because it is proven that there is plastic residue in your water when you use plastic bottles.
Have you had any reactions from the CIMMYT community so far about this initiative?
We ran a survey, and most definitely, people are interested. They are willing to make the necessary compromise in order to reduce our use of plastic.
And people are willing to pay more if they forget their containers?
Yes…most of them.
Plastic pollution is a defining environmental challenge for our time, be a part of the solution. Learn more about World Environment Day and how you can personally contribute to the global push against plastic pollution here.
Denis Huneault has been the Director of Business Services at CIMMYT since May 2016. In addition to managing the business services units at HQ, he coordinates the support services delivery in CIMMYT’s country offices around the world. Major responsibilities also include process improvement and risk management. Before joining CIMMYT, he was the Director of Administration and Finance at AfricaRice from 2012 until 2016. He has a long international career managing the administration of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Canadian Red Cross delegations in Sri Lanka, Russia, Sudan, Indonesia and Haiti from 2000 until 2012. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Finance and Economics from HEC Montreal (1986) and a M.Sc. in International Business also from HEC Montreal (1994). During the 1990’s, he contributed to the Canadian public sector by working for the House of Commons, the Ministry of Industry of Quebec and for the implementation of a Canadian International Development Agency project in Indonesia.
This blast-infected wheat spike contains no grain, only chaff. Photo: CIMMYT files.
A spatial mapping and ex ante studyregarding the risk and potential spread in South Asia of wheat blast, a mysterious and deadly disease from the Americas that unexpectedly infected wheat in southwestern Bangladesh in 2016, identified 7 million hectares of wheat cropping areas in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan whose agro-climatic conditions resemble those of the Bangladesh outbreak zone.
The study shows that, under a conservative scenario of 5-10% wheat blast production damage in a single season in those areas, wheat grain losses would amount to from 0.89 to 1.77 million tons worth, between $180 and $350 million. This would strain the region’s already fragile food security and forcing up wheat imports and prices, according to Khondoker Abdul Mottaleb, first author of the study.
“Climate change and related changes in weather patterns, together with continuing globalization, expose wheat crops to increased risks from pathogens that are sometimes transported over long distances,” said Mottaleb.
Foresight research at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) has focused on new diseases and pests that have emerged or spread in recent decades, threatening global food safety and security. For wheat these include Ug99 and other new strains of stem rust, the movement of stripe rust into new areas, and the sudden appearance in Bangladesh of wheat blast, which had previously been limited to South America.
“As early as 2011, CIMMYT researchers had warned that wheat blast could spread to new areas, including South Asia,” said Kai Sonder, who manages CIMMYT’s geographic information systems lab and was a co-author on the current study, referring to a 2011 notepublished by the American Pathological Society. “Now that forecast has come true.”
CIMMYT has played a pivotal role in global efforts to study and control blast, with funding from the Australian Center for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat (WHEAT), the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
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Farmers and agricultural policymakers frequently encounter tough decisions with complex trade-offs. Selecting which crop to plant next season, for example, would be much easier with a crystal ball. Wei Xiong, a senior scientist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), cannot look into the future, but he can remove a lot of the guesswork.
Xiong uses modeling tools to simulate how agricultural systems would respond to different policies, technological innovations and climate change.
“With these simulations, we can show farmers and policymakers different hypothetical outcomes,” said Xiong. “We can help them make better, more informed decisions.”
Xiong and his multi-disciplinary team are interested in looking at new angles of agricultural issues. For one project, Xiong is investigating how climate change could affect global beer prices. He and his team are studying the effects of increasingly frequent extreme weather events, such as drought, on global barley yields and how this could affect beer production and prices.
“We call the project drinking security,” added Xiong.
Xiong is also interested in the impacts of air pollution on agricultural production and livelihoods in India and China.
“We want to know if air pollution affects yields and whether policies to curb air pollution will have any impact on farmer incomes, food prices and international trade,” he said.
Xiong collaborates with a team of Chinese agricultural scientists and local extension officers on a program called Size & Technology Backyard. The program aims to increase farmers’ yields while decreasing agricultural pollution in the water, air and soil. During each growing season, agricultural students stay in villages to conduct surveys and field research with farmers.
“Based on that data, we can create an agricultural modeling system that incorporates everything from the crop physiology side, to the socioeconomic side and human dimension side,” said Xiong. “We can project which farmers are most likely to adopt which specific kinds of technology based on everything from their location to their family structure.”
But in China, Xiong explained, agriculture still falls under government control.
“The government has always decided which crop you should plant, which area you should use and how to use the areas,” said Xiong. “Most of the policies are based on suggestions by experts.”
The team will use their simulation models to recommend policies that benefit farmers and the environment.
Xiong effectively links many silos through his work at CIMMYT, in large part due to his diverse educational background. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in geography at Hubei University, he continued with a master’s degree in meteorology from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) in Beijing. He later went on to earn a doctorate in agronomy from China Agricultural University.
After ten years as a professor at CAAS, Xiong worked at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis where he designed large-scale simulations of crop production and the effects of global policy. In 2014, he collaborated with other researchers on a global agriculture systems modeling project through a position at the University of Florida. Last fall, Xiong joined CIMMYT at its headquarters in El Batán, Mexico, working on sustainable intensification.
Xiong will return to China later this year to help establish a new CIMMYT office in Henan and strengthen CIMMYT’s partnership with Henan Agricultural University. The new location will focus on research and training, and will host two international senior scientists with expertise in remoting sensing, informatics, physiology and crop management.
Figure: Maize-producing counties in the USA that are vulnerable to Tar Spot Complex (TSC) of maize, developed based on climate analogue model analysis procedure matching historic climatic data of 13 counties where TSC has been detected.
A new study shows that nearly 12 million hectares of the maize-growing USA, approximately 33 percent of the entire maize-growing area of the country, might be vulnerable to a disease called Tar Spot Complex (TSC).
Native to Latin America, one of the two major fungal pathogens involved in TSC of maize was detected for the first time in the United States in 2015. In Latin America, TSC can cause up to 50 percent losses in maize yields, but the impact of one fungal pathogen alone on maize yields unknown. There is a hypothetical likelihood that the second fungal pathogen involved in TSC, could migrate to the US. If this happens, the devastating TSC disease in the US could cause significant economic damages.
Even a one percent loss in maize production caused by the disease in this area could lead to a reduction in maize production of 1.5 million metric tons of grain, or approximately $231.6 million in losses. Such production losses would not only affect the $51.5 billion US maize industry, but also the food security in a number of low-income countries that are heavily dependent on maize imports from the US.
The emergence and spread of new crop diseases or new variants of already established diseases around the globe over the last decades have generated serious threats for food safety and security. Therefore, the improvement of crop disease resistance has become one of the key focus topics of research at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).
The intent of this study is to raise public awareness regarding potential TSC outbreaks and to develop strategies and action plans for such scenario.
This study was published by an interdisciplinary team of CIMMYT scientists in the journal of Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change regarding the potential threats of TSC in the US and its global consequences. Within this article, ex-ante impact assessment techniques were combined with climate analogue analysis to identify the maize growing regions that may be vulnerable to potential TSC outbreaks in the USA.
Maize researchers at MMRI while receiving the DH inducer lines seeds. Photo:MMRI
Maize is Pakistan’s third important cereal following wheat and rice. Pakistan’s maize yield is among the highest in South Asia with an average yield of 4.5 tons per hectare (t/ha). Maize production in Pakistan in 2016-17 set a record high of 6.1 million tons, a 16 percent increase from the previous year and almost a 600 percent increase from levels in the early 1980s. The introduction and rapid expansion of hybrid maize in the mid 1990s, particularly in the spring season, is among the drivers for the wider adoption of maize in Pakistan.
Despite the noteworthy progress of maize production and productivity, Pakistan still imports more than 80 percent of the hybrid seeds, costing the country over $50 million annually and making retail price of hybrid seeds expensive. Dependency on seed import will not warrant sustainable maize production.
Haploid inducers are a specially developed maize genetic stock that are used to develop doubled haploid (DH) maize lines. DH maize lines are highly uniform, genetically pure and stable, making the maize breeding process more intuitive and efficient by simplifying logistics.
This material was shared with two AIP public partners, Maize and Millets Research Institute (MMRI) and University of Agriculture Faisalabad (UAF). The CIM2GTAILs showed high haploid induction rates (~8-15 percent) under CIMMYT-tested (sub)tropical conditions in Mexico and Kenya, and showed better agronomic performance in terms of plant vigor, synchrony with tropical source populations, better standability, and resistance to important tropical foliar diseases and ear rots..
This DH technology is capable to develop a large number of inbred lines with highest uniformity and homozygosity in shortest possible time of 2-3 generations. Conventional breeding methods needs 6-8 generations to develop stable maize inbred line.
Double haploid inducer seeds handover to UAF. Dr. Muhammad Aslam (UAF),left receiving from Dr. Muhammad Imtiaz. Photo: Ehtisham/CIMMYT
While handing over the inducer seeds to UAF, Muhammad Imtiaz, CIMMYT country representative for Pakistan said “the initiation of the DH technology in Pakistan will modernize and enhance maize breeding efficiency of local institutions particularly in availing locally adapted inbred lines.”
The two institutions have mobilized additional resources from the Government of Pakistan to establish the required DH facilities in their respective institutions and currently they are multiplying the seeds in a controlled environment. Receiving the seeds that were sent from CIMMYT Mexico, Muhammad Aslam, assistant professor at UAF and Muhammad Arshad, director of MMRI sincerely acknowledged the continued and unreserved support from CIMMYT particularly in building the capacity of national programs.
CIMMYT and AIP have trained Pakistani researchers on DH technology in Mexico and Kenya and have allocated 52 market-ready maize varities, including hybrids and biofortified varieties, to 12 public and private partners to foster availability and affordability of maize seeds in Pakistan.
The Agricultural Innovation Program (AIP) for Pakistan is working to sustainably increase agricultural productivity and incomes in the agricultural sector through the promotion and dissemination of modern technologies/practices in the livestock, horticulture (fruits and vegetables) and cereals (wheat, maize and rice) sector. Project management is vested in a unique consortium of CGIAR Centers and the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC), led by CIMMYT supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development. The project aims to foster emergence of a dynamic, responsive, and competitive system of science and innovation in Pakistan. AIP seeks to catalyze equitable growth in agricultural production, productivity, and value.
Bram Govaerts with the members of the Río Fuerte Sur Farmer Association (AARFS) Management Committee. Photo: José Saucedo.
On the 14th of May, the Río Fuerte Sur Farmers’ Association (Asociación de Agricultores del Río Fuerte Sur, or AARFS), whose membership includes 2,500 farmers from northern Sinaloa, granted Bram Govaerts the 2018 Tecnoagro Award.
Starting 27 years ago, this award has been granted to people who promote the development of science and technologies aimed at improving farmers’ productivity and their ability to overcome the challenges of Mexican agriculture.
Govaerts received the 2018 Tecnoagro Award in recognition of the efforts of CIMMYT and, in particular, of its Sustainable Intensification Program, for promoting the adoption of conservation agriculture in northern Sinaloa, where the MasAgro program has had great success thanks to its close collaboration with AARFS farmers.
“It gave me great satisfaction to hear the words of Montiel Ibarra, an agricultural engineer who is Chairman of the Management Committee of the AARFS, indicating that MasAgro practices are the most appropriate alternative because they allow farmers to reduce costs, become more competitive, transform Sinaloa’s agriculture and make it more sustainable,” said Govaerts. “The best award is the one farmers give,” added CIMMYT’s Regional Representative in the Americas.
Govaerts receives the 2018 Tecnoagro Award and gives a keynote speech at the AARFS offices in Los Mochis, Sinaloa. Photo: Andrea Carbajal.
CIMMYT’s latest data indicate that Sinaloan farmers have saved, on average, $4,564 Mexican pesos and increased their productivity by 1.3 tons per hectare by implementing MasAgro’s sustainable intensification practices.
Additionally, conservation agriculture and the technologies that MasAgro promotes have made it possible for farmers to save up to 50% of the water used in their irrigation systems and reduce their pesticide applications by up to 66%, thanks to innovative integrated pest management practices.
Sinaloan farmers have also saved up to 170 kg of nitrogen fertilizer per hectare by applying optimal fertilizer doses estimated by remote sensors that very precisely determine the nutrient needs of maize or wheat crops.
Upon accepting the 2018 Tecnoagro Award, Govaerts joined AARFS’ call for farmers to adopt the sustainable intensification practices promoted by CIMMYT through MasAgro and reaffirmed his commitment to agricultural development both in Mexico and the world.
At a recent TEDx event in Johannesburg, South Africa, agricultural economist and development practitioner Ed Mabaya invited the audience to think of improved seed varieties as ‘tiny little robots’ that can be deployed to remote African villages to deliver nutrition and improved livelihoods. During his talk, Mabaya showed the impact of Bazooka maize, a drought- and disease-resistant variety that scientists at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) helped develop. Read the below conversation with Mabaya to learn about the importance of improved seed varieties and how to make their use more widespread.
Q: How did your experience growing up in Zimbabwe motivate your career choice?
A: I am one of 11 children born to smallholder farmers in rural Zimbabwe. My parents are among the first generation of smallholder farmers who shifted from producing “just enough to feed the family” to “making the most from their land.” They were the early adopters of hybrid maize varieties in the 1980s, creating what was later referred to as Zimbabwe’s Green Revolution.
In addition to keeping their families well nourished, farmers like my parents could take their surplus to nearby city markets, make money and invest it in education and health for their children. Farming beyond subsistence indeed opened new horizons for their children. I am where I am today in part because my parents used improved seed.
Q: Why did you decide to focus on Bazooka maize and NABE 15 beans in your TEDx talk? Are there other crops with resistance to disease and drought that you consider ‘Hunger Busters’?
A: To showcase the transformative power of improved seed to a general audience, I needed one cereal and one legume crop variety that offered easy-to-understand benefits. My key requirements where higher yields, disease resistance and climate change adaptation. These are key challenges facing smallholder farmers worldwide. Having these attributes in one variety is as close as one can get to a silver bullet for smallholder agriculture.
Most importantly, I wanted varieties that have been successfully commercialized – not just prototypes. I find it easier to use farmer testimonials to not only demonstrate the benefits, but also to show that these technologies are available and affordable to resource-poor farmers. Both Bazooka and NABE 15 met all of these criteria. Bonus features for NABE 15 were higher levels of micronutrients and shorter cooking times.
Q: In your talk, you discuss how the genius of these seeds is not enough to scale up their adoption. Can you provide specific examples of bottlenecks, and how policy reform, partnerships and strategic investments have helped to increase the use of this type of seeds?
A: We have made significant progress over the past two decades in overcoming many bottlenecks that limit adoption of improved varieties by smallholder farmers. A recent example is the proliferation of fake or counterfeit seed in many African countries. If a farmer purchases certified seed that turns out to be fake, they will experience low germination and poor performance that is often worse than their own recycled seed. Not only do they lose a key investment for that season, but also they are likely to ‘dis-adopt’ certified seed.
However, several countries are taking notable steps to address the challenge. The Seed Trade Association of Kenya (STAK), working closely with the government seed regulator, is leading the effort to have security labels inserted in each packet of seed. These labels, authenticated via SMS on mobile phones, demonstrate the power of public-private-partnerships to deliver solutions to rural development.
Q: How do the key bottlenecks vary from country to country?
A: I am the lead investigator of The African Seed Access Index (TASAI), a tool that identifies bottlenecks on the improved seed value chains, from breeding all the way to agro-dealers in rural areas. Based on recent studies conducted in 14 African countries, we know that the bottlenecks vary significantly by country and crop.
For example, access to foundation seed is a key challenge for beans in Malawi, seed inspectors are inadequate in Senegal, and the availability of seed in small packages is limited in South Africa. More importantly, seed systems are dynamic and the constraints can change from year to year. A summary of ten emerging findings from recent TASAI studies is available online.
Q: Was there anything you wish you could have included in the TEDx Talk but had to leave out due to time constraints?
A: I could have used more time to describe the pathway that improved seed takes from research and development all the way to the village. Seed systems in Africa are highly complex, often involving multiple institutions with different interests. This complexity is the main reason why you will find ice-cold Coca-Cola in many African rural stores, but you might not find good seed.
The fact that seed is a living organism also presents the challenge of maintaining viability along this long and complex system. To understand the challenges of seed access in Africa, the devil is often in the details.
Q: What was the general response from attendees at the TEDx event? Did anyone ask surprising or difficult questions afterwards?
A: Overall, the presentation was well received. The general response was along the lines of “Wow! I had never thought of seed that way.” A few farmers in the audience wanted to know if and how they can get their hands on Bazooka and NABE 15 seed. However, there were several skeptics in the room who were mostly concerned about GMOs and the dominance of multinational seed companies.
I had anticipated these concerns and I tried my best to preemptively address them in my talk. While I find most these concerns to be misinformed, we would be remised to ignore them as they are shaping public perceptions of the formal seed sector. Unfortunately, it is hard to shift perceptions in just one talk.
Ed Mabaya is a scholar and a development practitioner with more than a decade of experience working with African seed systems. He is the Principal Investigator at The African Seed Access Index (TASAI), which monitors national indicators related to seed sector development. As a Senior Research Associate in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University, he conducts research on food marketing and distribution, seed systems and the role of efficient agricultural markets in Africa’s economic development. He is also Assistant Director of the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development (CIIFAD).
Mabaya was one of the speakers at the CIMMYT 50 celebrations in September 2016, and at TEDx MidAtlantic 2017. You can watch Mabaya’s talk at CIMMYT here and at TEDx MidAtlantic here.
Crop growth simulation models coupled with climate model projections are promoted and increasingly used for assessing impacts of climate change on crop yields and for informing crop-level adaptations. However, most reported studies are unclear regarding the choice of the global circulation models (GCMs) for climate projections and the corresponding uncertainty with these type of model simulations.In our study, we investigated to what extent far climate-change modeling can be used for identifying crop management adaptation options to climate change. We focused our analysis on a case study of maize production in southern Africa using the APSIM crop growth model (Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator) and projections from 17 individual climate models for the period 2017-2060 for the contrasting representative concentration pathways 2.6 and 8.5.
Our findings demonstrate that the identification of crop management-level adaptation options based on linked climate-crop simulation modelling is largely hindered by uncertainties in the projections of climate change impacts on crop yields. With uncertainties in future crop yield predictions of around 30 to 40% or more, many potential adaptation options to climate change are not identifiable or testable with crop-climate models.
First, the variation of climate predictions is high. Their accuracy is limited by fundamental, irreducible uncertainties that are the result of structural differences in the GCMs as well as different model parametrization and downscaling approaches. We found that different GCMs gave largely different results, without any clear pattern.
Second, there is also large uncertainty in simulating the responses of crops to changing climate because of the different structures, and input data and parameters of crop models. Besides, crop models often lack key processes (e.g., physiological plant responses to extreme temperatures) related to climate change impacts, as they were not built for this purpose. It is also evident that due to the limited capability of crop models in simulating effects of soil and crop management practices on crop yields, only a limited number of adaptation options could be informed.
A more successful approach for informing adaptation to climate change may be to begin with the decision-making context, assessing the existing capacities and vulnerabilities of farmers and their communities to climate change. This “capacity approach” does not require probability-based estimates of future climate, but rather a range of plausible representations that can help to better understand how the climate-related vulnerabilities can be addressed. Most of the decisions on crop management are made by the farmer in the context of his/her production objectives and farming opportunities and constraints. From there, farming options can be identified and proposed that are feasible and robust over a range of plausible climatic futures, without the need for detailed climate projections.
Furthermore, adaption to climate change is also entwined with socioeconomic drivers, such as globalization, economic and political priorities, and demographics. In fact, complexities in economic and social systems may outweigh climatic uncertainties in determining possible and feasible adaptation options. A general trend observed is that by diversifying their income sources, including off-farm income, farmers become less vulnerable to climate variability and change.
Whilst we argue that results from GCMs cannot be directly used for informing local-scale adaptation options, we do acknowledge that the use of ensembles of both climate and crop models in regionally- and globally-oriented impact studies can provide valuable information that can guide policy decision-making on agricultural adaptation to climate change at national and international scales.
Felipa Martinez shows off some of her family’s maize from last year’s harvest. Photo: Matthew O’Leary
Felipa Martinez, an indigenous Mexican grandmother, grins as she shows off a bag bulging with maize cobs saved from last harvest season. With her family, she managed to farm enough maize for the year despite the increasing pressure brought by climate change.
Felipa’s grin shows satisfaction. Her main concern is her family, the healthy harvest lets her feed them without worry and sell the little left over to cover utilities.
“When our crops produce a good harvest I am happy because we don’t have to spend our money on food. We can make our own tortillas and tostadas,” she said.
Her family belongs to the Chatino indigenous community and lives in the small town of Santiago Yaitepec in humid southern Oaxaca. They are from one of eleven marginalized indigenous communities throughout the state involved in a participatory breeding project with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) to naturally improve the quality and preserve the biodiversity of native maize.
These indigenous farmers are custodians of maize biodiversity, growing seeds passed down over generations. Their maize varieties represent a portion of the diversity found in the 59 native Mexican races of maize, or landraces, which first developed from wild grasses at the hands of their ancestors. These different types of maize diversified through generations of selective breeding, adapting to the environment, climate and cultural needs of the different communities.
In recent years, a good harvest has become increasingly unreliable, as the impacts of climate change, such as erratic rainfall and the proliferation of pests and disease, have begun to challenge native maize varieties. Rural poor and smallholder farmers, like Martinez and her family, are among the hardest hit by the mounting impacts of climate change, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
These farmers and their ancestors have thousands of years of experience selecting and breeding maize to meet their environment. However, climate change is at times outpacing their selection methods, said CIMMYT landrace improvement coordinator Martha Willcox, who works with the community and coordinates the participatory breeding project. Through the initiative, the indigenous communities work together with professional maize breeders to continuously improve and conserve their native maize.
Despite numerous challenges, farmers in the region are unwilling to give up their maize for other varieties. “The native maize, my maize grows best here, it yields well in our environment. The maize is sweeter, it is heavier,” said Don Modesto Suarez, Felipa’s husband. “This maize has been grown by our grandfathers and this is why I will not change it.”
Una mujer de la comunidad Chatino prepara tortillas muy grandes de maíz criollo que son muy apreciadas en los mercados locales. Foto: Matthew O’Leary
This is because a community’s native maize varieties are adapted to their specific microclimate, such as elevation and weather patterns, and therefore may perform better or be more resistant to local pests and diseases than other maize varieties. They may also have specific characteristics prized for local culinary traditions — for example, in Santiago Yaitepec the native maize varieties have a specific type of starch that allows for the creation of extra-large tortillas and tostadas that are in high demand in local markets.
Other varieties may not meet farmers’ specific needs or climate, and many families do not want to give up their cultural attachment to native maize, said Flavio Aragon, a genetic resources researcher at the Mexican National Institute for Forestry, Agriculture and Livestock Research (INIFAP) who collaborates with Willcox.
CIMMYT and INIFAP launched the four-year participatory plant breeding project to understand marginalized communities’ unique makeup and needs – including maize type, local climates, farming practices, diseases and culture – and include farmers in breeding maize to suit these needs.
“Our aim is to get the most out of the unique traits in the native maize found in the farmer’s fields. To preserve and use it to build resistance and strength without losing the authenticity,” said Aragon.
“When we involve farmers in the process of selection, they are watching what we are doing and they are learning techniques,” he said. “Not only about the process of genetic selection in breeding but also sustainable farming practices and this makes it easier for farmers to adopt the maize that they have worked alongside breeders to improve through the project.”
Suarez said he appreciates the help, “We are learning how to improve our maize and identify diseases. I hope more farmers in the community join in and grow with us,” he said.
When disease strikes
Chatino men stand in a maize field in Santiago Yaitepec, Oaxaca, Mexico. Tar spot complex threatened harvests, but work in participatory breeding with CIMMYT has helped local communities to improve their native maize without loosing preferred traits. (Photo: Matthew O’Leary)
Changes in weather patterns due to climate change are making it hard for farmers to know when to plant their crops to avoid serious disease. Now, a fungal disease known as tar spot complex, or TSC, is increasingly taking hold of maize crops, destroying harvests and threatening local food security, said Willcox. TSC resistance is one key trait farmers want to include in the participatory breeding.
Named for the black spots that cover infected plants, TSC causes leaves to die prematurely, weakening the plant and preventing the ears from developing fully, cutting yields by up to 50 percent or more in extreme cases.
Caused by a combination of three fungal infections, the disease occurs most often in cool and humid areas across southern Mexico, Central America and into South America. The disease is beginning to spread, possibly due to climate change, evolving pathogens and introduction of susceptible maize varieties.
“Our maize used to grow very well here, but then this disease came and now our maize doesn’t grow as well,” said Suarez. “For this reason we started to look for maize that we could exchange with our neighbors.”
A traditional breeding method for indigenous farmers is to see what works in fields of neighboring farmers and test it in their own, Willcox said.
Taking the search to the next level, Willcox turned to the CIMMYT Maize Germplasm Bank, which holds over 7000 native maize seed types collected from indigenous farmers. She tested nearly a thousand accessions in search of TSC resistance. A tedious task that saw her rate the different varieties on how they handled the disease in the field. However, the effort paid off with her team discovering two varieties that stood up to the disease. One variety, Oaxaca 280, originated from just a few hours north of where the Suarez family lives.
Farmer Modesto Suarez (left) and neighbors were originally cautious to plant Oaxaca 280 in their fields, but were pleased with the results. (Photo: Matthew O’Leary)
After testing Oaxaca 280 in their fields the farmers were impressed with the results and have now begun to include the variety in their breeding.
“Oaxaca 280 is a landrace – something from Mexico – and crossing this with the community’s maize gives 100 percent unimproved material that is from Oaxaca very close to their own,” said Willcox. “It is really a farmer to farmer exchange of resistance from another area of Oaxaca to this landrace here.”
“The goal is to make it as close as it can be to what the farmer currently has and to conserve the characteristics valued by farmers while improving specific problems that the farmers request help with, so that it is still similar to their native varieties and they accept it,” Aragon said.
Expanding for impact
Willcox and colleagues throughout Mexico seek to expand the participatory breeding project nationwide in a bid to preserve maize biodiversity and support rural communities.
“If you take away their native maize you take away a huge portion of the culture that holds these communities together,” said Willcox. Participatory breeding in marginalized communities preserves maize diversity and builds rural opportunities in areas that are hotbeds for migration to the United States.
“A lack of opportunities leads to migration out of Mexico to find work in other places, a strong agricultural sector means strong rural opportunities,” she said.
To further economic opportunities in the communities, these researchers have been connecting farmers with restaurant owners in Mexico City and the United States to export surplus grain and support livelihoods. A taste for high-quality Mexican food has created a small but growing market for the native maize varieties.
The next generation: The granddaughter of Felipa Martinez and Modesto Suarez stands in her grandparent’s maize field. (Photo: Matthew O’Leary)
Native maize hold the building blocks for climate-smart crops
Native maize varieties show remarkable diversity and climate resilience that grow in a range from arid to humid environments, said Willcox. The genetic traits found in this diversity are the building blocks that can be used to develop varieties suitable for the changing crop environments predicted for 2050.
“There is a lot of reasoning that goes into the way that these farmers farm the land, the way they decide on what they select for,” said Willcox. “This has been going on for years and has been passed down through generations. For this reason, they have maize of such high quality with resistance to local challenges, genetic traits that now can be used to create strong varieties to help farmers in Mexico and around the world.”
It is key to analyze the genetic variability of native maize, and support the family farmers who conserve it in their fields, she added. This biodiversity still sown and selected throughout diverse microclimates of Mexico holds the traits we need to protect our food supplies.
To watch a video on CIMMYT’s work in this community, please click here.
This work has been conducted as part of the CIMMYT-led MasAgro project in collaboration with INIFAP, and supported by Mexico’s Department of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food (SAGARPA) and the CGIAR Research Program MAIZE.
Tortillas made of zinc-enriched biofortified maize. Photo: HarvestPlus.
The first zinc-enriched maize varieties developed specifically for farmers in Guatemala were released this month as part of efforts to improve food and nutrition security in a country where over 46 percent of children under five suffer from chronic malnutrition.
More than 40 percent of Guatemala’s rural population have been found to be deficient in zinc, an essential micronutrient that plays a crucial role in pre-natal and post-natal development, and is key to maintaining a healthy immune system.
Felix San Vicente, second from left, at the launch event. Photo: HarvestPlus.
“There are not many countries working with zinc maize right now, and that makes us pioneers in this area,” said Felix San Vicente, CIMMYT maize breeder. “Guatemala is the first country to release a zinc maize hybrid and Colombia will be the second. This means that we can also breed high zinc maize hybrids for producers who prefer hybrids over open pollinated varieties.”
These biofortified varieties were developed using conventional breeding methods. Farmers expressed interest in the varieties due to their high yield quality protein content, high zinc levels, early maturity and large kernel size.
Maize is a staple crop in Guatemala, and the base of many traditional foods such as tortillas, tamales, fresh roasted maize ears and other products. Tortillas made with ICTA B-15 contain up to 60 percent more zinc than regular tortillas. ICTA HB-18, a zinc maize hybrid, contains 15 percent more zinc compared to commercial maize. Just 100 grams of tortilla made of these varieties can provide 2.5 milligrams of zinc, 50 percent of the daily recommended zinc intake for children, making zinc-enriched biofortified maize an excellent tool in the fight against malnutrition and hidden hunger.
One hundred and thirteen tons of seed will be produced and delivered to producers by the end of 2018.
A new science brief, written by scientists from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and partner organizations details the use of naturally occurring diversity in maize to breed higher levels of Vitamin A into the crop.
Diets high in cereal crops are often lacking in vitamins and minerals, leading to malnutrition. However, maize, which is eaten widely in developing countries, and provides nearly one third of total calories to over 4.5 billion people globally, can be bred to naturally produce nutritionally adequate levels of VA.
Vitamin A (VA) deficiency is the leading cause of preventable childhood blindness and nearly one third of children under the age of five are at risk of developing VA deficiency. ProVA maize has been shown to be effective at increasing VA status in at-risk children, reducing the likelihood that they will suffer from complications such as blindness.
The science brief details the use of the naturally occurring genetic diversity, found in the nearly 30,000 maize cultivars held between the germplasm banks at CIMMYT and at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), to breed higher levels of VA into maize which is more suited for the tropical environments where VA deficiencies are more common.
This initiative to increase VA in maize is part of a larger CGIAR-wide initiative for biofortification with HarvestPlus and Crop Trust. This article is part of a series on biofortification by Crop Trust, find the rest of the series here.
Check out other recent publication by CIMMYT staff below:
Do mature innovation platforms make a difference in agricultural research for development? a meta-analysis of case studies. 2018. Schut, M., Cadilhon, J. J., Misiko, M., Dror, I. In: Experimental Agriculture v. 54, no. 1, p. 96-119.
Nematode management in rain-fed smallholder maize production systems under Conservation Agriculture in Zimbabwe. 2018. Madamombe, S.M., Nyagumbo, I., Mvumi, B.M., Nyamugafata, P., Wuta, M., Chinheya, C.C. In: Experimental Agriculture v. 54, no. 3, p. 452-466.
High-yielding winter synthetic hexaploid wheats resistant to multiple diseases and pests. 2018. Morgounov, A.I., Abugalieva, A.I., Akan, K., Akın, B., Baenziger, S., Bhatta, M.R., Dababat, A.A., Dutbayev, Y., Moustapha El Bouhssini, Erginbas-Orakci, G., Kishii, M., Keser, M., Koc, E., Kurespek, A., Mujeeb-Kazi, A., Yorgancılar, A., Ozdemir, F., Ozturk, I., Payne, T.S., Qadimaliyeva, G., Shamanin, V., Subasi, K., Suleymanova, G., Yakisir, E., Zelenskiy, Y., Demir, L. In: Plant Genetic Resources v. 16, no. 3, p. 273-278.
Measuring farm and market level economic impacts of improved maize production technologies in Ethiopia : evidence from Panel Data. 2018. Kassie, M., Marenya, P., Tessema, Y., Jaleta Debello Moti, Zeng, D., Erenstein, O., Dil Bahadur Rahut. In: Journal of Agricultural Economics v. 69, no. 1, p. 76–95.
Cereal cyst nematodes : importance, distribution, identification, quantification, and control. 2018. Toumi, F., Waeyenberge, L., Viaene, N., Dababat, A.A., Nicol, J.M., Moens, M., Ogbonnaya, F.C. In: European Journal of Plant Pathology v. 150, no. 1, p. 1-24.
