Skip to main content

funder_partner: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

https://www.gatesfoundation.org/

Blast and rust forecast

Written by Matthew O'Leary on . Posted in Features. 1 Comment on Blast and rust forecast

An early warning system set to deliver wheat disease predictions directly to farmers’ phones is being piloted in Bangladesh and Nepal by interdisciplinary researchers.

Experts in crop disease, meteorology and computer science are crunching data from multiple countries to formulate models that anticipate the spread of the wheat rust and blast diseases in order to warn farmers of likely outbreaks, providing time for pre-emptive measures, said Dave Hodson, a principal scientist with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) coordinating the pilot project.

Around 50,000 smallholder farmers are expected to receive improved disease warnings and appropriate management advisories through the one-year proof-of-concept project, as part of the UK Aid-funded Asia Regional Resilience to a Changing Climate (ARRCC) program.

Early action is critical to prevent crop diseases becoming endemic. The speed at which wind-dispersed fungal wheat diseases are spreading through Asia poses a constant threat to sustainable wheat production of the 130 million tons produced in the region each year.

“Wheat rust and blast are caused by fungal pathogens, and like many fungi, they spread from plant to plant — and field to field — in tiny particles called spores,” said Hodson. “Disease strain mutations can overcome resistant varieties, leaving farmers few choices but to rely on expensive and environmentally-damaging fungicides to prevent crop loss.”

“The early warning system combines climate data and epidemiology models to predict how spores will spread through the air and identifies environmental conditions where healthy crops are at risk of infection. This allows for more targeted and optimal use of fungicides.”

The system was first developed in Ethiopia. It uses weather information from the Met Office, the UK’s national meteorological service, along with field and mobile phone surveillance data and disease spread modeling from the University of Cambridge, to construct and deploy a near real-time early warning system.

CIMMYT consultant Madan Bhatta conducts field surveys using Open Data Kit (ODK) in the mid-hills of Nepal. (Photo: D. Hodson/CIMMYT)
CIMMYT consultant Madan Bhatta conducts field surveys using Open Data Kit (ODK) in the mid-hills of Nepal. (Photo: D. Hodson/CIMMYT)

Initial efforts focused on adapting the wheat stripe and stem rust model from Ethiopia to Bangladesh and Nepal have been successful, with field surveillance data appearing to align with the weather-driven disease early warnings, but further analysis is ongoing, said Hodson.

“In the current wheat season we are in the process of comparing our disease forecasting models with on-the-ground survey results in both countries,” the wheat expert said.

“Next season, after getting validation from national partners, we will pilot getting our predictions to farmers through text-based messaging systems.”

CIMMYT’s strong partnerships with governmental extension systems and farmer associations across South Asia are being utilized to develop efficient pathways to get disease predictions to farmers, said Tim Krupnik, a CIMMYT Senior Scientist based in Bangladesh.

“Partnerships are essential. Working with our colleagues, we can validate and test the deployment of model-derived advisories in real-world extension settings,” Krupnik said. “The forecasting and early warning systems are designed to reduce unnecessary fungicide use, advising it only in the case where outbreaks are expected.”

Local partners are also key for data collection to support and develop future epidemiological modelling, the development of advisory graphics and the dissemination of information, he explained.

The second stage of the project concerns the adaptation of the framework and protocols for wheat blast disease to improve existing wheat blast early warning systems already pioneered in Bangladesh.

Example of weekly stripe rust spore deposition forecast in Nepal. Darker colors represent higher predicted number of spores deposited. The early warning system combines weather information from the Met Office with field and mobile phone surveillance data and disease spread modeling from the University of Cambridge. (Graphic: University of Cambridge and Met Office)
Example of weekly stripe rust spore deposition forecast in Nepal. Darker colors represent higher predicted number of spores deposited. The early warning system combines weather information from the Met Office with field and mobile phone surveillance data and disease spread modeling from the University of Cambridge. (Graphic: University of Cambridge and Met Office)

Strong scientific partnership champions diversity to achieve common goals

The meteorological-driven wheat disease warning system is an example of effective international scientific partnership contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, said Sarah Millington, a scientific manager at Atmospheric Dispersion and Air Quality Group with the Met Office.

“Diverse expertise from the Met Office, the University of Cambridge and CIMMYT shows how combined fundamental research in epidemiology and meteorology modelling with field-based disease observation can produce a system that boosts smallholder farmers’ resilience to major agricultural challenges,” she said.

The atmospheric dispersion modeling was originally developed in response to the Chernobyl disaster and since then has evolved to be able to model the dispersion and deposition of a range of particles and gases, including biological particles such as wheat rust spores.

“The framework together with the underpinning technologies are transferable to forecast fungal disease in other regions and can be readily adapted for other wind-dispersed pests and disease of major agricultural crops,” said Christopher Gilligan, head of the Epidemiology and Modelling Group at the University of Cambridge.

Fungal wheat diseases are an increasing threat to farmer livelihoods in Asia

Wheat leaf rust can be spotted on a wheat plant of a highly susceptible variety in Nepal. The symptoms of wheat rust are dusty, reddish-orange to reddish-brown fruiting bodies that appear on the leaf surface. These lesions produce numerous spores, which are spread by wind and splashing water. (Photo: D Hodson/CIMMYT)
Wheat leaf rust can be spotted on a wheat plant of a highly susceptible variety in Nepal. The symptoms of wheat rust are dusty, reddish-orange to reddish-brown fruiting bodies that appear on the leaf surface. These lesions produce numerous spores, which are spread by wind and splashing water. (Photo: D Hodson/CIMMYT)

While there has been a history of wheat rust disease epidemics in South Asia, new emerging strains and changes to climate pose an increased threat to farmers’ livelihoods. The pathogens that cause rust diseases are continually evolving and changing over time, making them difficult to control.

Stripe rust threatens farmers in Afghanistan, India, Nepal and Pakistan, typically in two out of five seasons, with an estimated 43 million hectares of wheat vulnerable. When weather conditions are conducive and susceptible cultivars are grown, farmers can experience losses exceeding 70%.

Populations of stem rust are building at alarming rates and previously unseen scales in neighboring regions. Stem rust spores can spread across regions on the wind; this also amplifies the threat of incursion into South Asia and the ARRCC program’s target countries, underscoring the very real risk that the disease could reemerge within the subcontinent.

The devastating wheat blast disease, originating in the Americas, suddenly appeared in Bangladesh in 2016, causing wheat crop losses as high as 30% on a large area, and continues to threaten South Asia’s vast wheat lands.

In both cases, quick international responses through CIMMYT, the CGIAR research program on Wheat (WHEAT) and the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative have been able to monitor and characterize the diseases and, especially, to develop and deploy resistant wheat varieties.

The UK aid-funded ARRCC program is led by the Met Office and the World Bank and aims to strengthen weather forecasting systems across Asia. The program is delivering new technologies and innovative approaches to help vulnerable communities use weather warnings and forecasts to better prepare for climate-related shocks.

The early warning system uses data gathered from the online Rust Tracker tool, with additional fieldwork support from the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA), funded by USAID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, both coordinated by CIMMYT.

Hans Braun, Director of the Global Wheat Program at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), inspects wheat plants in the greenhouses. (Photo: Alfonso Cortés/CIMMYT)

Crossing boundaries

Written by Marta Millere on . Posted in Features.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official views or position of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

Daily life as we know it has grinded to a halt and crop scientists are pondering next steps in face of the global COVID-19 crisis. Hans Braun, Director of the Global Wheat Program at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat, joins us for a virtual chat to discuss the need for increased investment in crop disease research as the world risks a food security crisis.

What have you learned from your work on contagious wheat diseases that we can take away during this time?

Wheat epidemics go back to biblical times. Wheat scientists now believe Egypt’s “seven bad years” of harvest referenced in the Bible were due to a stem rust outbreak.

So, we know what happens when we have a crop epidemic: diseases can completely wipe out a harvest. I have seen subsistence farmers stand in front of their swaying, golden wheat fields, but there is not a single grain inside the spikes. All because of wheat blast.

There are a lot of parallel issues that I see with COVID-19.

The epidemiology models for humans which we see now have a lot in common with plant epidemiology. For example, if you take a wheat field sown with a variety which is rust-resistant and then you get a spore which mutates and overcomes the resistance — like COVID-19 overcomes the human immune system — it then takes about two weeks for it to sporulate again and produce millions of these mutated spores. They sporulate once more and then you have billions and trillions of spores — then the wheat fields at the local, national and, in the worst case, regional level are severely damaged and in worst case are going to die.

The problem is that since we cannot quarantine wheat, if the weather is favorable these spores will fly everywhere and — just like with COVID-19 — they don’t need a passport to travel.

Could you elaborate on that? How can wheat diseases go global?

Usually it takes around 5 years, sometimes less, until a mutation in a rust spore can overcome the resistance of a wheat variety. Every so often, we see rust epidemics which cover an entire region. To monitor this movement, the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative of Cornell University and CIMMYT, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and DFID, established a global rust monitoring system that provides live data on spore movements.

For example, if you have a new race of stem rust in Yemen — and in Yemen wheat matures early — and then farmers burn the straw, their action “pushes” the spores up into the air, thus allowing them to enter the jet stream and cover 2,000 to 5,000 kilometers in a short period of time. Spores can also be carried on clothes or shoes by people who walked into an infected wheat field. Take Australia, for example, which has very strict quarantine laws. It is surrounded by sea and still eventually they get the new rust races which fly around or come with travelers. One just cannot prevent it.

Stem rust resistant (left) and susceptible (right) wheat plants at the stem rust phenotyping facility in Njoro, Nakuru County in Kenya. (Photo: Joshua Masinde/CIMMYT)
Stem rust resistant (left) and susceptible (right) wheat plants at the stem rust phenotyping facility in Njoro, Nakuru County in Kenya. (Photo: Joshua Masinde/CIMMYT)

Could climate change exacerbate the spreading of crop diseases?

Yes, the climate and its variability have a lot to do with it. For example, in the case of yellow rust, what’s extremely important is the time it takes from sporulation to sporulation. Take a rust spore. It germinates, then it grows, it multiplies and then once it is ready it will disperse and infect wheat plants. From one dispersal to the next it takes about two weeks.

In the last decades, in particular for yellow rust, new races are better adapted to high temperature and are multiplying faster. In a Nature paper, we showed that 30 years ago yellow rust was not present in the Great Plains in the US. Today, it is the most important wheat disease there. So there really is something going on and changing and that’s why we are so concerned about new wheat disease races when they come up.

What could an epidemiologist specialized in human viruses take from this?

Well, I think human epidemiologists know very well what happens in a case like COVID-19. Ordinary citizens now also start to understand what a pandemic is and what its related exponential growth means.

Maybe you should ask what policymakers can learn from COVID-19 in order to prevent plant epidemics. When it comes to epidemics, what applies to humans applies to plants. If there is a new race of a given crop disease, in that moment, the plant does not have a defense mechanism, like humans in the case of COVID-19, because we haven’t developed any immunity. While in developed countries farmers can use chemicals to control plant diseases, resource-poor farmers do not have this option, due to lack to access or if the plant protective has not been registered in their country.

In addition to this, our lines of work share a sense of urgency. If “doomsday” happens, it will be too late to react. At present, with a human pandemic, people are worried about the supply chain from food processing to the supermarket. But if we have an epidemic in plants, then we do not have the supply chain from the field to the food processing industry. And if people have nothing to eat, they will go to the streets and we will see violence. We simply cannot put this aside.

What other lessons can policymakers and other stakeholders take away from the current crisis?

The world needs to learn that we cannot use economics as the basis for disease research. We need to better foresee what could happen.

Let’s take the example of wheat blast, a devastating disease that can destroy the wheat spike and was initially confined to South America. The disease arrived in Bangladesh in 2016 and caused small economic damage, maybe 30,000 tons loss in a small geographic area — a small fraction of the national production but a disaster for the smallholder farmer, who thus would have lost her entire wheat harvest. The disease is now controlled with chemicals. But what if chemical resistance is developed and the disease spreads to the 10 million hectares in the Indo-Gangetic Plains of India and the south of Pakistan. Unlikely? But what if it happens?

Agriculture accounts for 30% of the global GDP and the research money [going to agriculture] in comparison to other areas is small. Globally only 5% of R&D is invested in research for development related to agriculture. Such a discrepancy! A million U.S. dollars invested in wheat blast research goes a long way and if you don’t do it, you risk a disaster.

If there is any flip side to the COVID-19 disaster, it is that hopefully our governments realize that they have to play a much more serious role in many areas, in particular public health and disease control in humans but also in plants.

A Lloyd’s report concluded that a global food crisis could be caused by governments taking isolating actions to protect their own countries in response to a breadbasket failure elsewhere. I’m concerned that as the COVID-19 crisis continues, governments will stop exports as some did during the 2008 food price crisis, and then, even if there is enough food around, the 2008 scenario might happen again and food prices will go through the roof, with disastrous impact on the lives of the poorest.

This article was originally published by the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat (WHEAT):
Crossing boundaries: looking at wheat diseases in times of the COVID-19 crisis.

Cover photo: Hans Braun, Director of the Global Wheat Program at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), inspects wheat plants in the greenhouses. (Photo: Alfonso Cortés/CIMMYT)

Breaking Ground: Aparna Das leads efficient and demand-driven maize research

Written by Jérôme Bossuet on . Posted in Features.

Getting a good maize harvest, or just enough to feed the family, has always been a challenge for maize small farmers in developing countries. Faced with variable rainfall, heat waves, insect attacks or diseases, they rarely yield more than two tons of maize per hectare, and sometimes lose their crops altogether. Climate change, invasive pests like fall armyworm or new diseases like maize lethal necrosis could jeopardize even further the livelihoods of maize farmers and trigger severe food crises.

In this scenario, the lives and income of maize farmers rely on good seeds: seeds that are climate-resilient, pest- and disease-resistant, and that grow and yield well under local conditions, often with minimum inputs.

“That is where the maize improvement research at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) plays a crucial role in this challenge of food security. You need to develop the right location-specific varieties that farmers want, that partner seed companies are willing to produce, in a cost- and time-efficient way,” says Aparna Das. She joined CIMMYT’s Global Maize research program in August 2018 as Technical Program Manager.

“My role is to work  with and guide the Breeding and Seed Systems team, so that our research is more client- and product-oriented, efficient, and so that there is a better coordination and monitoring, aligned with the available resources and skills within CIMMYT, and with our numerous public and private partners,” she explains.

Value-for-money farmer impact

An important activity Das coordinated recently is a series of collaborative product profiling workshops with CIMMYT’s partners. Integrating the priorities of the national agricultural research systems and partner seed companies, this exercise reviewed and redefined what maize traits and attributes research should focus on in years to come. After this consultation, partners not only pick up CIMMYT germplasm based on trial data, but they can also verify if it fits with their own profile, to make sure that the traits they want are there. It makes breeding much more targeted and efficient.

“Product profiling has already influenced our research. For instance, all partners mentioned husk cover as a ‘must-have’ trait, because you have less insect attacks and grain spoilage,” Das explains. “Although it was considered a base trait, the breeders did not consider it systematically during their maize line selection and product advancement. Now it is integrated,” she notes.

“Our impact should not be limited to the number of varieties released or the number of papers published, but also how many varieties are picked up by partners, adopted by farmers and scaled up,” Das points out.

Breeders and seed systems specialists have worked together to estimate and track the costs of delivering products. Teams responsible for product profiles can now, through simulation, test different solutions and see what costs could be reduced or adjusted to develop the hybrid.

Das enjoys this type of collaboration. “Managing behavioral change is a key part of my role, being able to work with different teams and cultures, which makes my job so interesting,” she says.

Plates of boiled and roasted maize are displayed for tasting during a farmer participatory varietal selection exercise in Embu, Kenya, in August 2019. Flavors of varieties are very distinct and could explain why some old varieties are still preferably grown by farmers. (Photo: S. Palmas/CIMMYT)
Plates of boiled and roasted maize are displayed for tasting during a farmer participatory varietal selection exercise in Embu, Kenya, in August 2019. Flavors of varieties are very distinct and could explain why some old varieties are still preferably grown by farmers. (Photo: S. Palmas/CIMMYT)

An out-of-the-book thinker in a men’s world

Plant breeding is a male-dominated world but Das is used to fitting in as a minority. Originally from West Bengal, she grew up in Ludhiana, another Indian state and a different culture. She learned genetics and plant breeding at Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) in Ludhiana. Discovering the new field of molecular breeding, at its infancy twenty-five years ago, was an exciting challenge.

At PAU, Das pursued crop improvement research, first in wheat and potato, and later in rice genetics. She received an award from India’s Department of Science and Technology under the Young Scientist Program for her work on jumping genes in basmati rice, aimed at creating shorter and more productive basmati varieties while maintaining the basmati aroma.

Later she joined the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) to work on the development of Golden Rice, a provitamin A-rich variety, through genetic engineering.

“Being a woman in plant breeding, especially as a breeder, is not that common. Women are not expected to do plant breeding fieldwork, away from the lab and offices. But I did not back off. I did my rice fieldwork in the paddy fields, at 40 degrees, all on my own. I believe that women bring a level of precision that is very important in breeding.”

Bridging public and private sectors

After ten years of public research, she moved to the private seed sector, to learn how seed companies integrate farmers’ needs to their research pipeline, and then channel this research to deliver to millions of farmers. “A big lesson from corporations is the value for money at each stage of their research, and that market research is instrumental to really understand farmers’ needs and guide breeding,” she notes.

After a decade in the private sector, Das was keen to move on and use her experience in the nonprofit sector. Then she joined CIMMYT. “This opportunity of technical program manager was timely. I knew the strengths of CGIAR, having highly educated scientists and the great potential outreach of the research. I knew where crop research could be improved, in converting basic research into demand-driven research.”

“Since my time at IRRI a decade ago, I realized things had moved on in the CGIAR system. Seed systems, product profiling and value chain research are now fully integrated in the Global Maize program. It is a crucial time to be here at CIMMYT. With the CGIAR reform, with the climate emergency, and emerging pests and diseases, we have to be even more inventive and reactive to continue to deliver greater impact,” she concludes.

Explore our coverage of International Women’s Day 2020.

Moving out of poverty or staying poor

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on . Posted in Blogs. 1 Comment on Moving out of poverty or staying poor

Farmer Dhansa Bhandari (left) sows maize seed while Bikram Daugi (right) ploughs with his oxen in Ramghat, Surkhet, Nepal. (Photo: P. Lowe/CIMMYT)
Farmer Dhansa Bhandari (left) sows maize seed while Bikram Daugi (right) ploughs with his oxen in Ramghat, Surkhet, Nepal. (Photo: P. Lowe/CIMMYT)

Although the conventional wisdom in South Asian rural villages is that men are principally responsible for pulling their families out of poverty, our recent study showed the truth to be more subtle, and more female.

In our new paper we dig into focus groups and individual life stories in a sample of 32 farming villages from five countries of South Asia. Although we asked about both men’s and women’s roles, focus groups of both sexes emphasized men in their responses — whether explaining how families escaped poverty or why they remained poor.

“Women usually cannot bring a big change, but they can assist their men in climbing up,” explains a member of the poor men’s focus group from Ismashal village (a pseudonym) of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

The focus group testimonies presented rich examples of the strong influence of gender norms: the social rules that dictate differential roles and conducts for men and women in their society. These norms significantly influenced how local people conceived of movements in and out of poverty in their village and in their own lives.

According to the women’s focus group from Rangpur district in Bangladesh, women “cannot work outside the home for fear of losing their reputation and respect.”

However, in these same communities, men’s and women’s productive roles proved far more variable in the mobility processes of their families than conveyed by the focus groups. We encountered many households with men making irregular or very limited contributions to family maintenance. This happens for a number of reasons, including men’s labor migration, disability, family conflict and separations, aging and death.

What’s more, when sharing their life stories in individual interviews, nearly every woman testified to her own persistent efforts to make a living, cover household expenses, deal with debts, and, when conditions allowed, provide a better life for their families. In fact, our life story sample captured 12 women who testified to making substantial contributions to moving their families out of poverty.

Movers and shakers

We were especially struck by how many of these women “movers” were employing innovative agricultural technologies and practices to expand their production and earnings.

“In 2015, using zero tillage machines I started maize farming, for which I had a great yield and large profit,” reports a 30-year-old woman and mother of two from Matipur, Bangladesh who brought her family out of poverty.

Another 30-year-old mover, a farmer and mother of two from the village of Thool in Nepal, attests to diversification and adoption of improved cultivation practices: “I got training on vegetable farming. In the beginning the agriculture office provided some vegetable seeds as well. And I began to grow vegetables along with cereal crops like wheat, paddy, maize, oats. […] I learnt how to make soil rows.”

Among the women who got ahead, a large majority credited an important man in their life with flouting local customs and directly supporting them to innovate in their agricultural livelihoods and bring their families out of poverty.

Across the “mover” stories, women gained access to family resources which enabled them to step up their livelihood activities. For example, three quarters of the women “movers” spoke of husbands or brothers supporting them to pursue important goals in their lives.

Women’s most important relationship helping them to pursue goals in life: women "movers" (on left) versus "chronic poor" (right).
Women’s most important relationship helping them to pursue goals in life: women “movers” (on left) versus “chronic poor” (right).

Sufia, from a village in the Rajshahi district of Bangladesh, describes how she overcame great resistance from her husband to access a farm plot provided by her brother. The plot enabled Sufia to cultivate betel leaves and paddy rice, and with those profits and additional earnings from livestock activities, she purchased more land and diversified into eggplant, chilies and bitter gourd. Sufia’s husband had struggled to maintain the family and shortly after Sufia began to prosper, he suffered a stroke and required years of medical treatments before passing away.

When Sufia reflects on her life, she considers the most important relationship in her life to be with her brother. “Because of him I can now stand on my two feet.”

We also studied women and their families who did not move out of poverty. These “chronic poor” women rarely mentioned accessing innovations or garnering significant benefits from their livelihoods. In these life stories, we find far fewer testimonies about men who financially supported a wife or sister to help her pursue an important goal.

The restrictive normative climate in much of South Asia means that women’s capacity to enable change in their livelihoods is rarely recognized or encouraged by the wider community as a way for a poor family to prosper. Still, the life stories of these “movers” open a window onto the possibilities unlocked when women have opportunities to take on more equitable household roles and are able to access agricultural innovations.

The women movers, and the men who support them, provide insights into pathways of more equitable agricultural change. What we can learn from these experiences holds great potential for programs aiming to relax gender norms, catalyze agricultural innovation, and unlock faster transitions to gender equality and poverty reduction in the region. Nevertheless, challenging social norms can be risky and can result in backlash from family or other community members. To address this, collaborative research models offer promise. These approaches engage researchers and local women and men in action learning to build understanding of and support for inclusive agricultural change. Our research suggests that such interventions, which combine social, institutional and technical dimensions of agricultural innovation, can help diverse types of families to leave poverty behind.

Read the full study:
Gender Norms and Poverty Dynamics in 32 Villages of South Asia

Explore our coverage of International Women’s Day 2020.
Explore our coverage of International Women’s Day 2020.

Tawanda Reginald Mashonganyika

Written by Emma Orchardson on . Posted in Uncategorized.

Tawanda Mashonganyika works with the CGIAR Excellence in Breeding Platform.

Working under the Product Design and Product Management module, he helps CGIAR centers and national breeding programs in Africa to design market-oriented crop varieties. This involves linking multidisciplinary teams with breeders to define what different African markets are looking for in upcoming varieties.

Mashonganyika also covers the module’s biofortification and gender components, assessing how these fit into variety design for all value chain actors in African crop markets.

Smartphones drive data collection revolution, boost climate-smart agriculture in Bangladesh

Written by Matthew O'Leary on . Posted in News.

Farmer receiving information from a phone-based service. (Photo: Michelle DeFreese/CIMMYT)

Agricultural research is entering a new age in Bangladesh. The days, months and years it takes to collect farm data with a clipboard, paper and pen are nearing their end.

Electronic smartphones and tablets are gaining ground, used by researchers, extension workers and farmers to revolutionize the efficiency of data collection and provide advice on best-bet practices to build resilient farming systems that stand up to climate change.

Digital data collection tools are crucial in today’s ‘big data’ driven agricultural research world and are fundamentally shifting the speed and accuracy of agricultural research, said Timothy Krupnik, Senior Scientist and Systems Agronomist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

“Easy-to-use data collection tools can be made available on electronic tablets for surveys. These allow extension workers to collect data from the farm and share it instantaneously with researchers,” he said.

“These tools allow the regular and rapid collection of data from farmers, meaning that researchers and extension workers can get more information than they would alone in a much quicker time frame.”

“This provides a better picture of the challenges farmers have, and once data are analyzed, we can more easily develop tailored solutions to farmers’ problems,” Krupnik explained.

Through the USAID and Bill and Melinda Gates supported Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA), and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) supported Big Data Analytics for Climate-Smart Agriculture in South Asia projects, 125 Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) agents were trained throughout Bangladesh to use tablets to gather agronomic information from rice and wheat farmers.

It is the first time extension workers have been involved in data collection in the country. Since the pilot began in late 2019, extension workers have collected data from over 5,000 farmers, with detailed information on climate responses, including the management of soil, water and variety use to understand what drives productivity. The DAE is enthused about learning from the data, and plans to collect information from 7,000 more farmers in 2020.

Bangladesh’s DAE is directly benefiting through partnerships with expert national and international researchers developing systems to efficiently collect and analyze massive amounts of data to generate relevant climate-smart recommendations for farmers, said the department Director General Dr. M. Abdul Muyeed.

Workers spread maize crop for drying at a wholesale grain market. (Photo: Dreamstime.com)

For the first time widespread monitoring examines how farmers are coping with climate stresses, and agronomic data are being used to estimate greenhouse gas emissions from thousands of individual farmers. This research and extension partnership aims at identifying ways to mitigate and adapt to climate change, he explained.

“This work will strengthen our ability to generate agriculturally relevant information and increase the climate resilience of smallholder farmers in Bangladesh,” Dr. Muyeed said.

Next-gen big data analysis produces best-bet agricultural practices

“By obtaining big datasets such as these, we are now using innovative research methods and artificial intelligence (AI) to examine patterns in productivity, the climate resilience of cropping practices, and greenhouse gas emissions. Our aim is to develop and recommend improved agricultural practices that are proven to increase yields and profitability,” said Krupknik.

The surveys can also be used to evaluate on-farm tests of agricultural technologies, inform need-based training programs, serve local knowledge centers and support the marketing of locally relevant agricultural technologies, he explained.

“Collecting farm-specific data on greenhouse gas emissions caused by agriculture and recording its causes is a great step to develop strategies to reduce agriculture’s contribution to climate change,” added Krupnik.

MLN Gene Editing Project

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on . Posted in Uncategorized.

The Maize Lethal Necrosis (MLN) Gene Editing Project uses gene editing technology to transform four elite CIMMYT maize lines which are susceptible to a devastating maize disease known as MLN. The disease first appeared in Kenya in 2011, and by 2013 it had reduced maize yields across the country by an average of 22%, resulting in loss of production worth $180 million and forcing many smallholder farmers to abandon planting maize. By 2014 it had spread to D.R. Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, hence posing a major threat to the food security and livelihoods of millions of Africans.

CIMMYT and its partners have responded to the problem by successfully developing MLN-tolerant hybrids through conventional backcrossing, which takes approximately 4-5 years. On the other hand, with the use of a gene editing technology known as CRISPR-Cas9, the breeding process can be accelerated, thereby reducing the time required to 2-3 years only, so that smallholders get faster access to improved maize varieties.

In partnership with Corteva Agriscience — which has significant expertise in the genome-editing field and who is the technology owner — and KALRO (Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization), CIMMYT scientists have been able to make a breakthrough via the CRISPR-Cas9 technology. The technology, Clustered Regularly Interspersed Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) along with CRISPR-associated System (Cas) containing Protein 9, functions to replicate natural mutations in maize that will help strengthen its resistance to MLN. At the same time, this precisely targeted crop improvement process eliminates the transfer of many undesirable genes that would often accompany the desired ones as with the case in traditional backcrossing.

Under this project, four CIMMYT inbred lines, that are parents of two commercial hybrids in eastern Africa but susceptible to MLN, have been selected to undergo gene editing to become MLN-resistant. The edited, MLN-resistant lines will in turn be used to produce MLN-resistant hybrids which will still carry all the farmer-preferred agronomic traits including drought tolerance, similar to other elite maize hybrids developed by CIMMYT and released through partners.

CIMMYT is working in close collaboration with KALRO and other partners from the public and private sectors to increase the number of MLN-resistant Africa-adapted inbred lines and hybrids, as well as to make deployment efforts. By 2025, subject to compliance with regulatory procedures, commercial seeds of the gene-edited MLN-resistant elite maize hybrids will be available to up to 20,000 smallholder farmers for approximately 40,000 hectares of planting. In line with the CGIAR Principles on the Management of Intellectual Assets and CIMMYT’s constant endeavor to treat its improved germplasm as international public good, the MLN-resistant hybrids will be available royalty-free and seed companies entering into commercialization/licensing agreements in connection with this project will not be allowed to charge smallholder farmers higher seed cost. In this way, more farmers in MLN-affected countries in eastern and Central Africa can eventually benefit from increased supply of high-yielding, MLN-resistant and affordable maize products.

Related documents:

MLN Gene Editing project brief

MLN Gene Editing project: FAQs

A farm worker applies fertilizer in a field of Staha maize for seed production at Suba Agro's Mbezi farm in Tanzania. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)

Study calls for better understanding of fertilizer prices faced by African smallholder farmers

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on . Posted in News. 1 Comment on Study calls for better understanding of fertilizer prices faced by African smallholder farmers

A farm worker applies fertilizer in a field of Staha maize for seed production at Suba Agro's Mbezi farm in Tanzania. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)
A farm worker applies fertilizer in a field of Staha maize for seed production at Suba Agro’s Mbezi farm in Tanzania. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)

Crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa are generally low. This is in large part because of low fertilizer use. A recent study of six countries in sub-Saharan Africa showed that just 35% of farmers applied fertilizer. Some possible reasons for this could be that farmers may be unaware of the efficacy of fertilizer use; or have degraded soils that do not respond to fertilizer; they may not have the cash to purchase it; or because unpredictable rainfall makes such investments risky. It may also be because local fertilizer prices make their use insufficiently profitable for many farmers.

To better understand the potential fertilizer demand in a particular location, it is important to know how crops respond to fertilizer under local conditions, but it is critical to understand crop responses in terms of economic returns. This requires information about local market prices of fertilizers and other inputs, as well as the prices that a farmer could receive from selling the crop.

While national-level fertilizer prices may be available, it is necessary to consider the extent to which prices vary within countries, reflecting transportation costs and other factors. In the absence of such data, analysis of household-level behaviors requires assumptions about the prices smallholder farmers face — assumptions which may not be valid. For example, evaluations of the returns to production technologies settings have often assumed spatially invariant input and output prices or, in other words, that all farmers in a country face the same set of prices. This is at odds with what we know about economic remoteness and the highly variable market access conditions under which African smallholders operate.

An obstacle to using empirical data on sub-national disparities in fertilizer prices is the scarcity of such data. A new study focused on the spatial discrepancies in fertilizer prices. The study compiled local market urea price in eighteen countries in sub-Saharan Africa for the period between 2010-2018 and used spatial interpolation models — using points with known values to approximate values at other unknown points — to predict local prices at locations for which no empirical data was available. It was conducted by scientists at University of California, Davis, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The authors note that this is the first major attempt to systematically describe the spatial variability of fertilizer prices within the target countries and test the ability to estimate the price at unsampled locations.

Predicted relative urea price (local price divided by the observed median national price) for areas with crop land in eight East African countries.
Predicted relative urea price (local price divided by the observed median national price) for areas with crop land in eight East African countries.

“Our study uncovers considerable spatial variation in fertilizer prices within African countries and gives a much more accurate representation of the economic realities faced by African smallholders than the picture suggested by using national average prices,” said Camila Bonilla Cedrez, PhD Candidate at University of California, Davis. “We show that in many countries, this variation can be predicted for unsampled locations by fitting models of prices as a function of longitude, latitude, and additional predictor variables that capture aspects of market access, demand, and environmental conditions.”

Urea prices were generally found to be more expensive in remote areas or away from large urban centers, ports of entry or blending facilities. There were some exceptions, though. In Benin, Ghana and Nigeria, prices went down when moving away from the coast, with the possible explanation being market prices in areas with higher demand are lower. In other locations, imports of fertilizer from neighboring countries with lower prices may be affecting prices in another country or region, much like political influence. Politically, well-connected villages can receive more input subsidies compared to the less connected ones.

“The performance of our price estimation methods and the simplicity of our approach suggest that large scale price mapping for rural areas is a cost-effective way to provide more useful price information for guiding policy, targeting interventions, and for enabling more realistic applied microeconomic research. For example, local price estimates could be incorporated into household-survey-based analysis of fertilizer adoption,” explained Jordan Chamberlin, CIMMYT spatial economist. “In addition, such predictive ‘price maps’ can be incorporated into targeting and planning frameworks for agricultural investments. For example, to target technology promotion efforts to the areas where those technologies are most likely to be profitable.”

Predicted relative urea price (local price divided by the observed median national price) for areas with crop land in nine West African countries.
Predicted relative urea price (local price divided by the observed median national price) for areas with crop land in nine West African countries.

“The evidence we have compiled in this paper suggests that, while investments in more comprehensive and spatially representative price data collection would be very useful, we may utilize spatial price prediction models to extend the value of existing data to better reflect local price variation through interpolation,” explained Robert J. Hijmans, professor at University of California, Davis. “Even if imperfect, such estimates almost certainly better reflect farmers’ economic realities than assumptions of spatially constant prices within a given country. We propose that spatial price estimation methods such as the ones we employ here serve for better approximating heterogeneous economic market landscapes.”

This study has illustrated new ways for incorporating spatial variation in prices into efforts to understand the profitability of agricultural technologies across rural areas in sub-Saharan Africa.  The authors suggest that an important avenue for future empirical work would be to evaluate the extent to which the subnational price variation documented is a useful explanatory factor for observed variation in smallholder fertilizer use in sub-Saharan Africa, after controlling for local agronomic responses and output prices. One way to do that may be to integrate input and output price predictions into spatial crop models, and then evaluate the degree to which modeled fertilizer use profitability predicts observed fertilizer use rates across different locations.

Read the full study:
Spatial variation in fertilizer prices in Sub-Saharan Africa

Some of the participants at the “Gender dynamics in seed systems in sub-Saharan Africa” workshop held on December 2, 2019, in Nairobi, Kenya. (Photo: Kipenz Films/CIMMYT)

Making seed systems work for men and women

Written by Jérôme Bossuet on . Posted in News.

Some of the participants at the “Gender dynamics in seed systems in sub-Saharan Africa” workshop held on December 2, 2019, in Nairobi, Kenya. (Photo: Kipenz Films/CIMMYT)
Some of the participants at the “Gender dynamics in seed systems in sub-Saharan Africa” workshop held on December 2, 2019, in Nairobi, Kenya. (Photo: Kipenz Films/CIMMYT)

One important pillar of Africa’s food security is ensuring that quality seeds are developed and delivered to the millions of smallholder farmers that feed the continent. Reaching the last mile with climate-resilient and disease-resistant seeds remains a challenge in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa. “In countries where we invested in seed systems initiatives, we have seen an upsurge in smallholder farm productivity,” said Joseph DeVries, the President of Seed Systems Group. “A story that is not adequately told is that of the important role of women along the seed value chain. In Kenya, 40% of owners of agrodealer shops are women. The farming sector would gain a lot with a stronger role for women in developing a gender-sensitive seed sector,” he noted.

DeVries was one of the keynote speakers at the “Gender dynamics in seed systems in sub-Saharan Africa” workshop organized by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) on December 2, 2019 in Nairobi, Kenya. The meeting brought together researchers, development practitioners, donors, farmers’ representatives, farmers, seed companies and other private actors.

CIMMYT’s Gender and Development Specialist, Rahma Adam, observed that with the African seed sector being male-dominated, the patriarchal nature of the family and community systems make it harder for women to penetrate the sector easily. For instance, many women employed in the sector mostly dominate the low-paying jobs. Workshop participants agreed that while there are many opportunities for women in the sector, the barriers to entry are many.

Joseph DeVries, President of Seed Systems Group, addresses participants at the “Gender dynamics in seed systems in sub-Saharan Africa” workshop. (Photo: Kipenz Films/CIMMYT)
Joseph DeVries, President of Seed Systems Group, addresses participants at the “Gender dynamics in seed systems in sub-Saharan Africa” workshop. (Photo: Kipenz Films/CIMMYT)

Acknowledging the gender gap in agriculture

“Decades of gender research have shown that where there is gender inequality, there is food insecurity,” remarked Jemimah Njuki, senior program specialist from the International Development Research Center (IDRC). The gender gap in agricultural productivity observed in sub-Saharan Africa — up to 30% in countries like Nigeria and Malawi — is often explained by unequal access to inputs and male labor for heavy operations such as land preparation, access to knowledge and capital.

Addressing such unequal access is not enough, according to Njuki. To switch to a truly gender-sensitive food system, “you need to address social norms and women’s agency and what they can do on their own.” Taking the example of financial services, women often find difficulties obtaining loans because banks ask for collateral like title deeds, which are typically in the name of the husband or a male in-law. Yet, women are very good at repaying their loans on time. Making finance institutions “womanable” as Njuki put it, would be good for the welfare of women and their family, hence good for business.

Jemimah Njuki, senior program officer at the International Development Research Center (IDRC), speaks at the workshop. (Photo: Kipenz Films/CIMMYT)
Jemimah Njuki, senior program officer at the International Development Research Center (IDRC), speaks at the workshop. (Photo: Kipenz Films/CIMMYT)

Is there such a thing as seed for women farmers?

Within a household, who has a say in buying new seeds? Do men and women farmers look for the same traits and attributes?

A study conducted in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda by Paswel Marenya, a senior agricultural economist at CIMMYT, revealed that in many cases, the man has a greater say in selecting new seed varieties. Other research shows that beyond grain yield, the characteristics of “a good variety” differ between men and women farmers. In the study, both genders mention what they were willing to pay as trade-off against yield. Women would favor a variety with a longer grain shelf-life (ability to store 3-4 months). Men preferred a variety that performs well with low fertilizer requirements. Equally, women farmers engaged in participatory varietal selections tended to provide more nuanced evaluation of varieties than men. Despite this evidence, seed companies do not often adapt their seed marketing strategy according to gender.

Making institutions and seed systems gender-sensitive

CIMMYT’s gender and development specialist Rahma Adam addresses participants at the “Gender dynamics in seed systems in sub-Saharan Africa” workshop. (Photo: Kipenz Films/CIMMYT)
CIMMYT’s gender and development specialist Rahma Adam addresses participants at the “Gender dynamics in seed systems in sub-Saharan Africa” workshop. (Photo: Kipenz Films/CIMMYT)

Are there missed opportunities for the seed sector by being “gender-blind”? Rahma Adam believes “the current one-size-fits-all model does not work for many women farmers”. She advises seed companies to be more gender-sensitive when organizing seed marketing operations. Women tend to have less time to attend field demos, the major marketing tool for seed companies. Packaging may not be adapted to suit their more limited purchasing power.

There are good examples of women seed entrepreneurs that have established their niche and reach out to women farmers. Janey Leakey, Director of Leldet Seed Company in Nakuru, Kenya, is one such example. She markets small seed packs called Leldet bouquet, a mix of improved maize and legume seeds at the cost of a cup of tea, to enable women farmers test new varieties.

For the more informal sweet potato seed systems, many women farmers have been successfully engaged in lucrative vine multiplication, thanks to the use of women extensionists and women groups to teach appropriate storage techniques in drought-prone regions. “Such seed business can empower women within the household,” noted Jan Low, co-leader of the Sweetpotato for Profit and Health Initiative (SPHI) at the International Potato Center (CIP) and 2016 World Food Prize Laureate. A woman vine multiplier was able to negotiate with the husband for more land and water access to increase production.

Many other important actors in the public, private and development sectors have also been more deliberate in structuring some of their project or business implementation plans to include or benefit more women in the seed value chain. Among the players are CARE International, Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture, the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI), the Seed Trade Association of Kenya (STAK), SeedCo, the Agricultural Market Development Trust (AGMARK), World Vision, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which attended and participated very actively in this workshop.

Some of the plans entail helping more women to access information on climate change to understand their cropping seasons, contracting women farmers as seed out-growers, encouraging and supporting them to join forces to produce seed in group settings. Some of these actors also train women to enhance their entrepreneurial acumen, help them to access finance, obtain the appropriate labor and time-saving machinery, and acquire small seed packs.

Ultimately, designing a seed system that works for men and women requires a holistic approach, from building women’s agency, addressing norms and unequal access to resources. It requires time, dedication, financial and human resources, as well as capabilities and multi-stakeholder collaboration. “The main take-home message is that building a gender-sensitive seed system starts with us,” said Amanda Lanzarone, program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Hafiz Uddin, a farmer from Ulankhati, Tanpuna, Barisal, Bangladesh. He used seeder fertilizer drills to plant mung beans on one acre of land, which resulted in a better yield than planting manually. (Photo: Ranak Martin)

Policy brief highlights opportunities to promote balanced nutrient management in South Asia

Written by Matthew O'Leary on . Posted in Publications.

Hafiz Uddin, a farmer from Ulankhati, Tanpuna, Barisal, Bangladesh. He used seeder fertilizer drills to plant mung beans on one acre of land, which resulted in a better yield than planting manually. (Photo: Ranak Martin)
Hafiz Uddin, a farmer from Ulankhati, Tanpuna, Barisal, Bangladesh. He used seeder fertilizer drills to plant mung beans on one acre of land, which resulted in a better yield than planting manually. (Photo: Ranak Martin)

Over the last few decades, deteriorating soil fertility has been linked to decreasing agricultural yields in South Asia, a region marked by inequities in food and nutritional security.

As the demand for fertilizers grows, researchers are working with government and businesses to promote balanced nutrient management and the appropriate use of organic amendments among smallholder farmers. The Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) has published a new policy brief outlining opportunities for innovation in the region.

Like all living organisms, crops need access to the right amount of nutrients for optimal growth. Plants get nutrients — like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, in addition to other crucially important micronutrients — from soils and carbon, hydrogen, oxygen from the air and water. When existing soil nutrients are not sufficient to sustain good crop yields, additional nutrients must be added through fertilizers or manures, compost or crop residues. When this is not done, farmers effectively mine the soil of fertility, producing short-term gains, but undermining long-term sustainability.

Nutrient management involves using crop nutrients as efficiently as possible to improve productivity while reducing costs for farmers, and also protecting the environment by limiting greenhouse gas emissions and water quality contamination. The key behind nutrient management is appropriately balancing soil nutrient inputs — which can be enhanced when combined with appropriate soil organic matter management — with crop requirements. When the right quantities are applied at the right times, added nutrients help crops yields flourish. On the other hand, applying too little will limit yield and applying too much can harm the environment, while also compromising farmers’ ability to feed themselves or turn profits from the crops they grow.

Smallholder farmers in South Asia commonly practice poor nutrition management with a heavy reliance on nitrogenous fertilizer and a lack of balanced inputs and micronutrients. Declining soil fertility, improperly designed policy and nutrient management guidelines, and weak fertilizer marketing and distribution problems are among the reasons farmers fail to improve fertility on their farms. This is why it is imperative to support efforts to improve soil organic matter management and foster innovation in the fertilizer industry, and find innovative ways to target farmers, provide extension services and communicate messages on cost-effective and more sustainable strategies for matching high yields with appropriate nutrient management.

Cross-country learning reveals opportunities for improved nutrient management. The policy brief is based on outcomes from a cross-country dialogue facilitated by CSISA earlier this year in Kathmandu. The meeting saw researchers, government and business stakeholders from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka discuss challenges and opportunities to improving farmer knowledge and access to sufficient nutrients. Several key outcomes for policy makers and representatives of the agricultural development sector were identified during the workshop, and are included in the brief.

Extension services as an effective way to encourage a more balanced use of fertilizers among smallholder farmers. There is a need to build the capacity of extension to educate smallholders on a plant’s nutritional needs and proper fertilization. It also details how farmers’ needs assessments and human-centered design approaches need to be integrated while developing and delivering nutrient application recommendations and extension materials.

Nutrient subsidies must be reviewed to ensure they balance micro and macro-nutrients. Cross-country learning and evidence sharing on policies and subsidies to promote balanced nutrient application are discussed in the brief, as is the need to balance micro and macro-nutrient subsidies, in addition to the organization of subsidy programs in ways that assure farmers get access the right nutrients when and where they are needed the most. The brief also suggests additional research and evidence are needed to identify ways to assure that farmers’ behavior changes in response to subsidy programs.

Market, policy, and product innovations in the fertilizer industry must be encouraged. It describes the need for blended fertilizer products and programs to support them. A blend is made by mixing two or more fertilizer materials. For example, particles of nitrogen, phosphate and small amounts of secondary nutrients and micronutrients mixed together. Experience with blended products are uneven in the region, and markets for blends are nascent in Bangladesh and Nepal in particular. Cross-country technical support on how to develop blending factories and markets could be leveraged to accelerate blended fertilizer markets and to identify ways to ensure equitable access to these potentially beneficial products for smallholder farmers.

Download the CSISA Policy and Research Note:
Development of Balanced Nutrient Management Innovations in South Asia: Lessons from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.

The CSISA project is led by CIMMYT with partners the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Maize plants at the MLN screening facility in Naivasha, Kenya. (Photo: Jennifer Johnson/CIMMYT)

Screening cycle for deadly MLN virus set to begin in Kenya in January 2020

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on . Posted in News.

Maize plants at the MLN screening facility in Naivasha, Kenya. (Photo: Jennifer Johnson/CIMMYT)
Maize plants at the MLN screening facility in Naivasha, Kenya. (Photo: Jennifer Johnson/CIMMYT)

The maize lethal necrosis (MLN) artificial inoculation screening site in Naivasha, Kenya, will begin its phenotyping (screening/indexing) cycle of 2020 at the beginning of January 2020, which will continue in four other intervals throughout the year. Interested organizations from both the private and public sectors are invited to send maize germplasm for screening.

In 2013, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the Kenya Agricultural & Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) jointly established the MLN screening facility at the KALRO Naivasha research station in Kenya’s Rift Valley, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture.

MLN was first discovered in Kenya in 2011 and quickly spread to other parts of eastern Africa. The disease causes premature plant death and unfilled, poorly formed maize cobs, which can lead to up to 100% yield loss in farmers’ fields.

CIMMYT and partners are dedicated to stopping the spread of this deadly maize disease by effectively managing the risk of MLN on maize production through screening and identifying MLN-resistant germplasm. The MLN screening facility supports countries in sub-Saharan Africa to screen maize germplasm — for hybrid, inbred and open pollinated varieties — against MLN in a quarantined environment.

This is the largest dedicated MLN screening facility in East Africa. Since its inception in 2013, the facility has evaluated more than 200,000 accessions — more than 300,000 rows of maize — from more than 15 multinational and national seed companies and national research programs.

Partners can now plan for annual MLN phenotyping (screening/indexing) during 2020 with the schedule below. The improved and streamlined approach for MLN phenotyping should enable partners to accelerate breeding programs to improve resistance for MLN for sub-Saharan Africa.

2020 annual phenotyping (indexing/screening) schedule:

When the seeds are available  Planting period (planned) MLN Screening / Indexing
December Second week of January MLN Indexing
March Second week of April MLN Screening
June Second week of July MLN Indexing
August Second week of September MLN Screening
October Second week of November MLN Indexing

More information about the disease and resources for farmers can be found on CIMMYT’s MLN portal.

Please note that it can take up to six weeks to process imports and clear shipments.

For assistance in obtaining import permits and necessary logistics for the upcoming screening, please contact:

L.M. Suresh
Tel.: +254 20 7224600 (direct)
Email: l.m.suresh@cgiar.org

CIMMYT–Kenya, ICRAF House
United Nations Avenue, Gigiri
P.O. Box 1041–00621
Nairobi, Kenya.

Agricultural solutions to tackle humanity’s climate crisis

Written by Mike Listman on . Posted in Features.

More than 11,000 scientists signed on to a recent report showing that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency and the United Nations warned that the world is on course for a 3.2 degree spike by 2100, even if 2015 Paris Agreement commitments are met.

Agriculture, forestry, and land-use change are implicated in roughly a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Agriculture also offers opportunities to mitigate climate change and to help farmers — particularly smallholders in developing and emerging economies who have been hardest hit by hot weather and reduced, more erratic rainfall.

Most of CIMMYT’s work relates to climate change, helping farmers adapt to shocks while meeting the rising demand for food and, where possible, reducing emissions.

Family farmer Geofrey Kurgat (center) with his mother Elice Tole (left) and his nephew Ronny Kiprotich in their 1-acre field of Korongo wheat near Belbur, Nukuru, Kenya. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)
Family farmer Geofrey Kurgat (center) with his mother Elice Tole (left) and his nephew Ronny Kiprotich in their 1-acre field of Korongo wheat near Belbur, Nukuru, Kenya. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)

Climate-resilient crops and farming practices

53 million people are benefiting from drought-tolerant maize. Drought-tolerant maize varieties developed using conventional breeding provide at least 25% more grain than other varieties in dry conditions in sub-Saharan Africa — this represents as much as 1 ton per hectare more grain on average. These varieties are now grown on nearly 2.5 million hectares, benefiting an estimated 6 million households or 53 million people in the continent. One study shows that drought-tolerant maize can provide farming families in Zimbabwe an extra 9 months of food at no additional cost. The greatest productivity results when these varieties are used with reduced or zero tillage and keeping crop residues on the soil, as was demonstrated in southern Africa during the 2015-16 El Niño drought. Finally, tolerance in maize to high temperatures in combination with drought tolerance has a benefit at least twice that of either trait alone.

Wheat yields rise in difficult environments. Nearly two decades of data from 740 locations in more than 60 countries shows that CIMMYT breeding is pushing up wheat yields by almost 2% each year — that’s some 38 kilograms per hectare more annually over almost 20 years — under dry or otherwise challenging conditions. This is partly through use of drought-tolerant lines and crosses with wild grasses that boost wheat’s resilience. An international consortium is applying cutting-edge science to develop climate-resilient wheat. Three widely-adopted heat and drought-tolerant wheat lines from this work are helping farmers in Pakistan, a wheat powerhouse facing rising temperatures and drier conditions; the most popular was grown on an estimated 40,000 hectares in 2018.

Climate-smart soil and fertilizer management. Rice-wheat rotations are the predominant farming system on more than 13 million hectares in the Indo-Gangetic Plains of South Asia, providing food and livelihoods for hundreds of millions. If farmers in India alone fine-tuned crop fertilizer dosages using available technologies such as cellphones and photosynthesis sensors, each year they could produce nearly 14 million tons more grain, save 1.4 million tons of fertilizer, and cut CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions by 5.3 million tons. Scientists have been studying and widely promoting such practices, as well as the use of direct seeding without tillage and keeping crop residues on the soil, farming methods that help capture and hold carbon and can save up to a ton of CO2 emissions per hectare, each crop cycle. Informed by CIMMYT researchers, India state officials seeking to reduce seasonal pollution in New Delhi and other cities have implemented policy measures to curb the burning of rice straw in northern India through widespread use of zero tillage.

Farmers going home for breakfast in Motoko district, Zimbabwe. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)
Farmers going home for breakfast in Motoko district, Zimbabwe. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)

Measuring climate change impacts and savings

In a landmark study involving CIMMYT wheat physiologists and underlining nutritional impacts of climate change, it was found that increased atmospheric CO2 reduces wheat grain protein content. Given wheat’s role as a key source of protein in the diets of millions of the poor, the results show the need for breeding and other measures to address this effect.

CIMMYT scientists are devising approaches to gauge organic carbon stocks in soils. The stored carbon improves soil resilience and fertility and reduces its emissions of greenhouse gases. Their research also provides the basis for a new global soil information system and to assess the effectiveness of resource-conserving crop management practices.

CIMMYT scientist Francisco Pinto operates a drone over wheat plots at CIMMYT's experimental station in Ciudad Obregon, Mexico. (Photo: Alfonso Cortés/CIMMYT)
CIMMYT scientist Francisco Pinto operates a drone over wheat plots at CIMMYT’s experimental station in Ciudad Obregon, Mexico. (Photo: Alfonso Cortés/CIMMYT)

Managing pests and diseases

Rising temperatures and shifting precipitation are causing the emergence and spread of deadly new crop diseases and insect pests. Research partners worldwide are helping farmers to gain an upper hand by monitoring and sharing information about pathogen and pest movements, by spreading control measures and fostering timely access to fungicides and pesticides, and by developing maize and wheat varieties that feature genetic resistance to these organisms.

Viruses and moth larvae assail maize. Rapid and coordinated action among public and private institutions across sub-Saharan Africa has averted a food security disaster by containing the spread of maize lethal necrosis, a viral disease which appeared in Kenya in 2011 and quickly moved to maize fields regionwide. Measures have included capacity development with seed companies, extension workers, and farmers the development of new disease-resilient maize hybrids.

The insect known as fall armyworm hit Africa in 2016, quickly ranged across nearly all the continent’s maize lands and is now spreading in Asia. Regional and international consortia are combating the pest with guidance on integrated pest management, organized trainings and videos to support smallholder farmers, and breeding maize varieties that can at least partly resist fall armyworm.

New fungal diseases threaten world wheat harvests. The Ug99 race of wheat stem rust emerged in eastern Africa in the late 1990s and spawned 13 new strains that eventually appeared in 13 countries of Africa and beyond. Adding to wheat’s adversity, a devastating malady from the Americas known as “wheat blast” suddenly appeared in Bangladesh in 2016, causing wheat crop losses as high as 30% on a large area and threatening to move quickly throughout South Asia’s vast wheat lands.

In both cases, quick international responses such as the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative, have been able to monitor and characterize the diseases and, especially, to develop and deploy resistant wheat varieties.

A community volunteer of an agricultural cooperative (left) uses the Plantix smartphone app to help a farmer diagnose pests in his maize field in Bardiya district, Nepal. (Photo: Bandana Pradhan/CIMMYT)
A community volunteer of an agricultural cooperative (left) uses the Plantix smartphone app to help a farmer diagnose pests in his maize field in Bardiya district, Nepal. (Photo: Bandana Pradhan/CIMMYT)

Partners and funders of CIMMYT’s climate research

A global leader in publicly-funded maize and wheat research and related farming systems, CIMMYT is a member of CGIAR and leads the South Asia Regional Program of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).

CIMMYT receives support for research relating to climate change from national governments, foundations, development banks and other public and private agencies. Top funders include CGIAR Research Programs and Platforms, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Mexico’s Secretary of Agriculture and Rural Development (SADER), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), Cornell University, the German aid agency GIZ, the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), and CGIAR Trust Fund Contributors to Window 1 &2.

Kindie Tesfaye Fantaye

Written by Emma Orchardson on . Posted in Uncategorized.

Kindie Tesfaye is a Senior Scientist based in Ethiopia. He has more than 15 years of experience in executing and managing climate, crop modeling and GIS related projects for agricultural research and development in developing countries.

During his time at CIMMYT, he has developed a system of data acquisition and quality control for climate, crop modeling and geospatial analysis. He has applied systems analysis, cropping systems modeling and geospatial analysis tools for yield gap analysis, targeting of climate smart technologies and climate change studies across different scales. In collaboration with partners, he has also developed a digital agro-climate advisory system that provides decision support to smallholder farmers.

Dhugga identified the gene for an enzyme that propels the chemical reactions to produce guar gum, a cell wall polymer that is a dominant component of the edible kernel of the coconut. (Photo: Allen Wen/CIMMYT)

Kanwarpal Dhugga awarded top honor in science

Written by Mike Listman on . Posted in News.

Kanwarpal S. Dhugga, a Principal Scientist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) who specializes in biotechnology, has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Section on Biological Sciences, in recognition of his invaluable contributions to science and technology.

Announced by AAAS on November 26, 2019, the honor acknowledges among other things Dhugga’s leading research on plant cell wall formation, with applications including their role in lodging resistance and in producing high-value industrial polymers in maize and soybean, and the assimilation, transport, and metabolism of nitrogen in plants.

“I consider this a special honor,” said Dhugga, who leads CIMMYT’s research in biotechnology with a focus on editing genes for disease resistance in maize and wheat. He has published in high-impact scientific journals including Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Plant Cell, Molecular Plant, Plant Biotechnology Journal, Plant Physiology and others.

AAAS Fellows are elected each year by their peers serving on the Council of AAAS, the organization’s member-run governing body. Scientists who have received this recognition include the inventor Thomas Edison (1878), anthropologist Margaret Mead (1934), and popular science author Jared Diamond (2000), as well as numerous Nobel laureates. The election of Dhugga doubles the tally of AAAS fellows at CIMMYT, the other one being Ravi P. Singh, Distinguished Scientist and Head of Global Wheat Improvement.

“Kanwarpal merits CIMMYT’s wholehearted congratulations for this prestigious recognition of his standing in science,” said Kevin Pixley, director of CIMMYT’s Genetics Resources program, to which Dhugga belongs. “I’m humbled and grateful to count him as a member of our team.”

Dhugga identified the gene for an enzyme that propels the chemical reactions to produce guar gum, a cell wall polymer that is a dominant component of the edible kernel of the coconut. (Photo: Allen Wen/CIMMYT)
Dhugga identified the gene for an enzyme that propels the chemical reactions to produce guar gum, a cell wall polymer that is a dominant component of the edible kernel of the coconut. (Photo: Allen Wen/CIMMYT)

A native of Punjab in India, Dhugga has a M.Sc. in Plant Breeding from Punjab Agricultural University and a Ph.D. in Botany (Plant Genetics) from the University of California, Riverside. He was introduced to membrane protein biochemistry and cell wall synthesis during his postdoctoral research at Stanford University in the laboratory of Peter Ray. Prior to joining CIMMYT in 2015, Dhugga worked at DuPont Pioneer (now Corteva) from 1996 to 2014.

In addition to scientific excellence, Dhugga counts among his achievements prominent international, public-private partnerships, such as the one he led between DuPont Pioneer and the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics to explore new avenues to improve plant nitrogen use efficiency and reduce culm (stalk) lodging in cereals from 2004 to 2014. He continues to explore opportunities to secure funds for undertaking joint work with the collaborators from that period, thanks to the relationships fostered then. One of the scientists in his current group actually completed his Ph.D. under that collaboration.

As part of science outreach he has guided the research of many graduate students in Australia, Canada, India, and the US, a country of which he is also a citizen, and helped make high-quality education accessible to the underprivileged, including establishing a private school in his ancestral village in the state of Punjab in India.

The 2019 Fellows will receive rosette pins in gold and blue, colors symbolizing science and engineering. (Photo: AAAS)
The 2019 Fellows will receive rosette pins in gold and blue, colors symbolizing science and engineering. (Photo: AAAS)

Dhugga has also been successful as a principal or co-principal investigator in attracting significant funding for scientific research from public agencies such as the US Department of Energy, the US National Science Foundation, USAID, and the Australian Research Council. Part of his current research is supported by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. At DuPont Pioneer he was the recipient of two separate, highly competitive research grants to carry out high-risk, discovery research outside of the area of the assigned company goals.

Among his research endeavors, Dhugga highlights a breakthrough he made in the area of cell wall biosynthesis under a discovery research grant from DuPont Pioneer. He identified the gene for an enzyme that propels the chemical reactions to produce guar gum, a cell wall polymer that is also used in industrial products from shampoos to ice cream and is a dominant component of the coconut kernel. The results were published in Science. On a basic level, this provided biochemical evidence for the first time for the involvement of any of the genes from the large plant cellulose synthase gene family in the formation of a cell wall polymer. Dhugga also confides that whenever he flies over coconut plantations anywhere, he gets butterflies in his stomach at the thought that he was the first one to know how simple molecules made a complex matrix that became the edible kernel of the coconut.

“That study constituted a prime example of the power of cross-disciplinary research in answering a longstanding fundamental question in plant biology,” he said. “Assaying enzymes involved in the formation of cell wall polymers is extremely difficult. The approach we used — identify a candidate gene by combining genomics with biochemistry and then express it in a related species lacking the product of the resulting enzyme to demonstrate its function — was subsequently applied by other scientists to identify genes involved in the formation of other key plant cell wall polymers.”

Dhugga will receive a pin as a token of his election as Fellow in an AAAS ceremony in Seattle, Washington, USA, on February 15, 2020.

Enumerator Mary Mdache (left) interviews Shangwe Stephano, staff of BAYDA agrovet shop in Haydom town, Mbulu district, Tanzania. (Photo: Furaha Joseph)

Do smallholders get the right seed and inputs from their agrodealer?

Written by Jérôme Bossuet on . Posted in News. 1 Comment on Do smallholders get the right seed and inputs from their agrodealer?

Judith Thomson, agrodealer in Mbalizi, Mbeya district, Tanzania. (Photo: Owekisha Kwigizile)
Judith Thomson, agrodealer in Mbalizi, Mbeya district, Tanzania. (Photo: Owekisha Kwigizile)

Many Tanzanian smallholder farmers fail to produce even 1 ton of maize grain per hectare. To improve crop yields, a farmer needs the right seeds and complementary inputs, including inorganic fertilizer. The “right” inputs will depend upon what his or her geographical location and farming system are. How many farmers have access to such inputs and advice? What is the distribution of agrodealers in rural areas? What do they stock, and at what prices?

The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) recently carried out a survey of agrodealers in Uganda and Tanzania to answer such questions related to the last-mile delivery of seeds and other agronomic inputs.

This is a joint initiative from two projects — Taking Maize Agronomy to Scale in Africa (TAMASA) and Strengthening product profile-based maize breeding and varietal turnover in Eastern and Southern Africa — funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID.

For the study, CIMMYT teams interviewed 233 agrodealers in Uganda and 299 agrodealers in Tanzania. The survey started in September 2019, just before the main maize planting season, and covered five districts in each country, in both easy-to-reach and remote areas.

The study focuses particularly on two types of agricultural inputs: maize seeds — similar to an earlier survey done this year in Kenya — and fertilizer.

Are agrodealers catalyzers of varietal turnover?

For maize seed, researchers looked at which varieties are available at the agrodealer and how do they decide on what to stock.

Agrodealers were also asked to report the key selling attribute of the different varieties they had in store whether it was yield, drought tolerance, maturity level or another marketing characteristic like pricing or packaging. Such information will give some better insights for CIMMYT’s maize breeding team about perceived differences along the seed value chain on key attributes and product profiles.

For example, a new variety in Uganda that was tolerant to maize lethal necrosis (MLN), was mainly promoted as a double cobber and not as MLN tolerant. And unlike in Uganda, there was no “cheap variety” option available in Tanzania, according to the agrodealers interviewed for the study, although high seed prices were often mentioned as the main barrier for seed purchases.

Better understanding how retailers select their varieties could help improve varietal turnover, a key indicator of how fast CIMMYT’s research reaches out farmers.

Besides their own role, it is also interesting to see how agrodealers perceive external challenges to influence farmer adoption of improved varieties. In Uganda, agrodealers saw counterfeit seed and government free seed distributions to farmers as the main challenges for their business, issues that were not frequently mentioned in Tanzania.

Understanding input market characteristics

Enumerator Mary Mdache (left) interviews Shangwe Stephano, staff of BAYDA agrovet shop in Haydom town, Mbulu district, Tanzania. (Photo: Furaha Joseph)
Enumerator Mary Mdache (left) interviews Shangwe Stephano, staff of BAYDA agrovet shop in Haydom town, Mbulu district, Tanzania. (Photo: Furaha Joseph)

The use of fertilizer is very low in sub-Saharan Africa, around 8-12 kg per hectare, twenty times less than Western standards. Fertilizer access and affordability have been cited as key factors in the low rates of uptake.

The study may shed some new light on this, as it looks at what types of fertilizer is available to farmers at agrodealer shops, and what drives sale and prices. Researchers will examine whether there is a competition effect and how transport costs or subsidies impede the growth of the fertilizer market.

Georeferencing of interviewed agrodealers and farmer population mapping will help reveal the degree to which agrodealers are concentrated in particular areas, leaving other areas with relatively little local access to inputs. Project researchers will investigate how marketing conditions vary across such situation, examining, for instance, how input pricing strategies, selection and quality varies spatially. The team will also use data collected on fertilizer prices to further refine regional fertilizer profitability maps.

Such mapping exercises could help improve the relevance of extension advice. As an example, to tackle acid soils or phosphorus deficiency, could farmers find the recommended input, lime or appropriate P fertilizer at the right time and right price, so that it is profitable for them?

The detailed results of the study are expected in early 2020 to guide agronomic investments and policies for more functional input markets that drive a much-needed sustainable intensification of African smallholder agriculture.