A global wheat conference originally scheduled to be held in June in Norwich, United Kingdom, now will take place virtually on Oct. 7-9.
The Borlaug Global Rust Initiativeâs (BGRI) virtual technical workshop was postponed earlier this year due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Read more here:Â https://www.world-grain.com/articles/14150-wheat-researchers-to-gather-for-october-virtual-event
An early warning system set to deliver wheat disease predictions directly to farmersâ 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.
âWheat rust and blast are caused by fungal pathogens, and like many fungi, they spread from plant to plant â and field to field â in tiny particles called spores,â said Hodson. âDisease strain mutations can overcome resistant varieties, leaving farmers few choices but to rely on expensive and environmentally-damaging fungicides to prevent crop loss.â
âThe 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.â
The system was first developed in Ethiopia. It uses weather information from the Met Office, the UKâs 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.
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.
âIn the current wheat season we are in the process of comparing our disease forecasting models with on-the-ground survey results in both countries,â the wheat expert said.
âNext season, after getting validation from national partners, we will pilot getting our predictions to farmers through text-based messaging systems.â
CIMMYTâs 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.
âPartnerships are essential. Working with our colleagues, we can validate and test the deployment of model-derived advisories in real-world extension settings,â Krupnik said. âThe forecasting and early warning systems are designed to reduce unnecessary fungicide use, advising it only in the case where outbreaks are expected.â
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.
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.
âDiverse 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,â 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.
âThe 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,â 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
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 farmersâ 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 programâs 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 Asiaâs 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.
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 Egyptâs âseven bad yearsâ 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 â like COVID-19 overcomes the human immune system â 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 â 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 â just like with COVID-19 â they donât 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 â and in Yemen wheat matures early â and then farmers burn the straw, their action âpushesâ 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.
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, whatâs 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 thatâs 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 havenât 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 âdoomsdayâ 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.
Letâs 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 â 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 donât 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 Lloydâs 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. Iâm 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)
As reported today in Communications Biology, an international team of researchers led by the John Innes Centre, U.K., found that 80 percent of U.K. wheat varieties are susceptible to the deadly stem rust strain. The group also confirmed for the first time in many decades that the stem rust fungus was growing on barberry bush, the pathogenâs alternate host, in the UK.
âThis signals the rising threat of stem rust disease for wheat and barley production in Europe,â said Dave Hodson, senior scientist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and co-author on the study.
A scourge of wheat since biblical times, stem rust caused major losses to North American wheat crops in the early 20th century. Stem rust disease was controlled for decades through the use of resistant wheat varieties bred in the 1950s by scientist Norman Borlaug and his colleagues. Widespread adoption of those varieties sparked the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 70s.
In 1999 a new, highly-virulent strain of the stem rust fungus emerged in eastern Africa. Spores of that strain and variants have spread rapidly and are threatening or overcoming the genetic resistance of many currently sown wheat varieties. Scientists worldwide joined forces in the early 2000s to develop new, resistant varieties and to monitor and control outbreaks of stem rust and yellow rust, as part of collaborations such as the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative led by Cornell University.
The Communications Biology study shows that 2013 U.K. stem rust strain is related to TKTTF, a fungal race first detected in Turkey that spread across the Middle East and recently into Europe. It was the dominant race in the 2013 stem rust outbreak in Germany and infected 10,000 hectares of wheat in Ethiopiaâs breadbasket the same year.
Because disease organisms mutate quickly to overcome crop resistance controlled by single genes, researchers are rushing to identify new resistance genes and to incorporate multiple genes into high-yielding varieties, according to Ravi Singh, CIMMYT wheat scientist who participated in the reported study.
âThe greatest hope for achieving durable resistance to rust diseases is to make wheatâs resistance genetically complex, combining several genes and resistance mechanisms,â Singh explained.
Barberry, which serves as a spawning ground for the stem rust fungus, was largely eradicated from the U.K. and U.S. last century, greatly reducing the spread and genetic diversification of rust disease races. Now barberry is being grown again in the U.K. over the last decade, according to Diane G.O. Saunders, John Innes Centre scientist and co-author of the study.
âThe late Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug said that the greatest ally of the pathogen is our short memory,â Saunders stated. âWe recommend continued, intensive resistance breeding. We would also welcome work with conservationists of endangered, barberry-dependent insect species to ensure that planting of common barberry occurs away from arable land, thus safeguarding European cereals from a large-scale re-emergence of wheat stem rust.â
Click here to read the John Innes Centre media release about the Communications Biology report and view the report.
EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) â Scientists are concerned over the proliferation of highly virulent fungal wheat diseases, including two new races of yellow rust â one in Europe and North Africa, the other taking hold in East Africa and Central Asia â and a new race of stem rust emerging in Europe.
The collaborative Global Rust Reference Center (GRRC) hosted by Aarhus University in Denmark and including the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), was instrumental in identifying the new races of yellow and stem rust.
A strategic tool developed by David Hodson, a senior scientist with CIMMYT plays a key role in monitoring the movement of wheat-rust pathogens, helping farmers combat the disease in time to save crops and prevent food insecurity.
âWe see an alarming increase in severe disease, more disease diversity and rapid spread,â said Hodson, who invented the Rust Tracker field surveillance tool.
Last year, the Italian island of Sicily was badly hit by a strain of wheat stem rust – an event not seen in Europe since the 1950s, following concerted efforts by wheat breeders to eliminate it.
Stem rust appears as a reddish-brown fungal build-up on wheat stems or leaves, stunting and weakening plants, preventing kernels from forming, leading to shriveled grain and potential crop losses of 50 to 100 percent.
Dispersal modeling, undertaken by the University of Cambridge and the UK Met Office, which forecasts weather and climate change, indicates that spores from the Sicilian outbreak could potentially have spread within the Mediterranean wheat growing region, but scientists are unsure whether they will successfully over-winter, surviving and proliferating, according to a recent story in the journal Nature.
EARLY WARNING
âSeveral factors may be influencing the changes and rapid spread: increased travel and trade; increasing pathogen populations; more uniform cropping systems and also climate change, but the rapid changes we are observing highlight the need for an enhanced early-warning system,â said Hodson, a member of an international team of scientists collaborating under the Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat (DGGW) project administered by Cornell University through the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI).
Scientists engaged with the major four-year international project â which has a budget of $34.5 million due to grants equalling $24 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a recent $10.5 million grant from UK Aid (Britainâs Department for International Development, or DFID) â use comparative genomics and big data to develop new wheat varieties. The aim is to help governments provide smallholder farmers in the developing world with seeds incorporating resilience to environmental stresses and diseases through local entrepreneurial distributors.
âThe sooner farmers are notified of a potential rust outbreak, the better chance they have to save their crops through fungicides or by planting resilient wheat varieties,â Hodson said.
âItâs a constant challenge. Weâre always on the lookout for new diseases and variants on old diseases to put the wheels in motion to aid governments who can distribute seeds bred specifically to outsmart rusts.â
However, the long-term sustainability of these vital disease-monitoring systems is uncertain. Despite the significant investments, challenges remain, Hodson said.
âItâs worrying that just as stem rust is re-appearing in Europe weâre at risk of losing the only stem rust pathotyping capacity in Europe at GRRC, due to a funding shortfall. Given the threats and changes we are observing, there really is a critical need for a long-term strategy to address major crop diseases.â
TRACKER ORIGINS
The online Rust Tracker was originally conceived as a tool to battle stem rust, including the lethal Ug99 race, which since its discovery in 1998 has spread from Uganda into the Middle East and is now found in 13 countries. If Ug99 takes hold in a field it can completely wipe out a farmerâs crop. In developing countries, farmers have more difficulty accessing and affording fungicides, which can potentially save a crop.
Under the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat project, the predecessor to the DGGW project, BGRI-affiliated scientists aimed to prevent the spread of Ug99 into the major global breadbaskets of China and India. So far, they have succeeded in keeping it in check and raising awareness among governments and farmers of its potentially devastating impact.
âResearchers and farmers are connected in the global village,â Hodson said. âPlant pathogens know no borders. We must leave no stone unturned in our efforts to understand the dynamics of wheat rusts, how theyâre changing, where theyâre spreading and why. If wheat scientists can help prevent a food crisis, weâre doing our job to help maintain political and economic stability in the world.â
LONDON (CIMMYT) â International wheat rust monitoring efforts are not only keeping the fast-spreading disease in check, but are now being deployed to manage risks posed by other crop diseases, said a scientist attending a major scientific event in London.
Although initially focused on highly virulent Ug99 stem rust, the rust tracking system â developed as part of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative, an international collaboration involving Cornell University and national agricultural research programs â is also used to monitor other fungal rusts and develop prediction models with the aim of helping to curtail their spread.
âWe appear to be looking at some shifts in stem rust populations with the Digalu race and new variants increasing and spreading,â said David Hodson, a senior scientist with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), who showcased the latest research findings at the recent Grand Challenges meeting in London hosted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
âOur data reinforce the fact that we face threats from rusts per se and not just from the Ug99 race group â we are fortunate that international efforts laid the groundwork to establish a comprehensive monitoring system,â said Hodson, one of more than 1,200 international scientists at the gathering.
âThe research investments are having additional benefits,â he told Priti Patel, Britainâs secretary of state for international development, explaining that the wheat rust surveillance system is now also being applied to the deadly Maize Lethal Necrosis disease in Africa.
âThe learning from stem rust and investments in data management systems and other components of the tracking system have allowed us to fast-track a similar surveillance system for another crop and pathosystem.â
In a keynote address, echoed by an opinion piece published in Londonâs Evening Standard newspaper authored by Patel and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, Patel described the risks posed by wheat rust to global food security and some of the efforts funded by Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID) to thwart it.
âResearchers at the University of Cambridge are working with the UK Met Office and international scientists to track and prevent deadly outbreaks of wheat rust which can decimate this important food crop for many of the worldâs poorest people,â Patel said, referring to collaborative projects involving CIMMYT, funded by the Gates Foundation and DFID
Patel also launched a DFID research review at the meeting, committing the international development agency to continued research support and detailing how the UK intends to deploy development research and innovation funding of ÂŁ390 million ($485 million) a year over the next four years.
Wheat improvement work by the CGIAR consortium of agricultural researchers was highlighted in the research review as an example of high impact DFID research. Wheat improvement has resulted in economic benefits of $2.2 to $3.1 billion per year and almost half of all the wheat planted in developing countries.
OBREGON, Mexico (CIMMYT) — For  hundreds of international agricultural development experts, an annual gathering in northern Mexico provides a vital platform for sharing and debating the latest wheat breeding news and research.
This year, more than 200 members of the wheat community from more than 30 countries met in the legendary wheat fields of Ciudad Obregon in Mexicoâs state of Sonora to participate in Visitorsâ Week, hosted by the Global Wheat Program (GWP) of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).
The event coincides with the birthday of Norman Borlaug, the late CIMMYT wheat breeder and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, known as the father of the Green Revolution for his contributions to global food security, many of which were undertaken in Obregon. This year, Visitors’ Week delegates toasted his 102nd birthday at the Norman E. Borlaug Experimental Field research station.
The month of March also marks the peak wheat-growing season in Obregon, and participants attended a field day tour to see old and new wheat varieties, learn about CIMMYT programs and the latest research findings. Additionally, meetings and discussions were held with the goal of contributing to the improvement of wheat research across the globe by identifying key priorities.
INTERNATIONAL DIALOGUES
A brainstorming session between representatives from the British government and CIMMYT included discussions on collaborating on breeding for tolerance to high ambient temperatures, durable disease resistance, nitrogen use efficiency, and quality and nutrition.
Future collaborations between CIMMYT and Australia were explored with the Grains Research and Development Corporation and the CIMMYT-Australia-ICARDA Germplasm Exchange (CAIGE) group. 2Blades, a U.S.-based organization supporting the development of durable disease resistance in crop plants, joined the discussion and expressed the need to use safe, sustainable crop production strategies.
As part of discussions regarding international collaboration, the second meeting of the Expert Working Group on Nutrient Use Efficiency in wheat aimed to improve international coordination on NUE (nitrogen and other nutrients) research among Australia, Britain, France, Mexico, Italy, Spain and Germany.
During the NUE meeting, an executive committee was appointed, with Malcolm Hawksford, head of Plant Biology and Crop Science at Rothamsted Research as chair and Jacques Le Gouis, of the French National Institute for Agricultural Research, as vice chair.
As well, the International Wheat Yield Partnership (IWYP) held its first official conference during which IWYP director Jeff Gwyn discussed outcomes and objectives for the next 20 years.
Due to the large audience of global wheat researchers, the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative took the opportunity to launch its new project, Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat (DGGW), supported by a $24 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Under the DGGW, CIMMYT scientists aim to mitigate serious threats to wheat brought about by climate change by developing and deploying new heat-tolerant, disease-resistant wheat varieties.
ENCOURAGING ENGAGEMENT
With the hope of increasing data and information sharing, the International Wheat Improvement Network (IWIN) awarded Mehmet Nazım Dincer of Turkey the IWIN Cooperator Award for contributing data on international nurseries. Through a lottery, Dincer was selected from among researchers who provided data on international seed nurseries to IWIN in 2015. Dincer was awarded a one-week paid visit to ObregĂłn during GWP Visitorsâ Week, and was also congratulated for his collaborative efforts during the festivities.
Another lottery will be held in November to select the next winner from among cooperators who return 2016 international nursery data. GWP director Hans Braun joked that he is not aware of other lotteries with so few participants in which the jackpot is a trip to Obregon, encouraging  IWIN cooperators to return their data and win.
Visitorsâ Week is not only an important time for international collaborations and brainstorming, but also for capacity development and training early career scientists. Coinciding with this yearâs Visitorsâ Week was the GWP Basic Wheat Improvement Course (BWIC), a three-month training course for young and mid-career scientists focusing on applied breeding techniques in the field. In addition to attending Visitorsâ Week events, trainees were offered special courses with guest lecturers.
Joining the BWIC at this time were winners of the 2016 Women in Triticum Award who alongside women trainees attended a âWomen in Agricultureâ discussion led by Jeannie Borlaug, daughter of Norman Borlaug, to discuss difficulties and successes women face in achieving equality in the science and agriculture sectors.
Pakistanâs National Philatelic Bureau issued a commemorative postage stamp to honor the 100th birthday, last 25 March, of late wheat scientist and Nobel Peace Laureate, Dr. Norman E. Borlaug.
Pakistani researchers and policymakers were instrumental to the work of Borlaug and the Green Revolution in South Asia, said Imtiaz Muhammad, CIMMYT wheat scientist and country representative in Pakistan, speaking at a 22 December unveiling ceremony.
Pakistan breeders have sown and returned data on CIMMYT international maize and wheat trials for more than four decades, and over 150 Pakistani wheat specialists have participated in training courses at CIMMYT.Â
Held at the National Agricultural Research Center (NARC), Islamabad, the unveiling was organized by CIMMYT, the Pakistan Agriculture Research Council (PARC) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and drew more than 50 participants, including agricultural scientists, media representatives and staff of Pakistanâs Ministry of National Food Security and Research (MNFSR).
The Federal Minister for Food Security and Research, Mr. Sikhandar Hayat Khan Bossan, formally unveiled the stamp. Speakers included Dr. Iftikhar Ahmed, Chairman of PARC, Dr. Shahid Masood, PARC plant scientist,and Mr. Seerat Asghar, Federal Secretary for National Food Security and Research. Thomas A. Lumpkin, CIMMYT director general, and Ronnie Coffman, vice-chair of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI), addressed the audience through video messages.
Through a personal message read during the ceremony, Jeanie Borlaug Laube, daughter of Norman Borlaug and BGRI chair, thanked the Pakistan government. “I know my father would be very proud to be on a stamp in Pakistan,” she said.