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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 April 7, 2020. 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)

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)

One-minute science: Cesar Petroli and genomic profiles

Written by Mary Donovan on April 3, 2020. Posted in Videos.

Cesar Petroli, High-throughput Genotyping Specialist with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), develops genomic profiles of DNA samples, generating tens or even hundreds of thousands of molecular markers. This helps the team to set up genetic diversity analysis, improve genebank collections management and identify genomic regions associated with the expression of important agronomic traits.

Watch him explain how this molecular information can help the breeding process, to ultimately help farmers face climate change and food security challenges.

The newly inaugurated greenhouse at Tlaltizapán research station, in Mexico's state of Morelos. (Photo: Alfonso Cortés/CIMMYT)

New greenhouse honors scientist, aims to further maize wild relatives research

Written by Natasha Nagarajan on April 2, 2020. Posted in Features. 1 Comment on New greenhouse honors scientist, aims to further maize wild relatives research

On February 27, 2020, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) opened a new greenhouse at its research station in Tlaltizapán, in Mexico’s state of Morelos. The Garrison Wilkes Center for Maize Wild Relatives is named after a pioneering scientist in the field of maize genetics.

“The name teosinte refers to a group of wild relatives of maize,” said Denise Costich, manager of the maize germplasm collection at CIMMYT. “The seven members of this group — all in the genus Zea — are more grass-like than maize, produce hard-shelled seeds that are virtually inedible, and are capable of enduring biotic and abiotic stressors better than their crop relative.” Teosintes must be protected, Costich explained, as they possess some desirable qualities that could help improve maize resilience in difficult conditions. Since CIMMYT’s Germplasm Bank is the global source for teosinte seed, the new greenhouse, designed exclusively for the regeneration of teosinte accessions from the bank collection, will ensure that there will always be seed available for research and breeding.

Garrison Wilkes was one of the first scientists to emphasize the importance of the teosintes and their close biological relationship to maize. He spent more than 50 years working on maize conservation in collaboration with CIMMYT. Together with scientists such as Angel Kato, a former CIMMYT research assistant and longtime professor, Suketoshi Taba, former head of CIMMYT’s Germplasm Bank, and Jesus Sanchez, as researchers at the University of Guadalajara, he contributed to the development of the global maize collection of CIMMYT’s Germplasm Bank as it exists today.

(From left to right) Garrison Wilkes, Angel Kato and Jesus Sanchez, study a teosinte population in Los Reyes, near Texcoco, Mexico, in 1992. (Photo: Mike Listman/CIMMYT)

Keeping seeds alive

Teosintes are the wild plants from which maize was domesticated about 7,000 years ago. They are durable, with natural resistance to disease and unfavorable weather, and grow primarily in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. “What makes [teosinte] a wild plant is its seed dispersal. Corn doesn’t disperse its seed — it’s stuck on the cob. To be a wild plant means they can sow their own seed and survive,” explained Wilkes. Keeping these seeds alive could be the key to developing resilient modern maize with the potential to feed millions.

One of the difficulties in growing maize and teosinte in Tlaltizapán to produce seed for global distribution is that the station is surrounded by sugarcane fields. Sugarcane carries a disease called the Sugarcane Mosaic Virus (SCMV), to which maize and teosinte are susceptible, and SCMV-positive seed cannot be distributed outside of Mexico. Additionally, if teosinte and maize are grown in close proximity to one another, it becomes very difficult to control gene flow between them via airborne pollen. Several experiments, ranging from growing the teosinte in pots to monitoring that the maize and teosinte flower at different times, could not fully guarantee that there was no cross-contamination. Therefore, in order to continue to cultivate maize and teosinte within the same station, the CIMMYT Germplasm Bank needed to create an isolated environment.

Garrison Wilkes describes characteristic features of the teosinte grown in the greenhouse. (Photo: Alfonso Cortés/CIMMYT)

On average, the teosinte seed collections in the germplasm bank were nearly 19 years old, and 29% were not available for distribution due to low seed numbers. Researchers needed to find a way to produce more high-quality seed and get started as soon as possible. “My staff and I visited Jesus Sanchez, a world-renowned teosinte expert, and learned as much as we could about how to cultivate teosinte in greenhouses,” explained Costich “We realized that this could be the solution to our teosinte regeneration problem.”

Construction of the new greenhouse began in late 2017, with funding received from the 2016 Save a Seed Campaign — a crowdfunding initiative which raised more than $50,000. Donations contributed to activities such as seed storage, tours and educational sessions, seed collection, seed repatriation and regeneration of depleted seeds. With the new greenhouse, CIMMYT scientists can now breed teosinte without worrying about maize contamination, and prevent the extinction of these valuable species.

CIMMYT holds most of the world’s publically accessible collections of teosinte. “The wild relatives are a small part of our collection, but also a very important part, as they are theoretically the future of genetic diversity,” said Costich.“They have been important in the evolution of the crop. If we lose them, we can’t learn anything more from them, which would be a shame.”

Garrison Wilkes (left) poses with maize producer Ventura Garcia and her family. (Photo: Alfonso Cortés/CIMMYT)

Wheat curl mites: What are they and how can we fight them?

Written by Alison Doody on April 1, 2020. Posted in Videos. 1 Comment on Wheat curl mites: What are they and how can we fight them?

The wheat curl mite, a pesky wheat pest which can cause up to 100% yield losses, is a significant threat to wheat crops worldwide. The pest has been confirmed in Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and parts of South America. Almost invisible to the naked eye, the microscopic pest is one of the most difficult pests to manage in wheat due to its ability to evade insecticides.

We caught up with Punya Nachappa, an assistant professor at Colorado State University, at this year’s International Plant Resistance to Insects (IPRI) Workshop to discuss wheat curl mites and how to fight them. She explains how the mite cleverly avoids insecticides, how climate change is leading to increasing populations and why breeding for host plant resistance is the main defense against outbreaks.

Injera, an Ethiopian sourdough flatbread made from wholegrain teff flour. (Photo: Rod Waddington)

From popcorn to roti

Written by Emma Orchardson on March 26, 2020. Posted in Photos. 1 Comment on From popcorn to roti

When asked to picture a food made of whole grains, your first thought might be a loaf of brown, whole-wheat bread. But wholegrain dishes come in all forms.

Take a virtual journey around the world to see the popular or surprising ways in which whole grains are eaten from Mexico to Bangladesh.

Popcorn, a wholegrain food and source of high-quality carbohydrates eaten across the world. (Photo: Alfonso Cortes/CIMMYT)

Roasted and boiled maize ears on sale in Xochimilco, in the south of Mexico City. (Photo: M. DeFreese/CIMMYT)

Maize-flour tortillas, a staple food eaten daily in Mexico and across Central America. (Photo: Alfonso Cortés/CIMMYT)

Githeri, a staple food made with maize and beans, Kenya. (Photo: CIMMYT)

A loaf of whole-wheat bread, which could look brown or white in color, depending on how the wheat flour is processed. (Photo: Mattie Hagedorn)

A woman in Bangladesh prepares roti, an unleavened whole wheat bread eaten across the Indian sub-continent. (Photo: S. Mojumder/Drik/CIMMYT)

Tabbouleh, a Levantine salad made with a base of soaked bulgur wheat. (Photo: Moritz Guth)

Granola, a popular breakfast food made with a base of rolled, whole oats. (Photo: Alfonso Cortes/CIMMYT)

Injera, an Ethiopian sourdough flatbread made from wholegrain teff flour. (Photo: Rod Waddington)

A plate of cooked brown rice will accompany a meal in the Philippines. (Photo: IRRI)

A basket contains an assortment of whole, unprocessed maize and wheat kernels. (Photo: Alfonso Cortes/CIMMYT)

ICARDA’s Mustapha El-Bouhssini explains how crop pests are moving in a warming world

Written by Alison Doody on March 26, 2020. Posted in Videos. 2 Comments on ICARDA’s Mustapha El-Bouhssini explains how crop pests are moving in a warming world

Insect resistance in plants is needed now more than ever. The UN, which has named 2020 as the International Year of Plant Health, estimates that almost 40% of food crops are lost annually due to plant pests and diseases.

Earlier this month, a group of wheat breeders and entomologists came together for the 24th Biannual International Plant Resistance to Insects (IPRI) Workshop, held at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

We caught up with Mustapha El-Bouhssini, principal scientist at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) to discuss insect pests and climate change. He explains how pests such as the Hessian fly — a destructive wheat pest which resembles a mosquito — and the chickpea pod borer are extending their geographical ranges in response to rising temperatures.

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

Written by Jérôme Bossuet on March 25, 2020. 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)

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.

A researcher collects field data at CIMMYT’s experiment station in Ciudad Obregón, Mexico. (Photo: Alfonso Cortés/CIMMYT)

New publications: Breeders can benefit much more from phenotyping tools

Written by Emma Orchardson on March 24, 2020. Posted in Publications.

In crop research fields, it is now a common sight to see drones or other high-tech sensing tools collecting high-resolution data on a wide range of traits — from simple measurement of canopy temperature to complex 3D reconstruction of photosynthetic canopies.

This technological approach to collecting precise plant trait information, known as phenotyping, is becoming ubiquitous, but according to experts at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and other research institutions, breeders can profit much more from these tools, when used judiciously.

In a new article in the journal Plant Science, CIMMYT researchers outline the different ways in which phenotyping can assist breeding — from large-scale screening to detailed physiological characterization of key traits — and why this methodology is crucial for crop improvement.

“While having been the subject of debate in the past, extra investment for phenotyping is becoming more accepted to capitalize on recent developments in crop genomics and prediction models,” explain the authors.

Their review considers different contexts for phenotyping, including breeding, exploration of genetic resources, parent building and translations research to deliver other new breeding resources, and how these different categories of phenotyping apply to each. Some of the same tools and rules of thumb apply equally well to phenotyping for genetic analysis of complex traits and gene discovery.

The authors make the case for breeders to invest in phenotyping, particularly in light of the imperative to breed crops for warmer and harsher climates. However, wide scale adoption of sophisticated phenotyping methods will only occur if new techniques add efficiency and effectiveness.

In this sense, “breeder-friendly” phenotyping should complement existing breeding approaches by cost-effectively increasing throughput during segregant selection and adding new sources of validated complex traits to crossing blocks. With this in mind, stringent criteria need to be applied before new traits or phenotyping protocols are incorporated into mainstream breeding pipelines.

Read the full article in Plant Science:
Breeder friendly phenotyping.

A researcher flies a UAV to collect field data at CIMMYT’s experiment station in Ciudad Obregón, Mexico. (Photo: Alfonso Cortés/CIMMYT)

See more recent publications from CIMMYT researchers:

Genome-wide association study to identify genomic regions influencing spontaneous fertility in maize haploids. 2019. Chaikam, V., Gowda, M., Nair, S.K., Melchinger, A.E., Prasanna, B.M. In: Euphytica v. 215, no. 8, art. 138.
Adapting irrigated and rainfed wheat to climate change in semi-arid environments: management, breeding options and land use change. 2019. Hernandez-Ochoa, I.M., Pequeno, D.N.L., Reynolds, M.P., Md Ali Babar, Sonder, K., Molero, A., Hoogenboom, G., Robertson, R., Gerber, S., Rowland, D.L., Fraisse, C.W., Asseng, S. In: European Journal of Agronomy.
Integrating genomic resources to present full gene and putative promoter capture probe sets for bread wheat. 2019. Gardiner, L.J., Brabbs, T., Akhunova, A., Jordan, K., Budak, H., Richmond, T., Sukhwinder-Singh, Catchpole, L., Akhunov, E., Hall, A.J.W. In: GigaScience v. 8, no. 4, art. giz018.
Rethinking technological change in smallholder agriculture. 2019. Glover, D., Sumberg, J., Ton, G., Andersson, J.A., Badstue, L.B. In: Outlook on Agriculture v. 48, no. 3, p. 169-180.
Food security and agriculture in the Western Highlands of Guatemala. 2019. Lopez-Ridaura, S., Barba‐Escoto, L., Reyna, C., Hellin, J. J., Gerard, B., Wijk, M.T. van. In: Food Security v. 11, no. 4, p. 817-833.
Agronomic, economic, and environmental performance of nitrogen rates and source in Bangladesh’s coastal rice agroecosystems. 2019. Shah-Al Emran, Krupnik, T.J., Kumar, V., Ali, M.Y., Pittelkow, C. M. In: Field Crops Research v. 241, art. 107567.
Highlights of special issue on “Wheat Genetics and Breeding”. 2019. He Zhonghu, Zhendong Zhao, Cheng Shun-He In: Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering v. 6, no. 3, p. 207-209.
Progress in breeding for resistance to Ug99 and other races of the stem rust fungus in CIMMYT wheat germplasm. 2019. Bhavani, S., Hodson, D.P., Huerta-Espino, J., Randhawa, M.S., Singh, R.P. In: Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering v. 6, no. 3, p. 210-224.
China-CIMMYT collaboration enhances wheat improvement in China. 2019. He Zhonghu, Xianchun Xia, Yong Zhang, Zhang Yan, Yonggui Xiao, Xinmin Chen, Li Simin, Yuanfeng Hao, Rasheed, A, Zhiyong Xin, Zhuang Qiaosheng, Ennian Yang, Zheru Fan, Yan Jun, Singh, R.P., Braun, H.J. In: Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering v. 6. No. 3, p. 233-239.
International Winter Wheat Improvement Program: history, activities, impact and future. 2019. Morgounov, A.I., Ozdemir, F., Keser, M., Akin, B., Payne, T.S., Braun, H.J. In: Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering v. 6, no. 3, p. 240-250.
Genetic improvement of wheat grain quality at CIMMYT. 2019. Guzman, C., Ammar, K., Velu, G., Singh, R.P. In: Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering v. 6, no. 3, p. 265-272.
Comments on special issue on “Wheat Genetics and Breeding”. 2019. He Zhonghu, Liu Xu In: Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering, v. 6. No. 3, p. 309.
Spectral reflectance indices as proxies for yield potential and heat stress tolerance in spring wheat: heritability estimates and marker-trait associations. 2019. Caiyun Liu, Pinto Espinosa, F., Cossani, C.M., Sukumaran, S., Reynolds, M.P. In: Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering, v. 6, no. 3, p. 296-308.
Beetle and maize yield response to plant residue application and manual weeding under two tillage systems in northern Zimbabwe. 2019. Mashavakure, N., Mashingaidze, A.B., Musundire, R., Gandiwa, E., Thierfelder, C., Muposhi, V.K. In: Applied Soil Ecology v. 144, p. 139-146.
Optimizing dry-matter partitioning for increased spike growth, grain number and harvest index in spring wheat. 2019. Rivera Amado, A.C., Trujillo, E., Molero, G., Reynolds, M.P., Sylvester Bradley, R., Foulkes, M.J. In: Field Crops Research v. 240, p. 154-167.
Small businesses, potentially large impacts: the role of fertilizer traders as agricultural extension agents in Bangladesh. 2019. Mottaleb, K.A., Rahut, D.B., Erenstein, O. In: Journal of Agribusiness in Developing and Emerging Economies v. 9, no. 2, p. 109-124.
Heterogeneous seed access and information exposure: implications for the adoption of drought-tolerant maize varieties in Uganda. 2019. Simtowe, F.P., Marenya, P. P., Amondo, E., Regasa, M.W., Rahut, D.B., Erenstein, O. In: Agricultural and Food Economics v. 7. No. 1, art. 15.
Hyperspectral reflectance-derived relationship matrices for genomic prediction of grain yield in wheat. 2019. Krause, M., Gonzalez-Perez, L., Crossa, J., Perez-Rodriguez, P., Montesinos-Lopez, O.A., Singh, R.P., Dreisigacker, S., Poland, J.A., Rutkoski, J., Sorrells, M.E., Gore, M.A., Mondal, S. In: G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics v.9, no. 4, p. 1231-1247.
Unravelling the complex genetics of karnal bunt (Tilletia indica) resistance in common wheat (Triticum aestivum) by genetic linkage and genome-wide association analyses. 2019. Emebiri, L.C., Sukhwinder-Singh, Tan, M.K., Singh, P.K., Fuentes Dávila, G., Ogbonnaya, F.C. In: G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics v. 9, no. 5, p. 1437-1447.
Healthy foods as proxy for functional foods: consumers’ awareness, perception, and demand for natural functional foods in Pakistan. 2019. Ali, A., Rahut, D.B. In: International Journal of Food Science v. 2019, art. 6390650.
Northern Himalayan region of Pakistan with cold and wet climate favors a high prevalence of wheat powdery mildew. 2019. Khan, M.R., Imtiaz, M., Farhatullah, Ahmad, S., Sajid Ali.In: Sarhad Journal of Agriculture v. 35, no. 1, p. 187-193.
Resistance to insect pests in wheat—rye and Aegilops speltoides Tausch translocation and substitution lines. 2019. Crespo-Herrera, L.A., Singh, R.P., Sabraoui, A., Moustapha El Bouhssini In: Euphytica v. 215, no. 7, art.123.
Productivity and production risk effects of adopting drought-tolerant maize varieties in Zambia. 2019. Amondo, E., Simtowe, F.P., Rahut, D.B., Erenstein, O. In: International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management v. 11, no. 4, p. 570-591.
Review: new sensors and data-driven approaches—A path to next generation phenomics. 2019. Roitsch, T., Cabrera-Bosquet, L., Fournier, A., Ghamkhar, K., Jiménez-Berni, J., Pinto Espinosa, F., Ober, E.S. In: Plant Science v. 282 p. 2-10.
Accountability mechanisms in international climate change financing. 2019. Basak, R., van der Werf, E. In: International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics v. 19, no. 3, p. 297-313.
Enhancing the rate of genetic gain in public-sector plant breeding programs: lessons from the breeder’s equation. 2019. Cobb, J.N., Juma, R.U., Biswas, P.S., Arbelaez, J.D., Rutkoski, J., Atlin, G.N., Hagen, T., Quinn, M., Eng Hwa Ng. In: Theoretical and Applied Genetics v. 132, no. 3, p. 627-645.

A farmer checks the drip irrigation system at his rice field in India. (Photo: Hamish John Appleby/IWMI)

Systems thinking at work in South Asia’s food production

Written by Emma Orchardson on March 20, 2020. Posted in News. 1 Comment on Systems thinking at work in South Asia’s food production

In 2009, state governments in Northwest India implemented a policy designed to reduce groundwater extraction by prohibiting the usual practice of planting rice in May and moving it to June, nearer the start of monsoon rains.

Although the policy did succeed in alleviating pressure on groundwater, it also had the unexpected effect of worsening already severe air pollution. The reason for this, according to a recent study published in Nature Sustainability, is that the delay in rice planting narrowed the window between rice harvest and sowing of the subsequent crop — mainly wheat — leaving farmers little time to remove rice straw from the field and compelling them to burn it instead.

Even though burning crop residues is prohibited in India, uncertainty about the implementation of government policy and a perceived lack of alternatives have perpetuated the practice in Haryana and Punjab states, near the nation’s capital, New Delhi, where air pollution poses a major health threat.

Land preparation on a rice field with a two-wheel tractor. (Photo: Vedachalam Dakshinamurthy/CIMMYT)

A farmer uses a tractor fitted with a Happy Seeder. (Photo: Vedachalam Dakshinamurthy/CIMMYT)

A farmer checks the drip irrigation system at his rice field in India. (Photo: Hamish John Appleby/IWMI)

Wheat crop in conservation agriculture. (Photo: Vedachalam Dakshinamurthy/CIMMYT)

A farmer ploughs a rice field with a water buffalo. (Photo: Licensed from Digitalpress – Dreamstime.com; Image 11205929)

Decades of research for development have enabled researchers at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and other partners to identify potential solutions to this problem.

One particularly viable option focuses on the practice of zero tillage, in which wheat seed is sown immediately after rice harvest through the rice straw directly into untilled soil with a single tractor pass.

In a new blog published as part of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ Field Notes series, CIMMYT scientists Hans Braun and Bruno Gerard discuss the combination of agronomic and breeding conditions required to make zero tillage work, and propose a fundamental shift away from current incentives to maximize the region´s cereal production.

Read the full article:
Field Notes – Systems thinking at work in South Asia’s food production

One-minute science: Suchismita Mondal on breeding resilient wheat

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on March 19, 2020. Posted in Videos.

Reduced water availability for irrigation and increasing temperatures are of great concern. These two factors can considerably affect wheat production and reduce grain yields.

Watch CIMMYT Wheat Breeder Suchismita Mondal explain — in just one minute — how breeders are developing wheat varieties that have stable grain yield under low water availability and high temperatures.

Africa’s devastating locust outbreak exposes need for crop science on all fronts

Written by Mary Donovan on March 10, 2020. Posted in In the media.

Behind every farmer dealing with a crop pest is a scientist who has supported them by developing better seeds, crop protection methods and apps to identify weeds.

Members of a women's group in Nigeria. (Photo: C. de Bode/CGIAR)

For a food system at risk, women are key yet often overlooked

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on March 9, 2020. Posted in Features.

On March 8, the world celebrates International Women’s Day, and the 25^th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the most progressive roadmap for the empowerment of women and girls, everywhere. In an op-ed in The Independent, Claudia Sadoff, CGIAR Gender Champion and Director General of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), declares that our climate change-ravaged food systems cannot wait for the gradual progress of gender quality.

From locust swarms, hurricanes, wildfires and emerging famines, climate-related disasters are taking place around the world and our fragile food systems are on the front line.

Our food systems are in need of urgent support, and rural women play a critical role in reversing the problem. Research has found that rural women are disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change, yet their significant contributions to food systems receive only a fraction of the focus they deserve.

Rural women are hamstrung by gender bias in food systems, home life, economics and culture. Barriers to accessing finance, insurance, high-quality seed, fertilizer, additional labor and markets result in women producing 20-30% less per hectare than men.

Women’s unpaid daily household tasks are often backbreaking and time-consuming. Women are responsible for collecting water and fuel for cooking and tending kitchen gardens and family-owned livestock. With African women producing up to 80% of food for their household, these women have less opportunity to grow and sell foods at market to improve their financial position.

Breaking free of this gender bias requires a rethink on how rural women are reflected in, and participate in, society at large, says Sadoff in her op-ed, published in The Independent on March 7, 2020.

So, what does this rethink look like? How can we enable women and, in the process, strengthen our food systems?

Sadoff has summarized this huge undertaking into three key steps: (1) Ensure rural women can invest in productivity in their farms, (2) ease the burden of daily household tasks, and (3) build research systems and cultures to be more gender equitable in the long run.

Through One CGIAR and the Generating Evidence and New Directors for Equitable Results (GENDER) Platform, we are proud to say that we are working together to achieve these three objectives. Closing the gender gap completely will not happen in a generation but taking steps towards achieving greater gender equality will help to build the resilience of our food systems, bolster rural economies and improve rural livelihoods.

With UN Women, One CGIAR supports #GenerationEquality, for the benefit of all.

Read Claudia Sadoff’s article on The Independent:
Unless we empower women farmers, we may not have enough to feed the planet.

This summary was originally published on the CGIAR website:
For a food system at risk, women are key yet often overlooked.

Cover photo: C. de Bode/CGIAR.

Explore our coverage of International Women’s Day 2020.

Growing vegetables in Tunisia. (Photo: ICARDA)

Four ways of strengthening gender equality in the agricultural sector in the MENA region

Written by Alison Doody on March 5, 2020. Posted in Features. 1 Comment on Four ways of strengthening gender equality in the agricultural sector in the MENA region

When it comes to labor markets, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is one of the most gender unequal regions in the world. The male labor force participation rate in MENA is no different from other regions, at around 75%, but female labor force participation rates have remained stubbornly low, at around 20% .

Agriculture is the largest employer of women in the MENA region and the female share of the agricultural workforce increased from 30% in 1980 to almost 45% in 2010, exceeding 60% in Jordan, Libya, Syria and the occupied Palestinian Territory. However, women in the region still face significant challenges accessing land and benefitting from technologies and decent, equitable working conditions.

In the fall of 2019, a group of experts, including London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) professor of Gender and Development Naila Kabeer, came together to discuss the persistent limited access to labor market opportunities for women in South Asia and MENA, despite an increase in women’s education and access to fertility planning. The workshop organized by LSE discussed barriers, opportunities and policy challenges.

Vegetable gardening in Tunisia. (Photo: ICARDA)

We share some of the expert panel’s key recommendations for the MENA region, which featured research funded by the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat.

1. Recognize women as workers not helpers

According to the World Bank, agriculture employs 36% of women and 22% of men in Egypt. However, research shows that women who work in agriculture are widely categorized as “helpers” to male workers rather than workers in their own right. What’s more, women are listed as “housewives” on their national ID cards, while men are listed as “agricultural workers.” As a result, these women are unable to even access opportunities to bargain for better wages and working conditions.

Legally and socially recognizing these women as workers is a first step to introducing equal pay legislation for men and women in agriculture. It would also justify their inclusion in agricultural extension services and strengthen social protection measures.

2. Change perceptions of property ownership

The MENA region has the lowest level of women’s landownership in the world, at just 5%. Our research findings indicate completely different perceptions of ownership among women and men.

Research in Egypt shows that women tend to identify land officially owned solely by themselves as belonging to themselves and their husbands. Men, on the other hand, are less likely to consider their wives as co-owners, identifying male relatives instead.

In the New Lands — lands irrigated after the building of the High Aswan Dam in Egypt — there are land distribution quotas to encourage more land ownership among women. This has enabled some women to gain significant economic, social and political power. Despite this, these women still prefer to bequeath their land to their sons rather than their daughters due to social pressure and the expectation that their sons will provide for them in their old age.

To mitigate these low levels of women’s land ownership, policy change on its own is not enough. Changing perceptions of land and property ownership needs to go hand in hand with changes at a policy level.

3. Enforce legislation for equal pay and zero tolerance for sexual harassment

In Morocco, female employment in agriculture has jumped from 29% in 1980 to 48% in 2010. However, women’s wages, working conditions and bargaining power have not risen with it.

Research shows that women are designated lower paid and more time-consuming tasks, and are systemically paid less than men, even for the same tasks. Women agricultural workers also face high levels of sexual harassment and have limited bargaining power.

Moroccan legislation already stipulates equal pay and zero tolerance for sexual harassment. However, enforcement remains extremely weak. Enforcing existing pro-active legislation is an essential step towards equality for women in agriculture.

4. Revitalize agriculture as a valuable and necessary occupation in society

Much of the world sees agriculture as an occupation of last resort. When surveyed, men and women in Morocco both complained about agricultural work being an unstable and unreliable way of making a living. Women were found to be hired more easily but only because they were paid less than men.

To shift how agriculture is viewed and rebrand it as an important and respected occupation, it needs to be reformed as a safer, more equal and respectful space for both women and men.

Building resilience for smallholder farmers in marginal drylands. (Photo: ICARDA)

A key overall take-away message from the expert panel is that supportive policies alone are not enough. Rather, in order to tackle the institutionalization of harmful gender norms and stimulate actual change in practice at all levels, policy interventions need to go hand in hand with strong consciousness-raising, critical reflection and behavior change initiatives.

Read the full report:
Women’s access to market opportunities in South Asia and the Middle East & North Africa: barriers, opportunities and policy challenges

Moving out of poverty or staying poor

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on March 4, 2020. 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)

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

With 30,000 surveys, researchers build the go-to dataset for smallholder farms

Written by Mary Donovan on March 3, 2020. Posted in In the media.

Incompatibility of surveys did not allow big-picture analysis, so a team of CGIAR researchers began tackling the household survey interoperability problem in 2015. They invited the global research-for-development community to contribute to the open-access dataset, which today includes more than 30,000 interviews conducted in 33 countries.

Broad adoption of the standardized survey tool may help guide international efforts to address smallholder challenges related to climate change, food security, nutrition, farm productivity, and social inclusion.