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AMBIONET: A Model for Strengthening National Agricultural Research Systems

Written by on May 14, 2012. Posted in News. 2 Comments on AMBIONET: A Model for Strengthening National Agricultural Research Systems

CIMMYT E-News, vol 3 no. 6, June 2006

june03 A USAID-funded study by Rutgers economist Carl Pray concludes that present and future impacts of the Asian Maize Biotechnology Network (AMBIONET)—a forum that during 1998-2005 fostered the use of biotechnology to boost maize yields in Asia’s developing countries—should produce benefits that far exceed its cost.

Organized by CIMMYT and funded chiefly by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), AMBIONET included public maize research institutions in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. “Despite the small investment—about US$ 2.4 million from ADB and US$ 1.3 million from CIMMYT—the network was successful in increasing research capacity, increasing research output, and initiating the development of technology that should benefit small farmers and consumers,” Pray says.

Benefits already seen in the field, with more to come

Pray estimates that farmers in Thailand and Southern China are already gaining nearly US$ 200,000 a year by sowing downy-mildew-resistant hybrids from the project. Pray’s future projections are much more dramatic. An example is drought tolerant maize: if such varieties are adopted on just a third of Asia’s maize area and reduce crop losses by one-third, farmers stand to gain US$ 100 million a year. Furthermore, in India AMBIONET has improved knowledge, capacity, and partnerships with private companies; a 1% increase in yield growth from this improvement would provide US$ 10 million per year, according to Pray.

Emphasis on applied work pays off

AMBIONET’s applied approach stressed formal training and attracted Asian researchers to work on maize germplasm enhancement and breeding. This included graduate students, scientists who switched from an academic to an applied-research focus, and advanced-degree scientists with experience in DNA markers and mapping for maize. Many noted that the partnering of molecular geneticists with breeders strengthened their interactions and the exchange of expertise. The project also boosted funding for maize breeding research. Several AMBIONET labs used project money to leverage significant institutional and government grants. Major research programs emerged from AMBIONET in India and China.

In a 2003 interview, Shihuang Zhang, leader of a project team at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences’ (CAAS) Institute of Plant Breeding, said: “AMBIONET came along at the ideal time for us. We were able have some of our young people trained and start our lab. Then in 1998 and 1999, China changed the way research was funded. We…were able to get big projects for molecular breeding.” The CAAS group used the initial money, equipment, training, and advice from AMBIONET to start the fingerprinting, mapping, and a markers lab, as well as to hire leading national maize breeding and molecular genetics experts. According to Pray, this eventually converted the group into China’s major maize molecular breeding and enhancement program.

Region-wide sharing

Benefits were not confined just to individual labs, as groups shared knowledge and resources across borders. The Indonesian team, for example, sent two young scientists for extended training in the laboratory of B.M. Prasanna, at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi. Veteran Indonesian maize breeder Firdaus Kasim reported this to be extremely useful: “Prasanna showed our scientists how to do downy mildew and genetic diversity research. He was a very good teacher. After they came back they made a lot of progress.” Prasanna also provided lines that the Indonesian trainees fingerprinted in diversity studies and 400 primers (markers) for downy mildew resistance.

Lines, data, and markers from AMBIONET are in use region-wide. For example, sugarcane mosaic virus was identified as a serious constraint in several countries, and partners are using resistant lines developed under AMBIONET. Based on information from diversity studies conducted under the project, Vietnamese researchers are developing hybrids that resist lodging and are drought tolerant.

A regional program that worked

Research projects provided the focal point for AMBIONET, with training activities, annually meetings, and the technical backstopping contributing to the programs’ success. “The combination of collaboration, cooperation, and competition…was impressive,” says Pray, in the study’s closing statement. “This is the way good, collaborative research is supposed to work.”

For more information contact Jonathan Crouch (j.crouch@cgiar.org)

Nepal-CIMMYT partnerships reach the unreached

Written by on May 14, 2012. Posted in Features.

nov1 More than two decades of joint efforts between researchers from Nepal and CIMMYT have helped boost the country’s maize yields 36% and those of wheat by 85%, according to a report compiled to mark the 25th anniversary of the partnership. As a result, farmers even in the country’s remote, mid hill mountain areas have more food and brighter futures.

Anywhere else, peaks above 3,000 meters would be called “mountains,” but a nation whose collective psyche has been shaped by the towering Himalayas refers to its rugged heartland as merely the “mid-hills.” Comprising deep river valleys and high ridge tops, peppered toward the north with sloping farm terraces, the mid-hills account for more than four-tenths of Nepal’s total land area. They are home to isolated villages whose inhabitants’ lives hold strongly to tradition.

One such villager is Bishnu Maya Nepali, 45 from, Belhara village of Dhankuta district. She is a farmer and a single mother of three. Maya is a “dalit,” one of the poorest castes in the Nepal’s traditional caste hierarchical system.

Up until a few years ago, Maya maintained a hardscrabble existence by planting maize, the region’s main food crop. Like many area farmers, it wasn’t enough. Her farm–which is roughly the size of a soccer field–didn’t produce enough food to feed her family.

Maya’s life began to change in 2006 when she was approached by members of the HMRP. Maya was asked to test maize varieties bred for the mid-hills by the Nepal Agriculture Research Council (NARC) with CIMMYT as one of the partners. She agreed and eventually decided to plant a type of maize, called Manakamana 3, which produced two large ears per plant and which had a shorter, sturdier stalk. To her delight, the new plant thrived. Maya’s maize harvests grew 20-50%. She also discovered the plant stayed green as it matured, providing better forage for her livestock. The project advised Maya to plant vegetables in addition to maize. These intercrops also did well, bringing Maya additional food and income. Maya grew enough food to feed her three children all year long. “Now I have enough food and can sell some surplus to pay for my children’s education,” she said. Maya’s additional income allowed her to put her children into school and even make modest improvements to her homestead.

Support for an agrarian way of life
Nepal is a nation of incredible diversity that depends heavily on agriculture. Of the Nepalese population, 84% live in rural areas and, during the growing season, four of every five adults of the rural population are engaged in agriculture.

In September 2010, Nepal and CIMMYT celebrated 25 years of partnership in developing and spreading improved maize and wheat varieties and cropping practices in benefit of Nepalese farmers and researchers. Given the country’s reliance on agriculture and its financial constraints, the partnership has been invaluable. “Maya’s case is just one example of this,” says Guillermo Ortíz-Ferrara, researcher and liaison officer for CIMMYT’s office in Nepal. The joint efforts have helped raise maize yields 36% and those of wheat by 85%, while 170 Nepali researchers have benefited from CIMMYT training and joint research or fellowships. “The partnership that CIMMYT has maintained over the past 25 years with our research and development institutions in Nepal has been very useful and of significant value to increase maize and wheat production,” says Dr. K.K. Lal, one of the very first CIMMYT maize trainees and former Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives of Nepal. “This partnership should continue and be strengthened.”

Fig. 1 Major shift in food security in HMRP collaborating households

An internal report on HMRP outcomes for 2008-10 by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation showed significant improvements in food security for the more than 21,000 households taking part in the project, with particular focus on women and disadvantaged groups like dalits: the proportion of the population in the groups having food sufficiency throughout most or all of the year (first two sets of bars) grew, while the proportion of the food-insecure—those with enough food for less than six months of the year (last set of bars)—fell.

The Hill Maize Research Program
Begun in 1999 with the cooperation of the National Maize Research Program (NMRP) of the Nepal Agriculture Research Council (NARC), the Hill Maize Research Program (HMRP) promotes the development and adoption of new technologies (improved varieties and crop management) in the hills of Nepal. Funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the HMRP works with government, non-government organizations, farmers groups and cooperatives and the private sector to develop and disseminate maize technologies that benefit poor farmers in the Nepali hills. With HMRP-CIMMYT support, NMRP has developed 12 improved maize varieties for commercial production and identified more than 15 promising inbred lines, including 4 QPM lines. These 12 improved maize varieties were released by National Seed Board (NSB) of Government of Nepal. By 2009, 174 farmers groups had produced 664 tons of improved maize seed, increasing maize productivity by at least 30%. A new 2010-14 phase of the HMRP continues the focus on improving the food security and incomes of Nepal hill farm families, especially the poor and disadvantaged. Partners include the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (MoAC), the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC), the Department of Agriculture (DoA), more than 26 NGOs/CBOs, and thousands of poor farmers. The new phase is jointly funded by SDC and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Winning with wheat
Along with maize, the importance of wheat as a food and cash crop has grown in Nepal. As a result of high-yielding Mexican varieties introduced through CIMMYT during the mid-1960s and intensive research and development efforts by the national partners, Nepal’s wheat area has increased 7-fold, its production 14-fold, and its productivity 2-fold. Overall, yield gains from the release of new varieties in Nepal have averaged 3.5% per year since 1985, which equals or exceeds the yield gains seen in neighboring countries where the Green Revolution began.

nov07 During 1997-2008, Nepal’s National Wheat Research Program (NWRP) worked in partnership with CIMMYT, involving farmers in varietal selection and distributing regional nurseries—sets of experimental wheat lines sent out for widespread testing and possible use in breeding programs. Two wheat varieties distributed this way, and bred by the NWRP, have been released in Bangladesh, and a significant number of other Nepali breeding lines have been used in research programs of Nepal and in eastern India.

Farming systems for a tough future
The Nepal-CIMMYT partnership has addressed important farming concerns with research and recommendations on varieties for timely and late sown conditions, appropriate weed management, balanced application of fertilizers, irrigation schedules, and resource-conserving practices such as surface seeding, zero and minimum tillage, and bed planting. The best results have included reduced costs for cropping, greater efficiency of input use, and increases of a ton or more per hectare in grain yields.

“South Asia will suffer particularly harsh effects from climate change, according to experts,” says Mr. Kamal Aryal, Agriculture/Climate Change Researcher, ICIMOD, Kathmandu, Nepal. “More input-efficient cropping systems will help farmers face the challenges expected.”

For more information: Guillermo Ortiz-Ferrara, cereal breeder (g.ortiz-ferrara@cgiar.org)

Body blow to grain borer

Written by on May 14, 2012. Posted in Features.

CIMMYT E-News, vol 4 no. 9, September 2007

sep04 The larger grain borer is taking a beating from CIMMYT breeders in Kenya as new African maize withstands the onslaught of one of the most damaging pests.

Scientists from CIMMYT, working with the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), have developed maize with significantly increased resistance to attack in storage bins from a pest called the larger grain borer. In just six months this small beetle can destroy more than a third of the maize farmers have stored. The new maize varieties, which dramatically decrease the damage and increase the storability of the grain, will be nominated by KARI maize breeders to the Kenya national maize performance trials run by the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Services (KEPHIS). The same varieties will also be distributed for evaluation by interested parties in other countries through the CIMMYT international maize testing program in 2008.

“This is a major achievement and will be of great help to farmers in Kenya and more than 20 African countries, who have had few options to control this pest for nearly 30 years” says Stephen Mugo, the CIMMYT maize breeder who headed the CIMMYT-KARI collaboration, which has been funded in part by the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture.

The larger grain borer, native to Central America, was first observed in Africa in Tanzania in the late 1970s and early 1980s. A particularly severe drought struck eastern Africa in 1979 and there was little local maize. The world responded with large shipments of maize as aid. The borer may well have been an uninvited guest in a food aid shipment.

sep06 Even in Latin America, where it has co-evolved with natural predators, losses are significant. In Africa, where there are no similar predators to control the insect, its spread has been most dramatic. Attempts to introduce some of those predators to Africa to control the borer (a technique called biological control) have met with limited success and regionally concerted action is essential if biological control is to be effective across borer-infested areas. Researchers also studied the habits of the borer, hoping to find ways to reduce the damage it does. They discovered that it needs a solid platform, such as that provided by maize kernels still on the cob, before it will bore into a kernel. Unfortunately African farmers often store maize on the cob, increasing the potential for borer damage. By shelling the maize and storing the kernels off the cob, the damage can be reduced by small amounts, but losses are still very high. This is what makes the development of new varieties, where the resistance lies in the seed, so exciting.

“Having the solution in the seed itself makes adoption much easier for farmers,” says Marianne Banziger, the director of CIMMYT’s Global Maize Program. “There is no added workload or expense to the farmer, no longstanding practices or habits to change.” But Banziger cautions that resistant maize is not a silver bullet solution to the grain borer problem. “We strongly encourage the use of the new varieties in combination with other measures,” she says. “The varieties are more resistant but as time progresses there will still be some damage, though much less than before.”

sep05 CIMMYT researchers found resistance to the borer in the Center’s germplasm bank, in maize seed originally from the Caribbean. The bank holds 25,000 unique collections of native maize races. By using conventional plant breeding techniques, crossing those plants with maize already adapted to the conditions found in eastern Africa, Mugo and the breeding team were able to combine the resistance of the Caribbean maize with the key traits valued by Kenyan maize farmers. The maize was tested for resistance at the KARI research station in Kiboko, Kenya. Larger grain borers were placed in glass jars with a known weight of maize. Weight changes to the maize and a visual assessment of damage were recorded, allowing researchers to select the best lines. The result is new maize varieties that will benefit farmers in Kenya and help reduce Kenya’s dependence on imported maize for national food security.

Testing by Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Services and by national seed authorities in other countries is expected to take 1-3 years, after which seed of the new maize hybrids and open pollinated varieties will be available to seed companies for seed production and sale to farmers.

For more information: Stephen Mugo, Maize breeder (s.mugo@cgiar.org)

Steady as she goes: Improved maize and wheat varieties actually lower farmers’ risks

Written by on May 14, 2012. Posted in News.

CIMMYT E-News, vol 3 no. 7, July 2006

jul04 A USAID-funded study by Williams College economist Douglas Gollin shows that modern maize and wheat varieties not only increase maximum yields in developing countries, but add hundreds of millions of dollars each year to farmers’ incomes by guaranteeing more reliable yields than traditional varieties.

Modern crop varieties developed through scientific crop breeding clearly produce higher yields than farmers’ traditional varieties. But critics have long maintained that, in developing countries, yields of modern varieties vary more from season to season than the traditional varieties, thereby exposing producers and consumers to greater risk.

Gollin’s study analyzed changes in national-level yield stability for wheat and maize across developing countries and related them directly to the diffusion of modern varieties. “The outcomes strongly suggest that, over the past 40 years, there has actually been a decline in the relative variability of grain yields—that is, the absolute magnitude of deviations from the yield trend—for both wheat and, to a lesser extent, for maize in developing countries,” says Gollin. “This reduction in variability is statistically associated with the spread of modern cultivars, even after controlling for expanded use of irrigation and other inputs.”

The value to farmers of reduced risk

Valuing these reductions in yield variability requires assumptions about society’s willingness to trade off risk against return. Using a standard analytic framework, the study finds that the reductions in variability are as valuable as small increases in average yield. Assuming a moderate level of risk aversion on farmers’ part and taking estimates for the magnitude of reductions in yield variability, the results suggest that the reductions in yield variability due to modern varieties are worth about 0.3% of annual production in the case of wheat and 0.8% of production in the case of maize. These appear to be small effects, but the sheer scale of wheat and maize production in the developing world means that the benefits from improved yield stability are large in absolute terms. At appropriate world prices, the benefits are about US$143 million for wheat and about US$149 million for maize, on an annual and recurring basis.

The study drew on country-level data for the diffusion of modern wheat and maize varieties compiled by Robert Evenson of Yale University, as well as aggregate data on production and yields from FAOSTAT, the global food information database of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The analysis also made novel use of a mathematical tool called the Hodrick-Prescott filter to disentangle changes in long term trends from annual fluctuations. The filter is most often used in macroeconomics.

According to Gollin, the benefits are not attributable to any particular research theme or program. “They reflect longstanding efforts in breeding for disease and pest resistance, drought tolerance, and improved cropping systems, to name a few,” he says. “By reducing the fluctuations in maize and wheat grain yields, scientists have played a vital role in making modern crop technology attractive, accessible, and beneficial to farmers and consumers around the globe.”

For more information contact John Dixon (j.dixon@cgiar.org)

Improving wheat for world food security

Written by on May 14, 2012. Posted in Features.

cimmyt-wheat In order to contribute to world food security, the International Research Initiative for Wheat Improvement (IRIWI), supported by research organisations and funding agencies from about ten countries, has been adopted by the Ministers of Agriculture of the G20. INRA, with the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (UK) and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT, Mexico), will contribute to the coordination activities of the IRIWI during the first four years of the project.

The historic agreement between the Ministers of Agriculture of the G20 on 23 June 2011 in Paris underlines the importance of increasing world agricultural production, in particular that of wheat, to resolve the urgent challenges of hunger and food price volatility. Already very active on this issue, INRA, together with other national and international research and funding organisations from about ten countries, will launch the International Research Initiative for Wheat Improvement (IRIWI) in 2011. This initiative aims at reinforcing synergies between bread and durum wheat national and international research programmes to increase food security, nutritional value and safety while taking into account societal demands for sustainable and resilient agricultural production systems.

Wheat is one of the main staple crops in the world but the present production levels do not satisfy demand. With a world population of 9 billion in 2050, wheat demand is expected to increase by 70%. Annual wheat yield increases must jump from the current level of below 1% to at least 1.7%.

Repeated weather hazards in a context of global change, the constant rise in oil prices, speculation on agricultural markets are some of the factors reinforcing volatility of wheat prices and aggravating food insecurity in numerous countries.

Strengthening coordination of world wheat research

IRIWI will coordinate worldwide research efforts in the fields of wheat genetics, genomics and agronomy. Both Northern and Southern countries share the need to improve wheat yield, tolerance to stress, pathogens and pests, as well as wheat resource use efficiency. Improved agronomic practices and development of innovative cropping systems are also a priority. Several large national research programmes on wheat have been launched recently in Northern countries. CIMMYT and ICARDA have presented a new CGIAR research programme called WHEAT for the developing world.

As part of its activities, IRIWI will provide a forum to facilitate communication between research groups, identify potential synergies and encourage collaborations among major existing or emerging nationally, regionally and internationally (public and private) funded wheat research programmes. It will also support the development of publicly available integrated databases and platforms and establish and periodically update priorities for wheat research of global relevance.

Sharing resources, methods and expertise to improve and stabilise yields

The on-going efforts to decipher the wheat genome sequence, as well as the development of high throughput genotyping and phenotyping tools, will provide new ways to exploit more efficiently the available genetic diversity and create new wheat varieties by public and private breeders. Development and adoption of precise and site-specific management techniques will lead to the improvement of production systems. The IRIWI will facilitate and ensure the rapid exchange of information and know-how between researchers, and will organize knowledge transfer to breeders and farmers.

These actions will allow the creation of improved wheat varieties and the dissemination of better agronomic practices worldwide in the next 15 years. These new wheat varieties and agronomic practises will allow farmers to stably produce more and better wheat in different environments.

Presentation of the International Research Initiative for Wheat Improvement (pdf)

IRIWI reinforces INRA’s long-term involvement in research in wheat improvement. Recently, the BREEDWHEAT project was selected by the French Stimulus Initative. BREEDWHEAT is carried out in coordination with or contributes to other international initiatives, such as the WHEAT-Global Alliance project for food security in Southern countries, conducted by the CIMMYT and the International Wheat Sequencing Programme coordinated by the IWGSC.

wheat-food-security

Zero-tillage a winner for winter wheat in Turkey

Written by on May 14, 2012. Posted in Features.

CIMMYT E-News, vol 4 no. 8, August 2007

aug06 Zero-tillage trials in rainfed, winter wheat-fallow systems show smallholder farmers on the Anatolian Plains a way to double their harvests.

Muzzafer Avci is an agronomist with the Central Field Crops Research Institute of the Turkish Ministry of Agriculture. In recent years he has been working with CIMMYT wheat agronomist, Ken Sayre, and over time has become an advocate of zero-tillage—the direct seeding of a crop into the residues of a previous crop, without plowing—for rainfed winter wheat, a key crop for small-scale farmers on the Anatolian Plateau. On this day, he completes a drought impact forecast for the Ministry and drives the three hours east of Ankarato to the Ilci Cicekdagi farm, where the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Turkey has funded zero-tillage trials.

On the Anatolian Plateau, farms are typically less than 10 hectares in size. Wheat farmers obtain just a single harvest every second season from each field. Sowing takes place in autumn before the onset of winter. The wheat germinates quickly, lies dormant over the winter, and matures the following summer. After harvest the field is left fallow for a year before being sown to wheat again. During the fallow, farmers plow the weeds under two or three times. Even with the long fallow, which one would suppose helps conserve or improve soil fertility, typical wheat harvests on these farms reach only 2 tons per hectare, far below the crop’s genetic potential. Once highly productive, the winter wheat farming system has become more and more dependent on fertilizer as soils degrade, making it unsustainable.

Model farm showcases zero-tillage

aug04
A former state farm that was recently privatized, the Ilci Cicekdagi farm is not typical. It comprises 1,700 hectares and supports modern, diversified farming involving dairy and beef cattle, sheep, and many crops, among them wheat. The farm owner and managers believe they have a responsibility to assist less well-endowed, smallholder farmers in the area. So they hold demonstrations and field days for the local community. Farm manager Nedim Tabak says he hopes the farm will be a model for local farmers. He is proud of his zero-tillage trials and shows them off to Avci and to Carla Konsten, Agricultural Counselor from the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Ankara. The Netherlands, Canada, and Australia have funded pilot zero-tillage work in Turkey for the past two years and representatives of those countries’ funding agencies are pleased with the result. “This technology will clearly benefit farmers on the Anatolian Plateau,” says Avci, who learned about zero-tillage first-hand at a CIMMYT course on the topic.

aug05 Retired agronomist Mufit Kalayci, recently brought back to the Anatolian Agricultural Research Center in Eskisiher, Turkey, to mentor a new team, sees the value of zero-tillage in intensive, irrigated systems with more than a single crop per year, but is skeptical about using it with traditional rainfed wheat farms. “I don’t think you can retain enough moisture over the fallow period.” he says. For that reason, one of the goals of the zero-tillage experiment was to see if a second crop other than weeds could be grown during the fallow season. This question will be answered in coming years.

Zero-tillage: A lot to like

Of course, use of zero-tillage and retaining crop residues on the soil do more than simply capture and hold soil moisture. The practices reduce production costs and diesel fuel burning, and help prevent topsoil erosion from the strong winds that often sweep the Plateau during fallow. The elimination of repeated tillage to bury weeds also helps retain soil structure, aiding aeration and water filtration. The zero-tillage trials have obtained demonstration yields of more than 4 tons per hectare—double what farmers currently get.

Farm manager Tabak says his trials were sown late for lack of timely access to a zero-tillage seeder. He is planning to modify one of the seeders on the farm for next season. Already some local farmers have looked at his test plots and said they will try zero-tillage too next season.

For more information: Julie Nicol, Wheat Nematologist (j.nicol@cgiar.org)

When papa said no

Written by on May 14, 2012. Posted in News.

CIMMYT E-News, vol 3 no. 7, July 2006

jul06 A daring move by a young farmer in India has changed his life and his father’s.

Durgesh Kumar Singh shoulders a huge responsibility. When his father became too ill to work his small farm near Varanasi in the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains, the 24- year-old student had little choice but to take on managing both the farm and his studies. His father was always there to give advice and share his farming knowledge, so when Durgesh decided to defy his father’s instructions, he was taking a big risk.

A team from the CIMMYT-convened Rice Wheat Consortium (RWC) for the Indo-Gangetic Plains had visited the villagers to enlist their cooperation in a demonstration of zero-till seeding technology. The team wanted village farmers to plant some of their wheat crop without plowing the soil first. Like people living on much of the vast plain below the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains, the farmers of Durgesh’s village plant wheat in the dry season, after harvesting the rainy-season rice crop. Preparing the land takes time and labor and for every day of delay after the optimal planting time, farmers lose about 1% of their potential harvest. A ten-day advance in wheat seeding results in 10% higher harvests. Plowing means waiting until a crew with a tractor and plow is available.

jul05

When the RWC team, which included Ramesh Chand and UP Singh from Banaras Hindu University, first visited the village, people laughed. “How can you expect the seed to germinate if you just throw it on the ground?” they joked. After two weeks of cajoling and pointing out that zero-tillage saves time, labor, and scarce water, the team convinced one farmer, Surindra Sharma Mayaran, to set aside a very small piece of his land for a trial. “If it works, OK, and if it doesn’t, OK,” he said. Even though the wheat germinated and grew, most villagers remained skeptical, especially Durgesh Singh’s father. He told Durgesh that he would die if his son tried to plant that way.

But seeing in that first trial a possibility for a brighter future, Durgesh decided to try zero-tillage for wheat on a small field that his father could not see from the house. He harvested at least as much as with the old methods, but gained something more precious. “We now have enough time to read,” he says. “My golden time is what I am saving.” This has not only let him continue his studies, but has reduced farm labor costs, making the family wheat crop more profitable. Now most of the villagers who were at first so skeptical are following his lead.

Even those who are nearly landless see benefits. Ram Dhari is what the village calls a “minimum landholder” with just a tenth of a hectare. He is extremely poor. He did not have the money to rent the zero-till seeding machinery, so the rest of the village let him use it for free and Banaras Hindu University provided seed. He had watched the others and wanted to follow. “I am looking forward to the profits,” he says.

This is one of countless stories of the success of a broad range of resource-conserving technologies on smallholder farms in India. RWC work, in India funded in large measure by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has won praise and awards. Recently the Minister of Agriculture for India, Sharad Pawar, said the use of such technologies, especially zero-tillage, was essential to the improvement of Indian agriculture.

Durgesh Singh, Ram Dhari and Surindra Mayaran see the impact in their village every day. At first Durgesh was a laughing stock. Now his zero-till fields have produced, and produced well. The father who said he would die if is son tried out such a foolish thing as planting without plowing now asks “Why didn’t you do the whole farm this way?”

For more information contact Raj Gupta (r.gupta@cgiar.org)

USD 170 million research program to help maize farmers worldwide

Written by on May 14, 2012. Posted in Features.

cimmyt-maize-farmers Bold Initiative Tackles Hunger in Developing World

Washington, July 6, 2011 – The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)—the world’s largest international agriculture research coalition—today announced a USD 170 million global alliance and program to expand and accelerate research into maize, the preferred staple food source for more than 900 million people in 94 developing countries, including one third of the world’s malnourished children.

“This program aims to double the productivity of maize farms, while also making those farms more resilient to climate change and reducing the amount of land used for growing the crop,” said Carlos Perez del Castillo, CGIAR Consortium Board Chair. “As a result, farmers’ incomes are expected to rise and their livelihood opportunities to increase, contributing to rural poverty reduction in developing countries.”

cimmyt-maize-planting The CGIAR applies cutting-edge science to foster sustainable agricultural growth that benefits the poor. The new crop varieties, knowledge and other products resulting from the CGIAR’s collaborative research are made widely available, at no cost, to individuals and organizations working for sustainable agricultural development throughout the world.

Under the research program, 40 million smallholder farm family members are expected to see direct benefits by 2020 and 175 million by 2030. The program is expected to provide enough maize to meet the annual food demands of an additional 135 million consumers by 2020 and 600 million by 2030.

The program will be implemented by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), and the International Institute of Tropic Agriculture (IITA).

The announcement came as the CGIAR celebrated its 40th anniversary at a ceremony in Washington attended by the President of the World Bank Group, as well as the heads of several of the 15 research centers that make up the CGIAR Consortium of International Agriculture Centers.

Inger Andersen, Vice President of Sustainable Development at the World Bank, and Chair of the CGIAR Fund Council, said the first target group to benefit from the enhanced maize research program would be smallholder farmers who live in environments prone to stress and who have poor access to markets.

“Small holder farmers are among the most vulnerable people in developing countries.” she said. “They should be among the first we seek to help. Enabling these people to produce more and better maize quickly and reliably will help to ensure their well being, as well as that of their communities.”

Studies carried out by CIMMYT show that the demand for maize in the developing world is expected to double between now and 2050.

“This is a highly ambitious project to address world hunger,” said Thomas Lumpkin, Director General of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). “It will take an enormous amount of work and cooperation between public and private sector institutions to meet the goals. The global challenges facing mankind are immediate and chronic; the time to act is now. Millions of lives depend on our ability to develop sustainable solutions to feed more people with fewer resources than ever before.”

The global alliance that will carry out the research program includes 130 national agricultural research institutes, 18 regional and international organizations, 21 advanced agricultural research institutes, 75 universities worldwide, 46 private sector organizations, 42 non-governmental organizations and farmer associations, and 11 country governments that will host offices dedicated to the program.

The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is a global partnership that unites organizations engaged in research for sustainable development with the funders of this work. The funders include developing and industrialized country governments, foundations, and international and regional organizations. The work they support is carried out by 15 members of the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers, in close collaboration with hundreds of partner organizations, including national and regional research institutes, civil society organizations, academia, and the private sector. www.cgiar.org – www.consortium.cgiar.org

The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, known by its Spanish acronym, CIMMYT® (staging.cimmyt.org), is a not-for-profit research and training organization with partners in over 100 countries. The center works to sustainably increase the productivity of maize and wheat systems and thus ensure global food security and reduce poverty. The center’s outputs and services include improved maize and wheat varieties and cropping systems, the conservation of maize and wheat genetic resources, and capacity building. CIMMYT belongs to and is funded by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) (www.cgiar.org) and also receives support from national governments, foundations, development banks, and other public and private agencies.

See also:
Maize Global Alliance for Improving Food Security and the Livelihoods of the Resource-poor in the Developing World

Executive summary | Full document

Value from building human capacity

Written by on May 14, 2012. Posted in Features.

CIMMYT E-News, vol 4 no. 6, June 2007

CIMMYT helps build scientific strength in Turkey.

When you first meet Gul Erginbas and Elif Sahin standing side by side in an experimental wheat plot in Turkey, what stands out are the differences between them. One is dressed very traditionally, head and body covered, the other is in close-fitting denim jeans. It seems these two young postgraduate students could not be less alike. But when it comes to science the external differences disappear. These are two committed and talented young people who hope to make a difference in their own country. They are already making a difference for CIMMYT.

“I really depend on them,” says Julie Nicol, the CIMMYT soil-borne disease pathologist, based in Turkey. “We work in close collaboration with the Turkish Ministry of Agriculture and several universities. Both women have started working on their doctoral degrees, supervised by key university experts and myself. This is a highly effective way to build capacity in applied research both for Turkey and the world.” Having bright and committed students on the ground is also very beneficial to CIMMYT.

The Anadolu Research Institute at Eskisehir is one of Turkey’s oldest and most important agricultural research stations, especially for winter wheat breeding. It is about a three-hour drive east of the capital city, Ankara, on the broad and rolling Anatolian plateau. At this station CIMMYT (together with ICARDA and Turkey) works in winter wheat breeding and also in Nicol’s area of specialization, finding ways to reduce the threat to wheat from pathogens in the soil, the microscopic worms and fungi that cause damage underground long before the impacts are seen in the part of the wheat plant that is above the ground.

Both Sahin and Erginbas have supervisors at their own universities in Turkey but having a CIMMYT scientist like Nicol as a co-advisor really helps. “She brings us a global perspective and makes sure we work with care and precision,” says Elif. “And she really knows the field. It is easy to learn from her,” adds Gul. “With this experience, I hope I can contribute to science in Turkey in the future.”

jun07 Erginbas is just beginning work on a project to screen wheat for resistance to a disease called crown rot. It is caused by a microscopic fungus in the soil called Fusarium culmorum (related to but not the same as the Fusarium fungus that causes head blight in wheat) and can cause farmers serious loss of yield. Her first tests have been with plants grown in a greenhouse on the station. Later she will expand her work to the field and as part of her program will spend some time in Australia with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO). Since there is some evidence that the fungus that causes crown rot can survive for up to two years in crop residues, there is a great interest in this work as more farmers adopt reduced tillage and stubble retention on their land.

Sahin is focusing on an underground pest called the cereal cyst nematode, a tiny worm that can cause great damage to the root system of the plant. It can be responsible for losses of up to 40% of rainfed winter wheat in Turkey and there is evidence that the nematodes are very widespread in west Asia, North Africa, northern India and China. Sahin, funded by a scholarship from the Turkish funding body TUBITAK, is looking for sources of resistance to the pest.

jun06 These pathogens are especially damaging when wheat is grown under more marginal conditions, and so the work in Turkey that these two young students are doing may have its greatest impact where farmers struggle the most.

For more information: Julie Nicol, pathologist (j.nicol@cgiar.org)

Turning on radios, tuning in to resource-conserving farm practices

Written by on May 14, 2012. Posted in Features.

CIMMYT E-News, vol 3 no. 8, August 2006

aug05 A radio program in Nepal brings information to farmers in a language they understand.

It’s Monday, 6:30 pm on Radio Birgunj, the voice of the plains in Southeastern Nepal. Fans for kilometers in all directions huddle by their radios to listen—not to a soap opera or pop music, but to a show about bed planting, horticulture, and zero-tillage. The weekly radio show on farming, targeted specifically to rural inhabitants, is one component of a project funded by CABI to introduce and promote resource-conserving technologies to the region’s rice and wheat farmers.

Radio is often the best way to reach rural families in developing countries, and farm shows broadcast from small community stations are not unusual. But Radio Birgunj broadcasts to a population of five million Nepalese, nearly all from farm families, and the station’s only “competition” is the region’s government radio network.

Ganesh Sah, head of the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) Agricultural Implement Research Center in Birgunj and long-time CIMMYT partner, is responsible for 70 programs since the show’s launch in January, 2005. “It’s been difficult coming up with a different topic each week, but we’ve managed with just a couple repeats,” he says. The program uses a question-and-answer format, with the station’s Anita Kumwar usually putting questions to an expert guest on behalf of farmers. The show uses the region’s indigenous language and music, attracting listeners and ensuring that messages are clearly understood.

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“The program has been very effective,” says Paras Thakur, a farmer in the nearby village of Tripeni. He leads a community group that is experimenting with zero-tillage, a practice whereby crops are seeded directly into field residues without plowing. “I especially liked the show about vegetables.” Eight out of ten farmers in the group have radios and listen to the broadcasts. In areas where radios are not so common, many people gather around a single radio for the show.

The program’s popularity has led the government of Nepal launch another radio farm show in the region. Is Sah worried about the competition? “Of course not: the more messages, the better,” he says. “Besides, the government program is in Nepalese, which is not the first language of Birgunj farm families.” The last show funded by the CABI project has been aired. But the project team has saved a small amount of money, so Sah hopes he and researchers from his center can hit the airwaves again soon with information to improve the livelihoods of thousands of farmers they could never meet in person.

Zero-tillage for growing wheat after rice saves water, diesel, and other inputs, and allows earlier sowing of wheat, which raises yields. The practice has been adopted by farmers on more than 2 million hectares in South Asia over the past six years. This is largely a result of work to test and promote zero-tillage and other resource-conserving practices by the Rice-Wheat Consortium for the Indo-Gangetic Plains, which includes the national agricultural research systems of Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan; several centers of the CGIAR with leadership from CIMMYT; and various advanced research institutes.

For more information contact Raj Gupta (r.gupta@cgiar.org)

Smallholder maize farmers in Zimbabwe lack knowledge of open-pollinated varieties

Written by on May 14, 2012. Posted in Features.

CIMMYT E-News, vol 4 no. 5, May 2007

OPVs perform as well as hybrids or better under the low-input conditions of many smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe, but farmers need information and training about how properly to use them.

A new study to assess the effectiveness of a large-scale maize seed relief effort in Zimbabwe during 2003-07 shows that, even among vulnerable, small-scale farmers living on the edge of survival under the most difficult conditions, a livelihood-saving technology like quality seed of open-pollinated maize varieties (OPVs) is not enough, without knowledge about how best to use it.

Farmers can save grain of OPVs from their harvest and sow it the following year without the yield or other qualities of the variety diminishing substantially. Hybrids normally yield more than OPVs under favorable conditions, but “recycling” the seed in subsequent seasons will result in a significant loss of that yield and of other advantages; farmers must purchase fresh seed each season to retain them. “Zimbabwe farmers have historically favored hybrids, and they have limited knowledge about OPVs,” says Augustine Langyintuo, CIMMYT socioeconomist and lead author of the study. “Changing economic circumstances in the country have meant that many farmers can no longer purchase fertilizer to take best advantage of hybrid yield potential. We interviewed 597 households in 6 districts of Zimbabwe where a major seed-relief effort had, among other aims, promoted the broader diffusion of OPVs over hybrids, thereby giving smallholder farmers the possibility to save and re-use their own seed without sacrificing their meager yields.”

The seed aid effort, which was funded by British Department for International Development (DfID) and coordinated by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) regional office in Harare, enlisted the assistance of 16 non-government organizations (NGOs) to distribute improved maize seed to more than 25,000 needy farmers. “The average household size in our survey group was 6.5 members, supported by a cultivated farm size of just 1.7 hectares, over 60% of which is planted to maize,” says Langyintuo. “Nearly a third of the households were headed by widowed females, a factor highly correlated with poverty.”

Under the relief program, the NGOs were expected to inform farmers of the types of seed being distributed and the need to select, store, and re-use the seed properly in subsequent seasons. Less than half the beneficiaries in the first year of the program were informed of the type of seeds to be provided, although the proportion increased to more than 60% over time. Information on OPVs was limited to the fact that they can be recycled. Less than half were ever taught how to select or store their seed.

According to Langyintuo, many farmers continue to recycle hybrids, or improperly select OPV grain for future use as seed, or—in the worst cases—eat all their grain and hope for another aid shipment to sow next year. “The relatively well-endowed farmers were more willing to recycle OPV seed. In future efforts, NGOs should perhaps target them to ensure larger-scale spillovers,” he says. “In general, whoever distributes seed of improved OPVs should provide information on proper seed selection and follow up with field-level training. Farmers should also be involved in the choice of the varieties.”

Another key issue to grapple with is the unavailability of OPV seed on the market. This stems from the unwillingness of seed companies to develop and promote OPVs, given the perception that farmers will simply recycle them and never buy fresh seed. “Zimbabwe farmers recycle both OPVs and hybrids, but if given a choice, they will purchase fresh seed whenever they can,” says Langyintuo. “OPVs perform as well as hybrids or better under the low-input conditions of many smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe, so they constitute a good option for such farmers.”

You can view or download the study “Assessment of the effectiveness of maize seed assistance to vulnerable farm households in Zimbabwe.”

For more information: Augustine Langyintuo, socioeconomist (a.langyintuo@cgiar.org)

No Maize, No Food

Written by on May 14, 2012. Posted in Features.

CIMMYT E-News, vol 3 no. 10, October 2006

oct01 Improved maize makes a big difference in the lives of smallholder farmers on the slopes of Mt Kenya.

It’s 4:00 am and still pitch-black on the farm of Consolata Nyaga, but she is already busy at work. With nothing but the dim light of an oil lamp to guide her she carefully milks her two cows to be ready for the buyer who passes her house just before 5:00 every morning. She will get about a dollar for the three liters of milk, a profitable start to what will be a very long working day.

The milk cows are a very small part of her “garden”; a hectare and a quarter of land. She also grows some coffee, bananas, and beans. But what makes her farm work is the half hectare of improved maize she grows every season.

Consolata is a widow living alone, but her maize, a variety released by Kenya based on material from CIMMYT and the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), feeds her and gives her the cash to put her 10 children through school. “This season I had thirteen bags” she proclaims. “Because it is my cash crop, I must sell and send the children to school.”

Neighbors are curious and come to field days on her farm to learn about the maize, which is not only a higher yielding variety but is also quality protein maize (QPM), meaning it has enhanced levels of the essential nutrient amino acids, lysine and tryptophan.

oct02
This is a part of Kenya where maize is not only a staple; it is the food people want to eat. Farmers store it inside their homes rather than in outside bins to prevent theft. “Actually any family that has no maize, has no food,” says Father Vincent Ireri, the Development Coordinator of the Diocese of Embu. “And anytime, even when we say as a country we have no food or there is famine, the implication is that there is no maize.” Ireri leads a team that works in conjunction with Catholic Relief Services, with farmers in the district to demonstrate the advantages of the new maize varieties.

CIMMYT and KARI have been working in this area to help farmers with maize varieties that are more drought-tolerant and insect resistant and under proper management give higher yields. Much of the work in this area has been funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Consolata and the community group of which she is the treasurer have been quick to adopt the improved materials. Life seems to revolve around maize on Consolata’s small farm. In fact when she comes back from selling the milk each morning she immediately settles down to a hot mug of uji—a maize meal porridge. At midday she starts to prepare for the evening meal. She puts a mixture of maize and beans, called githeri, to boil on the cooking fire and then heads to her last unprepared field with a large hoe. No animal-drawn plow, just the power of one energetic maize farmer.

oct03
“Ah no! Let me tell you, if you eat potatoes and cabbages and eat rice, you cannot have energy to dig,” she says. “Yes, maize has got very big energy. You see somebody like myself after 56 years cannot dig unless you eat something good!”

Four hours later, and after a trip to the market to sell a bag of maize, dinner is ready. Neighbors, friends, and relatives have stopped by to enjoy the feast as the sun sets.

“Whenever, if I miss maize, I feel as if I am losing somehow,” Consolata says. “Maize is good. Maize is my favorite thing. And I like it. Yes.”

You can read more about the adoption of quality protein maize in the Embu district in the August E-news article The maize with the beans inside: QPM gathers a following in Kenya.

For more information contact Dennis Friesen (d.friesen@cgiar.org)

Genes explain the amazing global spread of maize

Written by on May 14, 2012. Posted in Features.

CIMMYT E-News, vol 4 no. 5, May 2007

No need to dig for ancient seeds to discover how and when maize moved from its ancestral home in Mesoamerica to become one of the world’s most widely-sown and popular food crops. New work by gene sleuths from CIMMYT and numerous maize growing countries solves the puzzle using DNA of present-day maize.

How did a crop domesticated some 7,000 years ago from a humble Mexican grass called teosinte become the number-one food crop in Africa and Latin America, and a major food, feed, and industrial crop just about everywhere else?

The incredible story of maize has been told in books, but there have always been lingering doubts, unanswered questions. If, for example, as records show, in 1493 Columbus brought maize to Spain from his visit to the warm climes and long days of the Caribbean, how is it that reliable accounts have the crop being grown in 1539 in the cold, short daylengths of Germany? That’s only 46 years later, and far too soon for such a radical adaptation in tropical maize. In another case, maize was supposedly brought to African countries like Nigeria by Portuguese colonists, but the local names for maize in that country are of Arabic derivation, suggesting that the crop likely arrived via Arabic-speaking traders.
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Deciphering the history in genes

Recent work by CIMMYT and partners sheds new light on maize’s global migration. With support from Generation, a Challenge Program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, and in collaboration with nine research institutes on four continents, scientists have used DNA markers—molecular signposts for genes of interest—and new approaches to analyze nearly 900 populations of maize and teosinte from around the world. “What is emerging is a far clearer picture of the crop’s global diversity and the pathways that led to it,” says CIMMYT molecular geneticist and leader of the effort, Marilyn Warburton.

Phase I of the work was funded by PROMAIS, a European maize consortium, and focused on North America and Europe. The Generation Challenge Program commissioned Phase II, which featured global coverage and brought the number of maize populations studied to 580. In Phase III, partners are adding another 300 populations of maize and teosinte, to fill any geographical gaps. A primary objective is to gather samples of landraces—local varieties developed through centuries of farmer selection—and ensure their conservation in germplasm banks. The diversity studies apply a method developed by Warburton for using DNA markers on bulk samples of individuals from large, heterogeneous populations like those typical for maize.

The great divide: Temperate vs tropical maize

Among other things, the studies corroborate the notion that northern European maize originates from North American varieties brought to the continent several decades after Columbus’ returned, and definitely not from tropical genotypes. “The two main modern divisions of maize arose about 3,000 years ago,” says Warburton, “as maize arrived in what is now the southwestern US and, at about the same time, on the islands of the Caribbean. Temperate maize spread further north and east across North America, while tropical maize spread south. The temperate-tropical division remains today. What maintains it are differences in disease susceptibility and photosensitivity—essentially, how daylength affects flowering time. The two maize types are now so different from each other that they do not cross well, and their hybrids are not well adapted anywhere.”

The work continues and, in addition to elucidating the epic journey of maize, will help breeders to home in on and more effectively use traits like drought tolerance from the vast gene pool of maize.

The above report is largely based on a longer description of this work, “Tracing history’s maize,” that appears in Generation’s “Partner and Product Highlights 2006.”

For more information: Marilyn Warburton, molecular geneticist (m.warburton@cgiar.org)

CIMMYT Sows Second Field Trial of Promising Transgenic Drought Tolerant Wheat

Written by on May 14, 2012. Posted in Features.

March, 2005

noticias8 In March, CIMMYT scientists continued their pursuit of drought tolerant wheat with the second field trial of transgenic lines carrying the DREB gene, given to CIMMYT by Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS). The gene, obtained from Arabidopsis thaliana, a relative of wild mustard, exhibited considerable promise in its initial field trial in 2004, and in earlier greenhouse trials (see September 2004 E-news). The project is funded by Australia’s Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) and is led by CIMMYT cell biologist Alessandro Pellegrineschi.

noticias9 This second trial narrows the focus of investigation to four transgenic lines and uses a larger plot to ensure better control and analysis. It will also expose the experimental lines and control plants to both watered and drought conditions to determine their respective performance.

“In a few months when we get the results, we will follow the physiologists’ lead and see if this might be useful for producing hardy wheat for farmers in climates prone to drought,” says Pellegrineschi. He is particularly interested in identifying the promoter gene that switches on the drought response.

For further information, contact Alessandro Pellegrineschi (a.pellegrineschi@cgiar.org).

Small seed with a big footprint: Western Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Nepal

Written by on May 14, 2012. Posted in Features.

CIMMYT E-News, vol 4 no. 1, January 2007

jan01 Farmers and community leaders in Kenya’s most densely-populated region have organized to produce and sell seed of a maize variety so well-suited for smallholders that distant peers in highland Nepal have also selected it.

According to Paul Okong’o, retired school teacher and leader of Technology Adoption through Research Organizations (TATRO), Ochur Village, Western Kenya, farmers first disliked the maize whose seed he and group members are producing. “It has small grains, and they thought this would reduce its market value,” he explains. “But when you sowed the seed, which looked small, what came out of it was not small!”

Small-scale maize farmers of the Regional Agricultural Association Group (RAAG), another community-based organization in Western Kenya, have quintupled their yields in only one year—now obtaining more than 2 tons of maize grain per hectare—using seed, fertilizer, and training from TATRO, according to RAAG coordinator, David Mukungu. “This has meant that, besides having enough to eat, farmers were able to sell something to cover children’s school fees or other expenses,” says Mukungu. “We started with six farmers the first year, but after other farmers saw the harvest, the number using the improved seed and practices increased to thirty, and we expect it will continue increasing.”

The variety whose seed TATRO grows is called Kakamega Synthetic-I. It is an open-pollinated variety—a type often preferred over hybrids by cash-strapped smallholders, because they can save grain from the harvest and sow it as seed the following year, without losing its high yield or other desirable traits. The variety is also drought tolerant, matures earlier than other local varieties, and is better for making Kenyan’s favorite starchy staple, ugali. “Women say it ‘pulls’ the water, which means you don’t need much maize flour to make a good, heavy ugali,” Okong’o explains. “These things seem small, but when taken together they weigh a lot for farmers who eat ugali as a daily staple.”

A maize that crosses many borders

Kakamega Synthetic-I was released by the KARI research station in Kakamega, Kenya. Its pedigree traces back to the work of CIMMYT and many partners in southern and eastern Africa—national maize research programs, private companies, and non-government organizations—to develop stress tolerant maize for the region’s smallholders. “Kakamega Synthetic I was selected from ZM621, a long-season, drought tolerant, open-pollinated variety now released in several African countries,” says Marianne Bänziger, CIMMYT maize physiologist who took part in the creation of ZM621 and now serves as director of the center’s Global Maize Program. “The variety has also been released in Nepal, after small-scale farmers from the mid-hills chose it as one of their favorites in participatory varietal trials.” Bänziger says. This highlights the role of a global organization like CIMMYT, which can draw upon and distribute public goods and expertise transcending national borders: “The center was predicated upon and has practiced collaborative science ‘globalization’ for agricultural development since its inception four decades ago—long before that term became fashionable in policy circles.”

Finding and filling entrepreneurial niches

By reducing risk for small-scale farmers, varieties like Kakamega Synthetic-I encourage investment in other amendments, like fertilizer, that can start smallholders on an upward spiral out of low-input, subsistence agriculture. Good varieties also entice enterprising farmers and community-based organizations like TATRO into potentially profitable businesses like seed production, for niches inadequately served by existing companies. “We observe the seed production regulations of the KEPHIS, the Kenyan plant health inspectorate, and would like to work toward certification of our organization, to be able to sell certified seed in labeled packages and fetch better prices,” says Okong’o. TATRO is currently producing and marketing just under 2 tons of Kakamega Synthetic-I—enough to sow more than 70 hectares—each year. The lack of effective informal seed production and distribution systems limits the spread of improved open pollinated maize varieties and farming practices in eastern Africa, according to Stephen Mugo. CIMMYT maize breeder in the region, Mugo also coordinated the former, Rockefeller Foundation-funded project “Strengthening maize seed supply systems for small-scale farmers in Western Kenya and Uganda” that involved TATRO and similar farmer organizations. “Improved varieties raised yields in the past and could do so again,” he says, “but only about one-fifth of the region’s farmers grow improved varieties.”

For more information, Stephen Mugo, maize breeder (s.mugo@cgiar.org)