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Unpacking our biases for better gender research

Written by on October 7, 2016. Posted in News.

said Shelley Feldman, the recently retired director of feminist, gender and sexuality studies at the Polson Institute for Global Development at Cornell University, gives a keynote speech on gender balance in agriculture at CIMMYT's 50th anniversary conference. CIMMYT/Alfonso Arredondo. — Shelley Feldman, recently retired professor at Cornell University, gives a keynote speech on gender balance in agriculture at CIMMYT’s 50th anniversary conference. CIMMYT/Alfonso Arredondo.

MEXICO CITY (CIMMYT) — Women play a crucial role in agricultural production throughout the world, yet they often face barriers to accessing improved seeds, new agricultural techniques and technologies that could increase their productivity and livelihoods. If women had access to the same productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20 to 30 percent, raise the total agricultural output of developing countries from between 2.5 to 4 percent and reduce the number of malnourished people in the world by 100 to 150 million (FAO).

In order to improve women’s access to productive resources and global food security as a whole, the first step is to learn to seek out and listen to women’s needs and realities without bias, said Shelley Feldman, the recently retired director of feminist, gender and sexuality studies and the Polson Institute for Global Development at Cornell University. Feldman, who was speaking at a conference in Mexico City to mark the 50^th anniversary of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), also served as an international professor of development sociology at Cornell from 1984 to 2016, was a former director of the South Asia and the gender and global change programs, president of the American Institute of Bangladesh Studies, and fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute. She has published widely in area studies and social science journals on gender and rural development, feminist methodologies, patriarchy, religion, honor and normativity, as well as on displacement and ownership rights.

Feldman began conducting gender research in Bangladesh in the 1970s, where she was struck by how many of the rural women she worked with occupied crucial yet often unrecognized roles at all levels of the agricultural value chain, from food production to farming and post-harvest work. A passion for research in gender and agriculture was born.

At the CIMMYT conference in Mexico City on September 29, Feldman challenged the audience to really think about, unpack, and change their assumptions about female farmers and gender in a keynote speech titled, “What does gender-balanced agriculture look like?”

She shared some of her views on women and agriculture after her speech.

Q: What can we be doing here at CIMMYT to help improve gender balance in agriculture?

Allow yourself to hear what women really want. I feel that many of us still don’t know. It’s not just a question of listening. They speak to us and we translate it through our own language, our own personal experience and understanding. For example, when I first started doing research in Bangladesh, every single woman in a village reported on a survey that they were married. I wondered how this was possible—the country had just endured a terrible famine, surely some women had lost their husbands. So I went back to the village to ask the women to explain. It turns out that this particular village happened to be Hindu, and in their tradition, once a woman is married she is always married, even if her husband dies or abandons her. Because I had translated their responses in terms of my own personal understanding of marriage, I ran the risk of overlooking these women’s actual status, situation and needs. We need to change the way we think about our survey instruments. We’ve learned a lot about what women do, but not why or how—why they do or don’t take risks, adopt technologies or change eating habits. There is such a push for quantitative data, but qualitative information is so important if you are to truly understand the realities that people are facing.

We also really need to think about the structure of our research process. “Taking it to the farmer,” in the words of Norman Borlaug (the late Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former wheat breeder at CIMMYT, known internationally as the father of the Green Revolution), is absolutely crucial, but we really need to think about “Who is the farmer?” “What do they want?” and “How are we convincing them?”

Farmers are not just one homogenous group—women farmers are not one homogenous group. Interventions will only work if we truly listen to what they want and need, and understand where they are coming from, to develop solutions that are appropriately adapted to their situation.

Q: What advice do you have for researchers?

When I first started conducting gender research in the field in Bangladesh in the 1970s I saw how many donors and other organizations often threw “blanket” fixes at people who needed specific solutions. These people were genuinely trying to help, but either because they were not listening to women, or because they were interpreting the women’s responses through their own understanding of the world, they weren’t helping the situation.

Don’t reproduce the assumed meaning of things, take it to the field, and use it as evidence you have actual data. In order to create any sort of positive change you need to be reflexive—always question, think about your assumptions, unsettle them. Demand self-reflection, even when it hurts, and it will truly change your research analysis. This will allow you to appreciate when your subjects say something you never thought of.

Q: What are your thoughts on CIMMYT’s approach to gender work?

I really appreciate CIMMYT’s work with the GENNOVATE initiative through the CGIAR Research Programs (CRPs) on Maize and Wheat. GENNOVATE is a cross-CRP global comparative research initiative which addresses the question of how gender norms and agency influence men, women and youth to adopt innovation in agriculture and natural resource management. I think it’s great that the initiative includes both qualitative and quantitative research—and most importantly, comparative research.

We need to realize that “women farmers are not women farmers are not women farmers”—women in any two different locations or social groups will not have the same realities or constraints. That’s why it’s so important that the project is looking at 125 rural communities in 26 countries. The work that CIMMYT gender specialist Lone Badstue and her colleagues are doing on GENNOVATE is incredible, in that they are working to pattern out broad trends without flattening out key differences. Not looking at women as a homogenous group ensures that you’ll get better results.

Food security requires acceleration of advanced science, not just “feeding,” CIMMYT 50 delegates say

Written by on September 29, 2016. Posted in News.

Lindiwe Majele Sibanda of FANRPAN delivers a presentation at the CIMMYT 50th anniversary conference. CIMMYT/Alfonso Cortes — Lindiwe Majele Sibanda of Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network delivers a presentation at the CIMMYT 50th anniversary conference. CIMMYT/Alfonso Cortes

MEXICO CITY (CIMMYT) – The agriculture for development sector must begin “nourishing” families with nutrition-sensitive interventions instead of focusing on “feeding,” said a leading food security expert at a conference in Mexico City hosted by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), which is celebrating its 50^th anniversary.

“We’ve spent a lot of time in the last 50 years in the comfort zone of ‘feeding’,” said Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, chief executive for the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) in southern Africa.

On a panel of experts, which included researchers, policymakers, farmers and the private sector, Sibanda urged almost 1,000 delegates attending the three day conference to consider the potential risks of focusing solely on boosting yields and fortifying grains with micronutrients and vitamin A, rather than developing strategies for increased dietary diversity.

The panel also discussed topics related to agricultural research and development such as food security and nutrition, climate change, the social tensions that are both cause and result of migration, scientific developments and new technologies.

After the first day, a mixture of formal and celebratory activities at the CIMMYT research station in El Batan outside Mexico City, delegates relocated to the city to tackle such wide-ranging topics as nutrition, the newly approved portfolio for the CGIAR system of agricultural researchers to which CIMMYT belongs, funding, scientific developments, new technologies and technical innovations.

We are not yet on the right trajectory when it comes to nutrition and health outcomes, said Juergen Voegele, senior director, agriculture global practice World Bank and CGIAR System Council Chair.

“Without a CGIAR there would be 100 countries in conflict and not the 60 that we know today,” Voegele said. “The CGIAR has a major role to play in ensuring nutrition security and peace and conflict resolution.”

He said that productivity increases achieved in the 1980s and 1990s were ahead of population growth, but are currently lagging behind, leading to the necessity to increase funding for the CGIAR. Currently, for every dollar invested in the CGIAR, the return is $17, in some programs rising up to $100.

“At the current trajectory, we will not solve the world’s food challenges,” he said, adding that recent reforms have contributed much to focusing the efforts of the CGIAR towards the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, 15 measurable targets aimed at reducing poverty, and reaffirmed the World Bank’s commitment to championing and supporting CGIAR research.

The challenges are vast, said Martin Kropff, CIMMYT’s director general. “We have more people, less land, greater demand, all in the face of climate change.”

For food prices to remain constant, annual yield gains for maize would have to increase from 1.2 percent to 1.7 percent. For wheat they would have to increase from 1.1 percent to 1.7 percent.

A new agreement signed by CIMMYT and agri-seed company Dupont Pioneer at the conference, which will use CRISPR-Cas advanced breeding technologies to develop improved crops by using the best characteristics native to the plant, aims to streamline research into plant breeding and disease.

“It has become abundantly clear that there are at least two essential ingredients to feeding a growing population –innovation and farmers — and we must do a better job of connecting the two,” said Paul Schickler, president of Dupont Pioneer

The technology will be put to use first to challenge Maize Lethal Necrosis disease in sub-Saharan Africa, which first emerged in Kenya in 2011 and affects almost a quarter of total maize production with annual losses of about $110 million and up to 90 percent yield loss on individual farms, Schickler said.

“Usually, cutting-edge technologies benefit farmers in high income countries first,” said Marianne Banziger, CIMMYT’s deputy director general, commenting on the agreement between CIMMYT and Dupont Pioneer.

“The public-private partnership allows us to extend such benefits much more rapidly to farmers in low- and middle-income countries, addressing problems they uniquely face, giving them equal opportunities. As a result, we democratize access to new technologies.”

Among many recent scientific advancements, innovative remote sensing and satellite imagery technologies for assessing the effectiveness of research results in the field are increasingly being used.

Scientist David Lobell of Stanford University said that he uses satellite images to estimate which crops are being grown by farmers and the yields they obtain. Jose Luis Araus of the University of Barcelona spoke of a virtual revolution where phenotyping assessments are moving from the ground-based time consuming assessments to much more rapid assessments using drones and airplanes.

Other scientists, such as Ken Giller from the University of Wageningen described his work evaluating farm-level technology adoption.

“The fast-growing population of Africa is pushing down farm sizes, making it less likely that food security can be achieved in the near future,” Giller said. “We need to find new approaches to ensure that the combination of off-farm and on-farm incomes achieve household food security and, more, get farmers out of poverty.”

Mexico’s sub-secretary of agriculture, Jorge Armando Narváez Narváez, was among the many international agriculture experts and government officials who spoke at the conference, emphasizing the need to have reliable and market-oriented agricultural research and development platforms.

The benefits of global agricultural research that made improved hybrid maize seeds and fertilizer available to smallholders in the 1980s were illustrated by development economist and Cornell University Ph.D. graduate Ed Mabaya, who grew up on a hillside maize-livestock farm in rural Zimbabwe.

He recounted a meeting he had with a childhood friend whose fate was to remain in the village, struggling to survive and feed his family.

Mabaya concluded that his parents’ use of improved seed and farming practices derived from agricultural research helped open a pathway out of poverty for his family, with similar experiences for other progressive farmers in the community.

Reporting by Bianca Beks, Connie Castro, Ricardo Curiel, Jennifer Johnson, Mike Listman, Genevieve Renard, Miriam Shindler and Sam Storr.

Lindiwe Majele Sibanda of the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network delivers a presentation at the CIMMYT 50th anniversary conference. CIMMYT/Alfonso Cortes

Food security requires acceleration of advanced science, not just “feeding,” CIMMYT 50 delegates say

Written by on September 28, 2016. Posted in News.

We are not yet on the right trajectory when it comes to nutrition and health outcomes, said Juergen Voegele, senior director, agriculture global practice World Bank and CGIAR System Council Chair.

The challenges are vast, said Martin Kropff, CIMMYT’s director general. “We have more people, less land, greater demand, all in the face of climate change.”

For food prices to remain constant, annual yield gains for maize would have to increase from 1.2 percent to 1.7 percent. For wheat they would have to increase from 1.1 percent to 1.7 percent.

Among many recent scientific advancements, innovative remote sensing and satellite imagery technologies for assessing the effectiveness of research results in the field are increasingly being used.

Other scientists, such as Ken Giller from the University of Wageningen described his work evaluating farm-level technology adoption.

He recounted a meeting he had with a childhood friend whose fate was to remain in the village, struggling to survive and feed his family.

Reporting by Bianca Beks, Connie Castro, Ricardo Curiel, Jennifer Johnson, Mike Listman, Genevieve Renard, Miriam Shindler and Sam Storr.

A Chat With: Mark Lynas – sustainable agriculture key to food security amid climate change

Written by on August 23, 2016. Posted in News.

Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of CIMMYT

EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) – Sustainable agriculture must be adopted globally if natural ecosystems are to be protected as food production increases to feed a projected population of 9.7 billion by 2050, said author and environmentalist Mark Lynas.

An immediate move to transform overall agricultural practices is needed to overcome the challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss, said Lynas who will speak at a conference to mark the 50th anniversary of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in September.

Rather than expanding agricultural production into new terrain, Lynas, who is a visiting fellow at the Cornell Alliance for Science, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said sustainable intensification agricultural practices are preferable to boost productivity while preserving environmental equilibrium.

A former critic of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) Lynas changed his mind when he said it became clearer to him that there was a scientific consensus that genetic engineering was safe. In his current role at Cornell University, he now advises on public sector biotechnology in developing countries.

Lynas will deliver a presentation during a session entitled “Future Landscapes” at the CIMMYT 50th anniversary conference on Sept. 29, 2016.

He shared some views on the future of agriculture in the following interview.

Q: What are the key challenges the world faces?

Well, it’s become something of a cliche now to talk about how we need to double world food supply by 2050 in order to feed the growing human population. I’m keen to add an environmental perspective to this statement. We need to double world food production but at the same time to shrink the area of cultivated land in order to protect natural ecosystems. With the ongoing crises in climate change and biodiversity loss, we cannot afford to plow up the rain forests or other ecologically valuable areas, so the only viable option is to sustainably intensify existing cultivated areas, hopefully with “rewilding” of spared lands. Obviously, this is a broad-brush assertion, and there is a lot of geographical complexity and nuance underlying this, that we should not forget.

Q: How does your area of specialization address these challenges? What innovation do you see improving agriculture?

I’m particularly focused on biotechnology in agriculture, which can help improve sustainability in many ways. Basically, if you can move from chemistry to biology in addressing challenges, from water use to yield to pest control, so much the better for the environment. An example would be the use of the Bt gene, which produces a protein in the plant that is toxic only to the pest itself and harmless to everything else, including us. That’s a much more sustainable option than indiscriminate insecticide sprays that have serious environmental and health impacts. However, because of their total opposition to genetic engineering, anti-GMO campaigners end up defending continued pesticide use, which is a very strange place for supposedly green activists to be. I’ve seen this at first hand in Bangladesh with the campaign against Bt brinjal. Anti-science superstition of this sort can end up being very environmentally damaging.

Q: What outcomes would you like to see from the CIMMYT conference?

CIMMYT experts were co-authors on a recent paper, “Reducing emissions from agriculture to meet the 2 °C target” in Global Change Biology, that challenged the agriculture sector to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions significantly — by 1 billion tons a year — in order to contribute to meeting the 2 degrees C international climate change target. I thought this was a great initiative and I would love to see more attention given to it by other stakeholders at the CIMMYT conference. I really hope it becomes a talked about target that ends up being matched with real commitments and actions in the field.

Helping Nepalese farmers adapt to climate change

Written by on May 11, 2016. Posted in Blogs.

This story appeared originally on the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative website to mark Earth Day on April 22, 2016. Linda McCandless is associate director for communications, International Programs, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at Cornell University. She also oversees communications for the Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat project.

SINDHULPALCHOWK, Nepal (BGRI) — Farming the terraced hillsides above the Indrawati River Valley of Nepal, Nabaraj Sapkota and his wife Muthu Dei experience the impacts of climate change on an almost daily basis. Erratic rains make planting difficult. Warm, misty conditions and prolonged winter temperatures increase the incidence of wheat rusts that reduce yield. Unpredictable hailstorms flatten wheat and rice before they can be harvested.

“When we need rain, there is no rain. And when we don’t need rain, there is plenty of rain,” says Nabaraj. “We used to only have rain from May through July, now we have rain and mist from November.”

Khim lal Bastola grows wheat, maize and rice in rotation and sustains four generations in his 12-person household near Pokhara. “The change is obvious: man produces something with his hard labor but strong winds and hailstorms destroy it,” he said.

“The climate change scenario for Nepal — where temperature are likely to increase and precipitation is likely to be more erratic — will disproportionally affect smallholder farmers,” said Dhruba Thapa, a senior scientist with the Nepal Agricultural Research Council. “For Nepal, the cost of not adapting to climate change will be high.”

Like many farmers in Nepal, Bastola and the Sapkotas need technical assistance to help them adapt to climate change. They eagerly soak up the education offered by people like Thapa, Sarala Sharma, and Sunita Adhibari, NARC scientists who distribute disease resistant varieties of wheat and help farmers learn to identify diseases.

Scientists and farmers also soak up training from the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI), and specialists like Dave Hodson, a wheat surveillance specialist with CIMMYT, who shows them how to scout for wheat rust and upload data into the global RustTracker monitoring system.

FARMING PERVASIVE BUT DIFFICULT IN NEPAL

Farming in Nepal is hard, backbreaking labor predominantly done by hand in fields rarely more than one-quarter of an acre in size. Men plow the small plots on the terraced hillsides with oxen. Women break up the clods with heavy adzes. Although rarely above subsistence level, small farms are of vital importance in sustaining the multi-generational communities scattered throughout the Himalayas in the high hills to the north, the temperate mid-hills, and the subtropical terai to the south.

The livelihoods of more than 75 percent of the people in Nepal are based on agriculture and forestry, and almost 65 percent of the agriculture is rainfed, Nepal is among the 25 nations in the world with the lowest GDP per person and also ranks among the 25 with the greatest decrease in forested land. Rural populations are heavily clustered in river basins whose annual monsoon-fed flood cycles are likely to be exacerbated by warming. Deforestation adds to the problem, intensifying flooding and contributing to the likelihood of landslides.

HELPING FARMERS ADAPT TO CLIMATE CHANGE

Using disease resistant and improved seeds, and adopting different planting and harvesting calendars helps farmers adapt to climate change.

In Chhampi, north of Kathmandu, Krishna Bahadur Ghimire and the local farmers’ cooperative of which he is president, are now producing improved rice, wheat and maize on 140 ropanis of land. Ghimere supplies beans, rice, eggplant, soybeans, wheat and vegetable seeds to his neighbors. He started farming on one ropani of land (~ 500 sq.m) in 1997 but switched to the seed business when he found himself having to drive two hours to Kathmandu to get the improved varieties he needed.

“Our local varieties were not climate smart. We went to Kathmandu to get improved seeds from the Nepalese Agricultural Research Center because their seeds are more disease resistant, higher yielding, and higher quality,” said Ghimire, who has worked with Thapa for 11 years. “New varieties are less lodging and scattering during storms and high winds than the local ones.”

“Farmers need climate smart crops that have been improved for yield and disease resistance, but they also need seeds adapted for variable weather conditions whether we have drought or excess rainfall,” said Thapa. “NARC screens many lines and then provides seeds of promising lines to farmers for participatory variety selection trials, like with Ghimire’s group.”

Naparaj, the Sindhulpalchowk farmer, initially received 300 grams of seven varieties of improved wheat from Thapa. “I was thinking how I could uplift them (my neighbors),” said Naparaj. “I thought to myself, the lives of these people must be uplifted through improved seeds which would give them good production. We used to get one muri (~3.5 liters or 70 kg) of wheat per one ropani (~ 500 sq.m.). Now we are threshing three or four times more. It is a huge profit.”

Ghimere’s 25-year-old nephew Saroj Kumar Bista, speaks of another problem affecting farmers that requires gender-sensitive initiatves. “Many young men are going to the Middle East to work and not moving into the farming sector,” he said.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Godhavari, where Manju Khavas, Radha Basnet and Janaki Silwal’s sons have gone to the Middle East or Japan to work. Their husbands work off the farm, leaving them in charge. “At first we were overwhelmed,” said the 52-year-old Khavas. “We could not find someone to dig the fields. Now it is easier because of the handheld tractor.”

Thapa introduced improved eight or nine varieties of wheat to their community as well as agronomic practices like planting in rows, incorporating manure for fertilizer, and using handheld tractors (similar to heavy duty rototillers).

How does Khavas count improvement? “When we were 7 or 8 members in the family, the produce of this land was not enough. Now the produce is enough for 13 to 14 people,” she said. Wheat yields are so improved that she and her friends want a wheat threshing machine so they don’t have to thresh the greater quantities by hand.

Although the women said they have yet to “evaluate” climate change, they noted the “environment has been spoilt.”

“During the harvesting season of the wheat, we suffer from the fear of rain,” said Khavas. “Hailstorms also scare us. The moment the wheat becomes yellow, we begin to feel afraid whether we will be able to harvest it or not. And then when the wheat is harvested amid the fear of rain, in the paddy rice planting time, there is no rain.”

MORE TRAINING FOR CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION

Dave Hodson, a surveillance expert with CIMMYT and the BGRI, travels to countries like Nepal to train scientists on using handheld tablets to scout for disease and input data into global disease tracking and monitoring systems that can help to predict disease outbreaks.

Since 2008, the BGRI has held five 2-week training sessions on the “Art and Science of Rust Pathology and Wheat Breeding” in Asia for scientists in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), including scientists from Nepal, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Bhutan. The course is slated to be on-line this summer.

Nepalese farmers lack understanding of meteorological data and how to reduce risks in agriculture and farming. Sushila Pyakurel, who works with ICDO Lalitpur, has helped initiate Climate Field Schools in Nepal where farmers learn the effects of climate change, identifying crops most suitable to grow, seed selection, scheduling farm operations/farm management practices, and adaptation strategies/methodologies.

One of the new areas of expansion for the BGRI is the new Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat project, a $24M effort funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to make wheat for smallholder farmers around the world more heat tolerant and disease resistant in the face of climate change. It builds on the successes of the 2008-2015 Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat project, which initiated and funded the SAARC training courses.

DEDICATION: April 25, 2016: For smallholder farmers in Nepal, the challenges of climate change are disastrous enough. A 7.8 magnitude earthquake devastated Nepal on 25 April 2015, less than one month after the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative team visited. More than 9,000 people died and almost 900,000 homes were destroyed. Some of the hardest hit areas were Sindhulpalchowk and Chhampi. This Earth Day blog is dedicated to the resilient farmers of Nepal. It is the BGRI’s sincerest hope that their families are well on their way to recovery.

A woman for wheat: Maricelis Acevedo takes on new role

Written by on May 11, 2016. Posted in Blogs.

This story appeared originally on the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative website. Linda McCandless is associate director for communications, International Programs, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at Cornell University. She also oversees communications for the Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat project.

“A ship is safe in the harbor, but that’s not what ships are for” is Maricelis Acevedo’s favorite mantra. The newly appointed associate director for science for Cornell University’s Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat (DGGW) project left her island home of Puerto Rico in 2003 to pursue a career as a pathologist and has been traveling the world ever since.

This past month, Acevedo visited wheat screening nurseries in Kenya and Ethiopia and wheat research centers in India with Ronnie Coffman, director of the DGGW. She feels grateful for the opportunity to lead the scientific component of a project whose goals are to help mitigate the threat of food insecurity in vulnerable regions of the world, especially Ethiopia.

“The job comes with new opportunities and great responsibilities to achieve food security for a growing population,” said Acevedo. “Given the challenges of a changing climate, scarce agricultural resources, and the misinformation about what technology can provide to agriculture in the developing and developed world, I feel privileged to be a voice for farmers, researchers and sponsors in the fight against wheat pathogens.”

Acevedo believes the world can do better in bringing science to smallholder farmers’ fields. Her new journey on behalf of the DGGW began on March 16 when she helped launch the DGGW project in the wheat fields of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), in Ciudad Obregón in Mexico’s state of Sonora. Over the next year she will be visiting farmers and partner agricultural research facilities, including CIMMYT, around the globe.

“For the past eight years, Maricelis has collaborated with the Cornell team on various aspects of the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat project,” said Coffman, vice-chair of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI). “Maricelis is an accomplished rust pathologist who also comes from an agricultural background. That is enormously helpful in a project whose success is so closely linked to farmer adoption of new varieties. We welcome her with great enthusiasm.”

The new DGGW grant will use modern tools of comparative genomics and big data to develop and deploy varieties of wheat that incorporate climate resilience and heat tolerance as well as improved disease resistance for smallholder farmers.

SMALL FARM ROOTS

Growing up on a small farm in Puerto Rico, in a family that grew plantains, bananas, edible beans, taro, sweet potato, maize and pigeon peas, Acevedo received an early introduction to the agricultural science behind farming. It was her father, now a retired agronomist from the University of Puerto Rico, who first introduced her to the concept of “pathogens.” She remembers watching him spray their fields to protect their crops from disease dressed in a protective suit and face mask. Mimicking his actions as a 4-year-old, she took a small plastic cup and sucked it tight onto her face breaking the capillaries all around her mouth and nose while “spraying” her Mom’s flowers with a watering can — “my first job as a pathologist,” she laughs.

More seriously, she also remembers her father testing farming practices that were going to be introduced to farmers’ fields in following seasons — “participatory breeding and research at its best.” And his first lessons on phenotypic selection of plantains and beans and his eagerness to try the new varieties coming out of the University of Puerto Rico Agricultural Experiment Research Station breeding and crop improvement programs.

Having experienced the devastation of seasonal crops due to drought, hurricanes, diseases and insects, Acevedo said she also knows the heartaches associated with farming. “I will never forget the emotional stress on my dad’s face in those moments.”

UNDERSTANDING HOST-PATHOGEN INTERACTION

During her undergraduate years at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, Acevedo studied biology, genetics, botany and biotechnology, courses that helped her decide to pursue a master’s degree in agronomy where she focused on crop improvement and the genetics of edible beans.

Working on host resistance helped her decide to understand the pathogen side of the disease equation so she joined James R. Steadman’s laboratory in the department of plant pathology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to pursue her Ph.D. in 2003. Acevedo’s research project, partially funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, focused on virulence diversity of edible bean rust pathogens in Honduras and the identification of resistance in wild beans and bean landraces. “That is how my passion for international agriculture and rust research began,” said Acevedo.

Following her graduation in 2007, Acevedo pursued a postdoc at the U.S. Department of Agriculture – Agricultural Research Service National Small Grain Collection and Potato Research Unit in Aberdeen, Idaho, and then became assistant professor at North Dakota State University (NDSU) from 2010-2016. She said she will miss her friends and colleagues at NDSU, but credits them — along with her family — in helping her achieve her newest position at Cornell University.

Acevedo was in the first class of BGRI Women in Triticum (WIT) Early Career Award Winners in 2010. “The WIT award help me identify and meet an amazing pool of female scientists who have mentored and encouraged me. We have developed collaborations that go beyond our professional lives.”

Acevedo takes seriously her role as mentor to other younger WIT winners who look to her as a role model for their research and academic careers.

SOLUTION ORIENTED

Acevedo believes her role with the DGGW is the perfect opportunity for her to facilitate how great work done by wheat scientists makes it to the field.

“I look forward to being part of the solutions necessary to deliver higher genetic gain wheat and promote better variety adoptions in key regions of Sub-Saharan Africa and Central and South Asia,” said Acevedo. “I also look forward to seeing how we can utilize new technologies such as high through-put phenotyping, genomic selection and early warning systems for pathogen epidemics and implementing them in research and farmers’ fields.

“With the BGRI’s help in capacity building, research and education, we are training the next generation of wheat scientists for their countries and for their regions, increasing wheat production, and helping achieve food security,” Acevedo said. “I am very excited about helping developing countries with high potential for wheat improve their production and yield.”

More on Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat

YouTube interview with Maricelis Acevedo

Inaugural Paula Kantor Award recognizes work on agriculture, gender, improved diets

Written by on January 14, 2016. Posted in Features. 54 Comments on Inaugural Paula Kantor Award recognizes work on agriculture, gender, improved diets

El BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) – Post-doctoral fellow Soumya Gupta is the winner of the inaugural Paula Kantor Award for Excellence in Field Research, the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) announced on Thursday.

Gupta was recognized for research that “systematically and empirically assesses the empowerment of women in India as it relates to agricultural determinants and nutritional outcomes,” the group said in a statement.

The ICRW praised Gupta’s doctoral research at Cornell University for revealing that when women are empowered, they are better positioned to make their own choices in agriculture and help influence their own nutritional outcomes.

Gupta’s research showed that while diversification of production systems and diets is an important pathway to improved nutrition, the outcome is conditional on women’s status, the statement said.

Gupta found that empowered women tend to have better access to diet diversity and improved iron status.

“I could not imagine a more deserving researcher upon which to bestow the honor of the inaugural Paula Kantor Award,” said ICRW President Sarah Degnan Kambou. “Dr. Gupta’s work truly embodies the spirit and passion that Paula brought to her work every day. I see so many parallels between the important work that Paula was doing to better integrate gender into agriculture and rural development and Dr. Gupta’s field research.”

This is the first year that ICRW bestowed the award, which was designed to honor the legacy of the group’s former colleague Paula Kantor who died at age 46 in the aftermath of a Taliban attack in Pakistan last year.

At the time of her death, the prolific gender and development specialist was working at the Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) on a project focused on understanding the role of gender in the livelihoods of people in major wheat-growing areas of Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Pakistan.

Kantor was widely recognized in the international development community as an established and respected professional and writer, who pushed the realms of gender research to engage men more effectively. She published more than a dozen peer-reviewed academic publications, 10 peer-reviewed monographs and briefs, 15 other publications and 10 conference papers during her lifetime.

“I am honored to be the first recipient of the Paula Kantor Award,” Gupta said. “There is a great need for better data (and metrics) in the field of agriculture, nutrition and women’s empowerment. In light of that, the Paula Kantor Award acknowledges the importance of gathering primary data for evidence-based research.”

“At the same time the award also recognizes the tremendous effort that goes into designing a field-based data collection activity that is methodologically robust, contextually relevant, and ethically sound,” she said.

“I am inspired by Paula’s work and life, and with this award look forward to continuing my research on the linkages between nutrition and agriculture with a focus on women’s empowerment, and contributing to policy reform in a meaningful way.”

Gupta will receive the award at ICRW’s 40th Anniversary celebration in New Delhi, India on January 20th.

Gupta will receive a commemorative plaque and the opportunity to meet with organizations, government officials, leaders of non-governmental organizations, and others in Delhi to discuss her work and the importance of understanding the connections between women’s empowerment, agricultural practices and nutritional outcomes.

Global conference underscores complex socio-economic role of wheat

Written by on October 20, 2015. Posted in News.

SYDNEY, Australia, October 9 (CIMMYT) – A recent gathering of more than 600 international scientists highlighted the complexity of wheat as a crop and emphasized the key role wheat research plays in ensuring global food security now and in the future.

Specialist scientists and other members of the global wheat community attended two back-to-back wheat symposiums stretching over nine days from September 17 to 25 in Sydney, Australia. The first, a workshop hosted by the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI), focused on Ug99 wheat rust disease. At the second, the five-day International Wheat Conference, which is held every five years, scientists dissected topics ranging from the intricate inner workings of the wheat genome to nutritional misrepresentations of wheat in the popular media.

Hans Braun, head of the Global Wheat Program at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the CGIAR Wheat Research Program, delivered a keynote presentation focused on new research, which shows that about 70 percent of spring bread and durum wheat varieties released in developing countries over the 20-year period between 1994 and 2014 were bred or are derived from wheat lines developed by scientists working for the CGIAR consortium of agricultural researchers. On a global basis, more than 60 percent of the released varieties are related to CIMMYT or International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) germplasm.

Benefits of CGIAR wheat improvement research, conducted mainly by CIMMYT and ICARDA, range from $2.8 billion to $3.8 billion a year, he said, highlighting the economic benefits of international collaboration in wheat improvement research.

“Investment in agricultural research pays a huge dividend,” said Martin Kropff, CIMMYT’s director general, during a keynote address. “Investment in public research is a ‘triple win,’ leading to more food and income for the rural poor, lower prices for the urban poor, and extra stability and income for farmers in developed donor countries such as Australia, where gains are tens of millions a year.”

Bram Govaerts, who heads sustainable intensification efforts for CIMMYT in Latin America and leads the MasAgro project, demonstrated how minimal soil disturbance, permanent soil cover, and crop rotation can simultaneously boost yields, increase profits and protect the environment. Under MasAgro, some 400,000 hectares have been planted using improved technologies and agronomic practices; more than 200,000 producers are involved, of which 21 percent are women.

Sanjaya Rajaram, former CIMMYT wheat program director and 2014 World Food Prize laureate, described how wheat production must increase from the current 700 million metric tons a year to 1 billion metric tons a year by 2050 in order to keep up with population growth. Wheat currently provides 20 percent of calories and 20 percent of protein in the global human diet, he said, adding that the world’s food supply also faces the threat of climate-change related global warming.

“To date, scientists have been unable to sufficiently increase yields to meet demand through hybridization,” Rajaram said. “It’s time to invest in biotechnology to ensure yields can provide nourishment for an ever-hungrier planet. Simultaneously, we must maintain balance in the food chain and restore depleted carbon in the soil. Such concerns as disease resilience, seed diversity, water management and micronutrient imbalance must also be tackled.”

Ethiopia-based CIMMYT scientist David Hodson provided a retrospective on 10 years of Ug99 stem rust surveillance, while Kenya-based CIMMYT scientist Sridhar Bhavani provided an overview of progress made in breeding durable adult plant resistance to rust diseases and combining rust resistance in high yielding backgrounds over the past decade.

The Ug99 virulent disease threatens food security as it creeps steadily from its origin in Uganda towards the breadbasket regions of Asia.

“Technology can help us fight Ug99 stem rust, but we’re always going to need good field pathologists and researchers on the ground,” said Hodson, who also runs the Rust Tracker website.

Despite efforts to develop wheat that is resistant to damaging stem, stripe, and leaf rusts, these diseases, which have existed for 10,000 years, will continue to thwart scientists, said Philip Pardey, a professor in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota, adding that the annual global investment in wheat rust research should be $108 million a year in perpetuity.

Pardey determined in a recent study that global losses from all three rusts average at least 15.04 tons a year, equivalent to an average annual loss of about $2.9 billion.

Jessica Rutkoski, a quantitative geneticist who works as an adjunct associate scientist at CIMMYT and an assistant professor at Cornell University, discussed the implications of new technologies for more durable resistance to rust.

Wheat physiology was also under discussion, with CIMMYT physiologists Matthew Reynolds and Gemma Molero delivering presentations on phenotyping, pre-breeding strategies, genetic gains, and spike photosynthesis. Their work also involves the use of ancient landraces, which may hold the secret to creating wheat resilient to global warming caused by climate change.

CIMMYT’s Alexey Morgunov demonstrated how a number of ancient landrace genotypes grown by farmers in Turkey have shown signs that they are resistant to abiotic and biotic stresses, which could help in the development of heat and disease resistant wheat varieties.

CIMMYT’s Zhonghu He discussed progress on wheat production and genetic improvement in China, while Sukhwinder Singh described his work characterizing gene bank biodiversity and mobilizing useful genetic variation – pre-breeding – into elite breeding lines. Bhoja Basnet covered hybrid wheat breeding at CIMMYT.

A session on nutrition and wheat targeted some of the myths swirling around wheat and gluten. CIMMYT’s Velu Govindan gave an update on his research into breeding and delivering biofortified high zinc wheat varieties to farmers. Zinc deficiency limits childhood growth and decreases resistance to infections.

Kropff also delivered a keynote presentation on wheat and the role of gender in the developing world, which preceded the BGRI Women in Triticum Awards, presented by Jeanie Borlaug Laube, daughter of the late Nobel Peace Prize laureate and CIMMYT wheat breeder Norman Borlaug.

Kropff explained that each component of the strategy for research into wheat farming systems at CIMMYT includes a gender dimension, whether it is focused on improving the evidence base, responding to the fact that both women and men can be end users and beneficiaries of new seeds and other technologies, or ensuring that gender is considered part of capacity-building efforts.

Bekele Abeyo, CIMMYT wheat breeder and pathologist for sub-Saharan Africa, won a $100 prize in the BGRI poster competition for his poster explaining the performance of CIMMYT-derived wheat varieties in Ethiopia.

A team of Kenyan scientists were recognized for their contribution to the protection of the global wheat supply from Ug99 stem rust disease. Plant pathologist Ruth Wanyera and wheat breeders Godwin Macharia and Peter Njau of the Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Research Organization received the 2015 BGRI Gene Stewardship Award.

Kingbird released in Ethiopia to combat new stem rust threat

Written by on October 5, 2015. Posted in Features.

Kingbird released in Ethiopia to combat new stem rust threat. Credit: Linda McCandless

Farmers in Ethiopia are banking on Kingbird, the latest variety of wheat to be released by the Ethiopian Institute for Agricultural Research (EIAR). Kingbird is resistant to Ug99, the devastating race of stem rust first identified and subsequently race-typed as TTKSK in 1999, and TKTTF, a new stem rust race identified in 2012 that raged through so many Ethiopian farmers’ fields in 2013 and 2014.

The scourge of wheat farmers the world over, stem rust can quickly turn a wheat field into black stalks empty of grain when environmental conditions are optimal.

The new variety was evaluated at multiple locations in Ethiopia during the 2014 season and approved for release in 2015. “Kingbird offers new hope for resource-poor farmers in stem rust prone areas of Ethiopia,” said Fentahun Mengistu, EIAR Director General. “It is expected to replace the varieties Hawi and Pavon-76 in lowland areas, and complement Kakaba, Ogolcho, Shorima and a few other mid-altitude varieties.”

As Ronnie Coffman, vice-chair of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI), the international network of scientists, breeders and national wheat improvement programs that cooperated on the release of Kingbird, pointed out, crop diseases do not respect international boundaries. “Wheat farmers the world over are threatened by outbreaks of new races of yellow and stem rust of wheat on an almost yearly basis. It takes persistent and continually evolving international efforts to protect staple crops like wheat on a global scale.”

“Kingbird’s multi-disease resistance attributes combined with good bread-making quality and good yield performance led to its release in South Africa and Kenya a few years back,” said Ravi Singh, senior wheat scientist at CIMMYT, whose team is instrumental in making the initial crosses for most new wheat introductions in the developing world.

The pipeline for developing varieties such as Kingbird has been directed by the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat (DRRW) project at Cornell University, acting as BGRI secretariat, since 2008. CIMMYT, the international Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), national agricultural research systems, and 22 other institutions assist in the effort. Generous support is provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK Department of International Development (DFID).

To read more on Kingbird’s development and spread and the efforts to protect world wheat production, check out the BGRI blog, “How Kingbird moved across East Africa.” A poster abstract by Zerihun Tadesse, wheat breeder at the EIAR, may be found here.

Rust-resistant wheat varieties, new rust races, surveillance, monitoring, and gene stewardship will be topics at the 2015 BGRI Technical Workshop, 17-20 September, and the International Wheat Congress, 20-25 September, both in Sydney, Australia. Follow the conversations at #BGRI2015 and #IWC9.

CIMMYT wheat breeder Sridhar Bhavani talks about the recently discovered virulence of TKTTF on Robin in Kenya, and Digelu in Ethiopia, and the new Kingbird release here.

The world’s largest maize ear contest 2015

Written by on September 21, 2015. Posted in Features. 1 Comment on The world’s largest maize ear contest 2015

Contest winner Domingo Fránquez Flores from the nearby village of Coapan, with a maize ear 44 centimeters long. Photo: Victor Vidal/INIFAP — Contest winner Domingo Fránquez Flores from the nearby village of Coapan, with a maize ear 44 centimeters long.
Photo: Victor Vidal/INIFAP

On 14 August 2015, I was one of the judges in the contest to find “The World’s Largest Maize Ear” held in Jala, Nayarit, Mexico. The contest is one of the most popular events during the week-long celebration in honor of the town’s patron saint. This was the third time I was a judge, and the contest has become an annual highlight for me in my role as one of the custodians of the world’s maize genetic diversity. The Jala landrace will always hold a special place in my heart, not just because of its size, which is impressive, but also because of the culture surrounding it and the dedication of the people who grow it.

I met my friend, Dr. Victor Vidal, INIFAP maize breeder and enthusiastic supporter of maize genetic resources, at the flagpole on the main street separating the twin towns of Jala and Jomulco. Our first stop was the stall of the family of Don José Antioco Elías Partida of Coapan, the winner of last year’s contest, and a winning contestant for many years. We learned that sadly, Don José had died earlier in the year. However, two of his sons, continuing the family tradition, entered the contest this year.

At 4:45 p.m., the contestants gathered in the auditorium of the town hall, and watched a video about Jala maize, created by Dr. J. Arahón Hernández Guzmán, a local “boy” who got his Ph.D. at Cornell, and is now a professor at the Colegio de Posgraduados in Puebla. He presented Victor and me with copies of his video. Afterwards, the “convocatoria” (list of contest regulations) was read out loud. There was a bit of discussion about the rule that the maize be grown under “natural conditions,” i.e., no irrigation.

We judges were called to the stage, introduced, and the convocatoria was read once again. We split up into three teams, and the contestants, three at a time, were called up to have their five ears of Jala maize shucked and measured. The largest ear was selected, and its length and the contestant’s number were written on pieces of masking tape that were stuck on the ear. The contestants’ names and the length of their largest ear were announced, and photos were taken. Most ears were 30+ cm long, only a few were 40+. The crowd definitely kept track, cheering loudly for their friends, and especially for the 40+ ears. The very first farmer who came to our table had the winning ear, at 44 cm. As the contest proceeded, there would be a murmur of disappointment when another farmer had an ear that was almost a winner.

Judging Team #2 in action, shucking and measuring Jala maize on stage, including Denise Costich (CIMMYT), and Victor Vidal (INIFAP) on the right. Photo: Victor Vidal/INIFAP

Once all the shucking and measuring are completed, there is always an interval while the data from the different teams are collated and the winning places are assigned. During this time, my friend Victor gave an explanation of why some of the ears did not produce kernels (the reason: lack of pollination). As it happened, one of the oldest contestants had brought in an ear that was 48 cm long, but none of the grain was filled, so it had to be disqualified. However, this showed that there is genetic potential for still larger ears. With the approval of the mayor of Jala, Victor proposed that another contest be held at harvest time, when the ears would be mature enough to be stored and eventually germinate. Having the contest at harvest time would allow for further selection and improvement of the Jala landrace; in addition, seed of the outstanding phenotypes could be stored in germplasm banks.

At the end of the contest, there was a moving ceremony in memory of the late Don José Elías, and his family came on stage to accept the tribute. Three generations of proud Jala maize growers stood before the crowd, the youngest held in the arms of his father, exemplifying a tradition that keeps maize landraces alive and well as an integral part of the culture and food security of Mexico and the world.

Three generations of the family of the late Don José Antioco Elías Partida, accepting an award recognizing Don José’s contributions. Photo: Denise Costich/CIMMYT

Contributions from Victor Vidal

Replacing gender myths and assumptions with knowledge

Written by on September 18, 2015. Posted in Director General's corner.

CIMMYT Director General Martin Kropff speaks on the topic of ‘Wheat and the role of gender in the developing world’ prior to the 2015 Women in Triticum Awards at the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative Workshop in Sydney on 19 September.

If we are to be truly successful in improving the lives of farmers and consumers in the developing world, we need to base our interventions on the best evidence available. If we act based only on our assumptions, we may not be as effective as we could be or, even worse, actively cause harm.

One example is the common perception that women are not involved in the important wheat farming systems of North Africa and South Asia. By recognizing and engaging with these myths, we are beginning to build a more sophisticated understanding of how agriculture works as a social practice.

Currently, there are only a few published studies that take a closer examination of the roles played by women in wheat-based farming systems. These studies have found that, in some cases, men are responsible for land preparation and planting, and women for weeding and post-harvest activities, with harvest and transport duties being shared. Between different districts in India, huge variations may be found in the amount of time that women are actively involved in wheat agriculture. This shows that some careful study into the complexities of gender and agricultural labor may hold important lessons when intervening in any particular situation.

We must also never assume that, just because women are not as involved in agriculture in a particular context, they can not benefit from more information. In a survey carried out by CIMMYT researcher Surabhi Mittal in parts of rural India, it was found that women used a local cellphone agricultural advisory service just as much as men, and that this knowledge helped them get more involved in farming-related decision-making.

Gender is not just about women

For all that it is important to include women, along with other identity groups in project planning, implementation and data collection, it is important not to get into the trap of thinking that gender-integrated approaches are just about targeting women.

For example, the World Health Organization estimates that micronutrient deficiency affects at least two billion people around the world, causing poor health and development problems in the young. The effects of micronutrient deficiency start in the womb, and are most severe from then through to the first two years of life. Therefore it would make sense to target women of childbearing age and mothers with staple varieties that have been bio-fortified to contain high levels of important micronutrients such as zinc, iron or vitamin A.

However, to do so risks ignoring the process in which the decision to change the crop grown or the food eaten in the household is taken. Both men and women will be involved in that decision, and any intervention must therefore take the influence of gender norms and relations, involving both women and men, into account.

The way ahead

To move forward, each component of the strategy for research into wheat farming systems at CIMMYT also has a gender dimension, whether focused on improving the evidence base, responding to the fact that both women and men can be end users or beneficiaries of new seeds and other technologies, or ensuring that gender is considered as a part of capacity-building efforts.

Already, 20 of our largest projects are actively integrating gender into their work, helping to ensure that women are included in agricultural interventions and share in the benefits they bring, supplying a constant stream of data for future improvement.

We have also experienced great success in targeting marginalized groups. For instance, the Hill Maize Research Project in Nepal, funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) alongside the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), focused on food-insecure people facing discrimination due to their gender or social group. By supporting them to produce improved maize varieties in community groups, the project managed not only to greatly increase their incomes, but also to improve their self-confidence and recognition in society.

CIMMYT researchers are also among the leaders of a global push to encode gender into agricultural research together with other international research partnerships. In over 125 agricultural communities in 26 countries, a field study of gender norms, agency and agricultural innovation, known as GENNOVATE, is now underway. The huge evidence base generated will help spur the necessary transformation in how gender is included in agricultural research for development.

Further information:

The Borlaug Global Rust Initiative, chaired by Jeanie Borlaug Laube, has the overarching objective of systematically reducing the world’s vulnerability to stem, yellow, and leaf rusts of wheat and advocating/facilitating the evolution of a sustainable international system to contain the threat of wheat rusts and continue the enhancements in productivity required to withstand future global threats to wheat. This international network of scientists, breeders and national wheat improvement programs came together in 2005, at Norman Borlaug’s insistence, to combat Ug99. The Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat (DRRW) project at Cornell University serves as the secretariat for the BGRI. The DRRW, CIMMYT, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) and the FAO helped establish the BGRI a decade ago. Funding is provided by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. For more information, please visit www.globalrust.org.

CIMMYT is the global leader in research for development in wheat and maize and related farming systems. CIMMYT works throughout the developing world with hundreds of partners to sustainably increase the productivity of maize and wheat to improve food security and livelihoods. CIMMYT belongs to the 15-member CGIAR Consortium and leads the Consortium Research Programs on wheat and maize. CIMMYT receives support from national governments, foundations, development banks and other public and private agencies.

Follow the #BGRI2015 hashtag on social media

Twitter: @CIMMYT, @KropffMartin and @GlobalRust

Morris dedicated her life and career to understanding and developing wheat genes.

Super woman: Rosalind Morris an “outstanding wheat cytogeneticist”

Written by on May 29, 2015. Posted in News.

Rosalind Morris was a pioneer in agricultural science at a time when there were very few women scientists. Her achievements were groundbreaking: in 1947, Morris and Leona O. Schnell became the first women to graduate with doctoral degrees from Cornell University’s department of plant breeding.

That same year, Morris became the first female faculty member hired in the agronomy department at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln (UNL). Later, in 1963, she became the first woman honored as a fellow of the American Society of Agronomy.

“Morris became an outstanding wheat cytogeneticist. She was a mentor to many wheat scientists, and a meticulous teacher,” said Thomas Payne, head of the Wheat Germplasm Bank at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

Born in Wales in 1920, Morris had the unique opportunity to study agricultural sciences at a time when most college-age males were involved in World War Two. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Agriculture from the University of Guelph and was soon accepted into the graduate program in the plant breeding department at Cornell University.

During her career, Morris taught graduate courses in plant genetics and cytogenetics, exploring cell function and structure with a particular emphasis on chromosomes. She also became a junior partner in experiments to test the effects of X-rays and thermal neutrons on crop plants, studies, which are said to have grown out of concern over the effects of atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War Two.

Morris succeeded in developing wheat genetic stocks, or wheat populations generated for genetic studies, that have worldwide importance in explaining wheat genetics. Her work provides a premier resource base for the emerging field of functional genomics, which explores how DNA is translated into complex information in a cell.

Though Morris is now retired, she often feels “homesick” for her work, according to an interview with the Agricultural Institute of Canada, a sign of the passion which truly makes her a super woman.

Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.

SUPER WOMAN: Nobel winner Barbara McClintock discovered “jumping genes”

Written by on May 29, 2015. Posted in Features.

“JUMPING GENES” EXPLAIN HOW BACTERIA BUILD UP RESISTANCE TO ANTIBIOTIC

At a time when women scientists were few and far between, Barbara McClintock made a name for herself as the most distinguished cytogeneticist in the field of science. From her early studies in genetics in the 1920s, to her 1940s breakthrough in mobile genetic elements, which led to her 1983 Nobel Prize, her legacy is one that still lingers today.

“She was a pioneer in agricultural sciences at a time when women scientists were not promoted or supported,” said Thomas Payne, head of the Wheat Germplasm Bank at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

“Her contribution to cytogenetics, which explored cell function and structure with particular emphasis on chromosomes, was immense.”

Her work was groundbreaking. During the 1940s and 1950s, she discovered transposable elements and used them to demonstrate that genes are responsible for determining physical characteristics. Later, she made an extensive study of the cytogenetics and ethnobotany of South American maize races.

McClintock’s theories on transposition were initially met with skepticism. In 1950, when she first reported that genetic information could transpose from one chromosome to another, mainstream scientists assumed that her discoveries were not universally applicable to all organisms.

It wasn’t until the 1960s, when biologists Francois Jacob and Jacques Monod discovered similar controlling elements in bacteria that the importance of her research was realized. McClintock received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1983, and to this day remains the only woman to receive an unshared Nobel Prize in that category.

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1902, McClintock began her studies at Cornell’s College of Agriculture in 1919, attending the only genetics course open to undergraduate students in 1922. She received her Ph.D in botany in 1927, thus beginning her career as leader in the development of maize cytogenics.

By the time of her death in 1992, it was widely recognized that McClintock’s work had greatly assisted in the understanding of human disease. “Jumping genes” help explain how bacteria are able to build up resistance to an antibiotic, and there is some indication that these genes are involved in the alteration of normal cells to cancerous cells.
As a pioneer in agricultural sciences, McClintock truly was a superwoman.

Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center

SUPER WOMAN: Jessica Rutkoski conquers math demons, finds success as wheat breeder

Written by on May 29, 2015. Posted in Features.

EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — In high school, Jessica Rutkoski was similar to many girls who suffer from the tedium and complexity of high school arithmetic – she avoided it.

However, after graduation she went to college and took a stab at it again, picking up a course in calculus and surprising herself by scoring top marks.

“I discovered I wasn’t bad at math, I was scared of it, had low confidence or maybe just a bad attitude,” laughed Rutkoski, whose first love has always been science.

“Don’t assume that what you think you’re good or bad at is set in stone because when you get to college you may just find out you are better at something than you thought.”

Rutkoski’s mathematical successes at university helped her become an even bigger whiz at science than she was in high school.

Her interest in genetics got her started helping out in a sweet maize breeding program while she was an undergraduate science student at the University of Wisconsin. Subsequently, she decided to study for a doctoral degree, and was attracted to the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat project at Cornell University in New York.

At Cornell, she spent long hours in the greenhouse and field, learning about disease and disease resistance in wheat, focusing on stem- and leaf-rust pathology. Additionally, she learned how to program and analyze data using statistical and qualitative genetics.

A year after earning her Ph.D., Rutkoski’s focus is on improving all traits of wheat – she is widening her net to include crop-yield increases in her portfolio.

“I eventually want to use the available technology to predict all traits,” she said. “Data allows us to create prediction models based on genomic fingerprints, rather than using genes – we don’t necessarily have to know anything about genes or the underlying mechanisms of traits.”

Rutkoski is now an assistant professor at Cornell. She spends about three months a year teaching a course called “Selection Theory and Methods,” in which students learn how to maximize gain from selection in breeding programs. The rest of the year she spends working with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.

“Women are doing this kind of work, but I haven’t really followed in anyone’s footsteps,” she said. “I was inspired to pursue post-graduate studies by colleagues who were frustrated that they found themselves in underpaid, dead-end jobs.”

Some women take another path, choosing to prioritize finding a spouse and having a family, Rutkoski said, adding: “If you’re really passionate about something, then don’t worry about that, it’ll happen on its own. If you’re really passionate about something then just follow it and the rest will fall into place.”

Industrial water run-off can sustainably boost crop production

Written by on April 13, 2015. Posted in News.

Photo credit: Julie Mollins — Irrigation reservoir at the Kulumsa research station in Ethiopia. CIMMYT/Julie Mollins

KULUMSA, Ethiopia (CIMMYT) — An irrigation reservoir at the Kulumsa Agricultural Research Center in Ethiopia’s highlands captures water from a nearby beer distillery about 168 km (105 miles) southeast of the capital Addis Ababa.

Before the irrigation project was constructed, the industrial runoff from the brewery poured into the nearby river and affected the health of local residents.

Now it nourishes crops growing in neighboring fields during the dry season or in periods of drought. It can store up to 38,195 m³of water.

“The irrigation project has been a key investment – it’s very instrumental for accelerating seed multiplication of improved high-yielding rust resistant varieties for local wheat projects,” said Bekele Abeyo, a CIMMYT senior scientist and wheat breeder.

“It allows us to advance wheat germplasm and seed multiplication of elite lines twice a year, which we couldn’t do previously.”

This cuts the time by half from the currently required eight to 10 years to four to five years for the development and release of new varieties through conventional breeding.

An additional pond with the capacity to capture 27,069 m³of natural water from the river, generates the capacity to irrigate more than 30 hectares of land during the off season.

The project resulted from the joint investment of the East Africa Agricultural Productivity Program, the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat Project and CIMMYT.

The construction of the ponds began in April 2012. Sprinkler irrigation was completed in 2014 and management of the project was handed over to the Kulumsa Research Center.