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Partners for life: CIMMYT and maize researchers in eastern Africa

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CIMMYT E-News, vol 5 no. 1, January 2008

jan02CIMMYT’s partnerships on maize in eastern Africa hark back to the 1960s, when the center was launched. Formal networking since that time with researchers and extension workers, policy makers, non-government organizations, seed companies, millers, and farmers have culminated in successful breeding and dissemination teams and promising new varieties rated highly by farmers. Awards to teams in Tanzania and Ethiopia recently highlighted the value of these partnerships.

During a travel workshop, CIMMYT and national scientists observing maize breeding and dissemination activities in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda jointly selected the recipients of the two awards, one for the best regional technology dissemination team, led by the Selian Agricultural Research Institute (SARI), Tanzania, and one for the best regional maize breeding team for drought tolerance: the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR)-Melkassa Research Centre.

“The awards recognize the products of long-term collaboration and team-building in the region, oriented towards the rapid development, release, and scaling-up of locally adapted, stress tolerant, and nutritionally enhanced maize varieties,” says Wilfred Mwangi, leader of the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa (DTMA) project, which was launched in 2006 and which sponsored the awards. “We hope the awards will encourage result-oriented team approaches, such as those we pursue in the DTMA project.”

Ethiopia’s outstanding breeders

Dr. Aberra Deressa, the Ethiopian State Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development and Guest of Honor, presented the special award to the Ethiopian Institute for Agricultural Research (EIAR) team in Melkassa for work that resulted in the release of five new drought tolerant maize varieties since 2000. In on-farm and on-station tests for yield and agronomic performance at 14 moisture-stressed locations, the new varieties out-yielded leading maize cultivars by more than 30%. Farmers particularly preferred one variety, Melkassa-2, for its white seed and intermediate maturity, so seed of the variety was multiplied on farmers’ fields and distributed to the community.

“The Melkassa team also produced and sold basic seed of the five varieties to Ethiopian maize seed producers, including the Ethiopian Seed Enterprise, which then produced certified seed,” says Alpha Diallo, CIMMYT regional maize breeder who collaborated with the Ethiopian team on the development and identification of these varieties. “The varieties have since been promoted through field demonstrations and field days.”

“We have enjoyed great support for capacity building from CIMMYT over many years,” said Dr. Aberra Deressa. “We consider CIMMYT to be part of our national maize program and recommend this model for adoption by other partners.”

The miller’s tale: Better nutrition and more cash

The award-winning multidisciplinary team from Tanzania comprised breeders, agronomists, socio-economists, seed producers (including farmers), and millers, and was led by the Selian Agricultural Research Institute (SARI) in Arusha. Maize flour in eastern Africa is used mostly to make the starchy staple food known as ugali, and maize provides the bulk of inhabitants’ energy and protein in Tanzania. Three new varieties for which the Tanzanian research team received the Technology Dissemination Award are quality protein maize (QPM) varieties, which looks and performs like normal maize, but whose grain provides higher levels of lysine and tryptophan—amino acids essential for growth in humans and farm animals.

Tanzania’s promotion of QPM for milling is helping to increase the demand for QPM seed among farmers. Two millers, Nyirefami Limited and the Grain and Flour Enterprise, are producing QPM ugali flour. They hope eventually to replace conventional maize flour to satisfy the country’s growing appetite for QPM ugali and improve its nutritional well-being. “The Dissemination Team Award recognizes efforts that bring all the necessary players together—from breeders to NGOs to seed companies, and even millers, involving farmers along the way, to get the (QPM) technology to consumers,” says Dennis Friesen, CIMMYT maize agronomist for eastern Africa.

Farmers: From on-lookers to leaders

CIMMYT has supported partners in applying participatory approaches to evaluate new cultivars systematically and cost-effectively under resource-poor farmers’ conditions, as well as giving farmers a voice in determining whether any maize cultivar will become available on the market. In the case of the three QPM varieties in Tanzania, farmers particularly liked one for its superior yields, good tip cover, and greater resistance to the regionally-serious disease, maize streak virus.

Dr. Jeremiah Haki, Tanzania’s Director of Research and Training, Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives, has commended CIMMYT for promoting farmer participation. “The farmer is often left out in both variety development and dissemination; no wonder they do not find the resultant varieties as being appropriate to them and worth adopting,” says Haki. “Through our partnership with CIMMYT, seed companies, NGOs and farmer groups, we have placed strong emphasis on working with farmers. The result is good varieties which have a strong farmer acceptance.”

Support that enables research collaboration to lead to impact in farmers’ fields

Research and development activities that enabled these teams to succeed and bring new maize varieties to farmers have taken place via multiple projects, most recently supported by agencies including CIDA-Canada, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Rockefeller Foundation, BMZ-Germany, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. This and other work in the region has been executed by CIMMYT in collaboration with the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA), as well as public, private, NGO and CBO partners, according to Friesen. “The projects are mutually supportive,” he says. “They share complementary outputs and activities integrated in a consolidated framework, to develop and promote new varieties that tolerate drought and low soil fertility, resist pests and diseases, and offer better nutritional quality.”

And the final word

Isaka Mashauri from TanSeed, one of the recipients of the Tanzania team award, calls the success of these partnerships “of paramount importance.”

“Thank you very much for the award,” he says. “It greatly excited and motivated us to register more new and better maize varieties and hybrids in coming years, and to reach more farmers with new maize technologies.”

For more information: Wilfred Mwangi, project leader, DTMA (w.mwangi@cgiar.org), or Dennis Friesen, maize agronomist (d.friesen@cgiar.org)

Drought tolerant maize wins UK climate prize

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The United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) has won Best Technological Breakthrough at the 2012 UK Climate Week Awards for its support to the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa (DTMA) project. The awards were held in London on 12 March 2012 to celebrate the UK’s most effective and ambitious organizations, communities, and individuals and their efforts to combat climate change.

Climate-Week-award-picDTMA has been responsible for the development and dissemination of 34 new drought-tolerant maize varieties to farmers in 13 project countries—Angola, Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe—between 2007 and 2011. An estimated two million smallholder farmers are already using the drought-tolerant maize varieties and have obtained higher yields, improved food security, and increased incomes.

Drought-tolerant varieties are invaluable on a continent where maize is the staple crop for over 300 million people, and nearly always relies on rainwater alone. The DTMA varieties, produced by conventional breeding, provide farmers with better yields than leading commercial varieties under moderate drought conditions, while also giving outstanding harvests when rains are good. DTMA works with a diverse network of partners to develop, market, and distribute seed, including private companies, publicly funded agricultural research and extension systems, ministries of agriculture, nongovernmental organizations, and community-based seed producers.

Jointly implemented by CIMMYT and the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), the DTMA project is presently funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and is also receiving complementary grants from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation (HGBF) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

“DFID has been a highly-valued and reliable, top-ten core contributor to CIMMYT’s work,” said DTMA project leader Wilfred Mwangi. In addition, the efforts of DTMA build on long-term support from the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC), the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Rockefeller Foundation, USAID, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and the Eiselen-Foundation.

First international wheat blast meeting held in Brazil

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Wheat blast or ‘brusone’ is a new wheat disease caused by M. oryzae (Pyricularia oryzae). It is responsible for 5-100% of wheat yield loss in regions of South America, and has the potential to spread. To address this and other issues, a workshop titled “Wheat blast: A potential threat to global wheat production” was held in Passo Fundo, Brazil, during 03-05 May 2010, followed by a field visit to the Brasilia region. It was organized by Embrapa Wheat, Embrapa Cerrados, and CIMMYT, and attended by representatives from 11 countries.

Wheat blast was identified for the first time in 1985 in the State of Parana in southern Brazil, from where it quickly spread to neighboring countries. Four years later, it caused serious damage (40-100%) in the wheat fields of Paraguay. In the lowlands of Bolivia, it was responsible for a loss of 90,000 hectares of wheat between 1997 and 2000. In 2007, the disease was seen in summer-sown experimental wheat trials in Chaco, Argentina, and although researchers in Uruguay have not observed the disease in wheat, they have found the fungus on barley. A 2009 outbreak cut Brazilian wheat production by up to 30%.

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Of great concern is that chemical control of wheat blast may not be working. “There are places where farmers are using four fungicide applications with no results, which suggests the current chemicals are not effective against the fungus, or are not properly applied,” says Etienne Duveiller, wheat pathologist and associate director of CIMMYT’s Global Wheat Program. “To date, there is a lack of cultivars resistant to wheat blast, and only limited tolerance can be found.”

Climate change is adding to the problem. “A more hot and humid climate favors fungal diseases such as wheat blast, which needs high temperatures of about 24- 28°C and long periods of rain to occur,” explains researcher Gisele Torres of Embrapa Wheat. CIMMYT’s Duviller echoes these concerns: “Changes in rainfall may create environmental conditions favorable to wheat blast in other parts of the world such as South Asia or Africa. This was the main reason for inviting researchers from different wheat-producing countries in several continents to discuss wheat blast in Brazil.”

The most important diseases that affect wheat production worldwide are leaf rust (5 million ha), tan spot (4.5 million ha), and fusarium (4 million ha). “So far, new diseases like wheat blast in South America has been limited to a few countries,” says Man Mohan Kohli, ex-CIMMYT researcher once posted in South America. “Similarly the distribution of the stem rust Ug99 in Africa has been limited, but has been the object of studies by several research institutes around the world.” Efforts to improve wheat resistance to Ug99 and to reduce the risk of its spread to other countries show how international collaborative research and investment facilitates scientific response to new virulent pathotypes, or races of pathogens, that could become potentially devastating.

Researchers from the following institutions participated in the workshop, which was supported by EMBRAPA and BMZ (Germany): Göttingen University (Germany), Kansas State University (United States), CIRAD (France), CIAT (Bolivia), INTA (Argentina), INIA (Uruguay), CIMMYT (Mexico), USDA/ARS (United States), MAG/ DIA (Paraguay), and Wageningen University (Netherlands), as well as Brazil Embrapa Cerrados, Embrapa Wheat, Labex Europa, OR, BIOTRIGO, COODETEC, FUNDACEP, UPF, UNESP, and Fapa/Agråria.

Innovative partnerships boost livestock-maize systems in eastern Africa

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In recent times, in eastern Africa, arable land has become more scarce and livestock production has gained more ground, making maize more important than ever—both as a source of food and feed—in highly intensified crop-livestock farming systems. In an innovative partnership, CIMMYT, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and partners from universities, research centers, and ministries of agriculture in Ethiopia, Tanzania , Kenya, and Germany have worked together to develop and evaluate dual-purpose maize cultivars to meet the increasing need for livestock fodder in a project funded by BMZ from 2005 to 2009. The partnership—new to all those involved—brought together socio-economists, animal scientists, maize breeders, and spatial analysts.

Recently, CIMMYT and ILRI organized an end-of-project workshop themed “Improving the Value of Maize Stover as Livestock Feed” in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for stakeholders to review results of the project and agree on future directions. Maize stover is the leftover leaves, stalks, husks, and cobs after a harvest.

“Livestock is important in Ethiopia—contributing 40% to our gross domestic product (GDP). Available grazing land has decreased while the area under maize has increased. Therefore, stovers have become an important source of fodder,” said Adefris Teklewold, crop research process director at the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR), who opened the workshop. “However, maize stover has low nutritive value and this project has the potential of increasing its value as livestock feed.”

Researchers found that that farmers value grain yield much more than stover fodder value, and would adopt an improved variety only if it gave reasonable yields. Nevertheless, farmers do recognize differences among varieties in the fodder value of stover, particularly in traits such as ‘stay-green,’ softness of stalks, and palatability. After grain yield and food related attributes, stover biomass is an important characteristic upon which farmers base their selection of varieties.

The project successfully explored the potential to improve maize stover for livestock fodder and identified traits that could be used by breeding programs to do so. These traits would serve as additional ‘value added’ release criteria rather than requirements for release to facilitate optimization of whole plant utilization. To adopt and implement these findings will require more widespread awareness among actors in the food-feed value chain, including government extension workers, private seed companies, and farmers so that breeding for improved stover quality can be integrated in national maize breeding programs. Workshop participants also recognized competition for other uses of stover, such as fuel and fencing, as well as its importance in soil conservation. As Teklewold advised, “Reducing soil degradation and erosion from the hillsides and sloping fields on which much of Ethiopian agriculture is practiced is an urgent need. Reduced tillage and residue conservation are crucial to this task.” Participants were left with the challenge of how to reconcile the competing demands for crop residues in maize-livestock systems.

Machine mastery

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Nearly 50 two-wheel tractor operators in Bangladesh examined, adjusted, and tested several planting machines during in a four-day practical training course at the Wheat Research Center (WRC), Dinajpur. The Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI), and CIMMYT organized the course, which ran during 12-15 October 2009 and focused not only on the operation, repair, and maintenance of farm machinery, but also on different crop establishment techniques.

Course leaders divided participants into groups of four and gave each a Sayre Smart Planter (SSP), a farming implement with built-in seed dispensers for multiple crops and a fertilizer application mechanism. The small group size allowed each person to practice converting the machine into its various modes: bed planter, strip tillage seeder, minimum tillage seeder, and zero tillage seeder. All participants then operated the machine in its numerous settings and learned seed calibration techniques for crops such as rice, wheat, jute, lentil, and chickpea. To ensure full understanding of SSP mechanics, each group dismantled the seeder, indentified its various parts, and then reassembled it.

On-hand to provide assistance were Enamul Haque, CIMMYT cropping systems agronomist; Israil Hossain of BARI; and Abdur Rahman, AKM Saiful Islam, and Bidhan Chandra Nath of BRRI. The Australian Center for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), the German Federal Ministry for Economic Development Cooperation (BMZ), and USAID Famine Fund Projects funded the course.

Hybrid maize breeding course in Hyberabad

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Forty-five maize scientists gathered at CIMMYT’s office in Hyderabad, India, from 31 August until 5 September for a course on maize hybrid breeding for rainfed areas in Asia. Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA), and the Generation Challenge Program (GCP) organized the course, which received nearly 90 applications from interested scientists.

Various aspects related to hybrid maize breeding were covered by competent and qualified scientists from CIMMYT, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Indian maize programs, and the private sector. “This course was very successful,” said Harun-or Rahsid, a participant from Bangladesh. “We were introduced to several new ideas that we can use to develop stable maize hybrids in a more effective and resource-efficient manner.” The majority of participants came from India (23), but others came from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. The private sector was well represented; 12 participants came from the following companies: Monsanto, Syngenta, BIOSEED, Krishidhan Seeds, Ajeet Seeds, ABS Seeds, Safal Seeds, JK Seeds, VNR Seeds, and Vibha Agri-tech.

“I’m glad the CIMMYT-Asia program took the initiative to organized this much anticipated course,” said CIMMYT scientist S.K. Vasal. “It will strengthen partnerships and collaboration in the region and help us to achieve our goal of doubling maize production by the year 2020.”

Reaching maize farmers with improved varieties better through the value chain approach

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Jonathan Hellin, poverty specialist in the Impacts Targeting and Assessment Unit, was in Kenya over the past two weeks catching up with CIMMYT-Kenya colleagues and meeting senior economists and students from the University of Nairobi. This was in preparation for next year’s activities on his collaborative maize value chain research work. Funded by BMZ, the work builds on previous contributions by CIMMYT and its partners in meeting the needs of resource-poor farmers in stress-prone environments by making improved maize varieties more widely available.

A review mission concluded that work by CIMMYT and partners can serve as “
a model for multi-stakeholder regional R&D collaboration and enhanced researcher-extension-farmer-market linkages”. The mission suggested a continuation of the research but recommended that more emphasis be given to the availability and dissemination of varieties and technologies to the smallholder farmers in eastern and Central Africa. The current phase includes a value chain analysis of the seed input chains.

Learning from the wise: Jonathan Hellin in a work planning session with Alpha Diallo, maize breeder, in Nairobi, Kenya