The Feed the Future initiative of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) featured CIMMYTâs Heat Tolerant Maize for Asia (HTMA) project in a recent newsletter, highlighting it as an exemplary public-private partnership. Launched in 2013, the project is developing heat-resilient hybrid maize for resource-poor smallholder farmers in South Asia whose livelihoods are threatened by climate change.
The damaging effects of climate change on agriculture have already been felt throughout much of South Asia, and climate model studies predict that this trend will not end anytime soon. According to a 2009 report from the Asian Development Bank, maize production capacity in South Asia could decrease by 17 percent by the year 2050 if current climate trends continue. Due to the temperature sensitivity of key crops such as maize, farmers in the region urgently need access to seed of varieties that can withstand temperature stress. As climate change-related weather extremes threaten agriculture in South Asia, research and development partners are seeking solutions.
The HTMA ââŠbalances up-stream and down-stream research-for-development by leveraging CIMMYT germplasm with the research capacity and expertise of partners such as Purdue University, Pioneer-Asia and national programs in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan,â said P.H. Zaidi, the project leader. HTMA private partners such as DuPont Pioneer and the regional seed companies Kaveri Seeds and Ajeet Seeds have direct ties to local markets and farming communities that will foster the widespread availability and use of the new hybrids, according to Zaidi.
Outputs of this partnership include new breeding lines with enhanced levels of heat tolerance. The first generation of heat-tolerant hybrids from those lines became available after the second year of the project, and a new set of elite, stress-resilient hybrid varieties will be released by the project every two years. Apart from this, early-generation lines are being shared for use in partnersâ breeding programs, strengthening their germplasm base and ensuring the continued development and delivery of heat-stress-resilient maize after the project ends, Zaidi said. According to the Feed the Future report: âThe new varietiesâŠshow great promise to be taken to scale and deployed in tropical climates beyond South Asia.â
For Ethiopian smallholder farmers who have for millennia used the traditional animal-drawn maresha plow, two-wheel tractors could increase their productivity while reducing labor. They appear better suited to the Highlands of Ethiopia, characterized by small, fragmented farms and hilly terrain, than four-wheel tractors, which are only well-suited for large- and medium-scale farmers who comprise about 10% of the countryâs estimated 14.7 million farmers. Two-wheel tractors are also very versatile and can be used for seeding, pumping water, threshing wheat and transporting heavy loads.
Although two-wheel tractors and their attachments are relatively cheap (about US $1,400) and easy to maintain, it is evident that most Ethiopian farmers wonât be able to purchase them individually. Still, they could hire the services of dedicated providers trained to use two-wheel tractors. To make mechanization accessible to smallholder farmers, on 1-5 June 2015 CIMMYT and its partners organized a training course for service providers from Debre Birhan, Sinana and Lemo woredas (districts). They were trained in the operation, maintenance, business, financial management and marketing of two-wheel tractors.
The service model being tested by CIMMYT and its partners has been adopted in Bangladesh, where a single two-wheel tractor can service up to 30 farmers. The initiative to disseminate two-wheel tractors in the Highlands of Ethiopia is supported by the United States Agency for International Developmentâs (USAID) Africa Research in Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation (Africa RISING) program. After the course, trainees returned to their respective areas equipped with two-wheel tractors and various attachments, to start providing seeding, transport and water pumping services to local farmers.
Since the Growth and Transformation Plan was established by the Government of Ethiopia in 2011, tremendous progress has been made in the agricultural sector. Farmers now have access to better seeds and adequate quantities of fertilizer. Yields have increased dramatically, and improved connections between farmers and markets mean higher incomes for farmers and more food available for consumers in both rural and urban areas.
Sustaining such an increase in agricultural output, however, will require a proportionate increase in farm power. In response, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency developed a draft national mechanization strategy in 2014, with the goal of increasing the farm power available to Ethiopian farmers 10-fold by 2025.
Irmgard Hoeschle-Zeledon, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) from Africa RISING speaks at the event.
Developing a global âcommunity of practiceâ for sustainable intensification (SI) and the need to define indicators for measuring SI activities were highlighted at the cross-learning SI event hosted by Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) on 28 January in New Delhi, India.
A group of 50 participants from USAID, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), Africa RISING, USAIDâs Sustainable Intensification Innovation Lab, the Innovation Lab for Small-scale Irrigation, CIMMYT, the International Food Policy Research Institute, International Livestock Research Institute and International Rice Research Institute attended the event and shared perspectives on SI in African and South Asian contexts.
Applying principles of SI in mixed crop-livestock systems is key to achieving better food security and improved livelihoods, while minimizing negative impacts on the environment. The full-day program looked at the approaches taken by SI projects of CSISA and Africa RISING, collaborative research opportunities by the Sustainable Intensification Innovation Lab and the Innovation Lab for Small-scale Irrigation and the perspectives of donors who fund SI projects.
Andrew McDonald, CSISA Project Leader, outlines South Asia agricultural systems and the CSISA initiative.
âWe need broad systems programs to make impacts truly happen,â said Thomas Lumpkin, Director General, CIMMYT, talking about CSISAâs cropping systems approach at the start of the event. He added, âWe should get more value chains involved and look at regional and global levels to extract maximum value from our R4D projects.â Andrew McDonald, CSISA Project Leader, talked about the history and context of CSISA, highlighting its 10-year vision of success that aims to significantly increase the incomes and staple crop productivity of 6 million farm families by 2018.
Christian Witt, Senior Program Officer at BMGF, gave a brief overview of the Foundationâs global and regional strategies in SI, which highlighted significant investments in digital soil mapping in Africa and work with CIMMYT to merge soil data with agronomic research. âWe are also enhancing communication within farming communities through informal methods. A good example is our partnership with Digital Green,â he added.
Christian Witt, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, talks about emerging agricultural R4D priorities at the foundation.
The event provided CSISA an opportunity to discuss its current status in India and Bangladesh and to outline the potential future direction of CSISA as a regional initiative, now that CSISA Phase II is being renewed. A series of presentations also outlined the projectâs progress and emerging priorities in strategic agronomic, livestock, socio-economic and policy research and rice and wheat breeding.
Following the event, a group of 13 representatives accompanied members of CSISAâs leadership team on a tour of CSISA sites in Bihar and Odisha over the course of a week in January and February. The tour was designed to enable cross-learning among the flagship SI investments of USAID.
Participants in zero tillage wheat field. Photos: Naveed Ahmed Sheikh from Balochistan.
Under the Agricultural Innovation Program (AIP) for Pakistan and in collaboration with Balochistan Agriculture Research, CIMMYT has begun testing and spreading with farmers the practice known as âzero tillageâ to sow wheat in Balochistan, a province in southwest Pakistan that accounts for more than 40 percent of the countryâs land area but only five percent of the population.
Jaffarabad and Nasirabad are major rice- and wheat-growing districts in Balochistan. The predominant cropping systems are either fallow or rice, followed by a crop of wheat. Soils after rice are poorly-drained and hamper tilling for wheat, so wheat is not sown soon enough to avoid the high temperatures that arrive in spring, when the crop is filling grain. This seriously reduces yields.
Participants in field day at Usta Muhammad.
On 10 January, more than 100 participants gathered for a field day organized by AIP in Balochistan province to promote zero tillage for wheat. Involving the direct sowing of wheat seed into residues of the preceding rice crop, with no plowing, the practice has multiple benefits for farmers, soils and water use. These include more timely wheat planting, reduced land preparation costs, higher wheat yields and increased cropping system intensity (hence, productivity), according to agricultural experts Mr. Asmatullah Taran and Mr. Mehdi Hassan.
Intended for smallholder farmers, the event also drew progressive farmers, agricultural extension specialists and researchers from the Directorate of Agriculture Research Usta Muhammad Farm, Jaffarabad District, as well as renowned parliamentarians Mr. Khan Muhammad Khan Jamali, Mr. Changaiz Khan Jamali and Mr. Mir Jan Muhammad Jamali, Speaker, Balochistan Provincial Assembly.
Mir Jan Muhammad Jamali addressing the farmers.
Dr. Muhammad Javaid Tareen, Director General of Balochistan Agriculture Research, praised AIP and partnersâ efforts to promote conservation agriculture practices such as zero tillage, said the practices would improve farmersâ livelihoods in the Nasirabad Zone and called on scientists to address the Provinceâs crop productivity constraints. Mr. Changaiz Khan Jamali, former Federal Minister for Science & Technology, said that agricultural research must address small farmersâ concerns and provide new techniques to the farming community.
Mr. Jamali was grateful for the efforts of USAID and CIMMYT to improve smallholder famersâ incomes and assured the farmers and agricultural professionals that efforts would be made to improve research facilities and access to new technologies in Balochistan.
A Pakistani farmer carries seed of a new wheat variety for on-farm testing. Photo: Anju Joshi/CIMMYT
Lack of good seed of appropriate varieties is holding back harvests of smallholder wheat farmers in rugged, rain-fed areas of Punjab, Pakistan, said a group of farmers to some 50 representatives of seed companies, input dealers, and research, extension and development organizations, at a workshop in Chakwal, Punjab, on 18 September 2014.
âNinety-five percent of farmers in Pothwar, a semi-arid region of bare and broken terrain, use farm-saved seed of obsolete varieties, invariably with limited use of modern agricultural technologies and inputs, resulting in poor crop establishment and low yields,â said Krishna Dev Joshi, CIMMYT wheat improvement specialist based in Pakistan. âTheir yields average only 0.6 tons per hectare, whereas progressive farmers in irrigated areas get ten times that much.â
Joshi said only three varieties cover 83 percent of the regionâs wheat area and the same cultivars have been used for an average of 24 years. âOne of these, C591, is a variety that was recommended in 1934 and is still grown on about 14 percent of the regionâs nearly 0.6 million hectares of wheat area.â
According to Akhlaq Hussain, ex-Director General, Pakistan Department of Federal Seed Certification and Registration, one problem is that, despite their low yields, the older varieties have many traits that the farmers like. For example, they give stable yields under low inputs and harsh growing conditions and provide the preferred flavor and long-lasting good texture in chapattis.
Muhammad Tariq, Director of the Barani Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), Chakwal, Punjab, said there are few producers or suppliers of suitable, quality seed, fertilizer or other farm inputs for such marginal areas. They may be considered unattractive markets, but more than 70 percent of Pakistani wheat farmers are smallholders, cultivating between one and five hectares of land, according to Tariq.
Such farmers harvest on average only 1.5 tons per hectare and urgently need better seed and technology to raise their yields, said Joshi. âFarmers at the workshop complained they could not get access to high-yielding varieties of their choice,â he explained. âThey also criticized the long time â typically three years â required to obtain seed of new varieties, once the varieties are officially released.â
Given this need and the lack of legitimate suppliers, fraudulent seed dealers and middlemen often market inferior or false products. âLast year I bought a bag of seed labelled âGalaxy,â a new, high-yielding variety,â said Haji Muhammad Aslam Ochallee, a farmer from Khushab District, âbut the seed inside was of an entirely different variety.â
Some seed dealers may mix seed or sell grain in bags labelled âcertified seedâ at low prices to lure smallholders, and big landlords may sell cheap seed illegally to neighbors, said Qaiser Rasheed, Managing Director of the company Robert Cotton Association. âAll these practices cheat farmers, distort markets and erode farmersâ trust in the formal seed sector,â Rasheed observed.
Pothwarâs problems reflect Pakistanâs overall food security challenge, according to Joshi. âA 2014 bulletin by the World Food Program shows that more than 27 million people in Pakistan are highly-to-severely food insecure,â he said. âThe big concern is that most smallholders and vulnerable people live in districts that will need special attention to improve food security.â
Activating the Wheat Seed Value Chain
As a part of the Agricultural Innovation Program (AIP) for Pakistan, a project funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), CIMMYT is working with the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC), BARI in Punjab, seed companies and farmers to close gaps in the wheat seed value chain for rain-fed Punjab.
Workshop participants cited the need for better communication and coordination of research and extension agencies with commercial input suppliers sector and, especially, better marketing of new wheat varieties to farmers. âIf stakeholders donât integrate and coordinate, small-scale farmers will remain deprived of modern technologies and innovations, such as wheat varieties that resist new and virulent disease strains,â said Joshi.
“If stakeholders donât integrate and coordinate, small-scale farmers will remain deprived of modern technologies and innovations, such as wheat varieties that resist new and virulent disease strains”
â Krishna Dev Joshi
CIMMYT Wheat Improvement Specialist
Farmers recommended establishing village committees to choose and access seed of new varieties and help foster truth in labeling. They particularly called for strict punishment for those selling fake seed.
For their part, seed companies said the lack of reliable irrigation or storage facilities hinders seed production in Pothwar. âBecause of this, seed must be transported over long distances, raising costs, which in turn discourages buyers and cuts profits,â said one company representative.
The workshop forged an agreement to allow private seed companies to produce pre-basic and basic seed, supervised by concerned breeders and with support from Federal Seed Certification and Registration Department, to speed the marketing of new varieties. One result was that Robert Cotton Association has received pre-basic and basic seeds of two wheat varieties, Chakwal50 and Dharabi11, originally developed and released by BARI, which will provide technical backstopping.
Other action points agreed on at the workshop included the following:
On-farm trials and demonstrations that allow farmers to learn about and choose from new, high-yielding wheat varieties. To address this, AIP-wheat has already launched participatory varietal selection trials in which farmers and researchers jointly evaluate 14 new, high-yielding, disease resistant wheat varieties of diverse genetic backgrounds on the farms of 65 smallholders across Pothwar. In addition, to help farmers assess and improve crop management practices, the project is conducting 20 on-farm, participatory experiments on fertilizer use and 107 trials on pre-soaking seed, a practice that improves germination and crop establishment.
Community-based seed production linked with private companies and supported by proper equipment and training in quality seed production. Achievements to date include seed of 9 new varieties being multiplied directly with 52 Pothwar farmers on more than 42 hectares.
Sub-Saharan African farmers typically apply less than 20 kilograms of fertilizer per hectare of cropland â far less than their peers in any other region of the world. In 2014, partners in the Improved Maize for African Soils (IMAS) project developed 41 Africa-adapted maize varieties that respond better to low amounts of nitrogen fertilizer and are up for release in nine African countries through 24 seed companies.
A farmer applies nitrogen fertilizer to her hybrid maize. Photo: CIMMYT/IMAS
After water, nitrogen is the single most important input for maize production; lack of it is the main constraint to cereal yields in Africa, in areas with enough rain to raise a crop. Year after year, infertile soils and high fertilizer prices (in rural areas as much as six times the global average) combine to reduce harvests of maize, sub-Saharan Africaâs number-one cereal crop and chief source of calories and protein for the poor. With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), an initiative launched in 2010 has made dramatic progress to address this by exploiting natural genetic variation for nutrient-use efficiency in tropical maize. âPartners have been breeding maize varieties that respond better to the small amounts of nitrogen fertilizer African farmers can afford to apply,â said Biswanath Das, CIMMYT maize breeder and coordinator of the Improved Maize for African Soils (IMAS) project. âWeâre aiming to raise maize yields by 50 percent and benefit up to 60 million maize farmers in eastern and southern Africa.â
Smallholder Farmer Conditions: A Maize âReality Checkâ
A public-private partnership that, along with CIMMYT, involves national research organizations such as the Kenya Agricultural & Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) and South Africaâs Agricultural Research Council (ARC), African seed companies and DuPont Pioneer, IMAS has advanced quickly in part because participants share breeding lines and technical knowhow, according to Das.
âBut a real key to success â and a significant legacy of the project â is that IMAS has established in eastern and southern Africa the worldâs largest low-nitrogen screening network for maize,â Das explained. âThere are 25 sites in 10 countries and a total of over 120,000 experimental plots. Partners can test breeding lines and quickly and reliably spot the ones with superior nitrogen-use efficiency under smallholder farmersâ conditions.â According to Das, nearly a quarter of the plots are managed by seed companies, which recognize the value of nitrogen-use efficiency as a key trait for their farmer clients.
In an exciting 2014 development, regulatory agencies in eastern Africa began evaluating maize national performance trials â which varieties must pass as a prerequisite for release â under nitrogen stress in the IMAS network. âThis is a clear recognition by policymakers of poor soil fertility as a critical constraint for African maize farmers,â said Das. âTo meet farmersâ needs, IMAS varieties are also bred for drought tolerance and resistance to the regionâs major maize diseases.â
Also Yielding Under Well Fertilized Conditions
Partners are augmenting conventional breeding with DNA-marker-assisted selection and use of âdoubled haploids,â a high-tech shortcut to genetically-uniform maize inbred lines. Experimental breeding stocks thus developed are field tested under low-nitrogen stress through âhigh-precision phenotyping,â involving careful measurement of key traits in live plants.
Low nitrogen trials in Kiboko, Kenya, where new maize varieties are tested. Photo: CIMMYT/IMAS.
âIn this way, weâve quickly developed maize varieties that yield up to 50 percent more than existing varieties under low-fertility stress, characteristic of smallholder farming systems,â Das explained. âCrucially for farmers, these varieties also perform well under well- fertilized conditions, whilst several carry resistance to maize lethal necrosis, a devastating viral disease spreading through eastern Africa.â In 2014, 41 such varieties were nominated for release in nine countries in Africa, in partnership with 24 seed companies.
This year IMAS also worked with seed companies to support the production and dissemination of 3,000 tons of seed of nitrogen-use efficient maize hybrids in Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, potentially benefitting more than 120,000 smallholder maize farmers and helping to enhance food security for over half a million household members, according to Das. âClose collaboration with the private seed sector has been instrumental to IMAS since its inception,â Das said. âThese partners host over a quarter of the regional nitrogen stress screening network and have helped with the quick increase of seed of nitrogen-use efficient varieties and with managing farmer demonstrations and field days to support the fast release of new varieties.â
Farmer and social entrepreneur Amaha Abraham in a wheat field in Bishoftu, Ethiopia. CIMMYT/Julie Mollins
BISHOFTU, Ethiopia (CMMYT) — Farmer and social entrepreneur Amaha Abraham sets his sights high.
The 45-year-old aims to become as wealthy as Saudi Arabian-Ethiopian Mohammed Al Amoudi, who in March 2014 was estimated by Forbes magazine to have a net worth of $15.3 billion.
In an effort to achieve that goal Abraham is backing big reforms in Ethiopiaâs agriculture sector.
He is at the forefront of a new grassroots seed marketing and distribution program supported by the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) and the Ministry of Agriculture to improve the countryâs wheat crop through the marketing of improved seed by multiple producers and agents.
Under the program, government-subsidized farmer-run cooperatives produce high-yielding, disease-resistant wheat seed, accelerating distribution and helping smallholder farmers grow healthy crops to bolster national food security.
About 50 farmers belong to each cooperative, planting about 100 hectares (250 acres) of government-certified seed, which produce improved wheat varieties they then multiply and sell to smallholder farmers. Seed sales garner a 15 to 20 percent price premium over wheat-grain sales, providing a significant financial incentive.
âIâve reached so many farmers, so that their land will be covered by proper improved seeds,â Abraham said.
âWhen I take the seeds to them I give training and advice, which attracts more farmers to get involved. The government visits and organizes training on my land â they recognize my efforts and theyâre pushing other farmers to do the same thing.â
STREAMLINED SYSTEMS
The Direct Seed Marketing (DSM) program is part of Ethiopiaâs âWheat Productivity Increase Initiative,â which aims to end the countryâs reliance on wheat imports â equal to 1.1 million metric tons (1.2 million tons) or about 24 percent of domestic demand, which is 4.6 million metric tons in 2014, according to the Wheat Atlas, citing statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Previously, the process of getting new wheat seed varieties to farmers was allocation based, with limited producers and agents and a limited choice of varieties, said Sinshaw Alemu, wheat and barley chain program analyst at ATA.
âIt was a seed distribution system, not a seed marketing system,” Alemu explained. “DSM is based on the concept that the producers of the seed should be able to market and then sell it at the primary level and farmers will have their choice of seed.”
Farmers can now collect seeds from a certified agent â either a primary cooperative or a private outlet where a direct channel is established with seed producers, leading to timely deliveries and better estimates of potential demand. They can buy government-allocated seed as they did under the other system or the agent can now contact the seed enterprise and purchase additional wheat varieties at a farmerâs request with no fixed allocations in DSM.
âOne of the issues in the previous system was that due to delays on demand estimations from woredas (district councils), the unions and primary cooperatives had little or no control over the kind and quality of seed allocated to them,â Alemu said.
âPrimary cooperatives had to take it and seed remained unsold at the end of the planting season because either the variety or quality wasnât what they were looking for â the primary cooperative was left with hundreds of quintals of seed and they had no use for it.â
âWe tried the DSM in five woredas in 2014, and it was very successful â 97 percent of the seed delivered was sold and the remainder taken away â weâve seen some very encouraging results in this area,â he added.
DISEASE THREAT
In recent years, Ethiopiaâs wheat crop has been hit hard by stem and yellow rust epidemics, which at their worst can destroy entire crops. Rust infestation can lead to shriveled grain, yield losses and financial troubles for farmers, who must avoid susceptible wheat varieties.
The revamped seed marketing system can help get the new disease-resilient wheat varieties to farmers more efficiently, said David Hodson, a senior scientist based in Ethiopiaâs capital Addis Ababa with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) who manages RustTracker.org, a global wheat rust monitoring system supported by the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative.
Rust Tracker generates surveillance and monitoring information for emerging rust threats. The information provides an early warning system for disease and can help farmers prepare for epidemics, which could otherwise wipe out their crops.
CIMMYT, a non-profit research institute which works with partners worldwide to reduce poverty and hunger by increasing the sustainable productivity of maize and wheat cropping systems, plays a key role in providing germplasm to be tested and improved by government-run national agricultural research systems before it is potentially released to farmers.
Additionally, CIMMYT provides smallholder farmer training and skills development on such topics as crop management and agricultural practices. In Ethiopia, these activities, along with seed multiplication and delivery are being supported by a new $5.75 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
âCIMMYT supports Ethiopiaâs agriculture research in a variety of ways including by training researchers, development agents and farmers skills on modern sciences and filling technical gaps by providing field and laboratory equipment, farm machinery, installing irrigation systems, modernizing breeding programs, improving quality of data, providing germplasm and project funds,â said Bekele Abeyo, a CIMMYT senior scientist and wheat breeder based in Addis Ababa.
âThe government is now putting an emphasis on agriculture and the situation is far better and improving,â he said. âThe structure and extension systems are there to help farmers â Direct Seed Marketing is making it easier to increase the availability of seeds and complements more traditional public seed.â
Adopting improved wheat varieties increases the number of food secure households by 2.7 percent and reduces the number of chronic and transitory food insecure households by 10 and 2 percent respectively, according to CIMMYT scientist Menale Kassie, one of the authors of âAdoption of improved wheat varieties and impacts on household food security in Ethiopia.â
Ethiopiaâs wheat-growing area in 2013 was equivalent to 1.6 million hectares (4 million acres), and the country produced 2.45 metric tons of wheat per hectare, according to the countryâs Central Statistical Agency.
VENTURE EVOLVES
In 2013, Abraham harvested about 250 quintals (25 metric tons) of the Digalu wheat seed variety near Bishoftu, a town formerly known as Debre Zeyit in the Oromia Region situated at an altitude of 1,900 meters (6,230 feet) 40 kilometers (25 miles) southeast of Addis Ababa.
Abraham is optimistic. He expects he will soon be able to hire many employees, as he plans to expand his agricultural interests to include beekeeping, dairy cattle, poultry and livestock, he said.
âMy main aim is not only to earn more money, but also to teach and share with others â thatâs what I value most,â he said. âRegardless of money, there are certain people who have a far-sighted view and I want them to be involved. Thatâs what I value â Iâm opening an opportunity for others and envisioning a far-sighted development plan.â
He still has a way to go before he catches up with Al Amoudi, ranked by Forbes as the 61st wealthiest person in the world.
EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — Hans Braun, director of the Global Wheat Program at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), gestures toward an expansive field of green wheat shimmering in the hot sunlight outside his office.
âIf we donât prepare crops resilient to heat and drought, the effects of climate change will increase the risk of worldwide famine and conflict,â he explained. âThatâs why CIMMYT is part of an international research program to develop new climate change-resistant varieties.â
As the global population grows from a current 7 billion to a projected 9.6 billion by 2050, wheat breeders involved in the battle to ensure food security face many challenges.
Already, U.N. food agencies estimate that at least 805 million people do not get enough food and that more than 2 billion suffer from micronutrient deficiency, or âhidden hunger.â
Globally, wheat provides 20 percent of the worldâs daily protein and calories, according to the Wheat Initiative. Wheat production must grow 60 percent over the next 35 years to keep pace with demand, statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations show â an achievable goal only if wheat yields increase from the current level of below 1 percent annually to at least 1.7 percent per year.
The scientists that Braun leads are on the front lines â tackling the climate change threat in laboratories and at wheat research stations throughout Mexico and in 13 other countries.
LIFE-SAVING GRAIN
Wheat is vital to global food security. In particular, since CIMMYT scientist Norman Borlaug, who died in 2009 at age 95, led efforts to develop semi-dwarf wheat varieties in the mid-20th century that helped save more than 1 billion lives in Pakistan, India and other areas of the developing world.
Borlaug started work on wheat improvement in the mid-1940s in Mexico â where CIMMYT is headquartered near Mexico City. The country became self-sufficient in wheat production in the early 1960s.
Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work, and in his acceptance speech paid tribute to the âarmy of hunger fightersâ with whom he had worked.
However, in contemporary times, some critics have cast a shadow over his work, questioning the altruistic aims of the project that became widely known as the Green Revolution.
They argue that the modern high-yielding crop varieties did not help poor farmers, but caused environmental damage through overuse of fertilizers, water resources and the degradation of soils.
Other condemnations include claims that food scarcity is a mere political construct, that food provision has helped governments suppress disgruntled masses and that vast wheat mono-croplands compromise agricultural and wild biodiversity.
However, a 2003 report in “Science” magazine analyzed the overall impact of the Green Revolution in the 20th Century. The authors, economists from Yale University and Williams College, found that without the long-term increase in food crop productivity and lower food prices resulting from the Green Revolution, the world would have experienced âa human welfare crisis.â
âCaloric intake per capita in the developing world would have been 13.3 to 14.4 percent lower and the proportion of children malnourished would have been from 6.1 to 7.9 percent higher,â authors Robert Evanson and Douglas Gollen wrote.
âPut in perspective, this suggests that the Green Revolution succeeded in raising the health status of 32 to 42 million preschool children. Infant and child mortality would have been considerably higher in developing countries as well.â
Braun acknowledges certain points made by critics of the Green Revolution, but asks how else developing countries would have met the food demands of their rapidly-expanding populations with less environmental impact.
âItâs very easy to look back 50 years and criticize,â Braun said. âPeople forget that at the time, new farm technologies were an incredible success. We have to put it into context â saving hundreds of millions of lives from starvation was the priority and the Green Revolution did just that.â
CLIMATE-RESILIENT WHEAT
Fast-forward and today much of CIMMYTâs current work remains steadily focused on improving wheat yields, but now with an emphasis on ensuring sustainable productivity and reducing agricultureâs environmental footprint.
Scientists are engaged in an international five-year project to develop climate-resilient wheat. They estimate that in tropical and sub-tropical regions, wheat yields will decrease by 10 percent for each 1-degree rise in minimum night-time temperature, which means that production levels could decline by 30 percent in South Asia. About 20 percent of the worldâs wheat is produced in the region.
CIMMYT is collaborating with Kansas State University, Cornell University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture on the project, which is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as part of Feed the Future, the U.S. governmentâs global hunger and food security initiative.
According to Braun, one of the biggest challenges over the next 30 years is to develop better production systems in addition to resource-efficient crops.
For example, a great deal of water is used in food production and demand can and should be cut in half, he said. âWe need to focus on sustainable intensification in ways that wonât overuse natural resources.â
To aid in these efforts, CIMMYT has developed international research programs on conservation and precision agriculture.
In conservation agriculture, farmers reduce or stop tilling the soil, leaving crop residues on the surface of the field and rotate crops to sustainably increase productivity. Precision agriculture involves such technologies as light sensors to determine crop vigor and gauge nitrogen fertilizer dosages to determine exactly what plants need.
âThis reduces nitrate runoff into waterways and greenhouse gas emissions,â Braun explained. CIMMYT and its partners are also breeding wheat lines that are better at taking up and using fertilizer.
âWheat in developing countries currently uses only 30 percent of the fertilizer applied,â he said. âThere are promising options to double that rate, but developing and deploying them require significant investments.â
âIâm very optimistic that we can produce 60 to 70 percent more wheat to meet demand â society is beginning to recognize that food production is one of humanityâs biggest challenges â today and in the future,â Braun summarized.
âWe have or can develop the technologies needed, but politicians must recognize that investment in agriculture is not a problem, itâs a solution â the longer we wait the bigger the potential problems and challenges we face.â
Braun continued, âWe also need policymakers to reach agreement that global climate change is a big problem that absolutely must be addressed so that we can gain access to sufficient resources and more fully develop appropriate technologies.â
CIMMYT aims to improve the livelihoods of poor farmers in the developing world by providing practical solutions for more efficient and sustainable farming. Among the options to improve efficiency, scale-appropriate and precise planting machinery is a crucial yet rarely satisfied need.
Mechanization efforts are ongoing across CIMMYTâs projects, with a strong focus on capacity building of functional small- and medium-scale engineering and manufacturing enterprises. Projects involved include âFarm Power and Conservation Agriculture for Sustainable Intensificationâ in eastern and southern Africa, funded by the Australian Center for International AgriculturalResearch (ACIAR) and the Cereal Systems Initiative in South Asia (CSISA), funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID. CSISA collaborates closely with the machinery research and development work done on the farms of the Borlaug Institute for South Asia in India, CIMMYT conservation agriculture (CA) projects funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, the Agri-Machinery Program based in Yinchuan, Ningxia, China, and the MasAgro Take It to the Farmer machinery and intelligent mechanization unit based in Mexico.
Applied research scientists and technicians assisting these projects work specifically to tackle problems in diverse farming conditions and for varying production systems. Despite their geographically diverse target areas, this team strives to reach a common focal point from which they can learn and compare technical advancements. These advancements are achieved through mutual machine technology testing programs, exchanging machines and expertise and evaluations of best solutions for scale-appropriate mechanization to boost sustainable intensification for resource poor farmers.
Recently, this collaboration model led to the export of several units of a toolbar-based, two-wheel tractor implement for bed shaping, direct seeding of different crops and precise fertilizer application. They will be tested by CIMMYT projects in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Nepal. This multi-purpose, multi-crop equipment was developed to be CA-compatible and has been fine-tuned in Mexico, with design priorities that kept in mind the implementâs usefulness for smallholder farmers in other parts of the world. The machinery will be tested next in Zimbabwe and possibly India and Pakistan.
The teamâs goal is to help developing countries and viable business models of local enterprises in specific regions to have access to good quality implements and tools at reasonable prices. This open-source prototyping strategy is based on the free sharing of technical designs and machinery construction plans. The strategy combines patent-free, lowcost replication blueprints of promising technologies with strong agronomical testing as the ultimate âmake or breakâ criterion. This crucial interaction sets CIMMYTâs engineering platforms apart from commercial options that determine research and development priorities based mainly on sales projections and marketing objectives.
The mechanization team strongly believes in the power of cross regional collaboration â a multidisciplinary work environment, connected intercontinentally with social stewardship and the potential to bring transformative changes to farmersâ fields across the developing world.
CIMMYT, in collaboration with Wheat Research Institute Sindh (WRIS) and Pakistan Agriculture Research Council (PARC) supported by USAID, initiated pilot testing of a multi-crop bed planter for planting cotton and wheat in a cotton-wheat cropping system in Sakrand, Pakistan under the Agricultural Innovation Program (AIP) for Pakistan.
Dr. Imtiaz Hussain, cropping systems agronomist, explained how the multi-crop bed planter is used for planting various crops such as cotton, maize, pulses, rice and wheat on raised beds. This planter will help farmers cut farming operations and costs. It can be used to make beds, plant crop and apply fertilizer in one operation in a cotton-wheat cropping system.
A multi-crop bed planter is demonstrated during a recent AIP field day. Photo: Hira Khalid.
A field day was organized by WRIS on 27 August for the stakeholders to observe bed planted cotton, a demonstration of a bed planting operation, and discuss its use and performance. Over 150 new and aspiring farmers, agriculture extension workers, agriculture researchers and representatives from private seed companies observed the planting of mung beans using the multi-crop bed planter in the field.
Badar ud Din Khokahar, agronomist at WRIS, spoke about his experience with this new technology, noting the bed planted cotton had better germination and plant population in comparison with conventionally ridge planted cotton. The ability to apply fertilizer close to plant resulted in better crop growth.
The field day was followed by a discussion forum, where the participants expressed their interest in this new and emerging technology. During this session, farmers showed appreciation for the introduction of a multi-crop bed planter and showed their interest in using the planter for wheat crop next season. In response, Dr. Kareem Laghari, director at WRIS, recognized the efforts and cooperation of CIMMYT in the introduction of new technologies, and ensured that this technology will be transferred to the farmers for wheat and cotton planting.
Dr. Atta Somoro, director general Agriculture Research Sindh, acknowledged CIMMYTâs efforts in wheat research in the country and especially in the Sindh province. He recognized how CIMMYTâs work in the Green Revolution is highly valued. He also mentioned that the continuous inflow of germplasm and technologies from CIMMYT has helped to improve wheat productivity.
Dr. Shahid Masood, member of Plant Sciences within the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC), recognized how the efforts of CIMMYT and the support of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) are very helpful in scaling up mechanized planting in this area, which will ultimately help to improve crop productivity, along with saving in water and improving fertilizer use efficiency.
Dr. Imtiaz Muhammad, country representative CIMMYT-Pakistan, informed the participants that AIP is focusing on improving the productivity of the wheat and maize through better germplasm, seed and better agronomy. The project focuses on increasing agricultural productivity and incomes in the agricultural sector across Pakistan, with more emphasis on smallholder farmers from provinces with less access to agricultural resources. This equipment will be tested and it will also be manufactured locally through this project, so that more and more farmers can benefit from these activities.
Dr. Nora Lapitan, the new science advisor in the Bureau for Food Security of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and lead of USAIDâs Climate-Resilient Cereals portfolio, visited the maize field trials being conducted in India as part of Heat Stress Tolerant Maize for Asia (HTMA) during 17-21 June.
Nora Lapitan with the HTMA team at Kaveri Seeds field trials in Baijenki, Telangana. Photo: Kaveri Seeds staff
Lapitan is the project manager and provides technical oversight. Supported by USAID under the Feed the Future (FTF) initiative, the HTMA project is led by CIMMYT-Hyderabad. HTMA is a public-private alliance that targets resource-poor people of South Asia prone to face weather extremes and climate-change effects. The project connects several public sector agricultural research institutions in South Asia such as the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute; Maize & Millets Research Institute, Pakistan; National Maize Research Program, Nepal; Bhutan National Maize Program; and two Indian state agriculture universities â Bihar Agricultural University, Sabor and University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS), Raichur, as well as Purdue University in the U.S. Additional participants include seed companies DuPont Pioneer, Vibha Agritech, Kaveri Seeds and Ajeet Seeds. This was Lapitanâs first trip to India, which she chose to start with HTMA maize field activity visits. She visited maize trials under managed heat stress at different sites in India, starting with the trials at the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA), Ludhiana on 17 June.
A team of scientists from BISA, including Dr. H.S. Sidhu, Parvider Romana and Manish Koth showed her HTMA trials and explained the activities. The next day she visited the HTMA trials at DuPont Pioneer sites in Jalandhar, Punjab, where Dr. S.K. Kaushik explained project activities, including various types of hybrid trials, heat stress symptoms in the field and promising heattolerant hybrids. After visiting the maize trials in Punjab, Lapitan traveled to southern India, visiting HTMA trials in Hyderabad and Baijenki, Karimnagar. In Hyderabad, she visited the trials planted at a CIMMYT site within the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) campus, where Dr. P.H. Zaidi, CIMMYT senior maize physiologist and HTMA project leader, explained ongoing HTMA field trials across sites in South Asia in collaboration with partners. M.T. Vinayan, CIMMYT India maize stress specialist, discussed trials planted at the Hyderabad site.
Nora Lapitan with the HTMA team at CIMMYT field trials in Hyderabad. Photo: K. Seetharam/CIMMYT-Hyderabad
The presentation was followed by a field tour, where Lapitan could see the performance of some of the most promising heat-tolerant maize hybrids. In the afternoon, Lapitan met with CIMMYT-Hyderabad staff, where Zaidi presented the officeâs overall program and various ongoing projects. The next day, she and Zaidi visited HTMA trials at the Kaveri Seeds site at Baijenki, Telangana. Dr. N.P. Sarma, director of research; Dr. B.S. Dahiya, senior advisor; and Dr. Ramesh Chaurasia, maize breeder at Kaveri Seeds, explained the HTMA field trials at their site.
Lapitan took a field tour, where Chaurasia explained the details of the ongoing trials and showed her a number of promising heat-tolerant hybrids. âThis is very exciting for our company; to see unique products like heat-tolerant hybrids identified within two years of the project start, which we are ready to take forward in largescale testing,â said Sarma. He further explained that there are very few options for such types of maize hybrids, and that this is a newly emerging market. It is certainly a unique option for resource-poor farmers to provide food during those hot and dry months and also feed for their livestock.
After completion of the field visits, Lapitan expressed her strong satisfaction with HTMA project activities, saying âit is exciting to see that partners are ready with first wave of products for deployment within two years. This is remarkable and I congratulate the HTMA team.â
The Agricultural Innovation Project (AIP) for Pakistan, led by CIMMYT and funded by USAID, has accomplished a great deal since its inception in March 2013. Among this yearâs most notable AIP achievements by partner institutions were numerous training sessions and workshops, important vaccine developments, progress in baseline surveys and advances in seed improvement and distribution.
In May, 25 stakeholders involved in dairy production received training on the seven rapid assessment (RA) tools developed and modified by the International Livestock Research Institute (IRLI). Another 25 stakeholders involved in small ruminant production were given training on the small ruminant value chain rapid assessment (SRVC RA) tools by scientists from the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA). On 4 June, a wheat seed value chain workshop organized by CIMMYT in collaboration with the Cereal Crops Research Institute (CCRI) and the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) was held at CCRI in Nowshera, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province (KPP).
Nearly 50 actors in the wheat seed value chain participated in the workshop, in order to analyze gaps and identify opportunities in the KPP wheat seed system. A âtraining of trainersâ was organized by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) on developing and validating a local rice crop check system at Engro Eximp, Muridke, Sheikhupura for seven field staff of the private sector on 24 June.
The World Vegetable Center held a series of customized training workshops with its partners in order to identify gaps, exchange experiences and to further streamline the Centerâs activities among public and private partners. Advances have also been made in improved maize seed under the AIP maize component, which evaluated the performance of about 220 recently introduced maize varieties against locally available checks in spring 2014. Preliminary results from the harvested sites show the good selection potential of introduced maize varieties, which consisted of early to intermediate maturity, climate-resilient and bio-fortified white and yellow kernel hybrids and open pollinated varieties.
Best or comparable varieties identified will be further tested to fulfill variety release procedures. With the help of ILRI, the production of the Peste des Petits Ruminants (PPR) vaccine in Pakistan will soon be improved. The version of the vaccine currently produced in Pakistan is thermo-stable at 35ËC, while the version of the vaccine produced by IRLI is thermo-stable at 45ËC and is therefore more resistant to damage and able to be kept at a wider variety of temperatures.
Dr. Jeff Mariner, a former ILRI employee, visited Pakistan in June and conducted a technical audit of the production process in the two laboratories that produce the PPR vaccine. An action plan that includes training and production of a first batch of vaccine based on ILRIâs vaccine composition was created based on this audit, and will be implemented in August in order to help Pakistan create a more heat-resistant variety of the PPR vaccine.
AIP staff members have also worked this year to address the issue of quality fodder for livestock in Pakistan by promoting the growth of spineless cactus on range-land. AIP Livestock, in collaboration with the Rangeland Research Institute (RRI) of the National Agricultural Research Council (NARC), held a farmerâs field day at NARC on 15 May to train farmers in the advantages and methodology of growing spineless cactus. Forty farmers participated, and many have since planted spineless cactus on their lands. IRRI, in collaboration with Engro Exemp, distributed 600 kilograms (kg) of certified, high-yielding Basmati-515 rice seed to 30 farmers in the Punjab region to scale up the adoption of this variety. Basmati-515 has good quality attributes and a comparatively short growing duration, and is an excellent supplement to super basmati, which has lost its yield potential and is also prone to damage by insects and diseases.
One hundred kg of high-yielding, salt-tolerant seed of low phytate rice variety NIAB IR-9 was also distributed to farmers in Usta Muhammad in Balochistan. In addition, IRRI is working to promote mechanized dry rice seeding in Pakistan; a method which uses significantly less water than rice cultivated using the conventional planting method and is much easier to harvest. IRRI scientists, with the help of local farm machinery manufacturer Greenland Engineering, have identified a proper seed drill for direct dry seeding, which they are popularizing through the creation of public and private partnerships.
In addition, AIP reports that baseline surveys for wheat and conservation agriculture as well as vegetables and mung bean value chains are in progress in Pakistanâs four provinces. A maize baseline survey will be launched in August, and will interview more than 500 maize growers. The CIMMYT socio-economics team is also preparing to initiate durum wheat value chain studies in Pakistan, which will target producers, millers, food processors, seed companies, dealers, consumers and restaurants. A total of US $82,829 in funding was awarded to 14 research and extension projects, including: three projects related to grape and mango processing from PMAS Arid Agricultural University, Rawalpindi; seven projects on citrus from a research group at Citrus Research International; and four projects focusing on mangoes from faculty at the Institute of Horticulture and Institute of Food Science and Technology at the University of Faisalabad.
UC-Davis and the AIP Perennial Horticultural Project in-country coordinator will conduct the first review of these funded projects in September. Looking to the future, AIP partners chaired by UC-Davis met in Islamabad in June and created a working group for vocational training, which collaboratively planned cross-institute vocational training activities. The top priorities are to implement a short course on proposal writing that will enable the collaborators to prepare highquality proposals for upcoming competitive grant submissions on AIP call, as well as statistics courses that cater to the specific needs of trials and breeders.
The Heat Tolerant Maize for Asia (HTMA) project, supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the Feed the Future (FTF) initiative, is a public-private alliance that targets resource-poor people of South Asia who face weather extremes and climate-change effects. HTMA aims to create stable income and food security for resource-poor maize farmers in South Asia through development and deployment of heat-resilient maize hybrids.
The project connects several public sector agricultural research institutions in South Asia, such as the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute; the Maize & Millets Research Institute, Pakistan; National Maize Research Program, Nepal; and Bhutan Maize Program. Also involved in the project are two state agriculture universities from India â Bihar Agriculture University, Sabor and University of Agriculture Sciences (UAS), Raichur â as well as seed companies in the region including DuPont Pioneer, Vibha Agritech, Kaveri Seeds and Ajeet Seeds and international institutions including Purdue University and CIMMYT.
The â2nd Annual Progress Review and Planning Meeting for the HTMA Projectâ was held 22-23 July at UAS, Raichur in Karnataka, India. The meeting was attended by scientists and representatives from the collaborating institutions in South Asia, Purdue University and CIMMYT. Dr. Nora Lapitan represented USAID at the meeting. To take advantage of the presence of renowned scientists at this newly established agricultural university, the inaugural session of the meeting was organized as a special seminar on âGlobal initiatives on climate resilient crops.â
Dr. B.V. Patil, director of education at the university, organized the seminar for UAS staff and students. In his welcome speech Dr. Patil highlighted the importance of the HTMA public-private alliance, especially for addressing such complex issues as developing and deploying heat stress-resilient maize. Dr. BM Prasanna, director of the CIMMYT Global Maize Program, lectured on âAdapting Maize to the Changing Climate,â talking about the importance of climate change effects and CIMMYT initiatives on different continents in the development and deployment of stress-resilient maize hybrids.
This was followed by another highprofile lecture on âClimate-Resilient Crops: A Key Strategy for Feed the Future,â which was delivered by Lapitan. She spoke about the priorities of the FTF initiative, including efforts to reduce poverty and malnutrition in children in target countries through accelerated inclusive agricultural growth and a high-quality diet. The inaugural session was followed by a series of HTMA annual review and planning technical sessions. In the first, Dr. P.H. Zaidi, HTMA project leader and CIMMYT senior maize physiologist, presented updates on the projectâs execution and the progress achieved at the end of the second year. The project has met agreed milestones, and is even ahead on some fronts.
This was followed by detailed progress reports on objectives given by each collaborating partner. Professor Mitch Tuinstra of Purdue University presented on membrane lipid profiling in relation to heat stress, as well as identifying quantitative trait loci for heat stress tolerance and component traits by joint linkage analysis. The leads from each of the public and private sector partners presented the results of the HTMA trials conducted at their locations, and also shared a list of top-ranking, best-bet heat-tolerant maize hybrids to take forward for large-scale testing and deployment. During the projectâs first two years, each partner identified promising and unique maize hybrids suitable for their target environment. In molecular breeding, Zaidi presented the results of the association mapping panel, and Dr. Raman Babu, CIMMYT molecular maize breeder, presented the progress made on genotyping and association analysis. Dr. M.T. Vinayan, CIMMYT maize stress specialist for South Asia, presented a progress report on genomic selection for heat stress tolerance.
Nora Lapitan of USAID addressing the audience in HTMA seminar at UAS Raichur. Photo: UAS, Raichur photographer
Dr. K. Seetharaman, CIMMYT special project scientist in abiotic stress breeding and Dr. A.R. Sadananda, CIMMYT maize seed system specialist , presented jointly on the HTMA-product pipeline, including the promising heat stress-resilient hybrids ready for deployment, and a series of new hybrids ready for testing across locations in target environments. Dr. Christian Boeber, CIMMYT socio-economist, talked about progress in HTMA product targeting, pricing and adoption, summarizing the ongoing work on crop-modelling, reviewed work on the IMPACT model component, presented the survey tool and reviewed study sites in heat stress-prone ecologies of South Asia. Zaidi and Tuinstra presented the progress in project capacity building, including nine Ph.D. student fellowships. three workshops/training courses including in-country courses on âPrecision phenotyping for heat stress toleranceâ in Nepal and Pakistan, and a course on âStatistical analysis and genomic selection.â Project progress was critically reviewed by the project steering committee (PSC) headed by Prasanna, who expressed high satisfaction on its overall development. Speaking for USAID, Lapitan said: âI am highly impressed with the progress in the HTMA project. Within a period of two years there is a first wave of heat-tolerant hybrids ready for large-scale testing and deployment. This is one of the 26 projects in our climate-resilient cereals portfolio, but this project successfully demonstrated excellent balance between up-stream and down-stream research. We have made impressive progress, and are rather ahead on some milestones. I consider it a model project.â
Other PSC members also expressed their satisfaction, and agreed that HTMA has made tremendous progress in products for heat stress ecologies in the partnersâ target environments. After discussing the progress in detail, project partners discussed the work plan and research activities for the third year. A parallel group discussion on objectives helped finalize the workplans and activities for each partner during the projectâs third year.
HTMA-Project Steering Committee meeting.
Finally, the PSC met and discussed the overall progress of the project in detail. In addition to Prasanna chairing the PSC, members include Dr. Mohammda Munir, chief scientific officer, Pakistan Agricultural Research Council; Dr. Yagna Gajadhar Khadka, director, crops and horticulture, Nepal Agricultural Research Council; Dr. Khalid Sultan, research director, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute; Dr. B.V. Patil, director of education at UAS; Tuinstra; Dr. N.P. Sarma, Kaveri Seeds; and Zaidi as member secretary.
Overall, the PSC members expressed their satisfaction with ongoing activities and the progress being made by HTMA, particularly the close collaboration with partner institutions. âI sincerely hope that the same momentum is maintained for rest of the project, which is certainly going to have a strong impact on the maize farming community in stressprone agro-ecologies of South Asia,â said Munir.
The meeting was also attended by special guests, including Drs. Navin Hada and Danielle Knueppel from USAID in Nepal, and Dr. Mahendra Prasad Khanal and Mr. Dilaram Bhandari from the Agricultural Ministry of Nepal. They stated their appreciation for the opportunity to participate in the meeting for the project model and noted HTMAâs fast-track progress. Khanal said, âWe need to have a similar project for maize research and development in Nepal, since we are also pushing for hybrid varieties, and we should use a similar public-private partnership model for the product development and deployment.â
When traveling from Chimoio to Tete along one of the main roads in central Mozambique, one inevitably passes through Malomue, a small rural village in BĂĄruĂš District. Since 2008, conservation agriculture (CA) technologies and improved drought-tolerant maize varieties have been promoted to farmers through various donor-funded projects, including a USAID-funded Feed the Future initiative.
In the past, farmers in the area would cultivate their land, clear the surface of all protective cover and burn the residue from the previous cropping season. The main food security crop in the area is maize, and due to lack of access to improved seed, lowyielding landraces were often planted. The introduction of improved agriculture technologies developed and tested by the Platform of Agriculture Research and Innovation (PARTI) and the Collaborative Research Support Program (CRSP) of the Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management Lab (SANREM) at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) implemented in collaboration with the University of Tennessee, have brought significant change to Malomue. Farmers have been exposed to improved seed, fertilizers, improved weed management practices and more sustainable planting techniques based on conservation agriculture principles and practices.
JosĂš Leuane Dicane, a rural farmer from the community with approximately 15 hectares of cultivated land, said, âThe first lesson I learned is that no fire should enter my plots, and I have managed to avoid burning grass from my neighbors.â Dicane also appreciates the reduced labor required when chemical weed control options and direct seeding techniques are used, as well as the increased moisture retention and fertility increases when legume crops are rotated and crop residues are kept on the soil surface. Improved drought-tolerant maize varieties, developed by CIMMYT and extended through Mozambican private seed companies, have further increased the yields on the fields of farmers such as Dicane. Dicane and his large family have become food self-sufficient. He has planted a garden where he produces higher value horticulture crops under small-scale irrigation, and has become an emerging commercial farmer by successfully selling his produce at a profit in the nearby town of Catandica.
The project has identified him as one of the most visionary and successful farmers in central Mozambique, worthy of sharing his experiences with others in the world. With support from USAID, Dicane and his wife were invited to go to the United States to attend a meeting of SANREM/CRSP. On 16 May, Dicane and his wife Judisse boarded an airplane on their way to the U.S. Neither had ever flown, stayed in a hotel or seen the world outside of Mozambique. This was the experience of a lifetime for them. During the SANREM/CRSP meeting on 20 May, they shared their new farming expertise with other participants and farmers. They spoke as if they had presented to an audience many times. Their very impressive report on the lives of rural farmers from Mozambique made a difference to many of the participants. The farmers from Malomue have been given a voice and the opportunity to describe the gradual changes in their lives. The changes might be small, but viewed through another lens, they are also groundbreaking.
Schoolchildren singing a song they composed about climate change and agriculture at a field day in Gokwe, Zimbabwe.
CIMMYT scientists working on the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) have identified the most suitable maize varieties for high temperature and drought-prone environments in Zimbabwe. The scientists have been conducting research on drought- and heat-tolerant maize varieties in areas that are vulnerable to climate variability and climate change in Zimbabwe. Working in collaboration with Sustainable Agriculture Technology (SAT), a local NGO, the scientists are testing the suitability of drought- and heat-tolerant varieties as a solution to challenges farmers face in âclimate hotspots.â
These farmers are vulnerable to climate change due to erratic and limited rainfall, a situation that is worsened by increasing temperatures. âTo identify these areas, we looked at climate change patterns across Zimbabwe which allowed us to identify five wards: Bikita, Gokwe, Gutu, Mutare and Zaka,â said CIMMYT physiologist Dr. Jill Cairns. The scientists then downscaled projections of monthly changes in rainfall and temperature in these wards to confirm their vulnerability and get a better understanding of the seasonal changes likely to occur by 2050.
In this maize demonstration plot, crop management was done using hand weeding.
In partnership with SAT, scientists are screening drought- and heat-tolerant maize varieties in demonstration plots using different farmer-managed practices that are accessible to local communities. âSAT has very good links to extension leaders, which has helped us reach the community,â said Cairns. âIt holds field days at each demonstration location and has managed to engage locally.â During these events, farmers are provided with information on climate change, improved maize varieties and modern agricultural practices. Cairns said highlights from field days she has attended included seeing schoolchildren sing about climate change and agriculture, and a group of HIV-positive women singing about agriculture and improved seed. The drought-tolerant maize varieties used in this study are from the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa (DTMA) project breeding pipeline, which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The research on heat is a component of DTMA being funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
A public-private partnership that, along with CIMMYT, involves national research organizations such as the Kenya Agricultural & Livestock Research Organization (
