Location: Kenya

For more information, contact CIMMYT’s Kenya office.

AGG-Maize project registers impressive progress

Written by Susan Otieno on October 4, 2022. Posted in News.

Participants of the AGG Maize Mid-Term Review and Planning Meeting at CIMMYT’s Maize Lethal Necrosis Screening Facility in Naivasha, Kenya. (Photo: Dokta Jonte Photography)

The Accelerating Genetic Gains in Maize and Wheat (AGG) Project, which is halfway through its implementation, continues to register impressive achievements. At a meeting focusing on the project’s Maize component, held in Nairobi during July 25-28, B.M. Prasanna, Director of the Global Maize Program at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), highlighted the project’s major achievements in the opening session.

“One of the most important achievements of this project is increasing use of powerful tools and technologies to increase genetic gains in maize breeding pipelines in Africa,” said Prasanna. He noted that the AGG partners are showing keen interest in doubled haploid-based maize breeding. Prasanna pointed out that currently work is ongoing to produce third-generation tropicalized haploid inducers which, in combination with molecular markers, will support accelerated development of improved maize germplasm, a key objective of the AGG Project.

Prasanna also pointed out a significant increase in adoption of stress-tolerant maize in Africa – from less than half a million hectares cultivated under stress tolerant maize varieties in 2010, to 7.2 million hectares currently in 13 African countries, benefitting 44.5 million people. He explained that drought-tolerant maize is not only a productivity enhancing tool but also an innovation for improving the welfare of farmers. “It reduces the probability of crop failure by 30 percent and provides an extra income to farmers at a rate of approximately $240 USD per hectare, equivalent to about nine months of food for a family at no additional cost,” he said, adding that the essence of research is taking improved genetics to farmers and impacting their lives.

He noted there is remarkable progress in maize varietal turnover in sub-Saharan Africa, pointing out particularly efforts in Ethiopia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, where old maize varieties, some dating as far back as 1988, have been replaced with newer climate-resilient varieties. Prasanna highlighted the need to engage with policy makers to put in place appropriate legislation that can accelerate replacement of old or obsolete varieties with improved genetics.

Prasanna stressed on the importance of rapid response to transboundary diseases and insect-pests. CIMMYT has established fall armyworm (FAW) screening facility at Kiboko, Kenya, and that more than 10,000 maize germplasm entries have been screened over the last three years. He applauded South Sudan for being the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to recently release three CIMMYT-developed FAW-tolerant hybrids. He said CIMMYT’s FAW-tolerant inbred lines have been shared with 92 institutions, both public and private, in 34 countries globally since 2018.

Kevin Pixley, CIMMYT Global Genetic Resources Director and Deputy Director General, Breeding and Genetics, encouraged the participants to continuously reflect on making innovative contributions through the AGG project, to serve smallholder farmers and other stakeholders, and to offer sustainable solutions to the food crisis that plagues the world.

B.M. Prasanna addresses partners at the KALRO Kiboko Research station in Kenya during an AGG field visit. (Photo: Dokta Jonte Photography)

Synergies across crops and teams

Pixley pointed out that though the meeting’s focus was on maize, the AGG Project has both maize and wheat components, and the potential for learning between the maize and wheat teams would benefit many, especially with the innovative strides in research from both teams.

Pixley referenced a recent meeting in Ethiopia with colleagues from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and CIMMYT, where discussions explored collaboration among CGIAR centers and other stakeholders in strengthening work on cowpea, chickpea, beans, sorghum, millet and groundnut crops. He noted that maize, wheat and the aforementioned crops are all critical in achieving the mission of CGIAR.

“CIMMYT has been requested, since August of last year, by CGIAR to initiate research projects on sorghum, millet and groundnut because these crops are critical to the success of achieving the mission of CGIAR,” said Pixley. “So, we have recently initiated work on the Accelerated Varietal Improvement and Seed Systems in Africa (AVISA) project together with partners. This is the first step towards OneCGIAR. It’s about synergies across crops and teams.”

Collaborative research commended

The meeting’s Chief Guest, Felister Makini, Deputy Director General – Crops of the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation (KALRO), commended the collaborative research undertaken by CIMMYT and other CGIAR partners. She noted that the partnerships continue to build on synergies that strengthen institutional financial, physical and human resources. She attested that collaboration between KALRO and CGIAR dates back to the 1980s, beginning with training in maize breeding, and then subsequent collaboration on developing climate-adaptive improved maize varieties and training of KALRO technicians in maize lethal necrosis (MLN) screening and management among other areas.

Maize and wheat are staple food sources in Kenya and sub-Saharan Africa and as the population increases, new methods and approaches must be found to accelerate development and deployment of improved maize and wheat varieties. She challenged the partners to intensify research and come out with high-yielding varieties that are resistant or tolerant to a wide range of biotic and abiotic stresses.

The Inaugural Session also featured remarks from the representatives of the AGG funders – Gary Atlin from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Jonna Davis from the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), and John Derera from IITA, an AGG project partner.

A total of 116 participants, including representatives from National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) in 13 AGG-Maize partner countries in Africa and seed companies, participated in the meeting. Participants also visited the KALRO-CIMMYT MLN Screening Facility at Naivasha, and KALRO-CIMMYT maize experiments at Kiboko, Kenya, including the work being done at the maize doubled haploid and FAW facilities.

CGIAR Initiative: Digital Innovation

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on September 26, 2022. Posted in Uncategorized.

Digital innovations can enable an unprecedented transformation of food, land and water systems for greater climate resilience and sustainability. To realize this potential, multidisciplinary expertise across the CGIAR must find solutions to three challenges affecting the Global South:

The digital divide: digital technologies and infrastructure do not meet people’s needs, especially women and rural populations. More than 600 million people live outside the reach of mobile networks, two-thirds of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
Weak information systems: available information is inadequate or does not reach those who need it most. More than 300 million small-scale producers lack access to digital climate services. Weak information systems prevent evidence-based policy responses and lead to missed opportunities to reduce poverty and increase economic growth.
Limited digital capabilities: digital literacy and skill levels across the Global South remain low, particularly for marginalized and food-insecure individuals and groups such as women.

Objective

The Digital Innovation Initiative aims to develop and support digital innovations to stimulate the inclusive, sustainable transformation of food, land and water systems in the areas of investments that policymakers could make to close the digital divide, information delivery systems that allow more people to take action against predicted risks, and ways for partner organizations and marginalized communities to enhance digital capabilities, access resources and opportunities.

This objective will be achieved through:

Generating evidence on impacts of digital innovations and collaborative partnerships to create an enabling environment for digital ecosystems, unlocking local innovators’ access to investments and advanced technologies.
Developing a suite of tools and guidelines to bridge the digital divide, ensuring that gender equality and social inclusion underly the development of digital innovations, research programs and their implementation.
System dynamics modeling to understand complex dynamics in agrifood systems and support natural resource management authorities in equitably allocating water and land resources and managing risks.
Real-time food system monitoring to provide timely and reliable information to stakeholders by applying AI-driven analytics of satellite remote sensing, internet-connected sensors, and other ground-truthed data from multidisciplinary sources.
Strengthening partners’ capacity to collect real-time data, conduct data analytics and make data-driven decisions to enable equitable digital platforms and services.

Novel technology to reduce the complexity of maize seed production and increase maize hybrid yields in farmer’s fields

Written by Sarah Fernandes on July 27, 2022. Posted in Publications.

A recently published study in Nature Communications Biology journal demonstrates the potential of a novel seed production technology to transform Africa’s seed production system, conferring important benefits to smallholder maize farmers and seed companies in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Seed Production Technology for Africa (SPTA) process enables production of non-pollen-producing inbred seed that can be used in a two-step multiplication process to produce commercial seed of hybrid varieties containing equal parts pollen producing and non-pollen producing plants. The pollen producing plants provide pollen for the entire field, while the non-pollen producing plants deliver additional grain since they save energy by not producing pollen. Hybrids in which fifty percent of the plants are non-pollen producing have a significant grain yield advantage compared with hybrids in which all plants produce pollen.

Farmers and researchers evaluated the performance of fifty percent non-pollen producing (FNP) hybrids in side-by-side comparisons across diverse farm sites in Kenya, South Africa, and Zimbabwe between 2016 and 2019. The results demonstrate that FNP hybrids deliver an average yield increase of 200 kg per hectare, representing a 10-20% increase at current sub-Saharan Africa yield levels where farmers face frequent drought and sub-optimal soil fertility. The FNP yield advantage was consistent in both low yielding and higher yielding conditions. Additionally, in extensive farmer surveys, farmers rated the FNP hybrids higher than the pollen producing counterparts, recognizing the grain yield advantage. Favorable rating of FNP hybrids suggests that farmers are likely to adopt them once available.

Although consistent and steady improvement is being made for grain yield potential through plant breeding, the yield benefit of FNP hybrids is the equivalent of approximately six years of breeding progress under stressful conditions. The FNP trait provided a consistent yield advantage in several genetically unique hybrids evaluated, indicating that the yield advantage from FNP will be complementary to and additive with progress from maize breeding efforts.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the challenge of delivering genetically pure, high-quality seed is substantial. Seed companies in the region contend with a complex and costly system to produce commercial seed. In addition to delivering higher grain yield to farmers through the FNP trait, the SPTA process will reduce the complexity of seed production, enabling seed producers to deliver higher purity improved hybrid seeds in sufficient quantities for smallholder farmers.

Hybrid seed production requires that one of the parents of the hybrid is prevented from producing pollen, ensuring that the seed harvested has been cross-fertilized by the pollen parent. Most hybrid seed production in sub-Saharan Africa involves physical removal of the tassels of the seed parent prior to the release of pollen, a process known as detasseling. Detasseling is important in commercial seed production to prevent self-fertilization of the seed parent plants. Nearly all detasseling in sub-Saharan Africa is done by hand, which is a labor-intensive and time-sensitive process. Poorly executed or ill-timed detasseling results in unwanted self-fertilization of the seed parent, leading to rejection of seed and incurring losses to the seed producer. Furthermore, timely detasseling typically involves removal of one or more leaves together with the tassel, reducing the photosynthetic capacity of the plant, and lowering the seed yield.

Use of the SPTA process ensures that the seed parent of the hybrid will not produce pollen, thereby eliminating the need for detasseling. This means seed producers can ensure higher integrity of hybrid seed while reducing costs and increasing seed yield. The technology is well suited for the three-way hybrid production commonly used in sub-Saharan Africa. Economic advantages to seed companies of using seed from the SPTA process is also expected to provide incentive to replace older, lower yielding varieties with more recently developed hybrids. Providing improved quality seed of better hybrids while delivering the yield advantage of the FNP trait can benefit smallholder maize farmers throughout the region. Saving costs can help the seed sector remain strong and competitive, which leads to increasingly better options for farmers in the future.

Read the full study: Incorporating male sterility increases hybrid maize yield in low input African farming systems

The research was conducted by scientists from the Seed Production Technology for Africa project, a collaborative initiative of the Agricultural Research Council of South Africa (ARC), International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), CortevaTM Agriscience, Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO), and QualiBasic Seed Company (QBS).

Cover photo: A woman with a baby on her back evaluating maize plants farmer’s plots hosting FNP trials in Embu, Kenya. Photo: Hugo DeGroote/CIMMYT

CIMMYT researchers and staff from the East Africa Grain Council hold loaves of bread at a bakery on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. (Photo: Susan Otieno/CIMMYT)

Exploring the potential for blended wheat flours in Kenya

Written by Susan Otieno on July 26, 2022. Posted in Features.

Over the years, wheat-based foods have increasingly been incorporated as part of Kenyan meals. One example is packaged bread, which has become a common feature on Kenyan breakfast tables with millions of loaves from industrial bakeries delivered to retail shops daily, countrywide. Another example is chapati — a round unleavened flat bread. Once reserved for special occasions, chapati can now be purchased from roadside venders throughout the capital Nairobi.

Millers and processors in Kenya are highly dependent on imported wheat to meet the strong demand for wheat-based food products. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine, two of the most important sources of imported wheat for Kenya, presents a major threat to millers and industrial bakeries. Prices for bread and chapati are increasing and may continue to increase. Governments and wheat-related industries are looking at short- and long-term options to reduce utilization of imported wheat. One short-term option is the blending of wheat flour with flour derived from locally available crops, such as cassava, millet or sorghum.

Record-high price of wheat

A sign at a flour mill in East Africa shows proportions of wheat from different origins (Argentina, Russia, Ukraine and local) used in that particular day’s production. (Photo: Alison Bentley/CIMMYT)

A visit to local industrial bakeries and wheat flour millers on the outskirts of Nairobi by International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) researchers confirmed the effects of record-high global prices of wheat. Global Wheat Program director Alison Bentley and senior economist Jason Donovan had conversations with leaders of industrial bakeries and millers, who gave insights into their grain demands, production processes and sales volumes.

One of the leaders of an established industrial bakery divulged that they use approximately 15,000 tons of wheat flour monthly to make baked products, with only 10% of the wheat obtained locally.

“In the last ten years, local wheat production has comprised about ten to fifteen percent of our cereal mixture for bread, and we were already paying higher prices to farmers compared to import prices. The farmers were already being paid about 30 to 40 dollars more per ton,” a manager of a large baking industry in Kenya explained to the CIMMYT team.

According to government regulations, millers and bakeries must purchase locally produced wheat at agreed prices before they can buy imported wheat. He agreed that though the quality of local wheat is good, the local production cannot compete with the higher volume of imported wheat or its lower price.

Growing wheat in East Africa

It has been more than four months since the Russia-Ukraine conflict unfolded, and since then prices of wheat-based products have been increasing significantly. The current crisis has sparked the debate on low levels of self-sufficiency in food production for many countries. And this is especially the case for wheat in Kenya, and more widely in Africa.

Bentley points out that the biophysical conditions to produce wheat in East Africa are present and favorable. However, more work is needed to strengthen local wheat production, starting with efficient seed systems. Farmers who are interested in growing wheat need access to high performing and stress-tolerant wheat varieties.

CIMMYT Global Wheat Program director, Alison Bentley, observes the bread making process at an industrial bakery on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. (Photo: Susan Otieno/CIMMYT)

Practical response to the crisis

With no certainty as to how long the conflict will continue and climate change resulting in significant crop loss in key production zones, wheat shortages on international markets could become a reality. Blending of wheat flour with locally available crops could be an option as an immediate response to the current scarcity of wheat in East Africa. “Blending [flour] is when for instance five percent of wheat flour is replaced with flour from a different crop such as sorghum or cassava,” Bentley explained.

Donovan added that, though it might seem like a small number, it becomes significant in consideration to the volume of wheat that industries use to make different products, translating into thousands of metric tons. He noted that blending flour therefore has the potential to create a win-win situtation, because it can boost the demand for local crops and address uncertainty and price volatility on international wheat markets.

Consumer acceptance of new products

Different types of flour on supermarket shelves in Kenya. (Photo: Pieter Rutsaert/CIMMYT)

During a full week of engagements with universities, partners, and industry experts in Kenya, the CIMMYT team explored the current interest of the sector in blending wheat flour. Several partners agreed that this could be a potential way forward for the grain industry but all highlighted one key element: the importance of consumer acceptance. If the functionality of the flour or taste would be negatively influenced by blending wheat flour, it would represent a no-go from the industry, even if blends would have higher nutritional benefits or lower prices. “This reinforces the need to understand consumer preferences and evaluate both the functionality of the flour to produce essential food products such as chapati or bread as well as the taste of those products,” Pieter Rutsaert explained.

CIMMYT researchers Sarah Kariuki and Pieter Rutsaert, both Markets and Value Chain Specialists, and Maria Itria Ibba, Head of the Wheat Quality Lab, are therefore engaging with local millers and universities in Kenya to design bread and chapati products derived from different wheat blends, to include blends comprised of 5%, 15% and 20% of cassava or sorghum. Lab testing and preliminary consumer testing will be used to identify the most promising products. These products will be taken to the streets in urban and peri-urban Nairobi to assess consumer tastes and preferences, through sensory analysis and at-home testing.

The market intelligence gained will offer foundational support for CGIAR’s Seed Equal Initiative to accelerate the growth of a demand-driven seed system. By gathering and analyzing consumer preferences on selected crops for blending, such as from farmers and milling industries, Donovan pointed out that CGIAR breeding will continue to make informed choices and prioritize breeding for specific crops, that seek to address specific challenges, therefore having greater impact.

Donovan noted that data and information from the studies will provide much needed evidence and fill information gaps that will support governments, millers, processors and farmers to make decisions in response to the evolving wheat crisis.

Soil scientists and stakeholders reflect on progress and impacts of CIMMYT-Rwanda partnership for soil health

Written by Sarah Fernandes on July 1, 2022. Posted in Blogs.

Participants at the mid-term review and planning meeting on the Guiding Acid Soil Management Investments in Africa (GAIA) project. Photo CIMMYT

The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB) recently held a mid-term review and planning meeting on the Guiding Acid Soil Management Investments in Africa (GAIA) project.

The meeting aimed to track the progress made in the first year of the project’s implementation, identify challenges, document lessons learned, and develop an action plan for the following year, based on identified gaps and priorities.

In his welcoming remarks, RAB Director General Patrick Karangwa highlighted the close partnership between the two institutions.

“The workshop is not only about reviewing the progress but also about creating a strong partnership and interaction with each other to form a lasting togetherness that can later be useful for supporting each other in running the program’s activities of GAIA in the region,” he said.

Karangwa also noted the dynamism and enthusiasm of the GAIA team and partners, who made “remarkable successes” during a challenging period due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Along with plant nutrition and improved land management, healthier soils contribute to more productive and profitable smallholder enterprises. The GAIA project uses scalable innovations to provide reliable, timely and actionable data and insights on soil health and crop performance, at farm and regional levels.

The workshop brought together about 49 participant including regional program implementing partners, key stakeholders, and scientists from Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe to participate in more than 20 face-to-face and virtual presentations, breakout sessions, and team-building exercises.

“The key to project success is a strong partnership and collaboration with national and regional partners, particularly with private and public sectors ‘’ said Sieglinde Snapp, the director of the Sustainable Agrifood Systems (SAS) program at CIMMYT.

The participants addressed the work undertaken around eight work packages: spatial ex-ante analysis, adoption research on lime value chains, agronomy research for lime recommendations, support to the lime sector, policy support, coordination and advocacy, data use and management, and communication.

“We are encouraged by the progress made so far and expect to have a measurable impact in the next years. Let us feel comfortable to identify new area of research, based on the work conducted so far and national priorities” said Frédéric Baudron, GAIA project lead at CIMMYT.

GAIA is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and implemented by CIMMYT in partnership with the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International; Dalberg; national agricultural research systems in Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania; the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania; Wageningen University; and the University of California – Davis. The project aims to provide data-driven and spatially explicit recommendations to increase returns on investment for farmers, the private sector, and governments in Africa.

2022 Excellence in International Service Award

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on June 13, 2022. Posted in News.

Scientist Pablo D Olivera Firpo has been awarded the Excellence in International Service Award by Advancing the Science of Plant Pathology (APS) for outstanding contributions to plant pathology by APS members for countries other than their own.

Firpo was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, where he received a BSc degree as an agronomy engineer in 1997 from the University of the Republic, College of Agronomy. His PhD degree in 2008 was from the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of Minnesota (UMN). He began his career as a postdoctoral research associate with the Department of Plant Pathology and the USDA-ARS Cereal Disease Lab, and then became a research assistant professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at UMN in 2017.

Firpo has been a vital member in the global cereal rust pathology community and contributed substantially to the fight against Ug99 and other virulent wheat stem rust races that have re-emerged around the world and pose serious threats to food security. Firpo’s contributions are not only within the realm of research of great impact, but also include training 79 scientists and facilitating the establishment of a world-class research group in Ethiopia. He has worked to improve international germplasm screening in Ethiopia. As a postdoctoral research associate, Firpo’s first assignment was to search for new sources of resistance to Ug99 in durum wheat, used for pasta, and related tetraploid wheat lines. That project took him to Ethiopia, where an international Ug99-screening nursery for durum wheat was established at Debre Zeit Research Center. He worked closely with researchers from the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR) and the International Maize and Wheat Research Center (CIMMYT) to improve the methodologies for screening and to provide hands-on training to researchers managing the international screening nursery. During a period of 10 years (from 2009 to 2019), he traveled to Ethiopia 21 times to evaluate stem rust reactions of US and international durum wheat germplasm and completed the screening of the entire durum collection (more than 8,000 accessions) from the USDA National Small Grains Collection.

Firpo’s research on sources and genetics of stem rust resistance led to discoveries of valuable genetic resistance in durum and other relatives of wheat. These sources of resistance have provided the needed diversity to ensure the development and sustainability of durable stem rust resistance.

With frequent epidemics and severe yield losses caused by stem rust in eastern Africa, establishing a functional rust pathology laboratory to support international screening, as well as to monitor and detect new virulences in the pathogen population, became a high priority for the international wheat research community. Utilizing the onground opportunities in Ethiopia, Firpo and his colleagues at the CDL and UMN enthusiastically participated in building up the rust pathology lab at the Ambo Plant Protection Center of EIAR. Firpo traveled to Ambo 11 times to provide hands-on training to staff and to develop cereal rust protocols to suit local conditions. He worked closely with colleagues at CDL, EIAR, and CIMMYT to secure and upgrade facilities, equipment and supplies to a standard that ensures reliable rust work will be carried out. As a result, the rust pathology lab at the Ambo Center became the only laboratory in eastern Africa, and one of a handful in the world, that can conduct high-quality race analysis of wheat stem rust samples and provide vital and necessary support for breeding global wheat varieties for rust resistance. Currently, the laboratory is playing a critical role in the global surveillance of the stem rust pathogen and supports wheat breeding efforts led by EIAR, CIMMYT, and the USDA.

Firpo has been passionate in supporting capacity building of human resources in Ethiopia and elsewhere. He has been eager to share his knowledge whenever he encounters an opportunity to do so. In addition to the direct training of the staff at the Ambo Center, Firpo accepted invitations to provide training lectures and hands-on field- and greenhouse-based workshops on rust pathology at three research centers in Ethiopia. He prepared training materials, delivered a total of 12 lectures and 10 practical sessions in three Ethiopia national workshops in 2014, 2015, and 2017. These workshops enhanced human resource development and technical capacity in Ethiopia in cereal rust pathology; participants included a total of 64 junior scientists and technical staff from nationwide research centers. Beyond Ethiopia, he was responsible for developing and implementing a six-week training program in cereal rust prevention and control for international scientists. This training program, under the aegis of the Stakman-Borlaug Center for Sustainable Plant Health in the Department of Plant Pathology, University of Minnesota, provided an experiential learning opportunity for international scientists interested in acquiring knowledge and practical skills in all facets of working with cereal rusts. The program trained 15 rust pathologists and wheat scientists from Ethiopia, Kenya, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan, ranging from promising young scientists selected by the USDA as Borlaug Fellows to principal and senior scientists in their respective countries. Many of these trainees have become vital partners in the global surveillance network for cereal rusts.

Working in collaboration with CDL and international scientists, Firpo has been closely involved in global surveillance of the stem rust pathogen, spurred by monitoring the movements of, and detecting, new variants in the Ug99 race group. Since 2009, he and the team at the CDL have analyzed 2,500 stem rust samples from 22 countries, described over 35 new races, and identified significant virulence combinations that overcome stem rust resistance genes widely deployed in global wheat varieties. Among the most significant discoveries were the identification of active sexual populations of the stem rust pathogen in Kazakhstan, Georgia, Germany, and Spain that have unprecedented virulence and genetic diversities. More than 320 new virulent types (or races) were identified from these sexual populations. Evolution in these populations will present continued challenges to wheat breeding. Research in race analysis has provided valuable pathogen isolates that are used to evaluate breeding germplasm to select for resistant wheat varieties and to identify novel sources of stem rust resistance.

Kate Dreher, Data Manager at CIMMYT, presents to scientists, technicians, data management and support teams during the training on the Enterprise Breeding System (EBS) in Nairobi, Kenya. (Photo: Susan Umazi Otieno/CIMMYT)

Researchers in East Africa add the Enterprise Breeding System to their work tools

Written by Susan Otieno on June 8, 2022. Posted in News.

Scientists overseeing breeding, principal technicians and data management and support staff from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) learned about the Enterprise Breeding System (EBS) at a training in Nairobi, Kenya, on May 4–6, 2022. This was the first in-person training on this advanced tool held in Eastern Africa.

Kate Dreher, Data Manager at CIMMYT, was the primary trainer. Dreher sought to ensure that scientists and their teams are well equipped to confidently use the EBS for their programs, including the creation and management of trials and nurseries. During the training, participants had the opportunity to test, review and give feedback on the system.

“The EBS is an online comprehensive system that brings together different types of data, including field observations and genotypic data, to harmonize processes across all teams and enable optimized decision-making in the short term and continuous learning for the long term,” Dreher said.

She explained that the EBS is more efficient than the former approach of using the Excel-based Maize Fieldbook software, even though it managed several useful processes.

The EBS is currently available to registered breeding and support team members and data managers from CIMMYT, IITA, IRRI and AfricaRice, across all geographies where related programs are implemented. Currently, the EBS is used by programs in maize, rice and wheat crops.

A more streamlined approach

“Although teams sent germplasm and phenotypic data for centralized storage in two databases (IMIS-GMS and MaizeFinder) managed by the data management team in Mexico in the past, this required curation after the data had already been generated,” Dreher said. “The EBS will enable teams to manage their germplasm and trial nursery data directly within one system.”

The EBS stores information on germplasm and linked seed inventory items. It is also designed to house and perform analyses using phenotypic and genotypic data. Users can also capture metadata about their trials and nurseries, such as basic agronomic management information and the GPS coordinates of sites where experiments are conducted.

Yoseph Beyene, Regional Maize Breeding Coordinator for Africa and Maize Breeder for Eastern Africa at CIMMYT, observed that the training gave him firsthand information on the current capabilities and use of the live version to search germplasm and seed, and the capabilities to create nurseries and trials.

“In the AGG project, we have one primary objective which focuses on implementing improved data management, experimental designs and breeding methods to accelerate genetic gain and improved breeding efficiency. Therefore, implementing EBS is one of the top priorities for AGG project,” said Yoseph, who leads the Accelerating Genetic Gains in Maize and Wheat for Improved Livelihoods Project (AGG).

Lourine Bii, an Assistant Research Associate who recently joined CIMMYT and the only female research technician on the Global Maize program based in Kenya, also found the training useful. “The EBS is a fantastic system that enables an individual to create experiments. The system links a team, for instance a product development team, to get live updates on the various stages of creating an experiment, reducing back and forth by email.”

The system’s software development is ongoing. The development team continues to add and enhance features based on feedback from users.

Guiding Acid Soil Management Investments in Africa (GAIA)

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on June 1, 2022. Posted in Uncategorized.

Healthier soils, plant nutrition and improved land management contribute to more productive and profitable smallholder enterprises. The Guiding Acid Soil Management Investments in Africa (GAIA) project will address key knowledge gaps related to soil health and improved agronomy. It will use scalable innovations to provide reliable, timely and actionable data and insights on soil health and crop performance, at farm and regional levels.

Novel diagnostic approaches, data assets, decision aids and better farm management practices are increasingly being scaled and integrated with other data, products and services. These services can be integrated with solution-focused, bundled services that support farmers in their timely management and operational decisions. They can also be integrated with input delivery systems, including digitally enabled agricultural advisory systems.

Key expected results in the next five years include:

National soil information services fully integrated with functioning agronomy research pipelines within key international and national research organizations of at least seven focus countries in sub-Saharan Africa and SA.
Soil information services solutions are integrated with agricultural advisory services into overall decision agriculture platforms at the national level.
Innovative diagnostic tools and decision aids are increasingly used at farm and regional level.
All investments routinely apply FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) data principles and practices.

The vision of success of this project is the rehabilitation of acid soils at scale in East Africa — thanks to data-driven and spatially-explicit recommendations — leading to maximized (and inclusive) returns on investment for farmers, private companies and governments. While the analysis and outputs will be targeted to the specific needs of partner counties (Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania), the methodology, workflows and much of the analysis will be of relevance for other countries in the region. While the specific focus of the project is on acid soils, the frameworks will be adaptable and applicable to other soil health and geospatial agronomic challenges. The ultimate goal is sustainable intensification of African smallholder farming systems.

In line with its vision and goal, GAIA will deliver three primary outcomes:

Increase depth and utility of data and evidence related to acid soil management in the region.
Provide support to governments and the private sector to stimulate investment in acid soil management in the region.
Improve access and use of data related to acid soil management in the region.

Rapid Point-of-Care Diagnostics for Wheat Rusts (MARPLE)

Written by Bea Ciordia on May 30, 2022. Posted in Uncategorized.

MARPLE (Mobile And Real-time PLant disEase) diagnostics is a new innovative approach for fungal crop pathogen diagnostics developed by Diane Saunders’s team at the John Innes Centre.

MARPLE is the first operational system in the world using nanopore sequencing for rapid diagnostics and surveillance of complex fungal pathogens in situ. Generating results in 48 hours of field sampling, this new digital diagnostic strategy is leading revolutionary changes in plant disease diagnostics. Rapid strain level diagnostics are essential to quickly find new emergent strains and guide appropriate control measures.

Through this project, CIMMYT will:

Deploy and scale MARPLE to priority geographies and diseases as part of the Current and Emerging Threats to Crops Innovation Lab led by Penn State University / PlantVillage and funded by USAID’s Feed the Future.
Build national partner capacity for advanced disease diagnostics. We will focus geographically on Ethiopia, Kenya and Nepal for deployment of wheat stripe and stem rust diagnostics, with possible expansion to Bangladesh and Zambia (wheat blast).
Integrate this new in-country diagnostic capacity with recently developed disease forecasting models and early warning systems. Already functional for wheat stripe rust, the project plans to expand MARPLE to incorporate wheat stem rust and wheat blast.

Participants of the kick-off meeting for the Ukama Ustawi Initiative stand for a group photo in Nairobi, Kenya. (Photo: Mwihaki Mundia/ILRI)

New CGIAR Initiative to catalyze resilient agrifood systems in eastern and southern Africa

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on May 9, 2022. Posted in News.

Partners of CGIAR’s new regional integrated Initiative in eastern and southern Africa held a kick-off meeting in Nairobi on March 2–3, 2022. Eighty-five people participated, including national agricultural research extension programs, government representatives, private sector actors, funders and national and regional agricultural research and development organizations.

Entitled Ukama Ustawi, the Initiative aims to support climate-smart agriculture and livelihoods in 12 countries in eastern and southern Africa: Kenya, Zambia, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe (in Phase 1); Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda (in Phase 2); and Eswatini, Madagascar, Mozambique and South Africa (in Phase 3).

The Initiative aims to help millions of smallholders intensify, diversify and de-risk maize-mixed farming through improved extension services, institutional capacity strengthening, targeted farm management bundles, policy support, enterprise development and private investment.

Ukama Ustawi is a bilingual word derived from the Shona and Swahili languages. In Shona, Ukama refers to partnerships, and in Swahili, Ustawi means well-being and development. Together, they resemble the vision for the Initiative to achieve system-level development through innovative partnerships.

The meeting brought together partners to get to know each other, understand roles and responsibilities, identify priorities for 2022, and review the cross-cutting programmatic underpinnings of Ukama Ustawi — including gender and social inclusion, capacity strengthening and learning.

Baitsi Podisi, representing the Centre for Coordination of Agricultural Research and Development for Southern Africa (CCARDESA), said he is excited to be part of the Initiative: “CCARDESA, in its cooperation and coordination mandate, can learn a lot from CGIAR in restructuring to respond to the changing times.” Podisi supported the partnership with CGIAR in the Initiative’s embedded approach to policy dialogue, working with partners such as CCARDESA, the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA) and the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN).

Similarly, FANRPAN’s Francis Hale emphasized the need not to re-invent the wheel but to work with partners who already have a convening power, to advance the policy agenda for diversification and sustainable intensification.

What were key issues discussed?

One of the features of Ukama Ustawi is the use of four interconnected platforms: a scaling hub, a policy hub, an accelerator program and a learning platform. These will provide spaces for exchange and learning with partners across all CGIAR Initiatives in the region. Partners conducted a series of ‘fishbowl’ interactions across work packages to review the planned activities and provide a clearer understanding of deliverables, identify synergies, potential overlaps, common partners and countries, and set timelines.

The Initiative will work with innovative multimedia platforms to change knowledge, attitudes and practices of millions of farmers in eastern and southern Africa. One key partner in this area is the Shamba Shape Up TV show and the iShamba digital platform. Sophie Rottman, Producer of Shamba Shape Up, said she is looking forward to the work with Initiative partners, that will help expand the show to Uganda and Zambia.

Jean Claude Rubyogo, representing the Pan-Africa Bean Research Alliance (PABRA) said: “It is time we move away from CGIAR-initiated to country-initiated development activities. This is what Ukama Ustawi is all about”.

Martin Kropff, Global Director of Resilient Agrifood Systems at CGIAR, explained CGIAR’s regional integrated initiatives are designed to respond to national/regional demands. “The initiatives will start by working with partners to assess the food and nutritional challenges in the region, and tackle them by bringing in innovative solutions.”

The event was concluded by agreeing on the implementation of the inception phase of the Ukama Ustawi Initiative, and follow-on discussions to finalize key activities in 2022.

Learn more about the Ukama Ustawi Initiative.

Materials from the meeting are available online:

This article was originally published on CGIAR.org.

CGIAR research highlighted among climate innovations to meet net zero emissions

Written by Sam Storr on April 18, 2022. Posted in News.

Agriculture is one of the five main greenhouse gas-emitting sectors where innovations can be found to reach net zero emissions, according to the new documentary and ten-part miniseries “Solving for Zero: The Search for Climate Innovation.” The documentary tells the stories of scientists and innovators racing to develop solutions such as low-carbon cement, wind-powered global transportation, fusion electricity generation and sand that dissolves carbon in the oceans.

Three CGIAR scientists are featured in the documentary, speaking about the contributions being made by agricultural research.

Whereas all sectors of the global economy must contribute to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 to prevent the worse effects of climate change, agricultural innovations are needed by farmers at the front line of climate change today.

CIMMYT breeder Yoseph Beyene spoke to filmmakers about the use of molecular breeding to predict yield potential. (Image: Wondrium.com)

Breeding climate-smart crops

“Climate change has been a great disaster to us. Day by day it’s getting worse,” said Veronica Dungey, a maize farmer in Kenya interviewed for the documentary.

Around the world, 200 million people depend on maize for their livelihood, while 90% of farmers in Africa are smallholder farmers dependent on rainfall, and facing drought, heatwaves, floods, pests and disease related to climate change. According to CGIAR, agriculture must deliver 60% more food by 2050, but without new technologies, each 1°C of warming will reduce production by 5%.

“Seed is basic to everything. The whole family is dependent on the produce from the farm,” explained Yoseph Beyene, Regional Maize Breeding Coordinator for Africa and Maize Breeder for Eastern Africa at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). As a child in a smallholder farming family with no access to improved seeds, Beyene learned the importance of selecting the right seed from year to year. It was at high school that Beyene was shown the difference between improved varieties and the locally-grown seed, and decided to pursue a career as a crop breeder.

Yoseph Beyene examines breeding lines. (Image: Wondrium.com)

Today, the CIMMYT maize program has released 200 hybrid maize varieties adapted for drought conditions in sub-Saharan Africa, called hybrids because they combine maize lines selected to express important traits over several generations. Alongside other CGIAR Research Centers, CIMMYT continues to innovate with accelerated breeding approaches to benefit smallholder farmers.

“Currently we use two kinds of breeding. One is conventional breeding, and another one is molecular breeding to accelerate variety development. In conventional breeding you have to evaluate the hybrid in the field,” Beyene said. “Using molecular markers, instead of phenotypic evaluation in the field, we are evaluating the genetic material of a particular line. We can predict based on marker data which new material is potentially good for yield.”

Such innovations are necessary considering the speed and the complexity of challenges faced by smallholder farmers due climate change, which now includes fall armyworm. “Fall armyworm is a recent pest in the tropics and has affected a lot of countries,” said Moses Siambi, CIMMYT Regional Representative for Africa. “Increased temperatures have a direct impact on maize production because of the combination of temperature of humidity, and then you have these high insect populations that lead to low yield.”

Resistance to fall armyworm is now included in new CIMMYT maize hybrids alongside many other traits such as yield, nutrition, and multiple environmental and disease resistances.

Ana María Loboguerrero, Research Director for Climate Action at the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT, spoke about CGIAR’s community-focused climate work. (Image: Wondrium.com)

Building on CGIAR’s climate legacy

Ana María Loboguerrero, Research Director for Climate Action at the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), told the filmmakers about CGIAR’s community-focused climate work, which includes Climate-Smart Villages and Valleys. Launched in 2009, these ongoing projects span the global South and effectively bridge the gap between innovation, research and farmers living with the climate crisis at their doorsteps.

“Technological innovations are critical to food system transformation,” said Loboguerrero, who was a principal researcher for the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). “But if local contexts are not considered, even the best innovations may fail because they do not respond to beneficiaries needs.”

CCAFS’s impressive legacy — in research, influencing policy and informing $3.5 billion of climate-smart investments, among many achievements — is now being built upon by a new CGIAR portfolio of initiatives. Several initiatives focus on building systemic resilience against climate and scaling up climate action started by CCAFS that will contribute to a net-zero carbon future.

Loboguerrero pointed to other innovations that were adopted because they addressed local needs and were culturally appropriate. These include the uptake of new varieties of wheat, maize, rice and beans developed by CGIAR Research Centers. Taste, color, texture, cooking time and market demand are critical to the success of new varieties. Being drought-resistant or flood-tolerant is not enough.

Local Technical Agroclimatic Committees, another CCAFS innovation that is currently implemented in 11 countries across Latin America, effectively delivers weather information in agrarian communities across the tropics. Local farmers lead these committees to receive and disseminate weather information to better plan when they sow their seeds. “This success would not have been possible if scientists hadn’t gotten out of their labs to collaborate with producers in the field,” Loboguerrero said.

Climate adaptation solutions

Across CGIAR, which represents 13 Research Centers and Alliances, and a network of national and private sector partners, the goal is to provide climate adaptation solutions to 500 million small-scale farmers around the world by 2030. This work also covers reducing agricultural emissions, environmental impacts and even the possibility of capturing carbon while improving soil health.

Interested in learning more? The documentary “Solving for Zero: The Search for Climate Innovation” is available at Wondrium.com alongside a 10-part miniseries exploring the ongoing effort to address climate change.

Pauline Muindi (left), Gender Research Associate at CIMMYT listens to Wilbroda (right), a maize farmer from Kakamega County, Kenya, giving feedback on decision-making between spouses on maize farming. On the table are vignettes showing five different decision-making scenarios based on fictitious husband and wife characters. (Photo: Susan Umazi Otieno/CIMMYT)

Who does what in maize farming in Kenya?

Written by Susan Otieno on March 23, 2022. Posted in Features.

Women’s involvement in maize production is often shrouded in assumptions. One might assume that women have minimal say in management decisions, especially regarding jointly managed plots, due to rigid gender norms that prioritize men’s decisions on farming-related matters. However, operating under such assumptions about women’s role in the management of maize farms risks confining women to specific roles and not meeting their needs in the maize seed system.

To break these assumptions, Rachel Voss, Gender Specialist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), and a team of fellow researchers are conducting a study, “Unpacking maize plot management roles of women and men in smallholder households in Kenya.” The study, part of the Accelerating Genetic Gains in Maize and Wheat (AGG) project, aims to asses the gender dynamics of maize management in Kenya in order to categorize plots and households, analyzing intrahousehold decision-making and evaluating which women have the power and agency to apply their preferences for seed on their farms — and which ones do not.

Challenging perceptions

Take, for example, Sofa Eshiali, a 60-year-old farmer from Ikolomani, western Kenya, who participated in the study. She defies the stereotype of women having a limited role in maize farming, as she is deeply involved in decision-making on maize production in her household and represents an important client for new breeding efforts and more inclusive seed distribution programs. Together with her husband, she has grown maize primarily for family consumption since getting married, getting involved in all matters concerning their half acre farm. “For us, when we want to plant [our maize seeds], we sit together and discuss the cash we have at hand and decide if we can get two hands to help us work our half acre of land,” she says.

Eshiali and her husband make a joint decision on the maize seed variety they plant every season based on performance of the previous planting season. “We previously used the H614D [maize seed variety] and it did well in our farm — except when it gets very windy, as our crops fall and our bean crop gets destroyed before it is ready for harvest. Last season, we decided to use the H624 because it remains there even when it is windy,” she said, demonstrating her knowledge of maize seed variety.

In addition to seed choice and farm labour, Eshiali and her husband also discuss what fertilizer to use and when they need to shift to a new choice, and they make decisions together concerning their farm and farm produce. This includes deciding what amount of harvest they can sell and what to do with the sale proceeds. For a household like Eshiali’s, new maize varieties need to appeal to — and be marketed to — both spouses.

Sofa Eshiali, a 60-year-old maize farmer from Ikolomani, Western Kenya, who participated in the study. (Photo: Susan Umazi Otieno/CIMMYT)

Farming roles

Eshiali’s reality of equitable engagement in the farm may not be the case for other households in her community and across Kenya, meaning that reaching women with new varieties is not always simple.

As Voss points out, women are often less involved in major household decisions than men, frequently due to longstanding social norms. However, there is little understanding of how decisions are negotiated at the household level, particularly when crops are jointly produced. Furthermore, in many places, men are perceived to be the “real” farmers, while women are viewed to only play a supportive role within household farming. This can lead to the exclusion of women from extension activities, trainings and input marketing efforts.

Against this background, Voss notes that the ongoing study aims to identify in which types of households women have control over seed choice and in which households other constraints might be more important.

“To get new maize varieties into men’s and women’s fields, we need to identify the bottlenecks to reaching women. This means understanding, among other things, how decisions about seed are made within households and how households source their seed,” she explains.

Vignettes showing five different decision-making scenarios based on fictitious husband and wife characters. (Photo: Susan Umazi Otieno/CIMMYT)

Best-case scenario

To overcome the challenge of discussing the sensitive topic of decision-making roles between spouses and to encourage more culturally unbiased, candid responses, the study uses vignettes, or short stories, to describe various scenarios. This enables farmers to relate with different farm management decision making scenarios without pointing fingers at their spouses.

The study’s coauthor and research team leader, Zachary Gitonga, explains that the use of vignettes is still a relatively new method, especially in agricultural research, but enables digging deeper into sensitive topics.

Data collection involved a joint survey with both men and women household heads about maize plot management before breaking into separate discussions using the vignettes. These presented five possible decision-making scenarios with fictitious husband and wife characters. The five scenarios were then used to discuss strategic seed choices, operational decisions related to issues such as planting date and hiring farm labor, and financial decisions such as the use of the income from the maize sales.

“By presenting a set of short stories, a farmer can determine what scenario they relate with. In the study, farmers can talk about sensitive interaction without having to assign responsibility to their spouse, especially negatively, in the way decisions are made,” Gitonga said.

The vignettes also made it easier for both the enumerators to explain the scenarios and the farmers to understand and freely give their feedback. Sometimes, he pointed out, what men and women perceive as joint decision-making might not be the same. For instance, some men may think informing their wives that they are going to buy a particular seed means involving them. Here, the vignette activity aims to unpack the reality of joint decision-making in households.

From East Africa to Asia

During a recent field visit to the study area in Kakamega, Kenya, Hom Gartaula, Gender and Social Inclusion Research Lead at CIMMYT, noted the study’s importance to the inclusion of women in the farming cycle. “We urgently need to better understand the reality of women’s and men’s situation in terms of access to maize seed and other needed inputs and services. Otherwise, we risk designing breeding and seed systems that do not address the needs of the most vulnerable farmers, including women,” he said, adding that data from the study will enable insights into and comparison with the gender dynamics of wheat production in South Asia through cross-regional learning.

Gartaula also noted that, even though men predominantly manage South Asia’s wheat agriculture, women significantly contribute to it, especially in smallholder farming systems. In recent years, women’s contribution to providing labor and decision-making in wheat agriculture has increased due to the feminization of agriculture and livelihood diversification among smallholders.

Since women’s contributions to wheat farming are often vital to pre- and post-harvest processes, Gartaula notes they ought to be part of the entire maize and wheat value chain. That includes building more equitable seed delivery systems. “It is therefore important to have seed products that address the needs of different users and include home consumption and commercial sales,” he says.

The study will inform future efforts to ensure equitable seed access for both men and women farmers. Ultimately, if both men and women farmers access the best seed based on their needs and priorities, incomes will rise, households will be better sustained, and communities will become more food secure.

Explore our coverage of International Women’s Day 2022.

Dorcus Chepkesis Gemenet

Written by Leslie Domínguez on December 15, 2021. Posted in Uncategorized.

Dorcus Chepkesis Gemenet is a Breeding Simulation Specialist working with CIMMYT’s Integrated Development program.

She is currently working with the CGIAR Excellence in Breeding (EiB) Platform, in the Breeding Program Optimization team as a Breeding Simulation Specialist mainly giving direct support on program optimization for Roots, Tubers and Bananas CGIAR group of crops (RTB) with IITA, CIAT and CIP.

She has more than 10 years’ experience working with different CGIAR centers. Before joining EIB, she worked for the International Potato Center (CIP) as a Molecular Breeder and Quantitative Geneticist with duties to develop genomics-ssisted breeding tools and establish quality control standards in sweet potato and potato. Before CIP, as part of her PhD, she worked with ICRISAT in the Sahel region of West Africa (Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Senegal) on the genetic basis of low phosphorus tolerance in the Pearl millet systems. Chepkesis Gemenet was also part of the Kenya Maize Working group (KALRO) and worked on CIMMYT/NARS Projects including IRMA II, DTMA, WEMA and IMAS.

Bringing wild wheat’s untapped diversity into elite lines

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on November 23, 2021. Posted in Features.

A collaboration involving 15 international institutes across eight countries has optimized efforts to introduce beneficial traits from wild wheat accessions in genebanks into existing wheat varieties.

The findings, published in Nature Food, extend many potential benefits to national breeding programs, including improved wheat varieties better equipped to thrive in changing environmental conditions. This research was led by Sukhwinder Singh of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) as part of the Seeds of Discovery project.

Since the advent of modern crop improvement practices, there has been a bottleneck of genetic diversity, because many national wheat breeding programs use the same varieties in their crossing program as their “elite” source. This practice decreases genetic diversity, putting more areas of wheat at risk to pathogens and environmental stressors, now being exacerbated by a changing climate. As the global population grows, shocks to the world’s wheat supply result in more widespread dire consequences.

The research team hypothesized that many wheat accessions in genebanks — groups of related plant material from a single species collected at one time from a specific location — feature useful traits for national breeding programs to employ in their efforts to diversify their breeding programs.

“Genebanks hold many diverse accessions of wheat landraces and wild species with beneficial traits, but until recently the entire scope of diversity has never been explored and thousands of accessions have been sitting on the shelves. Our research targets beneficial traits in these varieties through genome mapping and then we can deliver them to breeding programs around the world,” Singh said.

Currently adopted approaches to introduce external beneficial genes into breeding programs’ elite cultivars take a substantial amount of time and money. “Breeding wheat from a national perspective is a race against pathogens and other abiotic threats,” said Deepmala Sehgal, co-author and wheat geneticist in the Global Wheat program at CIMMYT. “Any decrease in the time to test and release a variety has a huge positive impact on breeding programs.”

Deepmala Sehgal shows LTP lines currently being used in CIMMYT trait pipelines at the experimental station in Toluca, Mexico, for introgression of novel exotic-specific alleles into newly developed lines. (Photo: CIMMYT)

Taking into genetic biodiversity

The findings build from research undertaken through the Seeds of Discovery project, which genetically characterized nearly 80,000 samples of wheat from the seed banks of CIMMYT and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA).

First, the team undertook a large meta-survey of genetic resources from wild wheat varieties held in genebanks to create a catalog of improved traits.

“Our genetic mapping,” Singh said, “identifies beneficial traits so breeding programs don’t have to go looking through the proverbial needle in the haystack. Because of the collaborative effort of the research team, we could examine a far greater number of genomes than a single breeding program could.”

Next, the team developed a strategic three-way crossing method among 366 genebank accessions and the best historical elite varieties to reduce the time between the original introduction and deployment of an improved variety.

Sukhwinder Singh (second from left) selects best performing pre-breeding lines in India. (Photo: CIMMYT)

Worldwide impact

National breeding programs can use the diverse array of germplasm for making new crosses or can evaluate the germplasm in yield trials in their own environments.

The diverse new germplasm is being tested in major wheat producing areas, including India, Kenya, Mexico and Pakistan. In Mexico, many of the lines showed increased resistance to abiotic stresses; many lines tested in Pakistan exhibited increased disease resistance; and in India, many tested lines are now part of the national cultivar release system. Overall, national breeding programs have adopted 95 lines for their targeted breeding programs and seven lines are currently undergoing varietal trials.

“This is the first effort of its kind where large-scale pre-breeding efforts have not only enhanced the understanding of exotic genome footprints in bread wheat but also provided practical solutions to breeders,” Sehgal said. “This work has also delivered pre-breeding lines to trait pipelines within national breeding programs.”

Currently, many of these lines are being used in trait pipelines at CIMMYT to introduce these novel genomic regions into advanced elite lines. Researchers are collaborating with physiologists in CIMMYT’s global wheat program to dissect any underlying physiological mechanisms associated with the research team’s findings.

“Our investigation is a major leap forward in bringing genebank variation to the national breeding programs,” Singh explained. “Most significantly, this study sheds light on the importance of international collaborations to bring out successful products and new methods and knowledge to identify useful contributions of exotic in elite lines.”

Read the full article:
Direct introgression of untapped diversity into elite wheat lines

Cover photo: A researcher holds a plant of Aegilops neglecta, a wild wheat relative. Approximately every 20 years, CIMMYT regenerates wheat wild relatives in greenhouses, to have enough healthy and viable seed for distribution when necessary. (Photo: Rocío Quiroz/CIMMYT)

Florence Ochieng harvests green maize on her 105-acre family farm near Kitale, Kenya. (Photo: P. Lowe/CIMMYT)

When it comes to maize variety choices, can farmers have it all?

Written by Emma Orchardson on August 13, 2021. Posted in News.

Smallholder farmers are often torn between maize seed varieties that have multiple desirable traits. Since they cannot always have it all — there are limits on what traits breeders can integrate in any given variety — they face the dilemma of which seed to pick at the expense of an equally desirable option.

Trait preference trade-offs among maize farmers in western Kenya, published in March 2021, provides evidence of this prioritization and seeks to help breeders, seed companies and other stakeholders set priorities that account for farmers’ needs and their willingness to make preference trade-offs. The researchers evaluated responses from 1,288 male and female farmers in the mid-altitude maize growing areas of western Kenya.

The study argues that farmer-centered seed systems (including seed companies) should be guided by farmers’ priorities and reflect a greater understanding of the tradeoffs these farmers make between traits and varieties. They have two key options, according to Paswel Marenya, the study’s lead researcher and adoption and impact assessment economist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). The first involves prioritizing the critical must-have traits in any one variety. The second option entails having multiple varieties that meet diverse farmers’ needs and then segmenting the seed markets.

While Marenya argues that prioritization is important for balancing commercial realities and farmers’ diverse interests, he is quick to add that “market segmentation has limits imposed by the commercial viability of each segment.”

“At every turn, from breeding to farmer varietal preferences to seed company considerations, there have to be trade-offs, as one cannot keep segmenting the market forever,” Marenya said. “At some point, you must stop and choose what traits to prioritize in your breeding or commercially viable market segments, based on the most pressing challenges already identified.”

CIMMYT researchers conduct interviews in Kenya to determine farmer preferences for maize traits. (Photo: CIMMYT)

Differences in tradeoffs among men and women

From a gender lens, the paper reveals an obvious difference in tradeoffs made by men and women. Whereas the two groups desire some similar traits in their varieties of choice, women seem to be willing to make slightly larger yield sacrifices in favor of tolerance to drought and Striga and good storability. Women also valued good storability over 90-day maturity, while men appeared to place a higher value on the closed tip, a sign of resistance to moisture infiltration which causes grain rotting.

“These results imply that unless the risks of storage or pre-harvest losses are reduced or eliminated, the value of high yielding varieties can be diminished if they are susceptible to production stresses or the grain characteristics make them susceptible to storage pests,” the study states.

The study indicates that farmers may adopt stress tolerant and high yielding varieties with somewhat low storability only if advanced grain storage technologies are available.

Until then, the suggestion to policy makers responsible for maize breeding is to use “multi-criteria evaluations” of new varieties to ensure that traits for stress tolerance and storability are given optimal weighting in variety release decisions.

Additionally, information about farmer preferences should be fed back to breeding programs in national and international institutes responsible for maize genetic improvement.