CIMMYT’s work in Africa helps farmers access new maize and wheat systems-based technologies, information and markets, raising incomes and enhancing crop resilience to drought and climate change. CIMMYT sets priorities in consultation with ministries of agriculture, seed companies, farming communities and other stakeholders in the maize and wheat value chains. Our activities in Africa are wide ranging and include: breeding maize for drought tolerance and low-fertility soils, and for resistance to insect pests, foliar diseases and parasitic weeds; sustainably intensifying production in maize- and wheat-based systems; and investigating opportunities to reduce micronutrient and protein malnutrition among women and young children.
The Harnessing Appropriate-Scale Farm Mechanization in Zimbabwe (HAFIZ) project aims to support investments by the government and by the private sector in appropriate-scale farm mechanization in Zimbabwe, particularly around Pfumvudza (a system of manual conservation agriculture), and transfer learnings to South Africa.
Overall, the project has the goal to improve access to mechanization and reduce labor drudgery whilst stimulating the adoption of climate-smart/sustainable intensification technologies. The project will improve the understanding of private sector companies involved in appropriate-scale farm mechanisation towards the local markets in which they operate.
Manufacturing knowledge of two-wheel and small four-wheel tractor operated implements for mechanized Pfumvudza will also increase and private sector companies will have increased access to information through the development and strengthening of regional and national communities of practitioners on appropriate-scale farm mechanization. Finally, the project will strengthen the capacity of the existing knowledge networks around appropriate-scale mechanisation in Zimbabwe, through the results that will be generated and through the regular multi-stakeholder roundtables that will be organised.
Objectives
Increasing and more spatially-targeted Government spending in appropriate-scale farm mechanisation in Zimbabwe (and South Africa)
Increasing sales of appropriate-scale farm mechanization equipment in Zimbabwe (and South Africa) thanks to more targeted marketing by private sector (both in terms of geographies and clients)
Local manufacturing and commercialization of two-wheel tractor operated basin diggers and bed planters in Zimbabwe.
Farmers learn about two-wheel tractors. (Photo: CIMMYT)
A new project aims to climate-proof Zimbabwean farms through improved access to small-scale mechanization to reduce labor bottlenecks. Harnessing Appropriate-scale Farm mechanization In Zimbabwe (HAFIZ) is funded by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) through ACIAR and led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).
The project aligns with the Zimbabwean nationwide governmental program Pfumvudza, which promotes agricultural practices based on the principles of conservation agriculture. The initiative aims to increase agricultural productivity through minimum soil disturbance, a permanent soil cover, mulching and crop diversification.
Over 18 months, the project will work with selected service providers to support mechanized solutions that are technically, environmentally and economically appropriate for use in smallholder settings.
Speaking during the project launch, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development in Zimbabwe, John Basera, explained the tenets of Pfumvudza which translates as “a new season.” A new season of adopting climate-smart technologies, conservation agriculture practices and increasing productivity. Simply put, Pfumvudza means a sustainable agricultural productivity scheme.
“Pfumvudza was a big game-changer in Zimbabwe. We tripled productivity from 0.45 to 1.4 [metric tons] per hectare. Now the big challenge for all of us is to sustain and consolidate the growth, and this is where mechanization comes into place,” Basera said. “This project is an opportunity for the smallholder farmer in Zimbabwe, who contributes to over 60% of the food in the country, to be able to produce more with less.”
Service providers participate in a training at the Institute of Agricultural Engineering, Zimbabwe. (Photo: Frédéric Baudron/CIMMYT)
The mechanics of sustainable intensification
Building on the findings of the completed ACIAR-funded project Farm Mechanization and Conservation Agriculture for Sustainable Intensification (FACASI), the new initiative will work with selected farmers and service providers to identify farming systems most suitable for mechanization. It will also assist companies in targeting their investments as they test a range of technologies powered by small-engine machinery adapted to the Zimbabwe context and transfer the resultant learnings to South Africa.
Conservation agriculture adoption offers multidimensional benefits to the farmers with significant yields and sustainability of their systems. The introduction of mechanization in systems using animals for draught reduces the livestock energy demand — energy that will contribute to increasing meat and milk production.
A service provider demonstrates a small-scale maize sheller in Nyanga, Zimbabwe. (Photo: Frédéric Baudron/CIMMYT)
While conservation agriculture and research alone cannot solve all the issues affecting agricultural productivity, awareness-raising is integral to help address these issues, and this is where small-scale mechanization comes in, says ACIAR Crops Research Program Manager, Eric Huttner.
“We learnt a lot from FACASI and a similar project in Bangladesh on the opportunities of appropriate small-scale mechanization as a tool towards sustainable intensification when adopted by farmers,” he explained. “If we avoid the mistakes of the past, where large-scale mechanization efforts were invested in the wrong place and resulted in ineffective machines unusable for farmers, we can make a huge difference in increasing yields and reducing farm drudgery,” Huttner said.
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.
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.
For a decade, scientists at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) have been at the forefront of a multidisciplinary and multi-institutional effort to contain and effectively manage maize lethal necrosis (MLN) disease in Africa.
The manual is relevant to stakeholders in countries where MLN is already present, and also aims to offer technical tips to “‘high-risk’ countries globally for proactive implementation of practices that can possibly prevent the incursion and spread of the disease,” writes B.M. Prasanna, director of CIMMYT’s Global Maize Program and MAIZE, in the foreword.
“While intensive multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional efforts over the past decade have helped in containing the spread and impact of MLN in sub-Saharan Africa, we cannot afford to be complacent. We need to continue our efforts to safeguard crops like maize from devastating diseases and insect-pests, and to protect the food security and livelihoods of millions of smallholders,” says Prasanna, who is presently leading the OneCGIAR Plant Health Initiative Design Team.
The war in Ukraine and the sanctions against Russia will disrupt wheat supply chains, fertilizer exports and other components of food systems. Their combined effect, along with other factors, could unchain a major food security crisis as well as increased inequality.
Explore our analysis and coverage on major media outlets and journals. To get in touch with our experts, please contact the media team.
CIMMYT scientists have also made available a summary of key facts and figures about the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on wheat supply (PowerPoint, 32MB): changing patterns of consumption and effect on food prices, geographic export supply concentration, global wheat imports, and specific vulnerabilities particularly in the Global South.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict will cause massive disruptions to global wheat supply and food security. Agricultural research investments are the basis of resilient agri-food systems and a food-secure future.
War highlights the fragility of the global food supply — sustained investment is needed to feed the world in a changing climate, Alison Bentley explains on Nature.
A new Bloomberg op-ed urges nations to steer more money to organizations like CIMMYT that are advancing crucial research on how to grow more resilient wheat and maize crops in regions that are becoming steadily less arable.
The war in Ukraine, coupled with weather-related disruptions in the world’s major grain-producing regions, could unleash unbearable humanitarian consequences, civil unrest, and major financial losses worldwide, say Sharon E. Burke (Ecospherics) and Bram Govaerts (CIMMYT) on The Boston Globe.
The war in Ukraine, coupled with weather-related disruptions in the world’s major grain-producing regions, could unleash unbearable waves of displacement, humanitarian consequences, civil unrest, major financial losses worldwide, and geopolitical fragility, says Bram Govaerts, DG of CIMMYT, in a Boston Globe op-ed.
How does CIMMYT’s improved maize get to the farmer?
CIMMYT is proud to announce a new, improved highland maize hybrid that is now available for uptake by public- and private-sector partners, especially those interested in marketing or disseminating hybrid maize seed across upper altitudes of Eastern Africa and similar agro-ecologies. National agricultural research system (NARS) and seed companies are hereby invited to apply for licenses to pursue national release, scale-up seed production, and deliver these maize hybrids to farming communities.
The deadline to submit applications to be considered during the first round of allocations is 8 April 2022. Applications received after that deadline will be considered during subsequent rounds of product allocations.
The newly available CIMMYT maize hybrid, CIM20EAPP3-01-47, was identified through rigorous trialing and a stage-gate advancement process that culminated in the 2021 Eastern Africa Regional On-Farm Trials for CIMMYT’s eastern Africa highland maize breeding pipeline (EA-PP3). While individual products will vary, the EA-PP3 pipeline aims to develop maize hybrids fitting the product profile described in the following table:
Product profile
Basic traits
Nice-to-have / Emerging traits
Eastern Africa Product Profile 3 (EA-PP3)
Late -maturing, white, high yielding, drought tolerant, NUE, and resistant to GLS, TLB, Ear rots, and rust
MLN, fall armyworm, cold tolerance
Application instructions, and other relevant material is available via the CIMMYT Maize Product Catalog and in the links provided below.
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.
Md Abdul Matin is a Mechanization Specialist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), SARO, Zimbabwe.
He has over 20 years of R&D experience in design, development, assessment and commercialization of farm machinery for smallholder farmers. He completed his BSc Agri. Engg and MS in Farm Power & Machinery degrees from the Bangladesh Agricultural University and a PhD from the Agricultural Machinery Research & Design Centre, University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia. Matin has intensive experience working with national agricultural research institutes, other government and private sector partners (including manufacturers) in the mechanization value and supply chains.
Emerging in the last 120 years, science-based plant breeding begins by creating novel diversity from which useful new varieties can be identified or formed. The most common approach is making targeted crosses between parents with complementary, desirable traits. This is followed by selection among the resulting plants to obtain improved types that combine desired traits and performance. A less common approach is to expose plant tissues to chemicals or radiation that stimulate random mutations of the type that occur in nature, creating diversity and driving natural selection and evolution.
Determined by farmers and consumer markets, the target traits for plant breeding can include improved grain and fruit yield, resistance to major diseases and pests, better nutritional quality, ease of processing, and tolerance to environmental stresses such as drought, heat, acid soils, flooded fields and infertile soils. Most traits are genetically complex — that is, they are controlled by many genes and gene interactions — so breeders must intercross and select among hundreds of thousands of plants over generations to develop and choose the best.
Plant breeding over the last 100 years has fostered food and nutritional security for expanding populations, adapted crops to changing climates, and helped to alleviate poverty. Together with better farming practices, improved crop varieties can help to reduce environmental degradation and to mitigate climate change from agriculture.
Is plant breeding a modern technique?
Plant breeding began around 10,000 years ago, when humans undertook the domestication of ancestral food crop species. Over the ensuing millennia, farmers selected and re-sowed seed from the best grains, fruits or plants they harvested, genetically modifying the species for human use.
Modern, science-based plant breeding is a focused, systematic and swifter version of that process. It has been applied to all crops, among them maize, wheat, rice, potatoes, beans, cassava and horticulture crops, as well as to fruit trees, sugarcane, oil palm, cotton, farm animals and other species.
With modern breeding, specialists began collecting and preserving crop diversity, including farmer-selected heirloom varieties, improved varieties and the crops’ undomesticated relatives. Today hundreds of thousands of unique samples of diverse crop types, in the form of seeds and cuttings, are meticulously preserved as living catalogs in dozens of publicly-administered “banks.”
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) manages a germplasm bank containing more than 180,000 unique maize- and wheat-related seed samples, and the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen preserves back-up copies of nearly a million collections from CIMMYT and other banks.
Through genetic analyses or growing seed samples, scientists comb such collections to find useful traits. Data and seed samples from publicly-funded initiatives of this type are shared among breeders and other researchers worldwide. The complete DNA sequences of several food crops, including rice, maize, and wheat, are now available and greatly assist scientists to identify novel, useful diversity.
Much crop breeding is international. From its own breeding programs, CIMMYT sends half a million seed packages each year to some 800 partners, including public research institutions and private companies in 100 countries, for breeding, genetic analyses and other research.
A field worker removes the male flower of a wheat spike, as part of controlled pollination in breeding. (Photo: Alfonso Cortés/CIMMYT)
A century of breeding innovations
Early in the 20th century, plant breeders began to apply the discoveries of Gregor Mendel, a 19th-century mathematician and biologist, regarding genetic variation and heredity. They also began to take advantage of heterosis, commonly known as hybrid vigor, whereby progeny of crosses between genetically different lines will turn out stronger or more productive than their parents.
Modern statistical methods to analyze experimental data have helped breeders to understand differences in the performance of breeding offspring; particularly, how to distinguish genetic variation, which is heritable, from environmental influences on how parental traits are expressed in successive generations of plants.
Since the 1990s, geneticists and breeders have used molecular (DNA-based) markers. These are specific regions of the plant’s genome that are linked to a gene influencing a desired trait. Markers can also be used to obtain a DNA “fingerprint” of a variety, to develop detailed genetic maps and to sequence crop plant genomes. Many applications of molecular markers are used in plant breeding to select progenies of breeding crosses featuring the greatest number of desired traits from their parents.
Plant breeders normally prefer to work with “elite” populations that have already undergone breeding and thus feature high concentrations of useful genes and fewer undesirable ones, but scientists also introduce non-elite diversity into breeding populations to boost their resilience and address threats such as new fungi or viruses that attack crops.
Transgenics are products of one genetic engineering technology, in which a gene from one species is inserted in another. A great advantage of the technology for crop breeding is that it introduces the desired gene alone, in contrast to conventional breeding crosses, where many undesired genes accompany the target gene and can reduce yield or other valuable traits. Transgenics have been used since the 1990s to implant traits such as pest resistance, herbicide tolerance, or improved nutritional value. Transgenic crop varieties are grown on more than 190 million hectares worldwide and have increased harvests, raised farmers’ income and reduced the use of pesticides. Complex regulatory requirements to manage their potential health or environmental risks, as well as consumer concerns about such risks and the fair sharing of benefits, make transgenic crop varieties difficult and expensive to deploy.
Genome editing or gene editing techniques allow precise modification of specific DNA sequences, making it possible to enhance, diminish or turn off the expression of genes and to convert them to more favorable versions. Gene editing is used primarily to produce non-transgenic plants like those that arise through natural mutations. The approach can be used to improve plant traits that are controlled by single or small numbers of genes, such as resistance to diseases and better grain quality or nutrition. Whether and how to regulate gene edited crops is still being defined in many countries.
The mobile seed shop of Victoria Seeds Company provides access to improved maize varieties for farmers in remote villages of Uganda. (Photo: Kipenz Films for CIMMYT)
Selected impacts of maize and wheat breeding
In the early 1990s, a CIMMYT methodology led to improved maize varieties that tolerate moderate drought conditions around flowering time in tropical, rainfed environments, besides featuring other valuable agronomic and resilience traits. By 2015, almost half the maize-producing area in 18 countries of sub-Saharan Africa — a region where the crop provides almost a third of human calories but where 65% of maize lands face at least occasional drought — was sown to varieties from this breeding research, in partnership with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). The estimated yearly benefits are as high as $1 billion.
Intensive breeding for resistance to Maize Lethal Necrosis (MLN), a viral disease that appeared in eastern Africa in 2011 and quickly spread to attack maize crops across the continent, allowed the release by 2017 of 18 MLN-resistant maize hybrids.
Improved wheat varieties developed using breeding lines from CIMMYT or the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) cover more than 100 million hectares, nearly two-thirds of the area sown to improved wheat worldwide, with benefits in added grain that range from $2.8 to 3.8 billion each year.
Breeding for resistance to devastating crop diseases and pests has saved billions of dollars in crop losses and reduced the use of costly and potentially harmful pesticides. A 2004 study showed that investments since the early 1970s in breeding for resistance in wheat to the fungal disease leaf rust had provided benefits in added grain worth 5.36 billion 1990 US dollars. Global research to control wheat stem rust disease saves wheat farmers the equivalent of at least $1.12 billion each year.
Crosses of wheat with related crops (rye) or even wild grasses — the latter known as wide crosses — have greatly improved the hardiness and productivity of wheat. For example, an estimated one-fifth of the elite wheat breeding lines in CIMMYT international yield trials features genes from Aegilops tauschii, commonly known as “goat grass,” that boost their resilience and provide other valuable traits to protect yield.
Biofortification — breeding to develop nutritionally enriched crops — has resulted in more than 60 maize and wheat varieties whose grain offers improved protein quality or enhanced levels of micro-nutrients such as zinc and provitamin A. Biofortified maize and wheat varieties have benefited smallholder farm families and consumers in more than 20 countries across sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Consumption of provitamin-A-enhanced maize or sweet potato has been shown to reduce chronic vitamin A deficiencies in children in eastern and southern Africa. In India, farmers have grown a high-yielding sorghum variety with enhanced grain levels of iron and zinc since 2018 and use of iron-biofortified pearl millet has improved nutrition among vulnerable communities.
Innovations in measuring plant responses include remote sensing systems, such as multispectral and thermal cameras flown over breeding fields. In this image of the CIMMYT experimental station in Obregón, Mexico, water-stressed plots are shown in green and red. (Photo: CIMMYT and the Instituto de Agricultura Sostenible)
Thefuture
Crop breeders have been laying the groundwork to pursue genomic selection. This approach takes advantage of low-cost, genome-wide molecular markers to analyze large populations and allow scientists to predict the value of particular breeding lines and crosses to speed gains, especially for improving genetically complex traits.
Speed breeding uses artificially-extended daylength, controlled temperatures, genomic selection, data science, artificial intelligence tools and advanced technology for recording plant information — also called phenotyping — to make breeding faster and more efficient. A CIMMYT speed breeding facility for wheat features a screenhouse with specialized lighting, controlled temperatures and other special fixings that will allow four crop cycles — or generations — to be grown per year, in place of only two cycles with normal field trials. Speed breeding facilities will accelerate the development of productive and robust varieties by crop research programs worldwide.
Data analysis and management. Growing and evaluating hundreds of thousands of plants in diverse trials across multiple sites each season generates enormous volumes of data that breeders must examine, integrate, and co-analyze to inform decisions, especially about which lines to cross and which populations to discard or move forward. New informatics tools such as the Enterprise Breeding System will help scientists to manage, analyze and apply big data from genomics, field and lab studies.
Following the leaders. Driven by competition and the quest for profits, private companies that market seed and other farm products are generally on the cutting edge of breeding innovations. The CGIAR’s Excellence in Breeding (EiB) initiative is helping crop breeding programs that serve farmers in low- and middle-income countries to adopt appropriate best practices from private companies, including molecular marker-based approaches, strategic mechanization, digitization and use of big data to drive decision making. Modern plant breeding begins by ensuring that the new varieties produced are in line with what farmers and consumers want and need.
Cover photo: CIMMYT experimental station in Toluca, Mexico. Located in a valley at 2,630 meters above sea level with a cool and humid climate, it is the ideal location for selecting wheat materials resistant to foliar diseases, such as wheat rust. Conventional plant breeding involves selection among hundreds of thousands of plants from crosses over many generations, and requires extensive and costly field, screenhouse and lab facilities. (Photo: Alfonso Cortés/CIMMYT)
A worker uses a machine to seal a bag of maize seed at the Sementes Nzara Yapera Lda warehouse in Catandika, Mozambique. Photo: CIMMYT/Kipenz Films.
A newly published special issue in the journal Outlook on Agriculture features views and experiences on seed systems performance in Sub-Saharan Africa and options to drive faster uptake of new crop varieties. The contributions reflect the breadth of perspectives and expertise within CGIAR and beyond and make the case for the need for more demand-oriented variety development and seed delivery.
A seed system refers to the various actors, processes, and relationships that allow for the production, conservation, exchange and use of propagation materials for crops, trees, forages, livestock, and fish. For the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), seed systems involve private seed companies, retailers, and government research agencies, among others, that are involved in the design, testing, production and distribution of high-yielding, climate-resilient, and pest- and disease-resistant maize hybrids.
“A well-functioning seed system is critical for ensuring that farmers have reliable access to the quality seeds that they want. It forms the critical link between breeders and the small-scale farmers responsible for much of the food production in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and South Asia,” said CIMMYT Senior Economist Jason Donovan, who co-authored the introductory article.
“The papers in this collection raise important issues which up to now have not received enough attention, to include the strategies, capacities and incentives of the private sector to invest in the distribution of new varieties. The topics discussed have implications for the One CGIAR in its ongoing efforts to develop a coherent and coordinated seed system research program that supports accelerated varietal uptake and turnover through effective seed delivery,” he added.
CIMMYT researchers contributed two papers, one which looks at the role of different types of seed producers and traders in shaping seed systems performance and another which proposes new directions for research on gender and formal maize seed systems. The special edition grew out of the CGIAR Community of Excellence for Seed Systems Development where CIMMYT led the discussion on seed value chains and private sector linkages.
One consensus among the authors is that a wider range of partnerships will be required to reenforce the potential of seed systems to delivery more new varieties to small-scale farmers in less time.
How does CIMMYT’s improved maize get to the farmer?
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is offering a new set of elite, improved maize hybrids to partners for commercialization in eastern Africa and similar agro-ecological zones. National agricultural research systems (NARS) and seed companies are invited to apply for licenses to register and commercialize these new hybrids, in order to bring the benefits of the improved seed to farming communities.
The deadline to submit applications to be considered during the first round of allocations is February 11, 2022. Applications received after that deadline will be considered during the following round of product allocations.
Information about the newly available CIMMYT maize hybrids from the Latin America breeding program, application instructions and other relevant material is available in the CIMMYT Maize Product Catalog and in the links provided below.
Genomic selection identifies individual plants based on the information from molecular markers, DNA signposts for genes of interest, that are distributed densely throughout the wheat genome. For wheat blast, the results can help predict which wheat lines hold promise as providers of blast resistance for future crosses and those that can be advanced to the next generation after selection.
In this study, scientists from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and partners evaluated genomic selection by combining genotypic data with extensive and precise field data on wheat blast responses for three sets of genetically diverse wheat lines and varieties, more than 700 in all, grown by partners at locations in Bangladesh and Bolivia over several crop cycles.
The study also compared the use of a small number of molecular markers linked to the 2NS translocation, a chromosome segment from the grass species Aegilops ventricosa that was introduced into wheat in the 1980s and is a strong and stable source of blast resistance, with predictions using thousands of genome-wide markers. The outcome confirms that, in environments where wheat blast resistance is determined by the 2NS translocation, genotyping using one-to-few markers tagging the translocation is enough to predict the blast response of wheat lines.
Finally, the authors found that selection based on a few wheat blast-associated molecular markers retained 89% of lines that were also selected using field performance data, and discarded 92% of those that were discarded based on field performance data. Thus, both marker-assisted selection and genomic selection offer viable alternatives to the slower and more expensive field screening of many thousands of wheat lines in hot-spot locations for the disease, particularly at early stages of breeding, and can speed the development of blast-resistant wheat varieties.
The research was conducted by scientists from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the Bangladesh Wheat and Maize Research Institute (BWMRI), the Instituto Nacional de Innovación Agropecuaria y Forestal (INIAF) of Bolivia, the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA) and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) in India, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Alnarp), and Kansas State University in the USA. Funding for the study was provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office of the United Kingdom, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat (WHEAT), the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), the Swedish Research Council, and the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).
Cover photo: A researcher from Bangladesh shows blast infected wheat spikes and explains how the disease directly attacks the grain. (Photo: Chris Knight/Cornell University)
Several recent studies document the long-term health and economic benefits from the “Green Revolution” — the widespread adoption of high-yielding staple crop varieties during the last half of the 20th century — and argue for continued investment in the development and use of such varieties.
“Our estimates provide compelling evidence that the health benefits of broad-based increases in agricultural productivity should not be overlooked,” the authors state. “From a policy perspective, government subsidies for inputs leading to a green revolution as well as investments in extension and R&D programs seem to be important.”
Norman Borlaug (fourth from right) shows a plot of Sonora-64 wheat — one of the semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease-resistant varieties that was key to the Green Revolution — to a group of young international trainees at CIMMYT’s experimental station in Ciudad Obregon, Sonora state, Mexico. (Photo: CIMMYT)
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the fragility of the global food system and the need to transform it, increasing its environmental and economic resilience to withstand future threats, and underpinning healthier diets. The studies suggest that improved versions of cereal crops such as rice, wheat, and maize can play a key role.
“Our work speaks to the importance of supporting innovation and technology adoption in agriculture as a means of fostering economic development, improved health, and poverty reduction, said author Jan von der Goltz. “It also suggests that it is reasonable to view with some alarm the steady decline in funding for cereal crop improvement over the last few decades in sub-Saharan Africa, the continent with least diffusion of modern varieties.”
Likewise, a study co-authored by Prashant Bharadwaj of the University of California, San Diego, concluded that farmer adoption of high-yielding crop varieties (HYVs) in India reduced infant mortality dramatically across the country. Between 1960 and 2000, infant deaths dropped from 163.8 to 66.6 per 1,000 live births, and this occurred during the decades of India’s wheat productivity leap from 0.86 to 2.79 tons per hectare, as a result of HYV adoption and improved farming practices.
“What both of these papers do is to carefully establish a causal estimate of how HYVs affect infant mortality, by only comparing children born in the same location at different points in time, when HYV use was different, and by checking that mortality before arrival of HYVs was trending similarly in places that would receive different amount of HYVs,” Bharadwaj said.
“In the absence of a randomized control trial, these econometric techniques produce the best causal estimate of a phenomenon as important as the spread of HYVs during and after the Green Revolution,” he added. These thoughts were echoed by University of California San Diego professor Gordon McCord, a co-author of the global study.
Recent studies indicate that the Green Revolution also had long-term economic impacts, which also affected health outcomes.
In a 2021 update to the 2018 paper “Two Blades of Grass: The Impact of the Green Revolution,” Douglas Gollin, Professor of Development Economics at Oxford University and co-authors found that, in 90 countries where high-yielding varieties were adopted between 1965 and 2010, food crop yields increased by 44% and that, had this adoption not occurred, GDP per capita in the developing world could be half of what it is today.
Even a 10-year delay of the Green Revolution would, in 2010, have cost 17% of GDP per capita in the developing world, with a cumulative GDP loss of $83 trillion, equivalent to one year of current global GDP.
These GDP and health impacts were boosted by a related reduction in population growth. By observing causal inference at country, regional and developing world levels, and using a novel long-term impact assessment method, the study authors detected a trend: as living standards improved for rural families, they generally wanted to invest more in their children and have fewer.
“Our estimates suggest that the world would have contained more than 200 million additional people in 2010, if the onset of the Green Revolution had been delayed for ten years,” Gollin and his co-authors stated. This lower population growth seems to have increased the relative size of the working age population, which furthered GDP growth.
Ethiopian farmers give feedback to CGIAR researchers about durum wheat varieties. (Photo: C.Fadda/Bioversity International) (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
A long-term investment in system transformation
It takes time from the point of an intervention to when broad health impacts can be observed in the population, the authors note. For example, although the development of modern high-yielding varieties began in the 1950s and 60s, the rate of adoption did not speed up until the 1980s, 1990s, and even into the 2000s, with evidence from sub-Saharan Africa showing that variety adoption has increased by as much in the 2000s as in the four preceding decades.
In addition, any nutrition and food security strategy which aims to reach the second Sustainable Development Goal of feeding 9 billion by 2050 must incorporate wider system transformation solutions, such as zero-emissions agriculture, affordable, diverse diets and increased land conservation.
As Gollin explained, “The Green Revolution taught us that we need to approach productivity increases, especially in staple crop yields, differently. The challenge now is more complex: we need to get the same productivity increases, with fewer inputs and resources, more environmental awareness, and in larger quantities for more people.”
In part, this means increasing productivity on existing agricultural land with positive environmental and social impacts, according to Bram Govaerts, director general of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).
“Breeding and sharing more productive, hardy crop varieties is as important as ever,” Govaerts said, “but also engaging farmers — in our case, smallholders — in shared research and innovation efforts to bridge yield gaps, build climate-resilient farming systems, and open access to better nutrition and market opportunities.”
Cover photo: Children eat lunch at a mobile crèche outside Delhi, India. (Photo: Atul Loke/ODI) (CC BY-NC 2.0)
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.
