Location: Colombia

Training is a key CIMMYT activity, and in the CIMMYT-Colombia office it has been essential for all staff. During 08-11 November 2011, CIMMYT colleagues and partners took part in a course on analysis and interpretation of experiments, and genetic designs applied to breeding.

The course was attended by 75 plant breeders, biometricians, and molecular biologists, from a range of institutions such as Colombian and Ecuadorian research centers (CENICAÑA, CENIPALMA, CENICAFE, INIAP), guilds and private seed companies (FENALCE, FEDEARROZ, FEDEPALMA, Dow Agrosciences, Monsanto, Semillas Valle), Colombian universities, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), and CIMMYT. From the CIMMYT biometrics and statistics unit, consultant and University of Chapingo professor Mateo Vargas and researcher Gregorio Alvarado taught how to develop theoretical concepts of experimental designs and demonstrated the use of SAS, Genstat, ASREML, and R to analyze experiments.

Participants praised the course and requested similar courses and training events in the future. The course was organized by CIMMYT maize breeder Luis Narro and CIAT biometrician Myriam Cristina Duque, with funding from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Colombia, as part of a collaborative project with the Colombian Corporation of Agriculture and Livestock Research (CORPOICA) and the Colombian National Federation of Cereals and Legume Growers (FENALCE).

CIMMYT-Colombia also fosters the professional development of support staff, through CIAT’s employees program. The CIAT fund for human resource development covers as much as half of employees’ training expenses, and they can pursue studies as long as they are able to keep up with their work. Thesis students also have time for research.

CIMMYT-Colombia wishes to recognize the efforts of Joel Bolaños, field worker, who has finished his elementary and secondary studies, and will soon start high school education. Néstor Romero, systems engineer, and Claudio Romero, business administrator, have graduated and will now study agronomy. Alba Lucía Arcos, research assistant, received an MSc in plant genetic breeding, and is now working on a PhD. Luz Karime Gómez, former administrative assistant, received an MSc and has since gone to study for a PhD in international relations in Spain.

On 19 August 2011, a workshop was hosted by CIMMYT-Colombia for maize producers, association representatives, and educators and students from various local universities, among others, on the advances of a project to increase maize production in Colombia through the development of improved germplasm adapted to the production systems in the Orinoquía region (East Plains). The Orinoquía is an area of plains, covered by pasture and interspersed with rivers and forests; all the rivers terminate in the Orinoco river. The project is coordinated by CIMMYT-Colombia, with support from the Colombian Agricultural Research Cooperation (CORPOICA), Colombian Growers Federation of Cereals and Legumes (FENALCE), International Center of Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Colombia. The workshop took place at the CORPOICA Research Center in Villavicencio, Del Meta District.

As part of the workshop, attendants visited the field and observed the results of trials of maize with tolerance to acidic soils. For this component of the project, 1,000 acidity-tolerant hybrids are being tested in four locations of the Colombian high plains (C.I. La Libertad in Villavicencio; Menegua in Puerto López; and Taluma and Carimagua in Puerto Gaitán) in the Meta District. They are also being evaluated for yield potentialand other important agronomic traits which help to increase production and profitability. Workshop participants observed that the yields of the best hybrids evaluated in C.I. La Libertad exceeded 7 tons per hectare, and it is hoped that yields in Carimagua will reach almost 10 tons per hectare. Based on harvest data, from the 1,000 hybrids a 10% subset of those with the best performance will be selected for evaluation in an increased number of locations from 2012. The goal is to make the best five hybrids available to Orinoquía farmers within 3-4 years. This would make an important contribution to a region where there are enough resources to widen the agricultural frontier and duplicate the current area sown (5 million hectares).

The same project also trialed maize lines known to be susceptible or tolerant to acidic soils. At aluminum saturation levels of 60%, the susceptible lines died during the seedling stage, long before the flowering stage. These results are particularly relevant given that the percentage of aluminum saturation in a native savannah from the Orinoquía is over 90% and only a few plant species survive.

This is how the National Federation of Cereal and Legume Producers (FENALCE) announces on its website that on 30 June 2010 it celebrated half a century of its establishment. CIMMYT’s relationship with FENALCE dates back to the 1980s, with training for Colombian researchers and joint development of improved maize varieties.

Since 2002, CIMMYT has been working with the Federation in a collaborative project to grow maize among coffee trees. To celebrate its anniversary, FENALCE organized various regional events focused on cereal production. Two CIMMYT researchers from Mexico and Colombia, George Mahuku and Luis Narro, attended the official ceremony in Bogotá, which was chaired by Colombia’s deputy agriculture minister Juan Camilo Salazar. Mahuku was invited to present a seminar on “The impact of maize diseases on food production in Latin America,” while Narro was recognized by FENALCE for his support to cereals research in Colombia.

Jairo Manrique and Henry Vanegas, FENALCE officers, gave speeches that included mentions of the maize and wheat varieties resulting from collaboration with CIMMYT that are being sown in Colombia, and the benefits of CIMMYT’s training for their researchers.

Varieties of QPM released
Two new quality protein maize (QPM) varieties, designed to thrive in the tropical lowland coffee production zones of southwest Colombia, were released on 14 April 2010. CIMMYT-Mexico developed these two varieties—yellow maize FNC 31AC and white maize FNC 32AC—and the Fundación para la Investigación y Desarrollo Agrícola (FIDAR) evaluated them, under the supervision of Luis Narro of CIMMYT-Colombia. More than 150 people attended the launch event, held at the fields of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Palmira, a city in the Cauca Valley, Colombia.

The two varieties yield five tons per hectare, similar to normal maize, but have more tryptophan (0.08% compared to 0.05% of normal maize). Tryptophan is one of two amino acids required for protein synthesis in humans and swine livestock. The release of these QPM varieties is part of the Agrosalud Project, which aims to develop and disseminate biofortified crops, including maize, bean, rice, and sweet potato, and was the result of collaboration with CIMMYT, CIAT, and FIDAR. The National Federation of Colombian Coffee Growers (FENALCE) will take charge of seed production and distribution.

Visits and collaborations at CIMMYT-Colombia
The Global Maize Program’s new director, B.M. Prasanna, continues his travels to CIMMYT’s extensive and wide-spread maize offices. His most recent stop was to CIMMYT-Colombia where from 26-28 April he met with CIMMYTColombia staff and coordinated collaborative activities between CIMMYT and CIAT for Latin America, Asia, and Africa.

Included among other activities was a visit to one of the research stations of the Federación de Cafeteros de Colombia. The experimental station, Centro Nacional de Investigaciones de Café (CENICAFE) La Catalina, is a key area for maize-coffee trails. The director of the station, Carlos Gonzalo Mejía, showed Prasanna (accompanied by Félix San Vicente, maize breeder, and Reymunda Labuguen, program administrator) the fields where since 2002 CIMMYT has collaborated with FEDERECAFE (the National Federation of Colombian Coffee Growers) and FENALCE to sow maize among coffee trees. FENALCE researcher Argemiro Moreno highlighted the benefits of this crop combination, pointing out that maize yields in coffee production zones are high. This year, for example, experimental maize fields at La Catalina yielded 18 tons per hectare.

Agronomic management was another topic of conversation. FENALCE researcher Argemiro Moreno showed staff how to use GreenSeeker, a tool that allows farmers to apply the proper amount of nitrogen to their fields, which he learned about during a recent visit to CIMMYT’s Norman E. Borlaug Experimental Station, in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, Mexico.

Later, a meeting with Rubén Echeverría, director general of CIAT, led to the conclusion that CIMMYT and CIAT can and should increase collaboration for key areas in Latin America. Highlighted initiatives included 1) improving efficiency in the maize-bean-cattle production systems, 2) efficient utilization of new tools and methods to improve and expedite plant breeding and selection, 3) evaluation and promotion of precision agriculture technologies, and 4) capacity building with students and farmers for faster, effective technology adoption.

To follow-up on these identified issues, the visitor group toured CIAT facilities and met with some of the researchers involved in the emphasized areas, including Michael Peters, tropical forages program leader, Idupulapati M. Rao, physiology and plant nutrition, and Steve Beebe, bean breeder.

Fieldbook course
Two CIMMYT-Colombia team members led a course on Fieldbook during 13-14 May 2010. The course attracted 10 participants, including representatives from two local seed companies, Semivalle and Sem-Latam S.A, and agronomy students from the Corporación Universitaria Santa Rosa de Cabal, Risaralda, Colombia.

Yacenia Morillo, head of Semivalle’s basic research, said that Semivalle will embrace this new knowledge and software, and thanked course organizers Néstor Romero and Alba Lucía for their hard work. Counting this event, CIMMYT has now trained nearly 100 Latin American researchers from public and private organizations in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.

For about six years, CIMMYT and the large Colombian producer federations for coffee (FEDERECAFE) and cereals (FENALCE) have partnered to help coffee growers profit by cropping maize in the rows between pruned coffee plants, obtaining as many as three maize harvests while the coffee plants grow back. Led by maize breeder Luis Narro, CIMMYT has contributed hybrids that yield as much as 10 tons per hectare and are resistant to locally-important fungal diseases, particularly those caused by Cercospora zeae-maydis and Phyllachora maydis. As one result, over the short life of this work maize area in coffee zones has already gone from 5,000 to 60,000 hectares, with a potential area of 150,000 hectares.

This success has also bred a new partnership involving CIMMYT, FENALCE, and the Federation of Oil Palm Growers (FEDEPALMA), in which palm plantations will obtain three to four maize harvests while palm plants complete their growth cycle. Oil palms are grown on 350,000 hectares in Colombia, though the potential is 10 times that area. The palm-maize intercrop seems especially attractive given that many Colombian plantations are completely renewing their oil palm stands, due to severe attacks of bud rot disease (Phytophthora palmivora). This disease and other constraints are severely affecting smallscale (less than five hectares) palm growers in locations like Tumaco, who were previously earning at least USD 1,500 per month selling palm for oil extraction. Critically, farmers’ production losses also represent lost employment for farm hands, who are typically economically-disadvantaged. Growing maize offers a profitable hedge for all, while producers wait for the new generation of palm plants to come on line.

To date, 500 experimental maize hybrids have been tested in trials in 4 oil palm plantation zones. According to 90 farmers who took part in a field day in Tumaco on 30 October 2009, the trial results have been good. The highest yields surpassed 10 tons per hectare, with yields of 7 tons and profits of USD 1,500 per hectare on small-scale farmers’ plots.

“Maize could be of interest for farmers who might otherwise be tempted to grow drug crops, ” says Narro. “Maize also offers a profitable alternative for farmers in marginal zones who grow coconut palms in countries threatened with total crop loss from the lethal yellowing diseases.”

About 20 scientists from FENALCE learned how to use Fieldbook—software for managing maize breeding activities—at CIMMYT-Colombia from 10-12 June 2009. FENALCE, Colombia’s National Federation of Cereal and Legume Breeders, has been one of CIMMYT’s main partners for the past 20 years, and has supported the center’s research, capacity-building, and technology transfer activities. The course was set up to support the Federation’s newly created maize improvement program.

CIMMYT technician Néstor Romero presented the course material along with colleagues Alba Lucía Arcos, breeder; and Luis Narro, senior scientist. Participants learned about inventory management, preparation of seed for international trials, taking data in the field and in the lab, and analysis and interpretation of experiment data. The course covered Fieldbook use for maize cultivation and participants practiced compiling field data and analyzing it with the program. CIMMYT-Colombia staff showed researchers a new printer for creating labels for station experimental plots and envelopes for seed shipments. Participants were also interested in a new machine that quickly and accurately counts seed.

Katherine Girón, technical director of FENALCE, coordinated the training which also marked Henry Vanegas’ beginning as the federation’s general manager. Our best wishes to Henry in his new position!