Food entrepreneur Jorge Gaviria had the idea to small-scale farmers one by one who had surplus corn, buy it from them at market price and then import it to the United States. He partnered with CIMMYT to build up relationships with farmers, working out intricate systems that would determine fair prices and ensure that they were only buying surplus corn.
Read more here.
The existence of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) marks one of the longest and strongest bilateral relationships between Mexico and the United States of America. Beginning with a pilot program sponsored by the Mexican government and the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1940s, it would officially become CIMMYT in 1966, with many examples of strong collaboration between both countries throughout over 50 years of history.
United States Under Secretary of Agriculture for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs Ted McKinney and dozens of other U.S representatives were officially introduced to this legacy when they visited CIMMYT on November 8, 2019.
“This is a place I’ve wanted to visit for a very long time,” McKinney stated as he first laid eyes on the CIMMYT offices, “the historical CIMMYT.”
After photos and a quick tour of the museum, McKinney talked to CIMMYT Director General Martin Kropff over Skype. They bonded over their respect for Norman Borlaug and his legacy, especially as McKinney had known him and later his granddaughter Julie personally while the two men worked at Dow Agrosciences.
Kropff gave a presentation on CIMMYT’s impact on agriculture in the United States. McKinney was amazed at how much of CIMMYT’s wheat research benefits farmers in the United States, and expressed enthusiasm for further cooperation. “We’re ready, willing and able to help in any way,” he stated.
The director of the Integrated Development program and regional representative for the Americas, Bram Govaerts, presented on CIMMYT’s work with the United States. Mark Rhoda-Reis, Bureau Director of the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, was pleased to learn that CIMMYT has been working with the University of Wisconsin-Madison on drought-tolerant maize.
The group then split off into two groups for tours of the wheat fields and the CIMMYT germplasm bank. The delegation participated in a series of roundtable discussions on various topics such as climate change, sustainable agri-food systems, and the delegates’ objectives and needs related to agriculture in their respective states. A frequent topic was the dilemma of a public with a growing fear of technology, though technology is indispensable in the growth of the science of agriculture. “Research and education is the future of agriculture,” said one of the representatives.
At the closing of their visit, the delegation was eager to spread their newfound knowledge about CIMMYT’s work and legacy. “I’m just so impressed with the work done here… the representation of all the countries in this facility is outstanding!,” said Chris Chin, Director of the Missouri Department of Agriculture.
“I was blown away. [CIMMYT] is so valuable to every country in the world,” stated Ignacio Marquez, a representative from the Washington State Department of Agriculture.
Kanwarpal S. Dhugga, a Principal Scientist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) who specializes in biotechnology, has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Section on Biological Sciences, in recognition of his invaluable contributions to science and technology.
Announced by AAAS on November 26, 2019, the honor acknowledges among other things Dhugga’s leading research on plant cell wall formation, with applications including their role in lodging resistance and in producing high-value industrial polymers in maize and soybean, and the assimilation, transport, and metabolism of nitrogen in plants.
“I consider this a special honor,” said Dhugga, who leads CIMMYT’s research in biotechnology with a focus on editing genes for disease resistance in maize and wheat. He has published in high-impact scientific journals including Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Plant Cell, Molecular Plant, Plant Biotechnology Journal, Plant Physiology and others.
AAAS Fellows are elected each year by their peers serving on the Council of AAAS, the organization’s member-run governing body. Scientists who have received this recognition include the inventor Thomas Edison (1878), anthropologist Margaret Mead (1934), and popular science author Jared Diamond (2000), as well as numerous Nobel laureates. The election of Dhugga doubles the tally of AAAS fellows at CIMMYT, the other one being Ravi P. Singh, Distinguished Scientist and Head of Global Wheat Improvement.
“Kanwarpal merits CIMMYT’s wholehearted congratulations for this prestigious recognition of his standing in science,” said Kevin Pixley, director of CIMMYT’s Genetics Resources program, to which Dhugga belongs. “I’m humbled and grateful to count him as a member of our team.”
A native of Punjab in India, Dhugga has a M.Sc. in Plant Breeding from Punjab Agricultural University and a Ph.D. in Botany (Plant Genetics) from the University of California, Riverside. He was introduced to membrane protein biochemistry and cell wall synthesis during his postdoctoral research at Stanford University in the laboratory of Peter Ray. Prior to joining CIMMYT in 2015, Dhugga worked at DuPont Pioneer (now Corteva) from 1996 to 2014.
In addition to scientific excellence, Dhugga counts among his achievements prominent international, public-private partnerships, such as the one he led between DuPont Pioneer and the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics to explore new avenues to improve plant nitrogen use efficiency and reduce culm (stalk) lodging in cereals from 2004 to 2014. He continues to explore opportunities to secure funds for undertaking joint work with the collaborators from that period, thanks to the relationships fostered then. One of the scientists in his current group actually completed his Ph.D. under that collaboration.
As part of science outreach he has guided the research of many graduate students in Australia, Canada, India, and the US, a country of which he is also a citizen, and helped make high-quality education accessible to the underprivileged, including establishing a private school in his ancestral village in the state of Punjab in India.
Dhugga has also been successful as a principal or co-principal investigator in attracting significant funding for scientific research from public agencies such as the US Department of Energy, the US National Science Foundation, USAID, and the Australian Research Council. Part of his current research is supported by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. At DuPont Pioneer he was the recipient of two separate, highly competitive research grants to carry out high-risk, discovery research outside of the area of the assigned company goals.
Among his research endeavors, Dhugga highlights a breakthrough he made in the area of cell wall biosynthesis under a discovery research grant from DuPont Pioneer. He identified the gene for an enzyme that propels the chemical reactions to produce guar gum, a cell wall polymer that is also used in industrial products from shampoos to ice cream and is a dominant component of the coconut kernel. The results were published in Science. On a basic level, this provided biochemical evidence for the first time for the involvement of any of the genes from the large plant cellulose synthase gene family in the formation of a cell wall polymer. Dhugga also confides that whenever he flies over coconut plantations anywhere, he gets butterflies in his stomach at the thought that he was the first one to know how simple molecules made a complex matrix that became the edible kernel of the coconut.
“That study constituted a prime example of the power of cross-disciplinary research in answering a longstanding fundamental question in plant biology,” he said. “Assaying enzymes involved in the formation of cell wall polymers is extremely difficult. The approach we used — identify a candidate gene by combining genomics with biochemistry and then express it in a related species lacking the product of the resulting enzyme to demonstrate its function — was subsequently applied by other scientists to identify genes involved in the formation of other key plant cell wall polymers.”
Dhugga will receive a pin as a token of his election as Fellow in an AAAS ceremony in Seattle, Washington, USA, on February 15, 2020.
An international team of scientists is working with farmers in the Yaqui Valley, in Mexico’s Sonora state, to develop and test a new mobile technology that aims to improve wheat and sugarcane productivity by helping farmers manage factors that cause the yield gap between crop potential and actual field performance.
Scientists have been developing and testing a smartphone app where farmers can record their farming activities — including sowing date, crop type and irrigation — and receive local, precise crop management advice in return.
This project is a private-public partnership known as Mexican COMPASS, or Mexican Crop Observation, Management & Production Analysis Services System.
Research has shown that proper timing of irrigation is more important to yields than total water amounts. Earlier planting times have also been shown to improve wheat yields. Having optimum dates for both activities could help farmers improve yields and stabilize their incomes.
The COMPASS smartphone app uses earth observation satellite data and in-situ field data captured by farmers to provide information such as optimum sowing date and irrigation scheduling.
“Sowing and irrigation timing are well known drivers of yield potential in that region — these are two features of the app we’re about to validate during this next season,” explained Francelino Rodrigues, Precision Agriculture Scientist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).
Sound data
Technological innovation for crop productivity is needed now more than ever with threats to food security increasing and natural resources becoming scarcer. Farmers are under increasing pressure to produce more with less, which means greater precision is needed in their agricultural practices.
The Yaqui Valley, Mexico’s biggest wheat producing area, is located in the semi-arid Sonoran Desert in the northern part of Mexico. Water security is a serious challenge and farmers must be very precise in their irrigation management.
The Mexican COMPASS consortium, which is made up of the geospatial data analytics company Rezatec, the University of Nottingham, Booker Tate, CIMMYT and the Colegio de Postgraduados (COLPOS) in Mexico, evolved as a way to help Mexican farmers improve their water use efficiency.
“Yaqui Valley farmers are very experienced farmers, however they can also benefit by using an app that is designed locally to inform and record their decisions,” Rodrigues explained.
The smartphone app will also allow farmers to record and schedule their crop management practices and will give them access to weekly time-series Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) maps, that will allow farmers to view their fields at any time from any location.
“All of this information is provided for free! That’s the exciting part of the project. The business model was designed so that farmers will not need to pay for access to the app and its features, in exchange for providing their crop field data. It’s a win-win situation,” said Rodrigues.
Farmer-centered design
The app is now in the validation stage and COMPASS partners are inviting farmers to test the technology on their own farms. A workshop on October 21 in Ciudad Obregon provided farmers with hands-on training for the app and allowed them to give their feedback.
Over 100 farmers attended the workshop, which featured presentations from Saravana Gurusamy, project manager at Rezatec, Iván Ortíz-Monasterio, principal scientist at CIMMYT, and representatives from local farmer groups Asociación de Organismos de Agricultores del Sur de Sonora (AOASS) and Distrito de Riego del Río Yaqui (DRRYAQUI). The workshop featured a step-by-step demonstration of the app and practical exercises for farmers to test it out for themselves.
“We need technology nowadays because we have to deal with many factors. The profit we get for wheat is getting smaller and smaller each year, so we have to be very productive. I hope that this app can help me to produce a better crop,” said one local wheat farmer who attended the workshop.
User feedback has played a key role in the development of the app. COMPASS interviewed dozens of farmers to see what design worked for them.
“Initially we came up with a really complicated design. However, when we gave it to farmers, they didn’t know how to use it,” explained Rezatec project manager, Saravana Gurusamy. The team went back to the drawing board and with the feedback they received from farmers, came up with a simple design that any farmer, regardless of their experience with technology or digital literacy, could use.
A farmer who attended the workshop talks about his experience and the potential benefits of the app. See full video on YouTube.
Sitting down with Gurusamy after the workshop, he outlined his vision for the future of the app.
“My vision is to see all the farmers in Sonora, working in wheat using the app. The first step is to prove the technology here, then roll it out to all of Mexico and eventually internationally.”
Mexican COMPASS is a four year project funded by the UK Space Agency’s International Partnership Programme (IPP-UKSA) and the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat (WHEAT). It is a collaboration between Rezatec, the University of Nottingham and Booker Tate in the UK, and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the Colegio de Postgraduados (COLPOS) in Mexico.
From October 21 to November 1, 2019, software developers and administrators from several breeding software projects met at the global headquarters of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico to work on delivering an integrated solution to crop breeders.
Efforts to improve crop breeding for lower- and middle-income countries involves delivering better varieties to farmers faster and for less cost. These efforts rely on a mastery of data and technology throughout the breeding process.
To realize this potential, the CGIAR Excellence in Breeding Platform (EiB) is developing an Enterprise Breeding System (EBS) as a single solution for breeders. EBS will integrate the disparate software projects developed by different institutions over the years. This will free breeders from the onerous task of managing their data through different apps and allow them to rapidly optimize their breeding schemes based on sound data and advanced analytics.
“None of us can do everything,” said Tom Hagen, CIMMYT-EiB breeding software product manager, “so what breeding programs are experiencing is in fact fragmented IT. How do we come together as IT experts to create a system through our collective efforts?”
For the EBS to succeed, it is essential that the system is both low-cost and easy to deploy. “The cost of the operating environment is absolutely key,” said Jens Riis-Jacobson, international systems and IT director at CIMMYT. “We are trying to serve developing country institutions that have very little hard currency to pay for breeding program operations.”
Stacked software
During the hackathon, twelve experts from software projects across CGIAR and public sector institutions used a technology called Docker to automatically stack the latest versions of their applications into a single configuration file. This file can be loaded into any operating environment in less than four minutes — whether it be a laptop, local server or in the cloud. Quickly loading the complete system into a cloud environment means EBS can eventually be available as a one-click, Software-as-a-Service solution. This means that institutions will not need sophisticated IT infrastructure or support staff to maintain the software.
“If everything goes as planned, the end users won’t know that we exist,” said Peter Selby, coordinator of the Breeding API (BrAPI) project, an online collective working on a common language for breeding applications to communicate with each other. Updates to individual apps will be automatically loaded, tested and pushed out to users.
As well as the benefits to breeders, this automated deployment pipeline should also result in better software. “We have too little time for development because we spend too much time in deployment and testing,” said Riis-Jacobson.
A cross-institution DevOps culture
Though important technical obstacles were overcome, the cultural aspect was perhaps the most significant outcome of the hackathon. The participants found that they shared the same goals, language and were able to define the common operating environment for their apps to work together in.
“It’s really important to keep the collaboration open,” said Roy Petrie, DevOps engineer at the Genomic and Open-Source Breeding Informatics Initiative (GOBii) based at the Boyce Thompson Institute, Cornell University. “Having a communications platform was the first thing.”
In the future, this could mean that teams synchronize their development timeline to consistently release updates with new versions of the EBS, suggested Franjel Consolacion, systems admin at CIMMYT.
“They are the next generation,” remarked Hagen. “This is the first time that this has happened in CGIAR informatics and it validated a key aspect of our strategy: that we can work together to assemble parts of a system and then deploy it as needed to different institutions.”
By early 2020, selected CIMMYT and International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) breeding teams will have access to a “minimal viable implementation” of the EBS, in which they can conduct all basic breeding tasks through a simple user interface. More functionality, breeding programs and crops from other institutions including national agricultural research programs will be added in phases over three years.
Vietnamese officials expressed interest in increased future cooperation with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). A delegation from the Embassy of Vietnam in Mexico visited CIMMYT’s global headquarters in Texcoco, Mexico, on October 21, 2019. The delegation was composed of Hien Do Tat, First Secretary of Technology Science, and translator Cuc Doan Thi Thu.
CIMMYT sends germplasm to Vietnam and has previously collaborated with the country through several projects. More than twenty Vietnamese scientists have received training from CIMMYT.
The Vietnamese delegation was particularly interested in CIMMYT’s work with drought-tolerant maize and requested expert help with fall armyworm, which has appeared in Vietnam for the first time earlier this year. They also expressed surprise at the range of CIMMYT activities, as they were under the impression that the organization’s sole purpose was plant breeding.
CIMMYT Director General Martin Kropff reinforced interest in further cooperation with Vietnam, emphasizing the importance of appropriate mechanization and sustainable intensification in agricultural development.
Vietnam produced 5.1 million tons of maize a year, grown on more than one million hectares, according to the latest available figures.
Velu Govindan will always remember his father telling him not to waste his food. “He used to say that rice and wheat are very expensive commodities, which most people could only afford to eat once a week during his youth,” recalls the wheat breeder, who works at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).
As in many parts of the world, the Green Revolution had a radical impact on agricultural production and diets in southern India, where Govindan’s father grew up, and by the late 1960s all farmers in the area had heard of “the scientist” from the USA. “Borlaug’s influence in India is so great because those new high-yielding varieties fed millions of people — including me.”
But feeding millions was only half the battle.
Today, at least two billion people around the world currently suffer from micronutrient deficiency, characterized by iron-deficiency anemia, lack of vitamin A and zinc deficiency.
Govindan works in collaboration with HarvestPlus to improve nutritional quality in cereals in addition to core traits like yield potential, disease resistance and climate tolerance. His area of focus is South Asia, where wheat is an important staple and many smallholder farmers don’t have access to a diversified diet including fruit, vegetables or animal products which are high in micronutrients like iron and zinc.
“It’s important that people not only have access to food, but also have a healthy diet,” says Govindan. “The idea is to improve major staples like rice, maize and wheat so that people who consume these biofortified varieties get extra benefits, satisfying their daily dietary needs as well as combatting hidden hunger.”
The challenge, he explains, is that breeding for nutritional quality is often done at the expense of yield. But varieties need high yield potential to be successful on the market because farmers in developing countries will not get a premium price simply for having a high micronutrient content in their grain.
Fast evolving wheat diseases are another issue to contend with. “If you release a disease-resistant variety today, in as little as three or four years’ time it will already be susceptible because rust strains keep mutating. It’s a continuous battle, but that’s plant breeding.”
Mainstreaming zinc
When it comes to improvement, breeding is only the first part of the process, Govindan explains. “We can do a good job here in the lab, but if our varieties are not being taken up by farmers it’s no use.”
Govindan and his team work in collaboration with a number of public and private sector organizations to promote new varieties, partnering with national agricultural research systems and advanced research institutes to reach farmers in India, Nepal and Pakistan. As a result, additional high-zinc varieties have been successfully marketed and distributed across South Asia, as well as new biofortified lines which are currently being tested in sub-Saharan Africa for potential release and cultivation by farmers.
Their efforts paid off with the development and release of more than half dozen competitive high-zinc varieties including Zinc-Shakthi, whose grain holds 40% more zinc than conventional varieties and yields well, has good resistance to rust diseases, and matures a week earlier than other popular varieties, allowing farmers to increase their cropping intensity. To date, these biofortified high-zinc wheat varieties have reached nearly a million households in target regions of South Asia and are expected to spread more widely in coming years.
The next step will be to support the mainstreaming of zinc, so that it becomes an integral part of breeding programs as opposed to an optional addition. “Hopefully in ten years’ time, most of the wheat we eat will have those extra benefits.”
There may be a long way to go, but Govindan remains optimistic about the task ahead.
Born into a farming family, he has fond memories of a childhood spent helping his father in the fields, with afternoons and school holidays dedicated to growing rice, cotton and a number of other crops on the family plot.
The region has undergone significant changes since then, and farmers now contend with both rising temperatures and unpredictable rainfall. It was a motivation to help poor farmers adapt to climate change and improve food production that led Govindan into plant breeding.
He has spent nearly ten years working on CIMMYT’s Spring Wheat Program and still feels honored to be part of a program with such a significant legacy. “Norman Borlaug, Sanjay Rajaram and my supervisor Ravi Singh — these people are legendary,” he explains. “So luckily we’re not starting from scratch. These people made life easy, and we just need to keep moving towards achieving continuous genetic gains for improved food and nutrition security.”
Víctor Villalobos, Mexico’s Agriculture and Rural Development secretary, delivered a keynote speech about the inextricable links between agriculture, forced migration and peace at the Borlaug Dialogue hosted in Des Moines, Iowa, by the World Food Prize Foundation.
Villalobos argued for adopting an integrated development approach to improve food production systems in the developing world, particularly in the Northern Triangle of Central America, with an aim to offer development opportunities to subsistence farmers and help halt forced migration.
“Any lasting answer to environmental degradation, violence, famine and forced migration demands our best collective effort, which is not the fight of one generation but the lasting legacy of Norman Borlaug, and of anybody who has ever engaged in this Borlaug Dialogue,” he said.
According to Villalobos, who is also honorary chair of the Board of Trustees of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Mexico is committed to investing in innovation, science and research to make whole grains farming more sustainable and profitable. Among other initiatives, Mexico is scaling out a sustainable research and development project between Mexico and CIMMYT called MasAgro.
“We believe that MasAgro’s innovation hubs, integrated crop production systems and design thinking approach to sustainably increasing the productivity of traditional farming methods can really help to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals that all countries are committed to achieve by 2030,” said Villalobos.
In 2014, the World Food Prize Foundation acknowledged the achievements of the MasAgro project by granting Bram Govaerts — currently CIMMYT’s Integrated Development Program director and representative for the Americas — the Norman Borlaug Award for Field Research and Application, endowed by the Rockefeller Foundation.
MasAgro’s model has since earned recognition from several international development organizations, funding agencies and governments, including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, the G20, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The theme of the 2019 Borlaug Dialogue was “Peace through Agriculture,” and the winner of the 2019 World Food Prize was Simon Groot, founder of the East-West Seed Company, which commercializes improved vegetable seeds in more than 60 countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America at affordable prices for the benefit of subsistence and small farmers.
The World Food Prize has a long association with CIMMYT. Sanjaya Rajaram was awarded the 2014 World Food Prize for his work that led to a prodigious increase in world wheat production. Evangelina Villegas and Surinder Vasal were awarded the 2000 World Food Prize for their work on productivity and nutritional content of maize. As an institution, CIMMYT received the Norman Borlaug Field Medallion in 2014.
Step into supermarkets or restaurants in Mexico City and surrounding towns and you might see products made from blue maize — food which would not have been available just a few years ago. Some of Mexico’s favorite dishes are taking on a new hue with blue corn chips, blue tortillas or blue tamales. But should breeders, millers, processors and farmer organizations invest in expanding the production of blue maize and blue maize products? Are consumers really interested, and are they willing to pay more?
These are some of the questions researchers at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico set out to answer. They set up study to test consumer preferences and willingness to pay for this blue maize tortillas.
Maize is a main staple crop in Mexico and tortillas form the base of many traditional dishes. Blue maize varieties have existed for thousands of years, but until recently they were mostly unknown outside of the farming communities that grew them. In addition to its striking color, the grain has gained popularity partly due to its health benefits derived from anthocyanin, the blue pigment which contains antioxidants.
“Demand for blue maize has skyrocketed in the past few years,” said Trent Blare, economist at CIMMYT and the leader of the research.” Three years ago, white and blue maize sold at the same price. One year ago, blue maize cost just a few Mexican pesos more, and now blue maize is worth significantly more. However, we still lack information on consumer demand and preferences.”
According to Blare, the end goal of the study is to explore the demand for blue maize and try to better understand its market potential. “If we want farmers who grow blue maize to be able to get better market value, we have to know what the market looks like.”
This research received funding from Mexico’s Agency for Commercialization Services and Agricultural Market Development (ASERCA), which has been working with farmer organizations on post-harvest storage solutions for their maize. As blue maize is softer than typical white or yellow varieties, it requires special storage to protect it against insects and damage. In order to help provide farmers with the correct maize storage technology, ASERCA and others in Mexico will benefit from a deeper understanding of the market for blue maize in the region. In addition, researchers were interested to know if there is a premium for growing blue maize, or for making tortillas by hand. Premiums could help convince farmers to invest in post-harvest technologies and in the production of blue maize.
“There is this idea that demand should come from producers, but there are many steps along the maize value chain. We’re basically going backwards in the value chain: is there demand, is there a market, going all the way from the consumer back to the farmer,” Blare explained.
A matter of taste
The study was conducted in Texcoco, just outside of Mexico City, where CIMMYT’s global headquarters are based. This town in the State of Mexico was chosen because of its long history growing and consuming blue maize. Interviews were held in three different locations, a local traditional market and two local shopping malls, in order to ensure that different socioeconomic groups were included.
The team interviewed 640 consumers, asking questions such as where do they buy different types of tortillas, in which dishes they use different types of tortillas and if they faced difficulties in purchasing their preferred tortilla. The team also conducted sensory analysis and attributes, and gave study participants a choice between handmade blue maize tortillas, handmade white maize tortillas, and machine-made white maize tortillas.
The interviewees were given three different scenarios. Would they be willing to pay more for blue tortillas compared to other tortillas if eating quesadillas at a restaurant? To serve during a special event or visit from a family member? For everyday use?
The answers allowed researchers to quantify how much more consumers were willing to pay and in what circumstance, as they were given different price points for different types of tortillas in different scenarios.
True colors
The researchers found that preferences for blue and white maize were distinct for different dishes, and that there was a particular preference for blue maize when used in traditional dishes from this region, such as tlacoyos or barbacoa. A majority of consumers was willing to pay more for higher quality tortillas regardless of the color, as long as they were made handmade and fresh from locally grown maize. Interviewers also saw a noticeable difference in preference for blue tortillas depending on the situation: blue tortillas are demanded more for special occasions and in traditional markets.
“I found it fascinating that there is a difference in blue maize consumption based on the circumstance in which you are eating it.” Blare said. “This is one of the innovations in our demand study — not analyzing the demand for a food product in general but analyzing differences in demand for a product in different contexts, which is important as food is such an important component for celebrations.”
“We think there is potential to replicate this in other places in Mexico, to see consumer preference and price willingness for blue maize and other value-added maize products,” said Jason Donovan, senior economist at CIMMYT. “This will not just inform farmers and markets but also how to do this kind of research, especially in middle-income economies. This study is the first of its kind.”
Still got the blue
Overall, the results revealed that women were willing to pay 33% more for blue maize tortillas while men were willing to pay 19% more. For every additional year of education, a consumer was willing to pay 1% more for blue maize tortillas. Interestingly, a person’s income had no effect on her or his willingness to pay for more blue maize tortillas. Many people interviewed expressed a preference for blue maize, but commented that they cannot always find it in local markets.
The information collected in these choice experiments will help farmers, breeders, and other actors along the maize value chain make more informed decisions on how to best provide blue maize varieties to the public — and give consumers what they want.
“It was a very interesting experience, I’ve never participated in a survey like this before and I think it is important to take the time to think about our decisions about food,” said Brenda Lopez, one of the interviewees in the choice experiment. Lopez preferred the handmade tortillas, especially those made with blue maize. “I think they have more flavor,” she said. “I just bought handmade tortillas in the market before participating in this survey, but I had to buy white because there was no blue available.”
Another interviewee, Luis Alcantara, agreed. “I prefer blue because of the flavor, the texture, even the smell,” he said. “At home we eat machine-made tortillas because it is hard to find handmade tortillas, and even if you do, they are not blue. We would buy blue if we could.”
Cover photo: Blue maize tortillas (Photo: Luis Figueroa)
Norman Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food production. In the latest episode of the BBC radio show Witness History, Rebecca Kesby interviews Ronnie Coffman, student and friend of Norman Borlaug.
Among other stories, Coffman recalls the moment when Borlaug was notified about the Nobel Prize — while working in the wheat fields in Mexico — and explores what motivated Borlaug to bring the Green Revolution to India.
To meet the demand for wheat from a rising and quickly urbanizing population, wheat yields in farmers’ fields must increase by an estimated 1.5% each year through 2030.
Of all the factors that influence yield, grain weight is the trait that is most stable and heritable for use in breeding improved wheat varieties. Breeders measure this by thousand grain weight (TGW).
Over the years, molecular scientists have made efforts to identify genes related to increased TGW, in order to speed up breeding through marker-assisted selection (MAS). Using MAS, breeders can select parents that contain genes related to the traits they are looking for, increasing the likelihood they will be passed on and incorporated in a new variety.
There have been some limited successes in these efforts: in the past years, a few genes related to increased TGW have been cloned, and a set of genetic markers have been determined to be used for MAS. However, the effects of most of these candidate genes have not yet been validated in diverse sets of wheat germplasm throughout the world that represent the full range of global wheat growing environments.
A group of wheat geneticists and molecular breeders from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) has recently conducted a thorough study to confirm the effects of the favorable alleles reported for these genes on TGW in CIMMYT wheat, and to identify new genetic determinants of this desired trait.
They found some good news and some bad news.
First, the good news: focusing on more than 4,000 lines of CIMMYT wheat germplasm they found 15 haplotype blocks significantly associated with TGW. Four haplotype blocks associated with TGW were also associated with grain yield — a grand prize for breeders, because in general the positive association of grain yield with TGW is less profound and sometimes even negative. However, of the 14 genes that had been previously reported to increase TGW, only one in CIMMYT’s 2015-2016 Elite Yield Trial and two in Wheat Associative Mapping Initiative panel were shown to have significant TGW associations.
The scientists also found that the alleles — pairs of genes on a chromosome that determine heredity — that were supposedly favorable to TGW actually decreased it. These candidate genes also appear to vary in their TGW effects with genetic background and/or environment.
Thus, these findings also provide a foundation for more detailed investigations, opening the door for more studies on the genetic background dependence and environment sensitivity of the known candidate genes for TGW.
“Our findings indicate that it will be challenging to use MAS based on these existing markers across individual breeding programs,” said Deepmala Sehgal, CIMMYT wheat geneticist and the primary author of the study.
However, efforts to identify new genetic determinants of TGW were promising. The authors’ study of CIMMYT germplasm found one locus on chromosome 6A that showed increases of up to 2.60 grams in TGW and up to 258 kilograms per hectare in grain yield.
This discovery expands opportunities for developing diagnostic markers to assist in multi-gene pyramiding — a process that can derive new and complementary allele combinations for enhanced wheat TGW and grain yield.
Most of all, the study highlights the strong need for better and more validation of the genes related to this and other traits, so that breeders can be sure they are using material that is confirmed to increase wheat grain weight and genetic yield.
“Our findings are very promising for future efforts to efficiently develop more productive wheat in both grain weight and grain yield,” said Sehgal. “This ultimately means more bread on household tables throughout the world.”
“Validation of Candidate Gene-Based Markers and Identification of Novel Loci for Thousand-Grain Weight in Spring Bread Wheat” in Frontiers in Plant Science by Deepmala Sehgal, Suchismita Mondal, Carlos Guzman, Guillermo Garcia Barrios, Carolina Franco, Ravi Singh and Susanne Dreisigacker was supported by funding from the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat (WHEAT), the Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat (DGGW) project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK Department for International Development (DFID), and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Applied Wheat Genomics.
Read the full article here: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2019.01189
The CGIAR Research Program on Maize (MAIZE) is pleased to announce the winners of the 2019 MAIZE Youth Innovators Awards – Latin America. These awards recognize the contributions of young women and men under 35 who are implementing innovations in Latin American maize-based agri-food systems, including research for development, seed systems, agribusiness, and sustainable intensification.
The winners will attend the 23rd Latin American Maize Reunion (XXIII Reunión Latinoamericana del Maíz) in Monteria, Colombia, where they will receive their awards and present their work. Award recipients may also get the opportunity to collaborate with MAIZE and its partner scientists in Latin America on implementing or furthering their innovations.
This is the third instalment of the awards, following Asia in October 2018 and Africa in May 2019.
Congratulations to this year’s winners, seven exceptional young people working in Latin American maize-based systems:
Eduardo Cruz Rojo (Mexico) – Farmer category
Eduardo Cruz Rojo is a young agricultural entrepreneur, worried about rural out-migration in his region and about the poor agricultural practices that have led farming to cease to be profitable. He has a degree in logistics, and is originally from Alfajayucan, in Mexico’s state of Hidalgo. For the past four years he has been working on maize research and production, with a focus on improved agronomic practices that help farmers increase their yields. This includes soil improvement, organic fertilizers, earthworm compost and biological pest control. Through research and testing, he has shown smallholder farmers the cost-benefit of improved agricultural practices. This has been reflected in local farmers achieving improved soils and yields in an environmentally friendly manner.
Yésica Chazarreta (Argentina) – Researcher category
Yésica Chazarreta has a degree in genetics and is currently a doctoral fellow at the Scientific and Technologic Fund, working with the Crop Ecophysiology group at the National Agricultural Technology Institute (INTA) Pergamino in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her work centers on understanding the genetic and environmental control of the physiological determinants of filling, drying and quality of maize grains in genotypes destined for grain or silage. The objective is to generate knowledge to continue advancing in maize production improvement and to open the possibility of establishing improvement programs differentiated by planting times for her region, as well as to provide valuable information for the creation of mechanistic models to predict the evolution of humidity in maize grains. This information can help farmers make more informed decisions about the best time to harvest. In addition, Chazarreta hopes to deepen understanding of maize biomass quality for animal feed, a practice that has increased in her native country, Argentina, due to changes in crop management practices related to delays in planting dates.
Omar Garcilazo Rahme (Mexico) – Researcher category
Omar Garcilazo Rahme is a postgraduate student researching sustainable management of agro-ecosystems at the Meritorious Autonomous University of Puebla (BUAP).
A food engineer by training, he has a profound interest in Mexico’s bio-cultural heritage and maize as a staple food in his native country, as well as the various methods to produce and conserve the crop. His research project seeks to improve the economic, nutritious and sociocultural benefits associated with the production of maize.
He is currently collaborating in a technology transfer and innovation agency on the topics of nutritional labeling, big data and applied technology solutions for the agri-food industry.
Lucio Reinoso (Argentina) – Researcher category
Lucio Reinoso is an agronomist with a master’s degree in agricultural sciences from the National Southern University, Argentina. He has worked as a professor at the National University of Rio Negro since 2019. Reinoso was a fellow and researcher for 12 years at the National Institute for Agricultural Technology (INTA).
He works on sustainable models of maize production under irrigation in the irrigated valleys of Northern Patagonia, Argentina. Reinoso is specifically investigating the adaptation of maize to the soil and climatic conditions of the region, highlighting the water and nutritional needs to maximize production while also caring for the environment.
He works with local farmers to adapt no-till farming to scale and adjust irrigation management to improve water use efficiency while preserving the physical, chemical and biological characteristics of soil, increasing resilience.
Viviana López Ramírez (Colombia) – Researcher category
Viviana López Ramírez is a biological engineer with a master’s degree in environmental studies from the National University of Colombia in Medellin.
She is currently a doctoral student in biological sciences at the National University in Río Cuarto, Argentina, studying the application of bacteriocins for the biological control of phytopathogens.
This work on bacteriosis in maize is conducted by a multidisciplinary team and focuses on the identification of pathogenic bacteria isolated from a diverse maize population.
José Esteban Sotelo Mariche (Mexico) – Change Agent category
José Esteban Sotelo Mariche is an agronomist from the coastal region of Oaxaca, Mexico. He studied at Chapingo Autonomous University and is certified in rural development and food security.
Since 2012 he has offered capacity building to smallholder maize farmers in his region. In 2014 he formed Integradora Agroempresarial del Rio Verde to promote the production and commercialization of agricultural products. The group now has 80 members, including indigenous and Afro-Mexican farmers. In 2016 he began working with tortilla company Masienda to help local farmers export native maize to gourmet restaurants in the United States.
Most recently he has worked on the integration of the Center for Rural Technology Transfer and Validation (Centro de Validación y Transferencia de Tecnología Rural) to evaluate conservation agriculture systems, efficient water use and agroforestry. This space also serves to provide training activities and technical assistance to local farmers.
Carlos Barragan (Mexico) – Change Agent category
Carlos Barragan has a degree in agroecological engineering from Chapingo Autonomous University.
He collaborates with the MasAgro project in Mexico’s state of Oaxaca, helping to adapt small-scale production systems to climate change.
He also contributes to work on soil fertility as well as inclusive business models for smallholder farmers working in agri-food value chains.
Mexican and international researchers have joined with farmers and specialists from Jala, a scenic valley near the Pacific Coast of Mexico’s state of Nayarit, in a critical strategy to save and study an endangered, legendary maize race whose ears once grew longer than a man’s forearm.
Specialists from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) are analyzing the race’s genetic diversity, in hopes of preserving its qualities and, in concert with Jala farmers, safeguarding its future and merits.
Efforts include a new maize festival that reprises a yearly contest begun in 1981 to honor the community’s largest maize ear, but the outsize Jala maize race faces myriad hurdles to survive, according to Carolina Camacho, CIMMYT socioeconomics researcher and festival collaborator.
“The Jala maize landrace is unsuited to mechanization due to its size and agronomic requirements,” said Camacho. “It must be sown by hand and, because the plant can grow to several meters or taller, the ears must be harvested on horseback.”
Jala maize is also losing out to more competitive and profitable improved varieties, Camacho added. It is prized locally for its floury texture, but many farmers favor varieties more suited to milling and which yield more husks — in high demand as tamale wraps — as well as fodder and feed. The floury texture also means the grain is less dense and so fetches a lower price on external markets, where grain is sold by weight.
A fair fight for preservation
The most recent “Feria de la Mazorca del Maíz Nativo,” or Landrace Maize Ear Festival, was held in December 2018. Under the boughs of a giant guanacaste tree in the town square of Coapan, Jala Valley, children, elders, cooks and dancers celebrated maize and its associated traditions. The festival culminated in the contest for the largest maize ear, with the winning farmer’s submission measuring nearly 38 centimeters in length.
The competition typically takes place in August as part of Jala’s two-week “Feria del Elote,” or green ear festival, first established to foster the appreciation and preservation of the native maize.
CIMMYT scientists helped the community set up a local genebank to store Jala landrace seed, according to Denise Costich, head of the CIMMYT maize germplasm bank and festival collaborator.
“This enhances the community’s role as custodians of landrace diversity and their access to the seed,” said Costich, adding that Jala seed from as far back as the early 1980s forms part of CIMMYT’s maize collections, which comprise 28,000 unique samples.
Under CIMMYT’s Seeds of Discovery project, scientists are analyzing the remaining genetic potential in the Jala maize population, particularly to understand the extent and effects of both inbreeding and outcrossing.
On the one hand, Costich said, Jala’s unique genetic pedigree appears to be diluted from mixing with other varieties in the valley whose pollen lands on Jala silks. At the same time, she worries about possible inbreeding in some small and isolated valley pockets where Jala is grown.
Finally, the yearly contest, for which maize ears are harvested in the green stage before maturity, precludes use of the grain as seed and so may also remove inheritable potential for large ears from the local maize gene pool.
Farewell to small-scale farmers?
Whatever the causes, Jala maize isn’t what it used to be. In 1924, a visiting scientist observed maize plants over 6 meters in height and with ears more than 60 centimeters long — far longer than today’s samples.
One grave challenge to the landrace’s continued existence is the steady disappearance of older farmers who grow it. As throughout rural Mexico, many youths are leaving farm communities like Jala in search of better opportunities and livelihoods in cities.
Camacho believes the festival and contest encourage farmers to continue growing Jala maize but cannot alone ensure the landrace’s preservation.
“The solutions need to encompass all aspects of Jala maize and be supported by the entire community, particularly young people,” said Camacho.
The festival in Coapan included a panel discussion with local youths, among them graduate students from the Autonomous University of Nayarit.
“The panelists highlighted the lack of opportunities in rural areas and the need for an economically secure future; things that Jala maize doesn’t offer,” Camacho said.
The festival is a collaboration among Costich, Camacho, Victor Vidal of INIFAP-Nayarit, and local partners including Gilberto González, Ricardo Cambero, Alondra Maldonado, Ismael Elías, Renato Olmedo (CIMMYT), and Miguel González Lomelí.
CIMMYT’s projects in Latin America feature in a new report that aims to help countries use data to design public policies and projects that help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.
The Counting on The World to Act report was released on September 23, 2019, by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and the Thematic Research Network on Data and Statistics (TReNDS) during the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA 74) in New York City.
The report describes CIMMYT’s data management systems and tools as examples of “frontier technologies” for data gathering, management and analysis that effectively contribute to sustainable farming in Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico.
“As part of the data revolution, efficiencies are being derived from lower-tech approaches such as using citizen-generated data and smartphones to speed up existing survey-based approaches,” reads the introduction to CIMMYT’s sidebar story in Chapter 4, Incentives for Innovation.
The MasAgro Electronic Log that field technicians use to monitor crop cycles and management practices, and the AgroTutor application that offers farmers more specific and timely recommendations are some of the new affordable tools for data management that CIMMYT is successfully implementing in Latin America.
Read the full report on the TReNDS website.
Read more about MasAgro’s work for sustainable farming in Latin America here.
