âCIMMYT is the center with the most effective maize and wheat breeding programs in the world,â said VĂctor Villalobos, Mexicoâs Agriculture and Rural Development secretary, during his keynote address at the Borlaug Dialogue. (Photo: Mary Donovan/CIMMYT)
VĂctor Villalobos, Mexicoâs 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.
âAny 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,â 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 MasAgroâs 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,â said Villalobos.
In 2014, the World Food Prize Foundation acknowledged the achievements of the MasAgro project by granting Bram Govaerts â currently CIMMYTâs Integrated Development Program director and representative for the Americas â the Norman Borlaug Award for Field Research and Application, endowed by the Rockefeller Foundation.
MasAgroâs 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 âPeace through Agriculture,â 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.
William Penn Universityâs Health & Life Sciences Division welcomed students, staff, faculty, and community members at the annual World Food Prize lecture on Wednesday, Oct. 16.
This yearâs speaker was Bram Govaerts, the global Director Innovative Business Strategies with CIMMYT. Read more here.
CIMMYT researcher Bram Govaerts participates in the World Food Prize and Borlaug Dialogue.
Expertise, multiple achievements and a significant contribution to sustainable agri-food systems in Mexico and globally, have merited Bram Govaerts, director of the Integrated Development Program and regional representative for the Americas at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Cornell Universityâs appointment as Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large. This is a distinction granted to individuals whose work in science, education, social sciences, literature and creative arts has had great impact and international visibility.
Cornell University launched the Professors-at-Large program to commemorate its centenary and to honor its first president, Andrew D. White. The program secures a connection between the university and its faculty with the world, global issues, great thinkers and outstanding intellectuals. Since then, personalities such as philosopher Jacques Derrida, writer and poet Octavio Paz, geneticist M. S. Swaminathan, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Norman Borlaug have received this distinction.
âI was honored to learn about my nomination and glad to be interviewed, but I was happily surprised and humbled to learn that I had been chosen to join this group of distinguished thinkers and artists, which has welcomed such outstanding members as Norman Borlaug and Octavio Paz,â said Govaerts.
Professors-at-Large take the responsibility to participate, over a six-year period, in several activities that strengthen the international academic community and are, afterwards, considered distinguished and lifetime members of the university.
Govaerts takes inspiration from the âtake it to the farmerâ vision, and has been instrumental to the development of CIMMYTâs project portfolio, which integrates innovations in maize and wheat production systems by minimizing their environmental impact.
Govaerts shares this acknowledgement with his team and collaborators who have joined efforts to achieve the objectives set in Colombia, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Mexico and many other countries that have taken the decision to make a difference.
In 2014, Bram Govaerts received from the World Food Prize Foundation the Norman E. Borlaug Award for Field Research and Application, endowed by the Rockefeller Foundation, for leading the MasAgro project and finding innovative ways of applying science to improve the productivity and resilience of small and medium-sized maize and wheat farmers in Mexico.
DES MOINES (Iowa) â Hundreds of food and agriculture leaders from around the world gathered last week in Iowa, USA, for the 2018 edition of the Borlaug Dialogue. Much of the conversation this year was centered on how to âtake it to the farmer,â as Norman Borlaug famously said. Experts discussed how to build sustainable seed systems, grounded on solid science, so improved varieties reach smallholder farmers.
General view of the 2018 Borlaug Dialogue venue. (Photo: World Food Prize)
Louise Sperling, senior technical advisor at Catholic Relief Services, presented a study on the sources of seed for smallholder farmers in Africa. She explained that 52.2 percent of households receive new varieties, but only 2.8 percent of the seed comes through agro-dealers. The biggest source is local markets and own stock, the so-called informal channels.
Quality and variety of seed should be the focus, emphasized Jean Claude Rubyogo, seed systems specialist at CIAT. In his view, we need to integrate formal and informal seed distribution channels, using the competitive advantages of each.
âWhen we take good seed, we address all African soil,â said Ruth Oniang’o, board chair at the Sasakawa Africa Foundation. Oniang’o explained access to financing is a major hurdle for smallholders to access better seed and other innovations. In her view, current financial products are inadequate. âWhy should we get a farmer to pay 20 percent interest rates on a small loan?â
B.J. Marttin, member of the managing board of Rabobank Group, recommended financial institutions to partner with farmers through every stage, from production to sale, so they better understand risk and the whole value chain. Simon Winter, executive director of the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture, captured the main points from the session on financing for agricultural entrepreneurs. âWe have to have the farmer at the center. The farmer is the ultimate customer,â Winter said. âIf we are not serving farmer needs, we are not really solving the problems.â
Research to feed the world
The 2018 Global Agricultural Productivity (GAP) Report, presented at the Borlaug Dialogue, shows the growing gap between future food supply needs and agricultural production, particularly in low-income countries. To meet the projected food needs of nearly 10 billion people in 2050, global agricultural productivity must increase by 1.75 percent annually, the report states, but has only increased 1.51 percent annually since 2010.
A plenary session led by CGIAR explored the role of research in tackling this and other complex challenges. âWe have to talk about food and agriculture research,â said former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman. People need to understand research is not abstract academic knowledge, but rather useful innovation that goes âfrom the farm, to the table and to the stomach,â he explained.
âInnovation, no matter where you are in the world, is key to moving forward,â said Patience Koku, a farmer from Nigeria part of the Global Farmer Network. âI donât think the farmers in Africa or in Nigeria need a lot of convincingâ to adopt innovation, Koku noted. If someone is able to explain what a new technology can do, âfarmers see that science can make their life better and embrace it.â
Rising to the challenge
Agricultural research is also crucial to confront global threats like pests, conflict and climate change.
A session led by CIMMYT presented the latest research and actions against fall armyworm. (Photo: Rodrigo Ordóñez/CIMMYT)
Two separate sessions, hosted by Corteva Agriscience and CIMMYT, shared the latest approaches in the fight against fall armyworm and other pests and diseases. The Director General of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Martin Kropff, explained how organizations are working together to respond to the rapid spread of fall armyworm in Africa and Asia. âWe have to solve the problem based on science, and then develop, validate and deploy integrated pest management approaches,â Kropff said.
As part of the World Food Prize outreach program, Bram Govaerts, director of innovative business strategies at CIMMYT, gave a lecture to students at Brody Middle School about the importance of agriculture and food. “When people can’t grow crops or pay for food to feed their families, desperation turns to conflict.”
At a side event, the Economist Intelligence Unit presented the Global Food Security Index 2018, which ranks food systems in 113 countries based on affordability, availability, and quality and safety. Senior consultant Robert Powell explained that the index now includes an adjustment factor based on each countryâs natural resource risks and resilience to the impacts of a changing climate. âAll countries will experience the impact of climate change,â Powell said.
The pernicious effects of climate change were also evident to the 2018 World Food Prize winners, David Nabarro and Lawrence Haddad, who have led global efforts to curb child malnutrition. âThere is no evidence to me that [this] crisis is going to stop, because climate change is here,â Nabarro declared. âThe foods we choose to grow and eat have a large impact on emissions,â Haddad said. âFood has a lot to offerâ on climate mitigation and âdiversity is the secret sauceâ for climate adaptation. âWe need food systems that are diverse: in crops, locations, organizations involved in themâŠâ
Less biodiversity translates into âless resilience and worse nutrition,â according to the Vice President of Peru, Mercedes ArĂĄoz. Through improved health and nutrition services, the country more than halved malnutrition among children under five, from 28 percent in 2008 to 13.1 percent in 2016.
2018 World Food Prize winners Lawrence Haddad (left) and David Nabarro speak during the award ceremony. (Photo: World Food Prize)
A rallying cry for nutrition
The impact of nutrition on the first 1,000 days of life lasts a lifetime, explained Haddad. âFor young kids, these are permanent shocks.â
âIf a person is not nourished in those very important weeks and months of life, the long-term consequences are likely to be irreversible,â Nabarro added. According to him, nutrition needs to be the target in the 2030 agenda, not only hunger.
âNutrition-based interventions present us a new lens through which to create and assess impact as agricultural researchers,â said Elwyn Grainger-Jones, the executive director of the CGIAR System Organization. âOur future success must come not only from ensuring an adequate supply of calories for the global population, but also the right quality and diversity of foods to tackle hidden hunger as well.â
âWe are not going to resolve the challenges of undernutrition without the ag sector stepping up in a big way and differently,â argued Shawn Baker, director of nutrition at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. âNutrition needs you,â Baker told other participants. âWelcome to the nutrition family.â
DES MOINES (Iowa) â At the plenary of the 2018 Borlaug Dialogue, a global panel of experts gave an overview of the origins of the fall armyworm, how it is spreading around the world, and how governments, farmers and researchers are fighting against this pest.
Pedro Sanchez, research professor in tropical soils at the University of Florida and 2002 World Food Prize Laureate, shared background information on the history of the fall armyworm and the early attempts to neutralize it, decades ago. He pointed out that once-resistant varieties were eventually affected by this pest.
The Director General of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Martin Kropff, shared the most recent developments and explained how organizations are working together to respond to this pest. “We want to have science-based, evidence-based solutions,” Kropff said. “We have to solve the problem based on science, and then to develop and validate and deploy integrated pest management technologies.”
The director general of the Ethiopian Institute of Agriculture, Mandefro Nigussie, reminded that in addition to affecting people and the environment, fall armyworm âis also affecting the future generation,â as children were pulled out of school to pick larvae.
The response against fall armyworm cannot be done by governments alone, panelists agreed. It requires the support of multiple actors: financing the research, producing research, promoting the results of the research and implementing appropriate measures.
Rob Bertram, chief scientist at USAID’s Bureau for Food Security predicted the fall armyworm will continue to be a “serious problem” as it moves and migrates.
The director general and CEO of the Kenya Agricultural & Livestock Research Organization, Eluid Kireger, emphasized the importance of global collaboration. âWe need to borrow the technologies that are already workingâ.
The fall armyworm was also discussed during the Corteva Agriscience Forum side event, on a session on “Crop security for food security”. The Director of CIMMYT’s Global Maize Program and the CGIAR Research Program on Maize, B.M. Prasanna, was optimistic about the efforts to tackle this voracious pest. âIâm 100 percent confident that the pest will be overcome, but it requires very solid synergistic and coordinated actions at the national level, at the regional level and at the continental level.â
CIMMYT is co-leading the Fall Armyworm R4D International Consortium. âFall armyworm is not going to be the only threat now and forever; there will be more insects, pests and pathogens moving around,” Prasanna said. “Global connectedness is exacerbating this kind of problem, but the solution lies also in global connectedness.â
DES MOINES (Iowa) â As winners of the 2018 World Food Prize, Lawrence Haddad and David Nabarro are being recognized today for their individual work in unifying global nutrition efforts and reducing child malnutrition during the first 1,000 days of life. With this award, food and agriculture leaders highlight the importance of linking food production and nutrition.
Haddadâs and Nabarroâs efforts were crucial in uniting food security policy and programs in the wake of the 2008 global food crisis, when wheat, maize and rice prices doubled. Haddad and Nabarro leapt into action, each rallying a broad group of food system stakeholders and development champions and pushing for the implementation of evidence-based policies.
Using economic and medical research, Haddad convinced leaders to make child and maternal nutrition a priority in the global food security agenda. Nabarro, a champion of public health at the United Nations, was directly responsible for uniting 54 countries and one Indian state under the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement.
The 2018 laureatesâ work significantly improved nutrition for mothers and children in the critical first 1,000 days of life â the period from pregnancy to a childâs second birthday. Their relentless leadership and advocacy inspired efforts by countless others to reduce childhood malnutrition. Between 2012 and 2017, the worldâs number of stunted children dropped by 10 million.
“I would like to personally congratulate Haddad and Nabarro for putting nutrition and healthy diets on the global agenda,” expressed Martin Kropff, the Director General of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). “Together, we have to strive to develop resilient agri-food systems that provide nutritious cereal-based diets.”
Food and agriculture leadership
The World Food Prize has been referred to as the âNobel Prize for food and agriculture.â Awarded by the World Food Prize Foundation, it recognizes individuals who have advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world. Winners receive $250,000 in prize money.
The World Food Prize was founded in 1986 by Norman Borlaug, recipient of the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize.
Martin Kropff, CIMMYT director general (left) and Mustapha El-Bouhssini, ICARDA entomologist, in that centerâs lab at Rabat, Morocco.
In an excellent example of scientific collaboration spanning borders and generations, Mustapha El-Bouhssini, entomologist at the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), screened wheat breeding lines from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) under glasshouse infestations of Russian wheat aphid (Diuraphis noxia), a major global pest of wheat. At least one of the lines, which were developed through crosses of wheat with related crop and grass species, showed high levels of resistance.
âIn our experiments, we did an initial screening with one replication and then a replicated test with a Pavon line and the check,â said El-Bouhssini.
Pavon is a semi-dwarf wheat variety developed by Sanjaya Rajaram, former CIMMYT wheat director and 2014 World Food Prize laureate. The version of Pavon referred to by El-Bouhssini had been crossed with rye by Lukaszewski and entered CIMMYTâs wheat genetic resource collections; the check was a popular high-yielding variety with no resistance to Russian wheat aphid.
The resistant wheat line (center) is green while all others have perished under heavy infestation of Russian wheat aphid, in the ICARDA entomology lab at Rabat, Morocco.
Pavon had been used by Lukaszewski and colleagues as a model variety for wide crosses to transfer pest and disease resistance to wheat from its distant relatives. More recently Leonardo Crespo-Herrera, CIMMYT wheat breeder, pursued this research for his doctoral studies. It was he who provided a selection of wide-cross lines to El-Bouhssini.
âResistance to pests in wheat is a valuable trait for farmers and the environment,â said Crespo-Herrera. âIt can protect yield for farmers who lack access to other control methods. For those with access to insecticides, it can minimize their use and cost, as well as negative impacts on the environment and human health.â
Figure: Maize-producing counties in the USA that are vulnerable to Tar Spot Complex (TSC) of maize, developed based on climate analogue model analysis procedure matching historic climatic data of 13 counties where TSC has been detected.
A new study shows that nearly 12 million hectares of the maize-growing USA, approximately 33 percent of the entire maize-growing area of the country, might be vulnerable to a disease called Tar Spot Complex (TSC).
Native to Latin America, one of the two major fungal pathogens involved in TSC of maize was detected for the first time in the United States in 2015. In Latin America, TSC can cause up to 50 percent losses in maize yields, but the impact of one fungal pathogen alone on maize yields unknown. There is a hypothetical likelihood that the second fungal pathogen involved in TSC, could migrate to the US. If this happens, the devastating TSC disease in the US could cause significant economic damages.
Even a one percent loss in maize production caused by the disease in this area could lead to a reduction in maize production of 1.5 million metric tons of grain, or approximately $231.6 million in losses. Such production losses would not only affect the $51.5 billion US maize industry, but also the food security in a number of low-income countries that are heavily dependent on maize imports from the US.
The emergence and spread of new crop diseases or new variants of already established diseases around the globe over the last decades have generated serious threats for food safety and security. Therefore, the improvement of crop disease resistance has become one of the key focus topics of research at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).
The intent of this study is to raise public awareness regarding potential TSC outbreaks and to develop strategies and action plans for such scenario.
This study was published by an interdisciplinary team of CIMMYT scientists in the journal of Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change regarding the potential threats of TSC in the US and its global consequences. Within this article, ex-ante impact assessment techniques were combined with climate analogue analysis to identify the maize growing regions that may be vulnerable to potential TSC outbreaks in the USA.
Bekele Geleta Abeyo works on germplasm development, variety release, early generation seed multiplication, demonstration and popularization of new wheat varieties with recommended packages to realize better yield gains on farmers’ fields with NARS partners for nine sub-Saharan African countries.
He facilitates germplasm exchange among NARs within and across countries, NARS capacity building through training and mentoring of young professionals, material support by developing competitive and compelling projects pertinent to the country, data and experience sharing, and joint publication of new research findings.
He also organizes national, regional and international conferences and workshops, creating networks among NARs in the region, representing CIMMYT and the Global Wheat Program (GWP) in various forums. He liaises with government officials, institutions, and offices at various levels for collaboration effective partnerships.
The 2002 World Food Prize laureate, Pedro Sanchez, a professor at the University of Florida and Akinwumi Adesina, 2017 World Food Prize laureate and president of the African Development Bank speak about the fall armyworm at a press conference on the sidelines of the 2017 Borlaug Dialogue conference in Des Moines, Iowa. Credit: World Food Prize
DES MOINES, Iowa (CIMMYT) â World Food Prize laureates have joined forces with an international alliance battling the fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda), an aggressive pest indigenous to the Americas with a voracious appetite, now widespread throughout Africa.
The 2002 World Food Prize laureate, Pedro Sanchez, currently a research professor at the University of Florida, addressed delegates at the Borlaug Dialogue conference in Des Moines, Iowa, which is timed each year to coincide with annual World Food Prize celebrations.
Sanchez described the severity of the challenge posed by the pest, which has a host range of more than 80 plant species, including maize, a staple food on which millions of people throughout sub-Saharan Africa depend for their food and income security.
Fall armyworm activities not only put food security, livelihoods and national economies at risk, but also threaten to undo recent hard-earned crop production gains on the continent, Sanchez said.
âHopefully, it will be controlled; it will never be eradicated,â Sanchez said. âI think the fate of African food security really hinges now on this clear and present danger. It threatens to reverse the gains achieved in the last 10 years. Itâs the epitome of an invasive species.â
The pest, which has no known natural predators, can cause total crop losses, and at advanced larval development stages can be difficult to control even with synthetic pesticides. The female fall armyworm can lay up to a thousand eggs at a time and can produce multiple generations very quickly without pause in tropical environments. The moth can fly 100 km (62 miles) a night, and some moth populations have even been reported to fly distances of up to 1,600 kilometers in 30 hours, according to experts.
Sanchez said that Akinwumi Adesina, 2017 World Food Prize laureate and president of the African Development Bank, and Rob Fraley, 2013 World Food Prize laureate and chief technology officer at Monsanto, had united with him to urgently âraise the alarmâ about the threat from the pest.
By joining forces as laureates, we aim to really bring attention to this issue to avoid a food crisis, Adesina said. Mobile phones should be effectively used in the fight against the pest, he said.
âThereâs just no better way in which farmers can detect, recognize and send information very fast to extension agents or universities that can allow them to identify it and get the information they need to deal with it,â he said, adding that the new African Development Bank initiative Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT), will play a key role in fighting the fall armyworm.
Projections by the Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International, (CABI), indicate that if left unchecked, the fall armyworm could lead to maize yield losses of around $2.5 to $6.2 billion a year in just 12 of the 28 African countries where the pest has been confirmed.
Joint force
In April, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) hosted an international joint stakeholders meeting in Nairobi, committing to an integrated pest management strategy to tackle the pest.
CIMMYT, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and experts from several national and international research organizations, are currently developing a detailed field manual on Fall Armyworm management in Africa, said B.M. Prasanna, director of the Global Maize Program at CIMMYT and the CGIAR Research Program on Maize, who spoke at a Borlaug Dialogue side event with a panel of scientific experts.
Scientist B.M. Prasanna, director of the Global Maize Program at CIMMYT and the CGIAR Research Program on Maize, speaks at a Borlaug Dialogue side event about the fall armyworm with a panel of scientific experts. CIMMYT/Julie Mollins
âThe manual will offer protocols and best management practices related to fall armyworm scouting, monitoring and surveillance; biological control; pesticides and pesticide risk management; host plant resistance; pheromones and sustainable agro-ecological management of fall armyworm, especially in the African context,â Prasanna said, adding that the pest has so far devastated at least 1.5 million hectares of maize in just six countries.
A Southern Africa Regional Training-of-Trainers and Awareness Raising Workshop on Fall Armyworm management was conducted in Harare, Zimbabwe, from Oct. 30 to Nov. 1, while a similar workshop for Eastern Africa is scheduled for Nov. 13 to 15 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and for West Africa in early 2018.
The workshops are aimed at supporting pest control and extension actors to effectively scout, determine the need for intervention, and apply specific practices to control the pest in maize and other crops, Prasanna said.
Fall armyworm toolbox
Prasanna announced that the CIMMYT team in Africa is intensively evaluating maize germplasm for resistance to fall armyworm. Initial experiments have indicated some promising breeding materials, which need to be validated further and utilized in product development and deployment pipelines, he said.
âThe crisis is quickly escalating due to the loss of quality maize seed in production fields, and the extensive and indiscriminate use of low cost highly toxic pesticides,â Prasanna said.
âWe need to quickly bring awareness among the farming communities in Africa about environmentally safer approaches of Fall Armyworm management,â he said, adding that the international community can learn from the experiences of Brazil and the United States, where the pest has been endemic for  several decades.
âSustainable agro-ecological management at the field and landscape levels is key,â Prasanna said. âWe must make our solutions affordable to smallholder farmers.â
Panelist Mark Edge, director of collaborations for developing countries at agrochemical and biotechnology company Monsanto, said that integrated pest management, collaboration and public-private sector partnerships would be key to fighting the pest.
âFirst and foremost, it really is about an integrated pest management system â weâre not trying to propose that biotechnology is a silver bullet for this,â he said. âWe need to continue to use many different technologies and biotechnology is one very powerful tool that we have in the toolbox.â
Over the past 10 years, the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) a Monsanto-CIMMYT partnership project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID has led to the development of almost 100 hybrid varieties effective against drought and a Bt â or biological pesticide â trait effective against the maize stem borers (Chilo partellus and Busseola fusca). The varieties will be available royalty-free to smallholder farmers.
âInsect resistance together with drought is our target; weâve made tremendous progress over the past 10 years,â Edge said. âIn the Americas, we still have challenges with fall armyworm, but weâre certainly able to control it to where farmers are actually able to get very good yields and manage the pests very effectively.â
Smallholder farmers need access to these varieties as soon as possible, so the focus should be on getting regulatory approvals in place by encouraging governments to support the technology, Edge said. The Bt trait varieties will need to be managed carefully so they do not develop resistance to the pest, he added.
âScientists alone are not going to carry the day on this,â Edge said. âWe need to bring together the science on this, but we also need the political will to help make that happen.â
Panelist Segenet Kelemu, director general of the International Institute of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), said that techniques used to fight the stem borer have proven effective against the fall armyworm, although experiments are ongoing to craft an integrated pest management strategy to control various stages of the pest from egg to moth. The continent will face deepening challenges from insects due to climate change, she said.
âIf there were capacity on the ground, fall armyworm would have been identified sooner,â Kelemu said. âWe need a more comprehensive way and a global partnership to tackle this.â
Panelist Gregg Nuessly, a pest management researcher and the director of the Everglades Research and Education Center at the University of Florida, said that the fall armyworm could be effectively controlled through an integrated pest management approach.
âSuccess in control is not only possible, itâs quite common in the Western Hemisphere,â Nuessly said.
Speakers on panel “How Can CRISPR-Cas Technology Assist Small Holder Farmers Around the World?” at 2017 Borlaug Dialogue in Des Moines Iowa. L-R: Kevin Pixley, leader of Seeds of Discovery and the Genetic Resources Program at CIMMYT; Feng Zhang, core member of Broad Institute; Neal Gutterson, member of CIMMYTâs board of trustees and vice president of research and development at DuPont Pioneer, in DowDuPont agriculture division; Nigel Taylor, interim director, Institute for International Crop Improvement, Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. Picture credit: World Food Prize
DES MOINES, Iowa (CIMMYT) â Gene editing technology could revolutionize the way scientists breed high-yielding drought, disease and pest resistant, quality plant seeds, greatly reducing the time it currently takes to develop new varieties, said a panel of expert scientists at the Borlaug Dialogue conference in Des Moines, Iowa.
Using CRISPR-Cas9 to select or suppress desired traits in a genome is almost as simple as editing a Microsoft Word document on a computer, said Feng Zhang, the originator of the technology who is a core member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
To edit genes, a protein called Cas9 is programmed to create an RNA search string, which can search and edit paired DNA to alter a genome to achieve desired effects in plants, Zheng said.
âThereâs a lot of exciting opportunity to apply this technology in both human health and in agriculture,â he said.
Although the gene editing process itself is extremely fast, it will likely be several years before the benefits of the process for smallholder farmers begin to be realized, said Kevin Pixley, who leads the Seeds of Discovery project and the Genetic Resources Program at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).
CIMMYT scientists aim to use the breakthrough technology to help smallholder farmers in the developing world address food security, nutrition shortcomings and economic threats to their livelihoods caused by climate change, pests and disease. Additionally, they see the potential to reduce the use of pesticides, and to boost nutrition through bio-fortification of crops.
âWe want sustainable agriculture that provides food and nutrition security for all, while enabling biodiversity conservation,â Pixley said. âCRISPR-Cas9 is an affordable technology that can help us close the technology gap between the resource rich and resource poor farmers of the world.â
CRISPR-Cas9 improved varieties could also reduce the risk of investing in fertilizers, grain storage or other technologies, thereby contributing to “double benefits” for smallholder farmers, Pixley said.
Poverty alleviation and improved livelihoods for farmers are part of the shared vision for CIMMYT and our research partners, and we see CRISPR-Cas9 as a technology that can make a significant contribution to achieving this aim, he added.
DELIVERING BENEFITS
âWe think about this as being about bringing abundant potential to agriculture through this technology,â said Neal Gutterson, a member of CIMMYTâs board of trustees and vice president of research and development at DuPont Pioneer, part of the agriculture division at DowDuPont.
âFor us, it’s part of the evolution of breeding systems, itâs targeted breeding thatâs enabled by CRISPR-Cas9 technology,â he said, describing joint research projects with CIMMYT and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center.
Currently, CIMMYT and DuPont Pioneer are researching the benefits of using CRISPR-Cas9 to combat maize lethal necrosis (MLN) disease in East Africa. MLN is caused by a combination of two viruses, which can only be treated by developing genetic resistance in the plant.
âWe can ultimately accelerate the delivery of improved products that are really highly performing, high yielding, and also resistant to that viral disease,â Gutterson said, explaining how the technology would benefit smallholders. âShould the disease spread outside of Africa weâll be poised to deliver solutions even faster.â
DuPont Pioneer and the Broad Institute have signed an agreement to allow universities and non-profit organizations to use the technology for agricultural research and product development.
The joint licensing relationship opens up democratic access to CRISPR-Cas9 for agriculture, Gutterson said, adding that research collaborations with CIMMYT and Donald Danforth Plant Science Center will facilitate access to the technology in the developing world, enriching the livelihoods of farmers.
The technology will also benefit non-commodity crops, known as âorphan crops,â said Nigel Taylor, interim director of the Institute for International Crop Improvement at Donald Danforth Plant Science Center.
âThe exciting thing about them is that they have huge potential because they have not undergone the improvement maize or rice have gone through,â Taylor said.
Donald Danforth and DuPont Pioneer are conducting joint research using CRISPR Cas9 into cassava brown streak virus disease, which is projected to spread from East Africa to Nigeria, the largest producer of cassava in the world.
âWe edited two of the genes, which means the virus cannot replicate properly in the plant,â Taylor said. âWeâre seeing the viral load is completely reduced.â
Taylor also said he would like to develop improved varieties of teff, which is widely grown in Ethiopia and Eritrea, where the seeds are used to make the food staple âinjera,â a sourdough flatbread.
REGULATORY FRAMEWORK
To ensure access to the technology, consumers, farmers and scientists in Africa must be involved, and questions about how new crops are regulated must be addressed, the scientists agreed.
âWe must engage in regulatory work with stakeholders,â Taylor said. âAfrican research centers and others around the world must be part of this conversation right now â communication and education about new technologies are essential.â
If scientists use CRISPR-Cas9 to rapidly convert popular varieties from, for example, MLN-susceptible to MLN-resistant, they will make a lasting contribution to farmer livelihoods in Africa, Pixley said.
âHowever, we canât yet assume that the benefits of these technologies will reach smallholder farmers,â he said.
âPublic opinion is largely unformed because few people know about CRISPR-Cas9, and since the regulatory framework is largely undefined, we have a great opportunity to help form it in a way to make the benefits of these technologies available to smallholder farmers.â
We need to begin by recognizing and respecting the sovereignty of every country to decide if, when and how they are going to use this technology, he added.
I think we have a great responsibility to provide accurate, complete and trustworthy information to the public as we bring this technology into the public domain and to the regulatory process, he said.
âWe know that it’s not going to be a magic bullet because no technology is, but we also think that itâs unethical to dismiss any technology without responsibly considering its possible contributions,â Pixley said.
The Borlaug Dialogue conference is held each year in Des Moines to coincide with World Food Prize celebrations. This year delegates feted the 2017 laureate Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank, thematically focused on âThe Road out of Poverty.â
With backing from leading international donors and scientists, nine South Asia wheat researchers recently visited the Americas for training on measures to control a deadly and mysterious South American wheat disease that appeared suddenly on their doorstep in 2016.
Trainees at the CAICO farm in Okinawa, Bolivia. Photo: CIMMYT archives
Known as âwheat blast,â the disease results from a fungus that infects the wheat spikes in the field, turning the grain to inedible chaff. First sighted in Brazil in the mid-1980s, blast has affected up to 3 million hectares in South America and held back the regionâs wheat crop expansion for decades.
In 2016, a surprise outbreak in seven districts of Bangladesh blighted wheat harvests on some 15,000 hectares and announced blastâs likely spread throughout South Asia, a region where rice-wheat cropping rotations cover 13 million hectares and nearly a billion inhabitants eat wheat.
âMost commercially grown wheat in South Asia is susceptible to blast,â said Pawan Singh, head of wheat pathology at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), an organization whose breeding lines are used by public research programs and seed companies in over 100 countries. âThe disease poses a grave threat to food and income security in the region and yet is new and unknown to most breeders, pathologists and agronomists there.â
As part of an urgent global response to blast and to acquaint South Asian scientists with techniques to identify and describe the pathogen and help develop resistant varieties, Singh organized a two-week workshop in July. The event drew wheat scientists from Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Mexico, taking them from U.S. greenhouses and labs to fields in Bolivia, where experimental wheat lines are grown under actual blast infections to test for resistance.
The training began at the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) Foreign Disease-Weed Science Research facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland, where participants learned about molecular marker diagnosis of the causal fungus Magnaporthe oryzae pathotype triticum (MoT). Sessions also covered greenhouse screening for blast resistance and blast research conducted at Kansas State University. Inside Level-3 Biosafety Containment greenhouses from which no spore can escape, participants observed specialized plant inoculation and disease evaluation practices.
The group then traveled to Bolivia, where researchers have been fighting wheat blast for decades and had valuable experience to share with the colleagues from South Asia.
âIn Bolivia, workshop participants performed hands-on disease evaluation and selection in the fieldâan experience quite distinct from the precise lab and greenhouse practicums,â said Singh, describing the group’s time at the Cooperativa Agropecuaria Integral Colonias Okinawa (CAICO), Bolivia, experiment station.
Other stops in Bolivia included the stations of the Instituto Nacional de InnovaciĂłn Agropecuaria y Forestal (INIAF), AsociaciĂłn de Productores de Oleaginosas y Trigo (ANAPO), Centro de InvestigaciĂłn AgrĂcola Tropical (CIAT), and a blast-screening nursery in Quirusillas operated by INIAF-CIMMYT.
âScientists in South Asia have little or no experience with blast disease, which mainly attacks the wheat spike and is completely different from the leaf diseases we normally encounter,â said Prem Lal Kashyap, a scientist at the Indian Institute of Wheat and Barley Research (IIWBR) of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), who took part in the training. âTo score a disease like blast in the field, you need to evaluate each spike and check individual spikelets, which is painstaking and labor-intensive, but only thus can you assess the intensity of disease pressure and identify any plants that potentially carry genes for resistance.â
After the U.S.A. and Bolivia, the South Asia scientists took part in a two-week pathology module of an ongoing advanced wheat improvement course at CIMMYTâs headquarters and research stations in Mexico, covering topics such as the epidemiology and characterization of fungal pathogens and screening for resistance to common wheat diseases.
Gary Peterson (center), explaining wheat blast screening to trainees inside the USDA-ARS Level-3 Biosafety Containment facility. Photo: CIMMYT archives
The knowledge gained will allow participants to refine screening methods in South Asia and maintain communication with the blast experts they met in the Americas, according to Carolina St. Pierre who co-ordinates the precision field-based phenotyping platforms of the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat.
âThey can now also raise awareness back home concerning the threat of blast and alert farmers, who may then take preventative and remedial actions,â Singh added. âThe Bangladesh Ministry of Agriculture has already formed a task force through the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) to help develop and distribute blast resistant cultivars and pursue integrated agronomic control measures.â
The latest course follows on from a hands-on training course in February 2017 at the Wheat Research Center (WRC) of the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), Dinajpur, in collaboration with CIMMYT, Cornell University, and Kansas State University.
Participants in the July course received training from a truly international array of instructors, including Kerry Pedley and Gary Peterson, of USDA-ARS, and Christian Cruz, of Kansas State University; Felix Marza, of Boliviaâs Instituto Nacional de InnovaciĂłn Agropecuaria y Forestal (INIAF); Pawan Singh and Carolina St. Pierre, of CIMMYT; Diego Baldelomar, of ANAPO; and Edgar GuzmĂĄn, of CIAT-Bolivia.
Funding for the July event came from the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), CIMMYT, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (through the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia), the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), and the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat.
L-R: Judith Rodin, president of the Rockefeller Foundation; Bram Govaerts, CIMMYT Latin America Regional Representative at the World Food Prize. CIMMYT/Ricardo Curiel
DES MOINES, Iowa (CIMMYT) â Transforming subsistence agriculture and unsustainable farming systems into productive and sustainable operations has been the key focus of scientist Bram Govaerts, 2014 recipient of the Norman Borlaug Award for Field Research and Application at the World Food Prize
Govaerts manages the Sustainable Modernization of Traditional Agriculture (MasAgro) program at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), which aims to enable farmers to produce high quality staple grains in sufficient quantities to meet the needs of the Mexican market.
âStarting five years ago, MasAgro and, in particular, its work on technological innovation in farmersâ fields, have been acting upon the infamous instructions of Dr. Norman Borlaug, founder of CIMMYT and of the World Food Prize,â said Govaerts, Latin America Regional Representative of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)  while participating in the  Borlaug Dialogue panel âBorlaugâRockefeller: Inspiring a new generation,â coordinated by the World Food Prize Foundation.
âBorlaug told his acolytes to âtake it to the farmer,â which is exactly what we have been doing through MasAgro,â Govaerts said.
On the panel hosted by Rockefeller Foundation President Judith Rodin, which included three other young researchers who are also Norman Borlaug Award for Field Research and Application laureates, Govaerts added that MasAgro has produced successful results because its applied field research and capacity building activities transfer technologies to the farm sector through decision-making processes based on reliable and objective data.
âWe demand scientific excellence of ourselves because agriculture can only be transformed through innovation networks, mechanisms and smart tools that enable farmers to realize their full potential,â Govaerts said.
Each year, more than 1,000 private and public sector leaders from the international community meet in Des Moines, the state capital of Iowa in the United States, to participate in the Borlaug Dialogue. The conference precedes the presentation of the World Food Prize, which was established by Borlaug, who reached the pinnacle of his career when he was awarded the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize, in recognition of exceptional leaders who have contributed to the fight against world hunger.
Previously, three CIMMYT researchersâEvangelina Villegas, Surinder Vasal and Sanjaya Rajaramâhave been awarded this important prize. This year, the World Food Prize Foundation recognized Maria Andrade from Cape Verde, Robert Mwanga from Uganda, and Jan Low and Howarth Bouis, both from the United States, for their work developing and disseminating  micronutrient-rich crops, including the biofortified, vitamin A-enriched orange-fleshed sweet potato.
Andrew Mude received the 2016 Norman Borlaug Award for Field Research and Application for developing an insurance program for previously uninsured communities whose livelihoods depend on herding cattle, goats, sheep and camels in the remote, arid and drought-prone lowlands of the Horn of Africa. The field award is sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation.
