Staff members of the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) are developing and implementing projects aimed at improving agricultural production and standards of living for farmers in South Asia, with excellent results. At their “Seed Summit for Enhancing the Seed Supply Chain in Eastern India” meeting in Patna, Bihar on 14-15 May they worked to design solutions to improve the delivery of high-yielding seed varieties in eastern India, a region that has traditionally suffered from lack of access to these varieties and low seed replacement rates. The meeting, which included over 60 seed experts from the government, research and private sectors, focused on topics such as better-targeted subsidies on seeds, improved storage infrastructure and stronger extension systems to increase accessibility and adoption of improved seed varieties.
The roundtable “Sustainable Intensification in South Asia’s Cereal Systems: Investment Strategies for Productivity Growth, Resource Conservation, and Climate Risk Management” was held on 19 May in New Delhi. It brought together 20 firms and entrepreneurs to build collaborative action plans and joint investment strategies under CSISA to identify new product tie-ins, joint ventures, technical collaborations and shared marketing channels in order to bring high-tech farming ideas to India’s risk-prone ecologies.
In India, CSISA seeks to increase crop yields through the provision of more accurate, location-specific fertilizer recommendations to maize and rice farmers with the “Crop Manager” decision-making tool. The web-based and mobile Android application uses information provided by farmers including field location, planting method, seed variety, typical yields and method of harvesting to create a personalized fertilizer application recommendation at critical crop growth stages to increase yield and profit.
CSISA-Nepal has initiated a series of participatory research trials in farmers’ fields, in order to promote maize triple cropping, the practice of planting maize during the spring period after winter crop harvesting, when fields would usually be fallow. The practice, while proven to be highly remunerative, is not widely popular. The trials seek to determine optimum management practices for maize in order to encourage triple cropping and to generate additional income for farmers.
Greater gender equality in agriculture is also an important goal of CSISA, supported through the creation of Kisan Sakhi, a support group to empower women farmers in Bihar, India by “disseminating new climate-resilient and sustainable farming technologies and practices that will reduce women’s drudgery and bridge the gender gap in agriculture.” A CSISA-Bangladesh project has already had a positive impact on the lives of rural women, providing new farming and pond management techniques that have helped them to greatly increase the productivity of their fish ponds and gain new respect within their families and communities.
Dr. Nora Lapitan, the new science advisor in the Bureau for Food Security of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and lead of USAID’s Climate-Resilient Cereals portfolio, visited the maize field trials being conducted in India as part of Heat Stress Tolerant Maize for Asia (HTMA) during 17-21 June.
Nora Lapitan with the HTMA team at Kaveri Seeds field trials in Baijenki, Telangana. Photo: Kaveri Seeds staff
Lapitan is the project manager and provides technical oversight. Supported by USAID under the Feed the Future (FTF) initiative, the HTMA project is led by CIMMYT-Hyderabad. HTMA is a public-private alliance that targets resource-poor people of South Asia prone to face weather extremes and climate-change effects. The project connects several public sector agricultural research institutions in South Asia such as the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute; Maize & Millets Research Institute, Pakistan; National Maize Research Program, Nepal; Bhutan National Maize Program; and two Indian state agriculture universities – Bihar Agricultural University, Sabor and University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS), Raichur, as well as Purdue University in the U.S. Additional participants include seed companies DuPont Pioneer, Vibha Agritech, Kaveri Seeds and Ajeet Seeds. This was Lapitan’s first trip to India, which she chose to start with HTMA maize field activity visits. She visited maize trials under managed heat stress at different sites in India, starting with the trials at the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA), Ludhiana on 17 June.
A team of scientists from BISA, including Dr. H.S. Sidhu, Parvider Romana and Manish Koth showed her HTMA trials and explained the activities. The next day she visited the HTMA trials at DuPont Pioneer sites in Jalandhar, Punjab, where Dr. S.K. Kaushik explained project activities, including various types of hybrid trials, heat stress symptoms in the field and promising heattolerant hybrids. After visiting the maize trials in Punjab, Lapitan traveled to southern India, visiting HTMA trials in Hyderabad and Baijenki, Karimnagar. In Hyderabad, she visited the trials planted at a CIMMYT site within the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) campus, where Dr. P.H. Zaidi, CIMMYT senior maize physiologist and HTMA project leader, explained ongoing HTMA field trials across sites in South Asia in collaboration with partners. M.T. Vinayan, CIMMYT India maize stress specialist, discussed trials planted at the Hyderabad site.
Nora Lapitan with the HTMA team at CIMMYT field trials in Hyderabad. Photo: K. Seetharam/CIMMYT-Hyderabad
The presentation was followed by a field tour, where Lapitan could see the performance of some of the most promising heat-tolerant maize hybrids. In the afternoon, Lapitan met with CIMMYT-Hyderabad staff, where Zaidi presented the office’s overall program and various ongoing projects. The next day, she and Zaidi visited HTMA trials at the Kaveri Seeds site at Baijenki, Telangana. Dr. N.P. Sarma, director of research; Dr. B.S. Dahiya, senior advisor; and Dr. Ramesh Chaurasia, maize breeder at Kaveri Seeds, explained the HTMA field trials at their site.
Lapitan took a field tour, where Chaurasia explained the details of the ongoing trials and showed her a number of promising heat-tolerant hybrids. “This is very exciting for our company; to see unique products like heat-tolerant hybrids identified within two years of the project start, which we are ready to take forward in largescale testing,” said Sarma. He further explained that there are very few options for such types of maize hybrids, and that this is a newly emerging market. It is certainly a unique option for resource-poor farmers to provide food during those hot and dry months and also feed for their livestock.
After completion of the field visits, Lapitan expressed her strong satisfaction with HTMA project activities, saying “it is exciting to see that partners are ready with first wave of products for deployment within two years. This is remarkable and I congratulate the HTMA team.”
Hari S. Gupta was selected as the second Director General (DG) of the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA) in India and assumed his new position on August 7th. BISA, named to honor Dr. Norman E. Borlaug (1914-2009), world-renowned agricultural scientist and 1970 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, is helping to meet food security and sustainable productivity growth in both irrigated and rain-fed production areas by adapting wheat and maize systems to the emerging challenges of climate change, natural resource scarcity and market demands. While working at CIMMYT and its predecessor organization, Borlaug’s development of high-yielding, dwarf varieties of wheat helped trigger the Green Revolution in the 1960s. BISA was established in 2011 to catalyze agricultural research for development (AR4D) in South Asia and is a non-profit international agricultural research institute founded by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and CIMMYT, and managed by the latter.
According to Thomas A. Lumpkin, CIMMYT Director General, who also served concurrently as the first DG of BISA, “The challenge today is to increase yields of staple crops in South Asia despite the fact that climate change, population growth, dietary changes and natural resource degradation all pose enormous challenges to agriculture.” BISA was created to “address the challenges head on,” added Lumpkin. Providing food and nutritional security is “a daunting task” and the region needs “a dedicated, world-class effort focused entirely on these problems.” Lumpkin stated, “To lead BISA’s work on those problems, Dr. Gupta was chosen from a field of very qualified candidates. We anticipate that he will be a very strong DG for BISA and will lead it into its next phase.”
Photo: Courtesy of Indian Agricultural Research Institute
Prior to joining BISA, Gupta served for almost five and one-half years as Director and Vice Chancellor of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), one of the largest agricultural research institutes in Asia. With 10 centers spread across India, IARI is the flagship research institute of ICAR and is known globally as the institution that was instrumental in spreading the Green Revolution across India. During the Green Revolution, Borlaug and regional scientists, policymakers and farmers in South Asia took India and Pakistan from near-famine in 1965-1966 to food self-sufficiency. Dr. Borlaug’s work in AR4D is credited with saving 1 billion people from hunger and malnutrition, and many were in South Asia. However, Borlaug correctly predicted that the Green Revolution boost in food production could not last, and was only a reprieve for humanity to adapt more sustainable systems and policies for managing population growth and use of natural resources.
Describing the goals he will focus on as DG of BISA, Gupta stated, “In order to usher a second Green Revolution in South Asia, improving crop productivity in conjunction with efficient use of natural resources – especially of soil and water – will be my top priority. In addition, reducing the vulnerability of South Asian agriculture to climate change will be addressed with an emphasis on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.” Climate change, ever-increasing population, persistent poverty, chronic malnutrition and declining annual crop yield gains are retarding human development across South Asia.
Despite notable progress over the past several decades, South Asia is still home to more than 300 million undernourished people (35 percent of the global total). Food price spikes exacerbate these issues and make the lives of South Asia’s poorest even more difficult. Because of these issues, Gupta said, “Increasing the system productivity per unit area and time with conservation of natural resources is BISA’s guiding principle. Development of technology for rain-fed areas will receive priority whereas sustaining the gains made in irrigated areas will help in meeting the region’s short-term needs for food and feed.” He continued, stating, “In order to make agriculture more efficient in South Asia, mechanization – particularly using renewable sources of energy in farm operations – will be pursued vigorously. My experience at IARI will help me to work with others to implement the programs rapidly and efficiently.” Prior to joining IARI, Gupta worked for a number of agricultural research organizations, including serving as: director, Vivekanand Institute of Hill Agriculture, or VPKAS (2000-09); principal scientist and head of the Division of Plant Breeding, ICAR Research Complex for NEH Region (1989-99); senior scientist, ICAR Research Complex for NEH Region (1983-89); and scientist, Central Potato Research Institute (1978-83). Gupta earned his M.Sc. in genetics at GB Pant University of Agriculture & Technology in Pant Nagar, India. He earned his Ph.D. at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, West Bengal.
Among the highlights of his post-doctoral research are: Rockefeller Foundation Career Fellow in 2003 and 2006 at Washington State University (WSU) on the genetic engineering of rice for increasing starch biosynthesis; visiting scientist at WSU, working on the induction of early flowering in crop plants in 1993-94; and Commonwealth Scholar in the Department of Life Science at the University of Nottingham (UK) on plant regeneration from protoplast and protoplast-mediated genetic manipulation in rice in 1987-88. Among the honors and recognition that Gupta has received during his career are: President, Indian Society of Genetics and Plant Breeding (2011-13); Sardar Patel Outstanding Institution Award to IARI during his tenure (2011); ICAR’s Team Award for Outstanding Multidisciplinary Research (2010, 2008 and 1997); Dr. AS Cheema Award for Outstanding Contribution to Indian Agriculture (2010); Outstanding Institution Award to VPKAS (2008 and 2001) during his tenure as director; ICAR “Hari Om Ashram” Trust Award (2007); NRDC’s Meritorious Invention award (2006); ICAR National Professor (2006); Dr. Rajendra Prasad Award for Best Book in Crop Sciences (2004); and Rockefeller Foundation Career Fellowship (2000). Gupta belongs to numerous professional societies, including: Indian Society of Genetics and Plant Breeding; Fellow, National Academy of Agricultural Sciences; Fellow, Indian Society of Genetics and Plant Breeding; Fellow, Indian Society of Agricultural Biochemists; founding member, Society for Plant Biochemistry and Biotechnology; and life member of the Indian Societies of the Biological Chemists, Genetics and Plant Breeding, Hill Agriculture and Seed Science.
About BISA
BISA is developing a state-of-theart agricultural research platform, technology transfer centers and training facilities. BISA’s focus is on holistic, interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches to breeding, conservation agriculture and socioeconomics for wheat- and maizebased cropping and food systems. BISA’s facilities and formal institutional partnerships can create a world-class research infrastructure and lead to strategic collaborations among regional and international scientists, as well as public and private stakeholders across the region’s agricultural value chains.
The Institute closely coordinates and synergizes with CIMMYT and other international centers such as the International Rice Research Institute and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, with national institutions such as ICAR, the Pakistan Agriculture Research Council and the Nepal Agriculture Research Council and the private sector within the region. BISA currently has three sites in India – Ludhiana in Punjab State, Pusa in Bihar State and Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh State. Each of the states contains varied agro-ecological zones allowing BISA and its partners to test a variety of maize and wheat cultivars suited to the equally varied environments of South Asia. BISA also has site commitments from Nepal and Pakistan and is in discussion with Afghanistan and Bangladesh for sites in those countries. Through BISA, CIMMYT and several national agricultural research systems (NARS) have taken a key step towards sustainable food and nutritional security.
CIMMYT has a long, successful history of partnerships in South Asia, playing an important role with regional partners in catalyzing the Green Revolution. The NARS have demonstrated their commitment to regional food and nutritional security, and recognized the contribution that BISA, an independent, non-profit organization with broad international backing, can make to strengthen existing efforts in the region. BISA’s role in strengthening South Asia’s food and nutritional security focuses on leveraging and accelerating efforts rather than duplicating or competing with existing institutions. BISA fills the most critical gap in present efforts in South Asia – an impartial coordinating platform for discovery and sharing information and technologies.
BISA’s primary focus is to strengthen capability-sharing through the collaborative execution of AR4D projects. This increase in resource productivity should increase food and nutritional security, environmental protection and economic development. BISA is also strengthening the links between national and international efforts, building capacity in the region’s scientific community and introducing the best seed, agricultural technologies and information to improve the productivity and profitability of the region’s smallholder farmers and agricultural value chains.
Thomas Lumpkin served as director general at CIMMYT from 2008 to 2015.
The history of wheat is the history of civilization. Over 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent our ancestors ascended from an existence as hunter-gatherers and began tending and domesticating crops. Thus began wheat’s symbiotic relationship with the history of civilization and humankind’s responsibility as stewards of planet Earth.
Wheat is not only a major diet component but wheat-based products are the personification of cultural heritage and pride. Imagine Italians without pasta, North Africans without couscous, Indians without Chapattis or Chinese without noodles or steamed bread. It is time to pay homage to this grass, which was the basis for the development of modern civilizations and has done so much for the human race.
Wheat is the staple food of humankind, and its history is that of civilization. Yet today wheat is losing its crown. Many perceive wheat to be a food eaten and produced only by rich countries. Atkins, Davis (wheat belly) and other diets have convinced even more that wheat is bad for you and less wholesome than other crops. Although wheat remains an important crop, funding for wheat research has decreased significantly in recent years.
In spite of all these challenges, the demand for wheat is not dropping. Wheat is the staff of life for 1.2 billion poor people who live on less than US$ 2 a day; providing 20 to 50 percent of daily calories and 20 percent of protein. From South Asia through to Central Asia across the Middle East and on to North Africa, wheat is a staple food. Demand for wheat is not isolated to these traditional wheat-eating regions. Today African countries spend about US$ 12 billion annually to import some 40 million tons of wheat. What was once considered a minor crop for consumers in Sub-Saharan Africa, demand for wheat is now growing faster than for any other commodity and is now considered a strategic crop for food security by African leaders.
Perhaps what is most concerning are the predictions for the near future. Demand for wheat in the developing world is projected to increase 60 percent by 2050. India, the largest wheat-consuming country after China, has 17.5 percent of total world’s population and 20.6 percent of the world’s poor. If you look at a map showing the locations of recent food riots, it is almost identical to one showing where wheat provides more than one-third of a person’s daily calories. Households in developed countries spend less than 10 percent of their income on food supplies, in many countries, that percentage is much more. For example, in Pakistan and Egypt this figure is around 40 percent.
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An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report published earlier this year predicts that wheat will be the first of the main staple crops to be significantly affected by climate change, because of its sensitivity to heat and the fact that it is grown all over the world. Current projections predict that with every Celsius degree increase in temperature, wheat yields in semi-tropical areas could drop by 10 percent. Changes in weather may also lead to an increased risk in the severity of wheat diseases, which may cause severe losses in areas that were previously thought of as unimportant.
Recurrent food crises combined with climate change, depletion of natural resources and rising food prices are threatening the lives of millions of poor people who depend on wheat for both diet and livelihood. Demographers predict that by 2050 the earth’s population will peak at 9.6 billion. Developing countries, especially those in Africa and South Asia, are experiencing tremendous population growth. Based on current crop yields and food distribution methods, feeding nearly 10 billion people will not be trivial. Sustainably increasing wheat production will have a crucial impact on food security.
Wheat’s significant contribution to humankind is not yet over.
A CIMMYT-led project was named as a finalist for the 2014 mBillionth Award South Asia thanks to its mobile platform that helps farmers adapt to changing climate conditions.
“Dissemination of climate-smart agro-advisories to farmers in CCAFS benchmark sites of India” was launched in August 2013 under the leadership of Dr. Surabhi Mittal, a senior agricultural economist based in India, in cooperation with the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). In the past 10 months, the project has helped 1,200 male and female farmers in eight Indian villages to gain more knowledge about climate-smart technology and adopt technologies to lessen their risks from climate fluctuations. The project also measured how receiving information on mobile telephones will affect farmers.
More than 300 entries were submitted for the award, which honors the most influential and leading practices in the mobile and telecommunications industry in South Asia. It was presented 18 July by the Digital Empowerment Foundation and Vodafone in a ceremony at the India Habitat Center. The CIMMYT project received acknowledgment for its impact on small farmers from Sanjeev Gupta, joint secretary of the Indian Ministry of Agriculture, and M.V. Ashok, chief general manager of the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development.
CIMMYT’S director general, Dr. Thomas A. Lumpkin, congratulated everyone involved with the project. “This shows your technological leadership,” he said in a staff email announcing the award. “Use this to energize your activities.”
ByJM Sutaliya, Parvinder Singh, Tripti Agarwal, ML Jat/CIMMYT and Anil Bana/Department of Agriculture, Government of Punjab, India
Punjab agriculture officers and farmers met in June to discuss the climate-smart villages that CIMMYT is testing, and they agreed that the CSVs offer one of the best strategies for making farming resilient and sustainable in the state.
CIMMYT, with financial support from the CCAFS South Asia regional program, recently initiated climate-smart village (CSV) pilots in Punjab State, India. On 16 June, Dr. IPS Sandhu, chief agriculture officer of Patiala District, and several other officers visited Aluna, one of the CSVs being piloted in close collaboration with the Punjab Department of Agriculture and several innovative farmers. The on-site stakeholder discussions on the emerging challenges of climate change included topics such as the El Niño effect during the current monsoon season and extended rains during the maturity period of winter crops.
The participants agreed that climate-smart agricultural practices being undertaken in the CSVs are some of the best for making farming resilient and sustainable in the Punjab. CIMMYT’s JM Sutaliya and Punjab’s Vimalpreet Singh gave briefings on the climate-smart agriculture practices being undertaken in the CSVs, including direct-seeded rice (DSR), precision water management using Punjab Agricultural University-designed tensiometers, precision nutrient management using the Nutrient ExpertTM tool, GreenSeeker, energy saving technologies, introduction of maize to diversify rice mono-cropping and efficient weed management in DSR. Farmers were given demonstrations of the GreenSeeker tool for nitrogen management and spraying techniques for weed control on DSR. The proposed Weather Smart weather forecasting services for farmers were also discussed.
Sandhu praised the CSV initiatives and shared his suggestions to strengthen and expand the CSV program in Punjab’s Patiala District. Additionally, he proposed a baseline socioeconomic survey of Aluna, formation of a farmers’ group, a women farmers’ club and other strategies to encourage more farmer contact. Looking to the future, he advocated integration with allied agriculture departments. Highlighting community-supported agriculture interventions for residue management, Sandhu spoke about the importance of advance planning and utilizing a spreader with a combine harvester. He also shared his personal experience using a Turbo Happy seeder to avoid burning straw in subsequent wheat crop.
Sandhu assured CIMMYT of close collaboration from the Department of Agriculture in the future, including extended support to scale up and expand the climate-smart agriculture initiatives in the CSVs with the goals of combating the adverse effects of climate change and addressing food security.
In South Asia, 90 percent of smallholder farmers using fertilizer lack access to soil testing services. Due to blanket recommendations, the application of nutrients is not well-matched to the local requirements of the soil and crop. Also, excessive and imbalanced use of chemical fertilizers can result in the deterioration of soil fertility. This is becoming a cause for concern to the Indian agriculture sector. According to a study published in the Journal of the Environment, Development and Sustainability, India is losing soil 30 to 40 times faster than the natural replenishment rate. The solution lies in part in having a precise, site-specific nutrient management approach that will build a sustainable and profitable agriculture sector.
CSISA scientist explaining Crop Manager tool to a farmer in Odisha.
A decision-making tool called Crop Manager is being developed by the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA), in collaboration with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), state universities and government partners. Crop Manager will provide location specific fertilizer recommendations to farmers growing rice and maize in Odisha state, and to farmers growing rice, wheat and maize in Eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states. A version of the tool, Rice Nutrient Manager, is also being developed by CSISA in the Cauvery Delta of Tamil Nadu state, to support and complement the existing crop management advisory services of the state government. The partners are in the advanced field testing phase and are fine-tuning the tools prior to official release.
Crop Manager is an expanded version of Nutrient Manager, which was first conceptualized and released by IRRI in the Philippines in 2009. Crop Manager combines improved nutrient management with field-specific, best bet crop management guidelines to address three to four of the main agronomic constraints, in addition to fertilizer recommendations.
Fast and Futuristic
Crop Manager is accessible in both web-based and mobile Android formats, with a simple, user-friendly interface providing personalized fertilizer guidance for small-scale farmers and extension workers. To use the tool, farmers provide information about their fields by responding to a set of 12-15 brief questions about field location, planting method, seed variety, typical yields, choice of fertilizer, method of harvesting and other factors.
Screenshot of the Crop Manager interface.
Based on these inputs, the tool recommends the ideal amount of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) nutrients to be added at critical growth stages to increase yield and profit, while taking into account the amount of fertilizer the farmer prefers to use. With a connection to the Internet, farmers can receive advice instantly on mobile devices. Information from Crop Manager will be available in Hindi, Odiya and English. An interactive voice response system in being planned, to guide the user through the survey using a recorded questionnaire.
India has 110 million mobile Internet users, of whom 25 million are in rural areas. “With mobile phone and internet penetrating fast in rural India, these ICT tools will serve as a useful platform to provide information to farmers easily, and at the time when they need it,” said Sheetal Sharma, a CSISA nutrient management specialist. Sharma added that these tools are based on strong scientific principles, and have an edge over traditional soil testing methods, which usually take more time to give recommendations and require farmers to carry soil samples to a testing facility. CSISA released a similar tool named Rice Crop Manager in Bangladesh last year to increase a farmer’s income by US $100 per hectare, per crop. This is a significant increase in a nation where farmers’ average income is less than $600 per year.
With the help of technologies like Crop Manager, CSISA hopes that farmers in South Asia will be able to replicate the high-tech precision farming used in developed countries with easy-to-use and low-cost options. The development of these products serves as a reminder that farmers are capable; they just need the right tools.
CIMMYT will lead a new research initiative to make agriculture more productive, profitable and sustainable for smallholder farmers in the Eastern Gangetic Plains (EGP) of Nepal, Bangladesh and India.
Launched in Dhulikhel, Nepal, on 4 July, the five-year US$6.8 million regional research initiative, Sustainable and Resilient Farming Systems Intensification in the Eastern Gangetic Plains (SRFSI), will tap the agricultural potential of the area and target 7,000 farmers to test and adopt appropriate new technology and farming approaches.
The program, funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), will operate in eight districts: two in northwest Bangladesh, two in the eastern Terai of Nepal and two each in the Indian states of Bihar and West Bengal.
The three-day Inception and Planning Meeting that launched the program was attended by 84 participants from Australia, Bangladesh, India, Mexico and Nepal. SRFSI is managed by CIMMYT on behalf of multiple partners including the national research and extension systems of Bangladesh, India and Nepal, Indian and Australian universities, national and international nongovernmental organizations, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation of Australia and four CGIAR Centers (CIMMYT, the International Rice Research Institute, the International Food Policy Research Institute and the International Water Management Institute).
The project was officially initiated by the Australian Ambassador to Nepal, Glenn White, together with the Executive Director of the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC), Dr. Dil Bahadur Gurung; the Joint Secretary of the Nepal Ministry of Agricultural Development, Dr. Rajendra Prasad Adhikari; Dr. Claire Glendenning of the Australian Department of Foreign Affair and Trade; and Dr. John Dixon, principal adviser for ACIAR.
“This initiative will help to raise agricultural productivity in a region which has the potential to become one of Asia’s great food bowls,” White told the gathering of scientists and development practitioners.
The EGP is home to some 300 million people, with the world’s highest concentration of rural poverty and a strong dependence on agriculture for food security and livelihoods. The region is dominated by small farms with many female farmers who have little access to credit, quality seeds, fertilizers, irrigation or formal extension services. They also have to contend with climate-related risks and extreme events such as floods, drought and cold snaps.
“This program will allow farmers to test a range of innovations to help them boost food production, including conservation agriculture and efficient use of water resources, while strengthening their ability to adapt and link to markets and support services,” White said. “Our aim is to enable at least 130,000 farmers to adopt these technologies within the next 10 years.”
Gurung and Adhikari lauded the long-term partnership between CIMMYT and Nepal, as well as the ACIAR support of this project, and assured that the Ministry will extend its full support.
Key Objectives of the SRFSI
The Eastern Gangetic Plains region has the potential to become a major contributor to South Asian regional food security, but rice and wheat productivity remain low and diversification is limited because of poorly developed markets, sparse agricultural knowledge and service networks, and inadequate development of available water resources and sustainable production practices. Labor shortages – mainly during sowing and harvesting – are becoming more acute. These factors lead to smallholder vulnerability to climate and market risks that limit investments in new technologies.
SRFSI will undertake several high-priority activities to reduce these factors:
• Improving farmers’ access to inputs, services and market information in order to reduce the risk associated with adopting new practices.
• Removing policy barriers to technology adoption.
• Analyzing the appropriateness of technologies, service provider models, markets and policies for women farmers, and adjusting them where necessary, to help ensure food security and gender equity in the region.
• Developing new knowledge among farmers, researchers, extension and change agents, service providers, agro-dealers and others involved in agriculture. This has been identified as the key to achieving widespread adoption of new technologies and reductions in poverty in the EGP.
• Investing heavily in capacity building at multiple levels, from field days to short courses to linkages with advanced research institutions. Ultimately the project focal communities, where all aspects of the project activities are put into place to achieve the desired change, will become demonstration or learning sites for institutions or individuals interested in agricultural development, where they can observe the technological changes and talk with farmers and farmer organizations about the importance of the different components of the project in bringing about agriculture change.
Dr. S. Ayyappan, director general of ICAR, honored Rajaram as “the best living wheat scientist in the world today.”
Dr. Sanjaya Rajaram was on board a flight to New Delhi on 18 June when he was announced as the recipient of the 2014 World Food Prize (WFP). Upon landing, he was given a warm welcome by his close associates in India, Dr. O.P. Shringi and Sanjaya Chhabra of DCM Shriram Ltd. and others, who informed him of the official announcement. After spending some quality time with his family in his hometown of Varanasi, he had a completely new itinerary for his visit that involved several congratulatory events at agriculture-related institutes and organizations.
Rajaram has been working closely with DCM Shriram Ltd. in New Delhi since 2005 on its wheat project. Sovan Chakrabarty, the business head and executive director, congratulated Rajaram in the traditional Indian way, with a shawl and a bouquet, in the presence of the Shriram Farm Solutions team members. Shringi said the firm took pride in being the first to receive and honor Rajaram after the official WFP announcement. During the ceremony, Rajaram said he is a strong proponent of public-private partnerships for food security and increasing wheat productivity in India. He applauded Shriram Farm Solutions’ excellent famer delivery mechanism and the progress it has made in developing and marketing new wheat varieties in a very short time.
At the request of Dr. R. R. Hanchinal, chairperson of Protection of Plant Varieties & Farmers’ Rights Authority at the National Seed Institute of India, Rajaram attended a function at the National Agriculture Science Center Complex. Dr. S. Ayyappan, director general of the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) and the chief guest, honored Rajaram as “the best living wheat scientist in the world today,” and Hanchinal shared his achievements with a select group of scientists and authorities from Indian agricultural universities and institutions.
Children of DWR staff members joined Dr. Indu Sharma, director of DWR, to welcome Rajaram with waving flags.
The Indian Agriculture Research Institute in New Delhi, where Rajaram earned his master’s degree in genetics and plant breeding, also held a function. The director, Dr. H.S. Gupta, lauded Rajaram’s contributions and congratulated him for being selected to receive the most prestigious prize in agriculture.
In a speech to several distinguished scientists, Rajaram emphasized the need to address the productivity problems in the eastern part of the Indo-Gangetic plains.
Rajaram has been a regular visitor at Punjab Agriculture University in Ludhiana, so the vice chancellor, Dr. B.S. Dhillon, invited Rajaram to an event in his honor. Dr. Darshan Singh Brar, former head of plant breeding, biotechnology and biochemistry at the International Rice Research Institute, and Dr. Gurdev Singh, a former professor at the university and adviser to DCM Shriram Ltd., were special guests. Rajaram took time to interact with the faculty, particularly Dr. Kuldeep Singh, director of biotechnology, and his Ph.D. students.
Dr. Indu Sharma, director of DWR, presented a memento to Rajaram during an event held in his honor.
Dr. Indu Sharma, director of ICAR’s Directorate of Wheat Research (DWR), organized a large event for Rajaram’s visit to DWR on 27 June. Sharma joined a group of staff members’ children to welcome Rajaram by waving flags, and then she shared some fond memories in a staff meeting of him interacting with Indian wheat scientists in the field. The DWR staff gave Rajaram a standing ovation for his unparalleled contribution to wheat production, particularly in Asia. Dr. A.K. Srivastava, director of the National Dairy Research Institute in Karnal, offered hearty congratulations and opined that wheat varieties with slightly more biomass would be handy in providing much-needed fodder for milking animals.
Addressing the audience, Rajaram congratulated the Indian wheat researchers for achieving remarkable wheat production again this year, and he emphasized the need to develop human resources and train the younger generations to work hard in the fields in an interactive mode. He also discussed the important issue of post-harvest handling and storage facilities in India. He then planted a tree at DWR’s new compound in Karnal.
Climate-Smart Villages (CSVs) in Haryana, India, are prioritizing and promoting climate-smart agriculture (CSA) interventions. Through the work of CIMMYT and its partners, the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) is promoting CSA interventions through CSVs in India and South Asia.
A planning workshop titled “Mainstreaming and scaling-out climate smart agriculture interventions in Haryana” was held on 27 May to promote climate-smart agriculture practices to benefit farmers. The workshop also addressed the emerging challenges of water scarcity and degrading soil health through promoting direct seeded rice (DSR), no till and diversification of ricewheat systems by introducing maize. Participants focused on daunting challenges in the agriculture sector. Topics included:
The promotion of CSA through techniques like laser-assisted precision land leveling and tools for precision nutrient management tools such as the GreenSeeker and Nutrient Expert software. The pedoclimatic and socio-economic condition of farmers including market demand, presented by CIMMYT’s Santiago López-Ridaura.
An action plan to disseminate soil fertility information for informed decision-making on nutrients and fertilizer application was presented by T Satyanarayana, Deputy Director of the Internal Plant Nutrition Institute.
Developing a joint action plan between CIMMYT and the state department of agriculture for the 2014 monsoon season to implement CSA practices. DSR and maize promotion in Haryana. The roadmap emphasized diversification through maize.
Precise nutrient management for capacity building and training needs on precision nutrient management and DSR was laid out for 10 districts of Haryana.
In order to mainstream climate-smart villages, there is a need to identify, adapt and evaluate demand-driven CSA interventions aimed at improving the adaptive capacity of rural livelihoods to climate change. Other priorities include identifying target domains for CSA interventions; designing, monitoring and evaluating the processes to integrate and deliver CSA interventions to facilitate up-scaling and out-scaling beyond the CCAFS CSVs; innovative business models for CSA interventions; capacity development; and promoting policies that help farmers better adapt to climate change. Capacity building, training on new technology and dissemination of agro-advisories through voice messages are features of the CSVs in Haryana.
The benefits of CSVs are already clear, though policy implementation and technological gaps hinder information dissemination and adaptation. With due time and effort, the CSVs in India will transform agriculture and sustainable development. The meeting was chaired by Suresh Gahalawat, Joint Director Agriculture, Government of Haryana and was organized jointly by the State Department of Agriculture, the Government of Haryana, CIMMYT-CCAFS, CSSRI-NICRA. The key stakeholders involved were PC Sharma from CSSRI; RK Sharma, DWR; DK Sharma, CSSRI; Pawan Sharma, DDA, Karnal and other deputy directors of agriculture from different districts of Haryan.
By ML Jat, RS Dadarwal, Tripti Agarwal and Love Kumar Singh/CIMMYT
In the intensively cropped region of northwest India, farmers generally use imbalanced and inappropriate nutrient doses, which leads to low yields, high production costs and low nutrient efficiency. The resulting loss of applied nutrients, particularly nitrogen, creates a large environmental footprint.
Photo: Vikas Choudhary
An interactive workshop was held 5-6 June in Haryana State to promote the use of precision nutrient management tools in smallholder production systems. The 175 participants received hands-on training in Nutrient ExpertTM, a software tool that helps determine fertilizer requirements in cereals, and GreenSeekerTM, an optical sensor that measures the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, an indicator of crop development and health.
To encourage widespread adoption of both technologies, the agriculture departments in the participating districts received them for free. Meanwhile, Haryana’s Department of Agriculture has planned more than 1,000 demonstrations of the tools in maize and rice fields during this year’s rainy season.
The training was jointly organized by the International Plant Nutrition Institute-South Asia Program, CIMMYT and the Haryana Department of Agriculture, under the umbrella of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). Many of the participants were agriculture development officers or extension experts who will use the tools to devise climate-smart management strategies for sustainable development.
CIMMYT is delighted that the World Food Prize 2014 has been awarded to distinguished wheat breeder Dr. Sanjaya Rajaram for his achievements in plant research and food production.
Continuing the legacy: Rajaram donates $20,000 to the Global Wheat Program to support training for the next generation of wheat breeders.
According to Hans Braun, Director of CIMMYT’s Global Wheat Program, “Rajaram is the most successful wheat breeder alive.” Rajaram cultivated a generation of wheat scientists and taught them about wheat improvement and key CIMMYT methods. Rajaram studied genetics and plant breeding under Prof. M.S. Swaminathan at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi in 1964 before joining Dr. Borlaug in Mexico in 1969.
At CIMMYT, Borlaug became a mentor to Rajaram and they worked side by side in the fields of El Batán, Toluca and Ciudad Obregón. Rajaram – known affectionately as “Raj” — led bread wheat breeding research at CIMMYT for more than three decades. His leadership and commitment to wheat improvement resulted in the release of more than 480 varieties of bread wheat with increased yield potential and stability, along with wide adaptation and resistance to important diseases and stresses.
Rajaram with his mentor Dr. Norman Borlaug in the wheat fields of Obregón. Photos: CIMMYT files
These varieties include the spring and winter wheat cross Veery, which was released in 36 countries; new approaches to disease resistance, for instance ‘slow-rusting’ wheatvarieties; and largely reduced foliar blight susceptibility in semi-dwarf wheat. Rajaram’s wheats are grown on some 58 million hectares worldwide and approximately 30 million hectares in South Asia. One of his wheats, PBW 343, is India’s most popular wheat variety. His varieties have increased the yield potential of wheat by 20 to 25 percent.
He also led efforts at CIMMYT to apply the concept of durable resistance to rusts — the most damaging wheat disease across the world. His accomplishments include training or mentoring more than 700 scientists from dozens of developing countries. The World Food Prize was established by Norman Borlaug in 1986 to honor the achievements of individuals who have “advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world.”
The first recipient of the World Food Prize was M.S. Swaminathan, the man who brought Borlaug’s semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties to India – thus earning him the title “Father of the Indian Green Revolution.” Rajaram was nominated for the World Food Prize by Dr. Thomas Lumpkin, Director General and Dr. Hans Braun, Director of the Global Wheat Program at CIMMYT, with support from national agricultural research institutes around the world.
Congratulations Raj, from the entire CIMMYT staff! We continue to be inspired by your work, which has benefited millions of farmers and consumers all over the world.
Biography:
Dr. Sanjaya Rajaram was born on a small farm in rural Uttar Pradesh, India, in 1943. Unlike most children in his socioeconomic position, he was encouraged to pursue an education by his parents, and graduated from secondary school as the top-ranked student in the entire Varanasi District. Rajaram went on to earn a B.Sc. in agriculture from the University of Gorakhpur, a M.Sc. in genetics and plant breeding from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi and a Ph.D. in plant breeding from the University of Sydney. Rajaram’s outstanding career at CIMMYT began in 1969 working as a wheat breeder alongside Dr. Norman Borlaug. In 1972, at the age of 29, Borlaug appointed him as head of CIMMYT’s Wheat Breeding Program. After 33 years at CIMMYT, including seven as Director of the Global Wheat Program, Rajaram joined the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) as Director of Integrated Gene Management before formally retiring in 2008. During his distinguished career, Rajaram’s work resulted in the release of more than 480 varieties of bread wheat in 51 countries, which are grown on more than 58 million hectares worldwide. Rajaram is a Mexican citizen and resides in Mexico.
A new project designed to improve farming systems in Bangladesh, India and Nepal kicked off work with a strategic planning meeting 19-21 May in New Delhi.
The Sustainable and Resilient Farming System Intensification (SRFSI) project, funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), is scheduled to run for 50 months and will focus on the heavily populated Eastern Gangetic Plains, home to some 300 million people and the world’s highest concentration of rural poverty. Together with farmers – especially women farmers – project staff will develop more intensive, sustainable and resilient farming systems by incorporating conservation agriculture (CA) and strategic supplementary irrigation into the current farming systems. The changes allowed by these two practices will permit more timely planting of the main cereal crops – rice, maize and wheat – increasing yield and allowing for a third crop to be sown between the main winter crop and summer rice. Supplementary irrigation will help ensure timely planting and act as a buffer against mid-season droughts, predicted to become more frequent with the advance of climate variability.
The project also calls for crop and system modeling to aid the development of farmer decision support tools, frequent farmer discussions and consultations, support and training of local service providers and agricultural dealers and farmer-to-farmer information exchange.
The strategic planning meeting set the stage for summer field work in Bangladesh, India and Nepal. Photo: Mahesh K Gathala
The meeting opened with an introduction to the program and background information from Dr. John Dixon, the ACIAR principal advisor responsible for SRFSI and a former director of CIMMYT’S Impact and Assessment (Socio-economics) Program, and Dr. Mahesh Gathala, a CIMMYT cropping systems agronomist and leader of the SRFSI project. Partners from the region then presented results from pre-project activities, including reports of field research in Bangladesh and West Bengal, and studies on the hydrology of the communities where the project will be based. Dr. Rasheed Sulaiman discussed a survey of potential partners for the innovation systems developed in the project.
With this background, workshop attendees began to focus on planning the field work for the coming summer season. Gathala and Andy McDonald presented a view of the researchable issues common to the project areas, followed by presentations from longtime CIMMYT partners in the region on opportunities for change. Based on these presentations, Gathala and Pat Wall, former director of CIMMYT’s Global Conservation Agriculture Program who has been involved in the development of the SRFSI project, developed and proposed a core research program for the coming season based on direct seeding and/or direct transplanting of rice (a key strategy to reach CA systems), strategic supplementary irrigation of the rice crop and short-season rice varieties, all of which will enable timely harvest of the rice crop and allow for seeding of the winter crops at the optimum time. This plan will be discussed and refined with partners in separate country planning workshops.
Initially the SRFSI was to include a large component of technology out-scaling (commonly called extension), but ACIAR decided to make out-scaling the focus of a separate but associated project. Dixon discussed current thinking on the phases of technology generation, out-scaling, adoption and impact, followed by interesting and enlightening presentations on successful projects linking agribusiness and small farmers to achieve technology adoption from Sanjeev Asthana and N. Sai Krishna of the National Skills Foundation of India, Srivalli Krishnan of USAID and Madan Pariyar of the SRFSI partner organization, iDE. A framework for the project will now be developed and this will be the focus of discussion at the next planning workshop set for 6-7 July in Kathmandu, Nepal.
On a hot summer day in the Muzaffarpur District of Bihar State, India, 345 women farmers gathered to talk about the challenges they face in agriculture with a visiting team from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. During the event, which was organized by the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA), one woman said, “Brothers, if you are farmers, so are we.” The group responded with loud claps and whistles. The women then discussed their day-to-day issues and shared their enthusiasm to learn about new agricultural technologies and management practices.
It is relatively uncommon to see women in rural India – where gender discrimination runs deep and women often are not empowered to speak or make decisions – talk openly and passionately about their lives. The farmers who attended the CSISA meeting are members of the new initiative Kisan Sakhi, meaning “a woman farmer friend,” jointly started by CSISA and the Bihar Mahila Samakya, an Indian government program on women’s equality.
Women farmers discussing their training needs with the CSISA team. Photo: Madhulika Singh
Women work extensively on farms across India – participating in sowing, weeding and harvesting – and are responsible for managing farm work and household chores. However, their contribution in agriculture remains largely unseen and unacknowledged. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, women account for 43 percent of the agricultural labor force in developing countries and produce 60 percent of the food, yet compared with men farmers most women don’t have land rights or equal access to education or training.
Kisan Sakhi aims to empower women farmers in Bihar by disseminating new climate-resilient and sustainable farming technologies and practices that will reduce women’s drudgery and bridge the gender gap in agriculture. FAO estimates that the productivity gains from ensuring equal access to fertilizer, technology and tools could raise the total agricultural output in developing countries and reduce the number of hungry people.
“In spite of doing all kinds of work in the field, I never got the respect as a farmer that men farmers would get,” said Sumintra Devi, who is now a member of Kisan Sakhi. She is being introduced to new technologies and management practices such as improved weed management, maize intercropping, intensification of cropping systems with summer green gram, machine transplanting of rice under non-puddled conditions and nursery management. “We have discussions with the group members during which they identify the training needs and practices they would like to adopt,” said CSISA gender specialist Sugandha Munshi. In one such discussion, the women mentioned the painful and tedious process of shelling maize by hand. CSISA organized training that demonstrated post-harvest technologies such as a hand-powered maize sheller and “super bags” for effective grain storage (see photos on page 8). Six geographical areas – Aurai, Bandra, Bochaha, Gai Ghat, Kudhni and Musahri – in Muzaffarpur District have been identified for the pilot work. “Women farmers recognize that receiving information and skill is more important than short-term monetary support from a project,” said R.K. Malik, the leader of CSISA’s Objective 1 and the Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh hub manager.
CSISA has also started helping women farmers to become entrepreneurs. As part of Kisan Sakhi, four women self-help groups in the Bandra area are pooling resources to buy a rice-transplanting machine, which will help them to earn income by offering custom-hire services. “It is part of a major shift in perception of participating women groups. CSISA and its partnership with the government of Bihar now see an opportunity to involve women for adoption of new technologies and facilitate them to become service providers,” said Malik.
“It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics,” George Bernard Shaw once said, and the 56 maize researchers who attended a mid-career refresher course on statistical and genomic analysis likely would agree.
Participants of the international refresher course on Statistical and Genomic Analysis
Five agriculture universities, seven national agriculture research systems, five seed companies from South and Southeast Asia, CIMMYT and ICRISAT were represented at the course, held 12-21 May at CIMMYT’s Hyderabad office.
Big data is now a reality and the volume, variety and velocity of data coming into the breeding programs are reaching unprecedented levels. The ability to swiftly sift through multi-location phenotypes and high-density genotypes enables breeders to continuously drive innovation and make the best selection decisions. The course was intended to strengthen the statistical underpinnings of modern crop improvement approaches, particularly for mid-career scientists and students involved in maize research.
Presenting certificates of completion to the participants. Photo: Dzung Do Van
A significant percentage of the training was devoted to hands-on practical assignments using mostly open source data analysis platforms such as R and Genstat with real datasets obtained from CIMMYT breeding programs. A range of analyses such as generation of BLUPs for large and unbalanced data, factorial regressions, QTL mapping, genome-wide association analysis, genomic selection, fine mapping, and genotype imputation was demonstrated.
“Getting to know an amazing variety of powerful statistical and molecular breeding tools will definitely help advance my breeding program,” said Mahendra Tripathi, a maize breeder with the National Maize Research Program, Nepal, who is pursuing a Ph.D. with CIMMYT as part of the Heat Tolerant Maize for Asia project. Brad Thada, a student from Purdue University in the U.S. who researches heat tolerance, said he particularly liked the big picture of maize improvement that he could capture, while Ryan Gibson, also from Purdue, admired the fine mapping part of the course, which gave him an opportunity to understand the entire process of marker discovery and how to fine-tune it to breeder-ready applications. Willy Bayuardi from Indonesia’s Bogor Agricultural University said he found the course intensely educational, especially the “Meta-R” suite of programs that summarize R Script-based statistical analyses in a user-friendly interface.
Mateo Vargas and Gregorio Alvarado from the Biometrical and Statistical Unit of CIMMYT-Mexico facilitated the statistics part of the training as key resource persons. The molecular breeding team of CIMMYT-India (Raman Babu, Sudha Nair, Girish Krishna and S. Gajanan) along with Willy Bayuardi, Jefferson Paril (Institute of Plant Breeding, University of Philippines) and ICRISAT staff orchestrated the genomic analysis part. The course was coordinated by B.S. Vivek, Maize Breeder and Raman Babu, Molecular Breeder of CIMMYT-India, Hyderabad.
In India, CSISA seeks to increase crop yields through the provision of more accurate, location-specific fertilizer recommendations to maize and rice farmers with the “Crop Manager” decision-making tool. The web-based and mobile Android application uses information provided by farmers including field location, planting method, seed variety, typical yields and method of harvesting to create a personalized fertilizer application recommendation at critical crop growth stages to increase yield and profit.
“This program will allow farmers to test a range of innovations to help them boost food production, including conservation agriculture and efficient use of water resources, while strengthening their ability to adapt and link to markets and support services,” White said. “Our aim is to enable at least 130,000 farmers to adopt these technologies within the next 10 years.”
Dr. Sanjaya Rajaram was born on a small farm in rural Uttar Pradesh, India, in 1943. Unlike most children in his socioeconomic position, he was encouraged to pursue an education by his parents, and graduated from secondary school as the top-ranked student in the entire Varanasi District. Rajaram went on to earn a B.Sc. in agriculture from the University of Gorakhpur, a M.Sc. in genetics and plant breeding from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi and a Ph.D. in plant breeding from the University of Sydney. Rajaram’s outstanding career at CIMMYT began in 1969 working as a wheat breeder alongside Dr. Norman Borlaug. In 1972, at the age of 29, Borlaug appointed him as head of CIMMYT’s Wheat Breeding Program. After 33 years at CIMMYT, including seven as Director of the Global Wheat Program, Rajaram joined the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) as Director of Integrated Gene Management before formally retiring in 2008. During his distinguished career, Rajaram’s work resulted in the release of more than 480 varieties of bread wheat in 51 countries, which are grown on more than 58 million hectares worldwide. Rajaram is a Mexican citizen and resides in Mexico.
