Skip to main content

Location: Asia

As a fast growing region with increasing challenges for smallholder farmers, Asia is a key target region for CIMMYT. CIMMYT’s work stretches from Central Asia to southern China and incorporates system-wide approaches to improve wheat and maize productivity and deliver quality seed to areas with high rates of child malnutrition. Activities involve national and regional local organizations to facilitate greater adoption of new technologies by farmers and benefit from close partnerships with farmer associations and agricultural extension agents.

CGIAR Initiative: Seed Equal

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in Uncategorized.

Inadequate seed supply and delivery systems, sometimes also misaligned with user and market demand, mean that smallholders often recycle seed or use older varieties, leaving them more vulnerable to pests and diseases.  Small-scale farmers, especially women and other disadvantaged groups, are particularly vulnerable to climate-related challenges, such as more frequent and severe droughts and erratic rainfall. Additionally, farmers may not be well informed about varietal options available to them or may be reluctant to experiment with new varieties. These challenges threaten agricultural production and can compromise their ability to meet their own food, nutrition and income needs.  

Improved varieties, innovations and approaches developed and promoted by CGIAR and partners could transform agrifood systems and reduce yield gaps, “hunger months” and other disparities. However, limited access to and use of affordable, quality seed of well-adapted varieties with desired traits, means these bottlenecks remain. 

This Initiative aims to support the delivery of seed of improved, climate-resilient, market-preferred and nutritious varieties of priority crops, embodying a high rate of genetic gain to farmers, ensuring equitable access for women and other disadvantaged groups.

This objective will be achieved through:

  • Supporting demand-driven cereal seed systems for more effective delivery of genetic gains from One CGIAR cereal breeding, as well as improving government, private sector and farmer-based capacity to deliver productive, resilient and preferred varieties to smallholders. 
  • Boosting legume seed through a demand-led approach that builds on growing demand for grain legumes. This multistakeholder approach will strengthen partnerships to provide efficient, more predictable and demand-led access to quality seed of new varieties. 
  • Scaling and delivering vegetatively propagated crop seed through sustainable enhanced delivery pathways that efficiently target different market segments and farmer preferences. 
  • Supporting partnerships (including with smallholders), capacity building and coordination to ensure uptake of public-bred varieties and other innovations by providing technical assistance for national agricultural research and extension systems (NARES) and foundation seed organizations in early-generation seed production and on-farm demonstrations. 
  • Developing and implementing policies for varietal turnover, seed quality assurance and trade in seeds by leveraging global expertise and experience to generate both the evidence and engagement necessary to advance efficient, sustainable, and inclusive seed markets that promote varietal turnover and wider adoption. 
  • Scaling equitable access to quality seed and traits in order to reach the unreached and provide inclusive access while addressing gender and social constraints and the digital divide. 

Engagement

This Initiative will work in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Mozambique, Nepal, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania as a priority, followed by other countries in Latin America, South and Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Outcomes

Proposed 3-year outcomes include:

  1. Robust tools developed and used by funders, developers, researchers and extension staff to sustainably measure and monitor key seed system metrics. 
  2. Increase of 10% in the quantity of quality seed of improved “best-fit” and farmer-preferred varieties available to farmers in representative crops and geographies due to increased capacity of seed companies and other seed multipliers (including farm-based seed actors).  
  3. Public and private seed enterprises adopting innovative and transformative models for accessing, disseminating and multiplying quality early-generation seed, reducing cost and increasing output. 
  4. Reduction of 5% in weighted average varietal age for priority crops in selected countries.     
  5. Government partners in policy design and implementation actively promote policy solutions to accelerate varietal turnover, adoption and quality seed use. 

CGIAR Initiative: Accelerated Breeding

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in Uncategorized.

Resource-poor farmers in low-income and middle-income countries will hugely benefit from improved crop varieties that perform better in terms of nutritional quality, income generation, water and nutrient use, stability of yields under climate change, and the needs of both women and men as farmers and as consumers.  

However, many smallholder farmers still grow old varieties, in part because they derive inadequate benefits from recent breeding efforts. To trigger timely adoption, new varieties must be widely available and affordable to farmers, and offer a step-change in performance through higher rates of genetic gain. A faster pace of varietal turnover is critical – to enable farmers to adapt and advance rapidly as climatic and market conditions change. 

Breeding programs also need a greater focus on developing farmer- and consumer- preferred varieties adapted to distinct production environments, markets and end uses. This can be facilitated by smarter design of breeding programs; stronger partnerships between CGIAR, National Agricultural Research and Extension Systems (NARES) and small and medium enterprises (SMEs); and strengthened organizational capacity.

This Initiative aims to develop better-performing, farmer-preferred crop varieties and to decrease the average age of varieties in farmers’ fields, providing real-time adaptation to climate change, evolving markets and production systems. 

The objective will be achieved through:

  • Re-focusing breeding teams and objectives on farmers’ needs, in particular the needs of women, through achievable product profiles and breeding pipelines targeting prioritized regions and market segments. 
  • Reorganizing breeding teams to drive efficiency gains through the coordinated engagement of specialists and processes using a common organizational framework, stage gates, key performance indicators and handover criteria. 
  • Transforming towards inclusive, impactful CGIAR-NARES-SME breeding networks with empowered partners, along with customized capacity building, standardized key performance indicators, and by dividing labor and resources across partners according to comparative advantage and aligned with national priorities. 
  • Discovering optimum traits and deployments through agile, demand-driven and effective trait discovery and deployment pipelines, and development of elite donor lines with novel and highly valuable traits. 
  • Accelerating population improvement and variety identification through optimizing breeding pipelines (trailing, parent selection, cycle time, use of Breeding Resources tools and services, etc.), with the goal of assuring all programs deliver market-demanded varieties that deliver greater rates of genetic gain per dollar invested. 

Engagement

This Initiative will work with breeding programs serving countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia, along with Asia and Latin America. Priority countries for the Initiative include Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe in Africa, and Bangladesh and India in South Asia. 

Outcomes

Proposed 3-year outcomes include:

  1. At least 75% of breeding pipelines are oriented towards specific market segments, enabling greater focus on farmers’ needs, drivers of adoption, distinct impact areas and the strategic allocation of resources. 
  2. At least 70% of breeding pipelines use a revised organizational framework that provides operational clarity and effectiveness for specialized teams pursuing breeding outputs. 
  3. At least 80% of the breeding networks have implemented documented steps toward stronger partnership models where NARES and SMEs have increased breeding capacity, and make greater scientific, operational and decision-making contributions to the breeding process. 
  4. At least 50% of breeding pipelines are supported by a dedicated trait discovery and deployment program that delivers high-impact traits in the form of elite parental lines. 
  5. At least 70% of breeding pipelines have increased the rate of genetic gain in the form of farmer-preferred varieties, with at least 50% providing significantly improved varieties delivered to seed system recipients.    

CGIAR Initiative: Market Intelligence

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in Uncategorized.

Decisions on how to invest scarce resources in CGIAR-NARES genetic innovation systems have been predominantly supply-driven and therefore potentially out-of-sync with the demands of smallholders, consumers and agro-industry. The turnover of improved crop varieties developed by CGIAR and its NARES partners (National Agricultural Research and Extension Services) has been slow. Small-scale seed businesses lack incentives to actively promote new varieties given weak demand. Little is known about the drivers of varietal replacement and product substitution, and the role of downstream market actors such as traders, processors and consumers in this process.  

There is a clear need for demand- and data-driven processes to guide genetic innovation systems, but efforts to advance this remain incomplete and fragmented within CGIAR. Current product profile design is strongly biased towards agronomic and stress-tolerance traits, with little systematic identification and integration of traits that contribute to wider social impact. 

This Initiative aims to maximize CGIAR and partners’ returns on investment in breeding, seed systems and other Initiatives based on reliable and timely market intelligence that enables stronger demand orientation and strengthens co-ownership and co-implementation by CGIAR and partners.

This objective will be achieved through:

  • Gathering market intelligence by collecting data to map global and regional challenges across CGIAR’s five impact areas, translating them into regional market segments and priorities for genetic innovation by identifying drivers of demand as well as variation by gender, age and social group.
  • Designing new-generation, gender-intentional target product profiles for each market segment using market intelligence. 
  • Generating behavioral intelligence based on what drives farmers, consumers and private-sector decisions to adopt new varieties and supporting other Initiatives in identifying cost-effective inclusive strategies for accelerating varietal uptake. 
  • Developing pipeline investment cases by estimating the potential impact and return on investment across CGIAR’s five impact areas of the portfolio of breeding pipelines serving the market segments and developing recommendations for the portfolio optimization and prioritization. 
  • Developing institutional scaling and monitoring, evaluation, learning and impact assessment (MELIA) by establishing a collaboration hub across Genetic Innovation Initiatives and partners to develop scaling mechanisms for the adoption of institutional standards and processes in market segmentation and gender-intentional product profile design, and to conduct rigorous MELIA of the portfolio. 

Engagement

This Initiative has a global and regional focus, with countries being prioritized as a result of the Initiative’s work. 

Outcomes

Proposed 3-year outcomes include:

  1. At least three transdisciplinary teams across CGIAR and partners in prioritized regions are empowered in co-implementation of market and behavioral intelligence and co-design of product profiles. 
  2. At least 10 CGIAR partners in prioritized regions adopt institutional standards and processes for market segmentation and product profile design, sharing of market and behavioral intelligence and monitoring of outcomes. 
  3. At least five seed suppliers, food companies and NGOs in prioritized regions use market and behavioral intelligence from the Initiative in strategic decision-making. 
  4. At least three research leaders and investors make investment decisions using pipeline investment cases and the Initiative’s investor dashboard and the increased availability of information and transparent, holistic analyses of high-impact opportunities attract increased investments in underinvested and new-opportunity market segments.

Private sector support essential for agribusiness

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in News.

Samantha Power, Administrator for USAID, in an interaction with colleagues from SSSC and CIMMYT in Nepal. (Photo: Kaji Ram Bhatta/CIMMYT)

On February 7, Samantha Power, Administrator for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), visited SEAN Seed Service Centre (SSSC) in Thankot, Nepal. Her time at the seed company — which is supported by the Nepal Seed and Fertilizer (NSAF) project — provided an opportunity to learn more about how private sector support for agribusiness can help accelerate Nepal’s agricultural transformation.

The event began with a tour of the company’s facilities and seed lab, where Power met with breeders and employees responsible for sorting and grading seeds. Other stops on the visit included meetings with SSSC management and researchers from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), who explained the important role the private sector plays in the country’s seed sector, from the development of climate stress tolerant varieties to facilitating seed access and distribution.

The Administrator and USAID officials at a round table with private sector on transforming Nepalese agriculture. (Photo: Kaji Ram Bhatta/CIMMYT)

Later in the day, Power participated in a round table discussion with agribusiness entrepreneurs from seed and agricultural production companies, fertilizer manufacturers and distributors, and farmers cooperatives to better understand the key challenges and opportunities in fostering agricultural transformation in Nepal. The talks focused on the need for reforms on seed and fertilizer markets and elimination of market distorting policies such as unplanned subsidies, as well as the need to facilitate access to finance to boost investments and insurance to manage risks.

Key recommendations from participants included increased use of technologies — such as improved seeds, machineries, improved soil fertility management and digital tools — as well as the creation of a more enabling environment for attracting private sector investment and increasing agricultural participation among youth and disadvantaged communities in Nepal. The private sector plays a critical role in bolstering national food security, increasing economic growth, and creating transformative change in the country’s agricultural sector so it can be more commercial, competitive, and inclusive. Participants provided suggestions on how the Government of Nepal could further support the sector, allowing agribusinesses to develop and grow in order to cater to the needs of smallholder farmers and consumers.

CIMMYTs Nepal Seed and Fertilizer (NSAF) project is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). It aims to develop competitive and vibrant seed and integrated soil fertility management (IFSM) systems for inclusive and sustainable growth in agricultural productivity, business development, and income generation in Nepal.

A deceptively simple hack boosts wheat yields in Bihar

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in Features.

As a warming planet desiccates crops around the world, threatening livelihoods and nutrition, farmers in Bihar, India, are boosting their wheat yields with a deceptively simple adaptation.

“Farmers can plant their wheat crop several weeks earlier, so that their wheat matures earlier and they are able to harvest their wheat before the heat gets bad,” said Amit Kumar Srivastava, a scientist with the International Rice Research Institute in India. “Traditionally, farmers in Bihar planted their wheat in mid-December. This put their crop at risk of what’s called ‘terminal heat’ – high heat during a critical growth stage that impacts the yields. We’ve advised them to begin planting by November 20.”

Bihar is blessed with good soil and adequate water resources. But its yields have been lagging below India’s average. Today, the average hectare of Bihar farmland produces 2.9 tons of wheat – significantly below the average yield in India of 3.4 tons.

Rising heat threatened to reduce this harvest even further. Wheat, like people, can suffer from heat stress. Researchers have found that an increase of just one-degree Celsius cuts wheat yields by 6%. In high heat conditions, wheat produces fewer, smaller grains, potentially impacting nutrition and livelihoods. Bihar, one of the poorest states in India, is considered a climate change hotspot and temperatures are expected to rise by up to 1 degree Celsius by 2050. India can ill afford declining farm yields. In fact, it needs to increase its wheat yields from around 110 million tons to 140 million tons by 2050 just to keep pace with domestic demand.

This seemingly simple adaptation was actually quite complicated to develop, explained Sonam Sherpa, a spatial agronomist with the Sustainable Agrifood Systems (SAS) program of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center. “It required researchers to look at the agricultural system as a whole. We had to understand why farmers were planting so late. And we learned it was because they were waiting for their rice crop to mature. And they couldn’t plant their rice crop earlier because they were waiting for the monsoon rains, which are unpredictable in Bihar. Understanding the system as a whole, led us to recommend a rice variety that matures earlier and to develop weather forecasting tools and systems that can communicate with farmers when the monsoon rains are expected. That will help farmers move forward with planting their rice earlier, allowing for an earlier harvest. And then planting and harvesting their wheat earlier.”

To demonstrate the potential of this shift, researchers established demonstration fields throughout the state and brought government officials and farmers to see the difference.

It was striking. Across the state, farmers who adopted early rice harvesting and early wheat planting grew nearly one ton more of wheat on each hectare than those who planted late – a 36% increase in yield. At the most extreme ends of the planting spectrum the difference in yield is hard to overstate; the difference in yields between the wheat planted in early November versus the wheat planted in late December was 69%. That’s enough of a boost to turn Bihar from a net wheat importer to a breadbasket for the region.

“Seeing is believing,” said Srivastava. As of the 2020-21 wheat growing season, an estimated 22% of farmers in the target districts – about half a million farmers with an estimated 0.83 million hectares of land – have shifted to different varieties of rice that allow them to plant their wheat earlier. Similar gains could be seen elsewhere in Eastern India, research indicates, if the rice-wheat system is managed as a system.

Researchers also established relationships with private sector seed distributors who often advise farmers and help them identify and adopt different varieties of rice that allow for earlier harvesting. “The lesson here is that even with climate change, we can increase production by optimizing agricultural systems,” said Srivastava.

Read the original article: A deceptively simple hack boosts wheat yields in Bihar

Cover photo: A deceptively simple hack boosts wheat yields in Bihar. (Photo: Reuters)

India will have record wheat production, must plan for export, says Arun Kumar Joshi

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in In the media.

A scientist from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) spoke to The Hindu about current challenges in wheat cultivation in India.

Arun Kumar Joshi, CIMMYT Country Representative for India, CIMMYT Regional Representative for South Asia and Managing Director of the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA), predicted a bumper year for wheat in India.

“The feedback so far I am getting is that there will be record production of wheat,” he said. “The reason is that the area of cultivation has increased. According to government estimates, wheat has been sown in more than 34 million hectares so far in this rabi season.”

Reasons for this include no current threat from locusts or diseases, appropriate levels of soil moisture and humidity, and farmers shifting to planting crops earlier, explained Joshi.

Read the original article: India will have record wheat production, must plan for export, says Arun Kumar Joshi

Mini-tillers bolster Nepal maize farmers’ food supplies and profits, new study shows

Written by Mike Listman on . Posted in Publications.

Use of lightweight, 5-9-horsepower mini-tillers by smallholder farmers in Nepal’s mid-hills cut tillage costs and boosted maize yields by facilitating timely maize cultivation, thus enhancing food self-sufficiency and farm profits and reducing rural poverty, a new study by an international team of scientists shows.

Published in the Journal of Economics and Development, the study reports findings of an on-farm survey involving more than 1,000 representative households from 6 districts of the mid-hills, a region of steep and broken terrain where rainfed maize is a staple crop, outmigration of working-age inhabitants makes farm labor scarce and costly, and farmers on small, fragmented landholdings typically till plots by hand or using ox-drawn plows.

“Conventional two- or four-wheel tractors are difficult to operate in the mid-hills’ rugged topography,” said Gokul P. Paudel, researcher working together with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and Leibniz University, Hannover, Germany, and lead author of the study. “Farms are small and the mini-tillers are a good fit. Very small farms — those comprising less than 0.4 hectares of land and normally not served by hired farm labor or larger machinery — benefited the most from mini-tiller adoption.”

The paper is the first to provide empirical linkages between small-scale farm mechanization and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, particularly No Poverty (SDG-1) and Zero Hunger (SDG-2).

“Given its rural poverty and the resulting outmigration from farm areas to cities and to other countries, Nepal has increasingly become a labor-exporting country,” explained Paudel, who partnered in this study with researchers from the Asian Development Bank Institute and Cornell University. “Our research can help guide investments by Nepal and other developing countries in scale-appropriate farm mechanization, supporting those who wish to remain on rural homesteads and make a go of it.”

Machine operators starting the mini-tiller in the Kavrepalanchok district in the mid-hills of Nepal. (Photo: CIMMYT)

The science team found that farm size, labor shortages, draft animal scarcity, and market proximity were major factors that facilitate the adoption of appropriate mechanization in Nepal, according to Tim Krupnik, CIMMYT systems agronomist and study co-author.

“Smallholder farms dominate more than two-thirds of agricultural systems globally,” Krupnik said. “Interest in scale-appropriate farm mechanization is growing rapidly, particularly among donors and governments, and practical empirical measures of its impact are crucial.” The findings of the latest study fill this knowledge gap and provide sufficient evidence to prioritize the spread of appropriate technologies among smallholder farmers.

Krupnik noted that, through its office in Nepal and strong shared research and capacity-building activities, CIMMYT has worked for almost four decades with Nepali scientists and development partners, including the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development (MoALD), to raise the productivity and sustainability of the country’s maize- and wheat-based farming systems.

In addition to strong government partnerships, CIMMYT works closely in Nepal with a range of non-government organizations, and importantly, hand-in-hand with private farm machinery manufacturers, retailers, and mechanics.

The study described was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Academy for International Agricultural Research (ACINAR) commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and carried out by ATSAF e.V. on behalf of the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, the One CGIAR Regional Integrated Initiative Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia (TAFSSA), and generous funders who contribute to the CGIAR Trust Fund.

Read the study: The contributions of scale-appropriate farm mechanization to hunger and poverty reduction: Evidence from smallholder systems in Nepal

Cover photo: In the Palpa district in the mid-hills of Nepal, a woman farmer tills the soil for maize seeding. (Photo: Gokul Paudel/CIMMYT)

Staple commodities: Country can save $1.3bn annually by developing efficient storage system

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in In the media.

Farmers in Pakistan could save up to $1.3 billion each year in post-harvest losses with the development of an efficient storage system.

Research shows that inefficient storage is the main cause of staple commodity losses in the country. Despite producing 27 million tons of wheat annually worth $7.4 billion, there is less than 6 million tons of storage capacity available; around 10% of the surplus wheat is lost at a value of $740 million due to the use of unregulated conditions.

With the ability to store their commodity for an extra two or three months, farmers can increase their income by between 20 to 40 percent. Preserving the crops that have already been produced will also pass on a saving of between 15 to 20 percent to end consumers.

Hermetic technology developed by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the University of Hohenheim offers a potential storage solution by protecting the commodity from the ambient environment.

Read the original article: Staple commodities: Country can save $1.3bn annually by developing efficient storage system

Farmers harvested double yield by adopting Wengkhar Hybrid Maize 1 in Bhutan

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in Features.

The planting of maize hybrid Wengkhar Hybrid Maize 1 (WHM-1) has helped farmers in the Mongar district of Bhutan double their maize yield.

WHM-1 was developed in partnership with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and became the first maize hybrid to be released in Bhutan to combat the negative effect of increasing temperature or extreme heat events on maize.

The hybrid was designed with characteristics of heat and drought tolerance, as well as a resistance to stem and root lodging. It also had additional stay-green traits after cob maturity and produced a high yield.

The success of the implementation in Bhutan is leading to an increased production of WHM-1, which will aim to meet national demand and work towards country’s self-sufficiency.

Dechen Yangden is one of the smallholder beneficiaries in Tsakaling, a sub-district in Mongar in the east of the country, who have boosted their maize yield by planting WHM-1. “My attempt to grow WHM-1 has doubled my maize production compared to last season where I cultivated some other maize varieties (2.5 metric tons (mt) in one hectare (ha)),” she said.

Farmer holds up a maize cob of WHM-1 in Waichur hamlet, Mongor, Bhutan. (Photo: ARDC)

Farmers’ experiences of WHM-1

Since its official release in 2020, the national maize program based at Agriculture Research & Development Center (ARDC) started producing hybrid seeds and maintaining parental lines. To test the success of the ARDC’s work, planting was carried out in the Tsakaling and Waichur hamlets in Mongar districts, covering an area of six acres.

Maize farmers in Tsakaling shared that although the crop was affected by the insect fall armyworm during the early vegetative stage, the productivity of the crop was not affected, as it recovered at later stage.

Meanwhile, ARDSC Khangma carried out yield monitoring during the harvest, where WHM-1 yielded 5.8 mt ha-1, which is noticeable rise on the national average of 3.7 mt ha-1.

Following the conclusion of their harvest, farmers in the two localities shared their views on the newly released maize in order to review the effect of the implementation of WHM-1. Both sets of growers reported an improved performance from the use of WHM-1 and noted that, unlike other maize varieties, the hybrid has shorter and uniform plant height along with a higher resistance to lodging, which is an essential trait given the conditions it is grown in. Furthermore, the stay-green trait of the hybrid after maturity of cobs gave farmers an added advantage of green fodder, which can be used for feeding their cattle.

In Waichur, the growers found that this hybrid had a tight husk and fully filled kernels. They shared similar views to growers in Tsakaling, reporting positive lodging resistance in the hybrid.

Both communities expressed their interest in continuing to use WHM-1, given the availability and accessibility of the seeds. As a response, the National Maize Program at ARDC Wengkhar, is looking to deploy the newly released hybrid on a larger scale, which will ultimately contribute towards enhancing maize self-sufficiency in the country.

WHM-1 was developed through partnership of the National Maize Program at Wengkhar and CIMMYT under the Heat Stress Tolerant Maize for Asia (HTMA) project for germplasm and technical assistance and the Commercial Agriculture and Resilient Livelihoods Enhancement Program (CARLEP-IFAD/MoAF) for on-farm research and intensification.

Feasibility mapping for WHM-1 showed that its adaption stretches along the southern foothills and some parts of eastern district. The National Maize Program, sister research centers, and farmers are currently working on upscaling the seed production for intensification of national maize production to meet the domestic demands.

Cover photo: Women farmers tagging their first choice of maize crop, WHM-1, in Tsakaling hamlet, Mongor, Bhutan. (Photo: ARDC)

Harvest of hybrid WHM-1 maize. (Photo: ARDC)

This story is written by P.H. Zaidi of CIMMYT and Passang Wangmo and Tsheltrim Gyeltshen of the National Maize Program, ARDC Wengkhar, Bhutan.

Xiplomacy: China, LAC countries embrace new era of win-win cooperation

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in In the media.

An article in the Big News Network examines opportunities for collaboration between China and Latin America and the Caribbean, referencing work between China and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

Bram Govaerts, director general of CIMMYT, said the collaboration with China can be regarded as one of the mutually beneficial examples of working together to safeguard the world’s food security.

“CIMMYT and China together can be partners,” said Govaerts. “CIMMYT can work with China for new wheat varieties that can fight climate change, for new maize varieties that can sustain new diseases.”

Read the original article: Xiplomacy: China, LAC countries embrace new era of win-win cooperation

More than a drop in the bucket: addressing food security in Nepal through improved sustainable irrigation

Written by Nur-A-Mahajabin Khan on . Posted in Features.

Agriculture is always impacted by war. However, Russia’s war in Ukraine, fought between two major agricultural producers in an era of globalized markets, poses unprecedented implications for global agriculture and food security. Russia and Ukraine are significant exporters of maize, wheat, fertilizers, edible oils and crude oil. These exports have been compromised by the war, with the greatest impact being on poor and low-income countries that rely most on food imports. Partly because of the Ukraine-Russia conflict and partly due to the decline in agricultural production caused by the climate emergency, food prices have increased between 9.5 and 10.5 percent over the past ten years. 

Nepal, where one in four families is impoverished, is an example of a low-income country impacted by the war’s disruption of trade in agricultural goods and inputs. Although wheat, maize and rice are staples, vegetables are also important for nutrition and income, and Nepal imports fuel and fertilizer for their domestic production. Uncertainty in global supply chains, combined with the Nepali rupee’s significant depreciation against the US dollar, has resulted in a 500% increase in the cost of diesel since 2012. ­­

Irrigation to boost homegrown production

Land irrigation is crucial to crop growth and to the capacity of famers to withstand the effects of the climate emergency and economic shock. However, the majority of Nepal’s groundwater resources are underutilized, leaving ample room for increasing climate-resilient agricultural production capable of withstanding an increasing number of drought events. With the right kind of management of its groundwater, Nepal can increase its domestic output, and bolster smallholder resilience and food security in times of economic and climate crisis.

As part of the first prong of this approach, the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) advises farmers (particularly women), governments and donors on the targeted support available to enable them to access existing low-cost and fuel-efficient engineering solutions. These solutions can contribute to the immediate goals of increasing agricultural productivity, intensifying groundwater irrigation and improving rural livelihoods. CSISA informs small producers about ways to access irrigation and develop water entrepreneurship. It also and empowers farmers, especially women, to improve service provision and gain access to services and irrigation pumps, including through access to finance.

Policymakers, businesses, researchers and farmers (especially women, youth and marginalized groups) will collaborate to co-create business models for sustainable and inclusive irrigation with development partners and Nepali public and private sector actors. While there are more than one million wells and pumps in Nepal, many of these are not used efficiently, and social barriers often preclude farmers from accessing services such as pump rentals when they need them. To address these constraints and support private investment in irrigation and water entrepreneurship models, CSISA will work with existing infrastructure investment programs and local stakeholders to build a dynamic and more inclusive irrigation sector over the course of the next year, positively impacting a projected 20,000 small farming households.

At the macro-level, these water entrepreneurship models will respond to prioritized irrigation scaling opportunities, while at the farm level they will respond to irrigation application scheduling advisories. CSISA will also create policy brief documents, in the form of an improved farm management advisory, to be distributed widely among partners and disseminated among farmers to support increases in production and resilience. CSISA’s sustainable and inclusive irrigation framework guides its crisis response.

Scaling digital groundwater monitoring to support adaptive water management

In growing resilience-building irrigation investments, there is always a risk of groundwater depletion, which means that accurate and efficient groundwater data collection is vital. However, Nepal doesn’t currently have a data or governance system for monitoring the impact of irrigation on groundwater resources.

To tackle the need for low-cost, context-specific data systems which improve groundwater data collection, as well as mechanisms for the translation of data into actionable information, and in response to farmer, cooperative and government agency stakeholder demands, the Government of Nepal Groundwater Resources Development Board (GWRDB) and CSISA have co-developed and piloted a digital groundwater monitoring system for Nepal.

In a recent ministerial level workshop, GWRDB executive director Bishnu Belbase said, “CSISA support for groundwater monitoring as well as the ongoing support for boosting sustainable and inclusive investments in groundwater irrigation are cornerstone to the country’s development efforts.”

A pilot study conducted jointly by the two organizations in 2021 identified several options for upgrading groundwater monitoring systems. Three approaches were piloted, and a phone-based monitoring system with a dashboard was evaluated and endorsed as the best fit for Nepal. To ensure the sustainability of the national response to the production crisis, the project will extend government monitoring to cover at least five Tarai districts within the Feed the Future Zone of Influence, collecting data on a total of 100 wells and conducting an assessment of potential network expansion in Nepal’s broad, inner-Tarai valleys and Mid-Hills regions. The goal is to utilize this data to strengthen the Feed the Future Zone of Influence in Nepal by increasing GWRDB’s capability to monitor groundwater in five districts.

Ensuring food security

These activities will be continued for next two years. During that time CSISA will increase GWRDB’s capacity to monitor groundwater and apply this to five districts in Nepal’s Feed the Future Zone of Influence, using an enhanced monitoring system which will assist planners and decision-makers in developing groundwater management plans. As a result, CSISA expects to support at least 20,000 farming households in gaining better irrigation access to achieve high yields and climate-resilient production, with 40 percent of them being women, youth and/or marginalized groups. This access will be made possible through the involvement of the private sector, as CSISA will develop at least two promising business models for sustainable and inclusive irrigation. Finally, through this activity government and private sector stakeholders in Western Nepal will have increased their capacity for inclusive irrigation and agricultural value chain development.

CSISA’s Ukraine Response Activities towards boosting sustainable and inclusive irrigation not only respond to crucial issues and challenges in Nepal, but will also contribute to the regional knowledge base for irrigation investments. Many regions in South Asia face similar challenges and the experience gained from this investment in Nepal will be applicable across the region. Given the importance of of groundwater resources for new farming systems and food system transformation, the project is mapped to Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia (TAFSSA), the One CGIAR regional integrated initiative for South Asia, that will act as a scaling platform for sharing lessons learned and coordinating with stakeholder regionally towards more sustainable groundwater management and irrigation investments.

Cover photo: Ram Bahadur Thapa managing water in his paddy field in Dailekh district of Nepal. (Photo: Nabin Baral)

Pravasi Bharatiya Samman winner, scientist Dr Ravi Singh is working towards food security for all

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in In the media.

As he retires from his illustrious career, a new interview with Ravi Singh, Head of Global Wheat Improvement at CIMMYT, by the Global Indian reveals his motivations for becoming a scientist and his desire to ensure people all over the world had access to food.

“I retired quite recently, however, I have a lot to do. I wish to mentor young scientists about on how to increase food production. I also look forward to working on several high-profile projects with farmers to tackle future issues they might face due to the climate changes on a crop like wheat,” shares the scientist.

Singh was honored with the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman by the Government of India in January 2021, recognizing his outstanding achievements by non-resident Indians, persons of Indian origin, or organizations or institutions run by them either in India or abroad. He received this for his role in the development, release, and cultivation of more than 550 wheat varieties over the past three decades.

Singh has also been included among the top one percent of highly-cited researchers, according to Clarivate Analytics-Web of Science every year since 2017.

Read the original article: Pravasi Bharatiya Samman winner, scientist Dr Ravi Singh is working towards food security for all

‘Farmers now more aware about climate resilient agri’

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in In the media.

A workshop in New Delhi on the Climate Resilient Agriculture (CRA) programme explored solar harvesting, carbon credit, crop residue management, climate resilient cultivars, millets and pulses in cropping systems, and maize drying and processing.

Arun Kumar Joshi from the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA) highlighted the potential of the programme if more farmers embrace CRA technology.

New technologies and innovations are essential in helping farmers adapt to changing climate conditions and reduce reliance on greenhouse gases (GHG).

Read the original article: ‘Farmers now more aware about climate resilient agri’

Mahesh Kumar Gathala

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in Uncategorized.

Born into a farming family in Rajasthan, Mahesh Gathala obtained his BSc and MSc from Rajasthan Agricultural University and his PhD in Soil Science from Maharana Pratap University of Agriculture and Technology (MPUA&T), Udaipur.

Currently, he has been working since 2011 with CIMMYT’s Sustainable Intensification Program, as a Senior Systems Agronomist, presently based in Bangladesh. Dr Gathala has made strong contributions to strategic research, development and deployment of Conservation Agriculture (CA) based Sustainable Intensification, crop production and farming systems, small scale mechanization, innovations for youth and women micro-entrepreneurship and capacity building to several thousand farmers and partners. He is currently responsible for developing sustainable intensification through CA-based management solutions to address issues of resource degradation, soil health, abiotic stresses, and climate change in South Asia.

CIMMYT-China workshop aims to facilitate future collaborations to battle climate change

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on . Posted in News.

Hybrid maize seed and ears of the Yunrui 88 variety, developed using CIMMYT and Chinese germplasm. It is high-yielding, resistant to important diseases, and drought tolerant, and farmers report that the ears can be stored for longer and are better for animal feed. It was released in 2009 and is now the most popular hybrid in the area. (Photo: Michelle DeFreese/CIMMYT)

The negative effects of climate change on food systems are felt across political boundaries, so creating sustainable remediation steps are best accomplished through global collaboration. In that spirit, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) convened the China-CIMMYT Workshop on Climate Change & Food Crops Production on December 6, 2022.

Participants included principal investigators of China’s National Key Technology Research and Development Program, representatives of Chinese agricultural universities, CIMMYT scientists and representatives from a variety of international organizations. The agenda featured discussions regarding research priorities, efforts to establish best practices in classifying and prioritizing climate risks and identifying potential crucial points for future cooperation between CIMMYT and China.

After the welcome address from Wheat Breeder and Country Representative for China Zhongzhu He, Thomas Lumpkin, CIMMYT Director General Emeritus provided the introduction to global climate issues and their effects on agriculture, particularly staple crops like wheat.

“All climate change mitigation strategies must account for their effect on food production systems, the aim of this convening was to facilitate discussions among climate change scientists, crop breeders and agronomists,” said Lumpkin. “Global issues require global solutions and so collaboration among institutions is pivotal.”

Tek Sapkota, CIMMYT Agricultural Systems and Climate Change Scientist, presented a framework for quantifying GHG emissions and mitigation potential for food systems, key research objectives of the One CGIAR initiative MITIGATE+, an initiative aimed to reduce annual global food systems emissions by 7% by 2030.

Three other CIMMYT scientists presented at the workshop. Wei Xiong, Senior Scientist, Crop Modeler, focused on genotype-environment interactions and its implication on breeding. Urs Schulthess, Remote Sensing Scientist, presented state-of-the-art results on the effects of temperature and vapor pressure deficit on radiation use efficiency of wheat. Huihui Li, Scientist, Quantitative Geneticist, discussed expanding genome wide association mapping and genomic selection to include climatic factors, highlighting novel methods to bring genes and climate together to accelerate breeding cycles.

In the workshop’s closing remarks, Wei reiterated CIMMYT’s commitments to continued collaboration with Chinese institutions and outlined next steps, such as CIMMYT’s commitment to increasing global agricultural resilience via novel research, partnerships, and increased engagement. Wei also detailed methods to identify new mechanisms and funding channels to promote global cooperation, such as One CGIAR initiatives and funding from national partners, including the CAAS.