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.

Setting the stage for delivering high zinc wheat in South Asia

Written by on October 6, 2015. Posted in News.

Public and private sector partners in HarvestPlus’ biofortified wheat research and dissemination network in South Asia got together at ICRISAT, Hyderabad, on 10-11 September to discuss progress on breeding research, producing seed for target populations, and strategies for accelerating seed production and fast-tracking commercialization of biofortified zinc-rich wheat varieties.

Partners from India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan, as well as delegates from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), various state agricultural universities, NGOs, small and medium-size private seed companies, processors, millers, and progressive farmers discussed topics such as critical gaps and opportunities in outreach strategies, priority upscaling interventions, and policy incentives for fast-track adoption of improved high Zn wheat varieties.

ICAR Deputy Director General (Crop Science) J.S. Sandhu inaugurated the workshop with a formal presentation on India’s Consortia Research Platforms (CRP) for improving nutritional quality of major staples and emphasized the extraordinary nutritional challenges that country faces, e.g., some of the highest rates of childhood stunting and malnutrition in the world. Wolfgang Pfeiffer, HarvestPlus Director (Product Development and Deployment), highlighted the success of HarvestPlus partners in disseminating nutrient-dense wheat, reaching 50,000 farm households and providing biofortified wheat to a quarter of a million household members by 2015. Parminder Virk, Product Development Manager at HarvestPlus, urged participants to set up a fast-track commercialization pipeline to enable nutrient rich wheat varieties to reach smallholder farmers fast.

CIMMYT Wheat Breeder Velu Govindan discussed advances in the development of competitive high Zn wheat germplasm at CIMMYT, Mexico, to satisfy the needs of national program partners, while Arun Joshi, Senior Wheat Breeder, CIMMYT-South Asia, emphasized the crucial role of public and private sector partners in ensuring farmers have rapid and long-term access to nutrient rich wheat seed. Ravish Chatrath, IIWBR, summarized the results of a special biofortified wheat trial conducted across locations in India.

HarvestPlus Wheat Biofortification meeting held at ICRISAT, in Patancheru. Photo credit : HarvestPlus.

V.K. Mishra, Banaras Hindu University, reported that farmer-participatory varietal selection trials have enabled the identification and release of competitive high Zn wheat varieties for fast-track commercialization in the eastern Gangetic Plains (EGP) of India. The new varieties are not only nutritionally superior, but also drought tolerant and resistant to rusts and other foliar diseases. They are being commercialized in India as truthfully-labeled seed under different names by private companies and farmers’ seed production networks.

Reflections of a wheat trainee: Zaki Afshar, Afghanistan

Written by on October 5, 2015. Posted in Features. 1 Comment on Reflections of a wheat trainee: Zaki Afshar, Afghanistan

Zaki Afshar grew up in the small city of Puli Khumri in northern Afghanistan, and visited his father’s seven-hectare farm every weekend. In this farming locality where the staple crops are wheat and rice, Afshar saw the impact agriculture could have on a community.

“A big part of why I chose agriculture was because I saw how hard the farmers worked and still suffered,” said Afshar. “I wanted to know how I could help them. Why were they not using the advanced technologies I saw available in other parts of the world?”

According to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), 60% of Afghan citizens rely on agriculture for their livelihoods. Wheat is the chief crop in Afghanistan, covering 2.5 million ha and providing about 60% of the daily calorie intake of an average Afghan. “We have a very basic agricultural system,” explained Afshar. “You will only see machinery used for plowing and threshing, not for sowing or even harvesting.”

Afshar attended Balkh University in Mazari Sharif and received a degree in Agricultural Plant Science. He currently works at the CIMMYT-Afghanistan office as a project associate in the wheat improvement program. The CIMMYT-ARIA (Agricultural Research Institute of Afghanistan) joint wheat breeding program is relatively small and new. Afshar’s dream upon starting at CIMMYT was eventually to join the wheat breeding team. Last March, Afshar was able to make this dream a reality, by participating in CIMMYT’s 2015 Basic Wheat Improvement Course (BWIC). This three-month intensive course at the Norman E. Borlaug Experiment Station in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, Mexico, targets young and mid-career scientists and focuses on applying breeding techniques in the field.

“On my first field visit after returning home, I realized how different things were in Kabul than in Obregón,” said Afshar. “Because our program is very new, we have fewer breeders and need more training. I am excited to share with them everything I learned in Mexico.”

In Obregón, Afshar was able to meet scientists from all over the world and learn about breeding methods used in various regions worldwide. For Afshar it was extremely important to come to Mexico to receive his training. At the end of the BWIC, Afshar was honored with the most improved wheat breeder award.

“Through this course I learned how to be a breeder, how different breeders work and new information in wheat breeding,” said Afshar. “The most exciting moment was when I joined my team back in Afghanistan. It was easy for me to score and differentiate between different types of rust, and I realized that everyone in the field was paying attention to what I had to say.”

Martin Kropff visits China

Written by on October 5, 2015. Posted in News.

Martin Kropff made his first official visit to China as CIMMYT Director General from 28 August to 1 September. He was accompanied by his wife and by Thomas Lumpkin, CIMMYT’s former DG. Major activities included meeting with Jiayang Li, President of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), and visiting the potential site for a new China-CIMMYT center in Tongzhou, located an hour’s drive from CAAS headquarters. Kropff also met with Jiangguo Zhang, Vice-Minister and Administrator of the State Administration of Foreign Expert Affairs (SAFEA), and officially presented a statue of Norman Borlaug to him in recognition of SAFEA and Jiangguo Zhang’s personal support for the CIMMYT-China collaboration.

The visitors from CIMMYT also had a fruitful discussion with the China Scholarship Council (SCC), which has sponsored 18 visiting scientists at CIMMYT. Liu Jinghui, SCC Secretary General, was very impressed with CIMMYT’s impact both worldwide and in China and agreed to increase the allowance of visiting scientists and postgraduate students from US$ 900 per month to US$ 1400 at CIMMYT HQ and all regional offices. Each year, SCC will offer more than 10 scholarships, ranging from 12 to 24 months, to train at CIMMYT. A memorandum of understanding between CIMMYT and SCC will be signed soon. In addition to these activities, Kropff visited China’s National Nature Science Foundation and met with CIMMYT Board Member Feng Feng.

Kropff also visited the CIMMYT office at CAAS and attended presentations by CIMMYT staff stationed at four locations. He mentioned that he will continue the work Tom Lumpkin did in China, which is the reason they decided to travel together. Maize and wheat are, respectively, the first and third leading crop in China. CIMMYT has worked with China for over 35 years; it opened its China office in 1997 and will continue to expand its collaboration.

CIMMYT helps the Seed Entrepreneurs’ Association of Nepal devise its organizational strategy

Written by on October 5, 2015. Posted in News.

In response to the interest expressed by the Seed Entrepreneurs’ Association of Nepal (SEAN), CIMMYT-Nepal organized a meeting with SEAN and the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) on 29 July 2015 at NARC’s Agriculture Botany Division, Khumaltar, as an activity of the CIMMYT-led Cereal System Initiative for South Asia-Nepal (CSISA-NP).

Following its interaction with the National Seed Association of India (NSAI) and Indian seed businesses during an event organized by CSISA-NP in the first and second week of June, SEAN decided to devise a strategic roadmap and upgrade its organizational strategy. The specific purpose of the July meeting, which was attended by 19 participants from SEAN, 3 from NARC and 4 from CIMMYT-Nepal, was to study SEAN’s vision, mission and goal, and how they could be updated in the current era of globalization, technological innovation and deregulation.

Increasing farmers’ access to quality seed is important for enhancing Nepal’s food security. To this end, CSISA-NP has been helping small and medium seed enterprises accelerate their growth in an integrated manner. To facilitate their growth, the current situation of seed enterprises, the challenges they face and their potential for growth were recently documented, and the outcomes will be presented at the National Seed Summit on 14-15 September 2015. In addition, representatives of 15 Nepali seed enterprises visited Indian seed companies in May 2015 to learn from their experience, and a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed between NSAI and SEAN to foster partnership between them.

Speaking on behalf of SEAN, its president, Laxmi Kanta Dhakal, said that to catalyze the implementation of the MoU between their organization and NSAI, SEAN needs to develop appropriate strategies to address its internal issues as well as reshape partnership modes with potential national and international stakeholders.

Initiated in 1989, SEAN was registered in Nepal in 1991 as a non-profit organization and now comprises 500 members, including seed entrepreneurs engaged in producing, processing and marketing seeds and other agricultural inputs. SEAN’s main purpose has been to organize individual entrepreneurs and private companies to foster capacity building, lobbying and advocating on behalf of seed entrepreneurs, thereby strengthening the national seed industry.

At the meeting, Gurbinder Singh Gill gave a lecture on how to develop the strategic roadmap and facilitated the session where SEAN started working on its mission, vision and goal statements. Gill also shared case studies from different countries and organizations to encourage SEAN’s leadership team to start working at the organizational level. Once these themes are discussed and detailed by SEAN at the organizational level, CSISA-NP will hold a workshop to decide on the way forward. This should lead to an implementable strategic plan for the next five or ten years.

NARC, SEAN and CIMMYT colleagues engaged in establishing a strategic road map for seed enterprises in Nepal.

Towards the end of the meeting, NARC Director (Crops and Horticulture) Shanbhu Prasad Khatiwada said that strong linkage and coordination between the national research program, SEAN, seed enterprises and the CIMMYT team are needed to achieve comprehensive progress towards solving Nepal’s food security issues. He said that this was the first meeting of its kind in Nepal where SEAN, NARC and CIMMYT came together to reshape the organizational strategy of the only seed association of Nepal.
The event was opened by Arun Joshi, Country Representative of CIMMYT-Nepal, facilitated by CIMMYT consultants Narayan Khanal and Gurbinder Singh, and by K.C. Dilli, Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist, CIMMYT-Nepal.

Pakistani stakeholders evaluate the performance of CIMMYT maize germplasm across Punjab

Written by on October 5, 2015. Posted in News.

Participants visit CIMMYT maize trials during the traveling seminar. Photo: M. Waheed Anwar/CIMMYT-Pakistan

Pakistan’s maize sector is heavily dependent on imported hybrid seed, which accounts for 85-90% of the annual seed supply. Such huge imports not only cost the country about US$ 50 million every year, but also mean that Pakistani maize farmers have to pay US$ 6-8 per kg for hybrid seed, depending on the variety and the availability of seed on the market. Availability and affordability of quality seed of widely adapted maize varieties are the key to unlocking the production and productivity potential of maize, Pakistan’s third most important cereal crop.

To address this issue, which is a priority of the government of Pakistan, CIMMYT is conducting maize intervention activities under the Agricultural Innovation Program for Pakistan (AIP), a USAID-funded project. Under the AIP program, CIMMYT has introduced more than 700 diverse maize lines from its regional breeding hubs in Colombia, Mexico and Zimbabwe, and has evaluated them under Pakistan’s diverse ecologies since early 2014.

The germplasm consists of hybrids and open-pollinated varieties with enhanced nutrient content (quality protein maize and varieties enriched with pro-vitamin A) and wide adaptation that have consistently performed well over the past three seasons.

Discussion on CIMMYT maize germplasm at a private seed company research station. Photo: M. Waheed Anwar/CIMMYT-Pakistan

Based on the performance of the materials, CIMMYT, in partnership with Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC), organized a traveling seminar to give stakeholders the chance to evaluate the performance of CIMMYT maize germplasm in Punjab Province. The evaluation focused mainly on spring maize and took place on 15-17 June 2015. Experts from 12 public and private institutions (including seed companies, agricultural universities and public research institutions) evaluated the performance of the materials at different sites across the province.

The event also gave stakeholders the opportunity to share their trial management and field data recording experience. Participants thanked CIMMYT and PARC for creating such a unique platform where stakeholders showcased their activities and discussed and shared information on how CIMMYT materials perform across the different sites. According to AbduRahman Beshir, CIMMYT-Pakistan maize improvement and seed systems specialist, “When we first introduced the range of CIMMYT maize hybrids and OPVs in early 2014, we were not sure how they would perform, particularly in harsh environments where the temperature often exceeds 40 ⁰C.” He added that after such an aggressive intervention, CIMMYT is now at the product allocation phase based on partners’ selection and requests. Today it is clear that CIMMYT has much to offer its Pakistani partners not only in their efforts to produce hybrid seed locally and achieve self-sufficiency, but also to enhance local maize breeding programs through enriched gene pools.

Message from Borlaug-Ruan international intern Sweta Sudhir, Turkey, summer 2015

Written by on October 5, 2015. Posted in Blogs.

Sweta in the field in Konya, peeling wheat stems to score for crown rot symptoms. Photo: Gul Erginbas Orakci

As a small-town Iowa girl, I have grown up around farms my whole life but never quite grasped the complexity of the issue of food insecurity. Two years ago, my understanding of food insecurity could be summed up in an image of a barren desert in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet that January I embarked on a journey that would take me from my hometown in Iowa, to the state capital and, finally, to Eskişehir, Turkey.

This past summer I spent eight weeks in Turkey as part of the Borlaug-Ruan International Internship of the World Food Prize Organization. My deep thanks to Mr. Brad Horton, Lisa Fleming, and Ambassador Quinn for this opportunity. Working in the soilborne pathogen lab of CIMMYT-Turkey, I was introduced to the devastating impact of nematodes and fusarium on wheat yield. Reading journal articles before I came to Turkey, I simply saw numbers on a sheet of paper, but as I visited the field sites in Eskişehir, Yozgat, and Konya and as I conversed with my mentors Dr. Abdelfattah A. Dababat and Dr. Gül Erginbas-Orakci, I was able to see the devastation these pathogens cause on yield and the livelihood of farmers.

Zero-till wheat raises farmers’ incomes in eastern India, research shows

Written by on September 30, 2015. Posted in Features.

Farmer-with-wheat-harvest — Photo Credit: Vinaynath Reddy / CIMMYT

In a study published last month in Food Security, CIMMYT researchers reported that wheat farmers’ total annual income increased by 6% on average with the introduction of zero tillage (ZT) in Bihar.

While studies done in the past in the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP) have shown ZT impacts in field trials or controlled environments, this research is believed to be the first that studied actual impacts in farmers’ fields in eastern India.

ZT allows direct planting of wheat without plowing, sowing seeds directly into residues of the previous crop on the soil surface, thus saving irrigation water, increasing soil organic matter and suppressing weeds.

“We found that the prevailing ZT practice, without full residue retention, used by farmers in Bihar has led to an average yield gain of 498 kilogram per hectare (19%) over conventional tillage wheat, which is in contrast to the results of a recent global meta-analysis” says Alwin Keil, Senior Agricultural Economist, CIMMYT and the lead author of this study.

The global meta-analysis published last year compared crop yields in ZT and conventionally tilled production systems across 48 crops in 63 countries. It reported that ZT is only profitable in rainfed systems and when it is combined with full residue retention and crop rotation. “However, in Bihar, marginal and resource-poor farmers cannot afford to leave the full residue in the field as they use the rice straw to feed their livestock,” says Keil.

According to Keil, the divergent findings of the meta-analysis may be caused by the fact that most of the reviewed studies were conducted in moderate climatic zones (U.S., Canada, Europe, China) and results were aggregated across various crops.

Bringing a Wheat Revolution to Eastern India

Compared to the prosperous northwestern states, the eastern IGP is characterized by pervasive poverty and high population density, and its resource-poor farmers are more prone to the risks of climate change. Bihar has the lowest wheat yields in the IGP with an average of 2.14 tons per hectare.

To feed a growing wheat-consuming population, Bihar currently imports wheat largely from Punjab, where yields have stagnated over the last five years due to an over-exploitation of resources, especially water.

While ZT is widespread on the mechanized farms of Punjab and Haryana, seat of the first Green Revolution in India, farmers in the eastern IGP are yet to benefit. “There is also evidence that the positive effect of ZT is larger in areas with low agricultural productivity (generally low yields, such as Bihar) than in areas with higher productivity (such as Punjab, for instance),” remarks Keil.

Increasing Access among Smallholders

The study concludes that ZT users reap substantial benefits, and that this technology could help close the growing yield gap between production and consumption of wheat in Bihar. A 19% yield increase would translate into a production increase of 950,000 MT, which exceeds the total wheat imports into Bihar (868,000 MT in 2011).

However, with low ownership of tractors and ZT drills, large-scale adoption of ZT in eastern India hinges on an expansion of the network of service providers, who can custom-hire these kinds of services to smallholder farmers.

With public and private sector partners, the CIMMYT-led Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) has supported the development of ZT service providers among tractor owners by facilitating the purchase of ZT drills and providing technical trainings and know-how since 2009. Consequently, the number of ZT service providers in Bihar increased from 17 in 2011 to 1,624 in 2014, servicing a total of approximately 44,700 acres.

“Furthermore, we found that only 32% of non-users of ZT in our sample were aware of the technology. Hence, increasing the number of service providers to enhance farmers’ access to ZT has to go hand-in-hand with large-scale information campaigns to raise their awareness of the technology,” says Keil.

Minimizing yield losses via conservation agriculture

Written by on September 28, 2015. Posted in News.

Last year, climatic variability such as untimely rainfall was devastating in northwest India. Mid-season rainfall resulted in massive yield losses during winter 2014-15. Starting that season, a case study of wheat adaptation to climatic risks was undertaken in Karnal by Sakshi Baliyan, a young female student, as an internship project under CIMMYT-CCAFS. The project aimed to evaluate yield losses as evidence of the difference zero till makes in coping with unseasonable rainfall.

The study focused on the vulnerability of wheat yields to untimely mid-season rainfall by comparing conventional vs. conservation agriculture (CA) practices. To construct the database, during the 2013-14 and 2014-15 winter seasons, wheat yield data were collected from 100 randomly selected farmers who produced wheat using conventional tillage and conservation agriculture in 14 climate-smart villages (CSVs) in the Karnal district of Haryana.

The results revealed that CA-based systems produced higher wheat yields (6% higher in 2013-14 and 13% higher in 2014-15) than conventional tillage systems. The study also found that farmers who practiced conventional tillage during winter 2014-15, which had untimely heavy rains, averaged a 19% yield loss, whereas those practicing CA averaged a yield loss of only 10% in the same locations.

These interesting results indicate that the next step should be to introduce climate-smart agricultural practices (CSAPs) in policy decision making. A more in-depth study should be undertaken to verify the results and establish environmentally and farmer friendly policies at the state and national levels. Policies that calculate subsidies and compensations considering the agricultural practices used by farmers are required to motivate them to adopt CSAPs. This will not only reduce losses in times of uncertainty, but also generate gains in favorable times.

Rebuilding livelihoods: CIMMYT supports agricultural recovery in Nepal

Written by on September 23, 2015. Posted in Features.

Farmer-uses-minitiller-in-Nepal — Farmer uses a mini-tiller in mid-west region of Nepal CSISA

The recent 7.6 magnitude earthquake that struck Nepal on 25 April, followed by a 7.3 magnitude aftershock on 12 May and several hundred additional aftershocks to date, has had huge negative impacts on the country’s agriculture and food security. Around two-thirds of Nepal’s population relies on agriculture for their livelihood and agriculture contributes to 33 percent of Nepal’s GDP. It is estimated that about 8 million people have been affected by the earthquakes, with smallholders in hilly regions being most hard-hit.

The earthquake damaged or destroyed agricultural assets, undermining the longer-term food production capacity of farm families and disrupting critical input supply, trade and processing networks. Farmers lost grain and seed stocks, livestock, agricultural tools and other inputs, and are facing significant shortages of agricultural labour. Widespread damage to seed and grain storage facilities have affected smallholder farmers’ ability to secure their harvested crops through the rainy season.

In response to the devastation, USAID-Nepal has provided US$1 million for earthquake relief and recovery to the CIMMYT-led Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia in Nepal (CSISA-NP). The Earthquake Recovery Support Program, for a period of 13 months, will be implemented in close coordination with the Ministry of Agricultural Development (MoAD), Department of Agriculture (DoA), Department of Livestock Services (DoLS), Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) and District Disaster Relief Committee (DDRC). The districts that will receive support include Dolkha, Kavre, Khotang, Makwanpur, Nuwakot, Ramechap, Sindhupalchowk, and Solukhumbu, which have suffered particularly high levels of damage.

“Even if seed is available, the capacity for farmers to plant and harvest crops has been severely diminished due to the loss of draft animals and the exacerbation of labor shortages,” said Andrew McDonald, CIMMYT Principal Scientist and CSISA Project Leader. “We will reach more than 33,000 farming households through seed and grain storage facilities, mini-tillers and other farm machines, agricultural hand tools, technical training and agronomy support,” added McDonald.

The program will provide 50,000 grain storage bags, 30 cocoons for community grain storage, 400 mini-tillers and other modern agriculture power tools (e.g., reapers, maize shellers, seeders), 800 sets (5 items in a set) of small agricultural hand tools, and 20,000 posters on better-bet agronomic practices for rice and maize. “We will first focus on getting small horsepower mini-tillers into affected communities, and subsequently broadening the utility of these machines to power a host of essential agricultural activities including seeding, reaping, threshing and shelling, as well as powering small pumps for irrigation,” said Scott Justice, Agricultural Mechanization Specialist, CSISA-NP.

At the program’s inception workshop held recently on 28 August, Dr. Beth Dunford, Mission Director, USAID Nepal, remarked that USAID-Nepal has arranged a special fund to help earthquake-affected people. Beyond the devastation of houses, public infrastructure like roads, the earthquake has seriously disrupted the agriculture and rural economy throughout the impacted districts. Re-establishing vital agricultural markets and services in the aftermath of the earthquake is key to how quickly these communities will recover, underlined Dunford.

For effective coordination and monitoring of activities in the program, Central Level Management Committee, District Level Management Committee and Local Level Management Committee have already been formed. They aim to identify most earthquake affected areas within a district and will ensure efficient and transparent distribution of support items.

Dr. Adhikari, Joint Secretary, MoAD, highlighted that the Ministry feels a real sense of ownership over this program and is committed to implementing the activities through its network. He said the farm machinery support program will be a perfect platform for MoAD to expand its farm mechanization program into other areas of the country. The Earthquake Recovery Support Program also aligns with the Agriculture Development Strategies of the Government of Nepal, which focuses on community-wide inclusive development.

Bhutan releases its first winter wheat variety

Written by on September 21, 2015. Posted in News.

In Bhutan, wheat is an important cereal for farmers at high altitudes, where its area of cultivation is considerable. However, in recent years, the winter wheat area has declined owing to numerous circumstances, including not having a better variety. This may be due to the fact that spring wheat has been the focus of most research and development efforts to date.

However, of late, the national wheat program has been paying equal attention to winter wheat research and development in collaboration with CIMMYT and ICARDA. But while ICARDA’s winter wheat nurseries are still being evaluated, CIMMYT-Nepal has helped to introduce cultivars that have recently been released in cooler regions elsewhere. One such genotype is Danphe (KIRITATI//2*PBW65/2*SERI.1B).

Danphe’s performance during its multi-location evaluation in the highlands of Bhutan (1200-2600 masl) was very promising. The new variety on average yielded 30% more than the local cultivar called Kaa, which means wheat in the local language. In addition, Danphe produces big grains, is short in height and lodging tolerant, which are farmers’ preferred traits. Up to now, farmers have had to manage with Kaa, which is very tall, small-grained and low yielding. Farmers who attended the field days unanimously preferred Danphe over the local cultivar.

In view of such an astonishing performance and of farmers’ preference for Danphe, the 18th Technology Release Committee of Bhutan’s Ministry of Agriculture and Forests authorized the release of this line under the name Bumthang Kaa Drukchu. Bumthang is the name of the target area (the district), Kaa means wheat and Drukchu means sixty (60).

Ganesh Chhettri, a committee member from the Department of Agriculture, remarked that such an accomplishment in such short time was not expected, as winter wheat was never adequately attended to. Further, he commented that wheat production in this ecosystem will surely increase now that farmers have a higher yielding variety.

CIMMYT is considering providing about 1500 kg of Danphe seed to Nepal to fulfill farmers’ needs for the ensuing season, and promote the new variety’s dissemination and adoption.

Videos sharpen Bangladeshi farmers’ interest in farm mechanization

Written by on September 21, 2015. Posted in Features.

Quality video can be an effective way of enhancing training messages and sharing complex agronomic information with a large audience. The USAID-funded Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia-Mechanisation and Irrigation (CSISA-MI) and the EU-supported Agriculture, Nutrition and Extension Project (ANEP) in Bangladesh recently produced five new farmer-focused videos on efficient irrigation technologies, machine-aided line sowing, strip tillage, bed planting and mechanized harvesters. The videos contain comical but educational dramas with farmers as actors; they focus on practical messages on how to calibrate, use and maintain the machines, which are drawn by two-wheeled tractors, and describe how machinery service providers can make money by selling machine planting and harvesting services to farmers at a low cost.

“Our research shows that machinery training videos can be an effective way of generating farmer interest in experimenting with and purchasing appropriate machinery,” explained CIMMYT agronomist Tim Krupnik. “CIMMYT’s private sector partners also agree, buying-in and paying cable television companies to screen the videos for advertising purposes, adding value to our efforts.” Most recently, The Metal Ltd., a private sector machinery manufacturer and CSISA-MI partner, aired the “Reaper” video on television in Bangladesh to an audience of over 75,000 people during 11 days. Technical support was provided by CSISA-MI’s NGO partner iDE, which arranged to show the video during the July vacation, when farmers tend to be at home watching television with their extended families.

Beyond advertising, the videos are crucial for training farmers on how to use complex machinery. According to CIMMYT training specialist Kamrun Naher, the videos are high quality and well produced. In each technical training course, they serve both as the ice-breaker and the primary lesson. “After watching the videos, service providers and farmers understand the machines’ usefulness,” she said.

“Farmers need to visualize and learn how technologies work in order to show interest in experimenting with and adopting them. Videos can help open that door,” commented Tim Krupnik. Mohammad Rafiqul, a farmer in southern Bangladesh who recently bought a wheat harvester through CSISA-MI’s private sector partners, agrees. “I should thank the video you showed me. I was inspired by it and bought the machine, though at first my family was against the investment.” In his opinion, the video should be screened more widely to increase the use of machines on Bangladeshi farms.

“The videos were prepared primarily as training materials and to influence farmers positively towards the machines,” explained Rezaul Karim, who directed the videos. Usually farmers are not well disposed towards a new idea or machine. “Our target was to remove their fear about the machines and make them feel that these machines are going to make real changes in their lives, and we succeeded.”

For more information on the use of videos in training programs, see:

Bentley, J., Van Mele, P., Harun-ar-Rashid, Md. and T.J. Krupnik. 2015. Distributing and Showing Farmer Learning Videos in Bangladesh. Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension. DOI: 10.1080/1389224X.2015.1026365.

View more CSISA-ANEP training videos below.
•Axial Flow Pumps
•Bed Planter
•Strip Tillage
•Power Tiller Operated-Seeder
•Reaper Machine

Statistical support for the Turkish wheat community

Written by on September 21, 2015. Posted in News.

The soilborne pathogens (SBP) program at CIMMYT-Turkey, a Grain Research Development Corporation (GRDC) funded project, hosted two biometricians from the GRDC project Statistics for the Australian Grains Industry (SAGI): Beverley Gogel, a senior biometrician at the University of Adelaide, and Chong You, a biometrician at the University of Wollongong. Their visit, spanning from 31 August to 4 September, was sponsored under the umbrella of the CIMMYT Australia ICARDA Germplasm Evaluation (CAIGE) project.

The main objective of the visit was to advise on how to improve the program’s experimental design and data analysis under the framework of the GRDC-SBP, CIMMYT project. Gogel and You visited experimental locations in the different environments where the SBP group is testing/screening wheat materials against SBPs. They gave very valuable suggestions and recommendations on how to increase efficiency and improve estimates associated with the targeted research questions. The outcome of this statistical support will ultimately improve trial design and analysis and, hence, the results of the full trial process.

At the same time, Abdelfattah A. Dababat, in collaboration with the Transitional Zone Agriculture Research Institute, organized a two-day workshop titled “Understanding linear mixed models from the ground up: Statistical tools for the Turkish National Breeding Programs” to a group of 13 participants, including breeders, pre-breeders, physiologists and pathologists from Turkey, CIMMYT, and ICARDA. Gogel introduced the experimental trial designs used in Australia and described how to analyze both single trials and trials in multiple sites using the ASReml software. Chong You gave a presentation on QTL analysis and described improvements over the current methodologies used by Turkish national breeding programs.

Special thanks to the GRDC for funding this statistics workshop and to the Turkish Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock for hosting and facilitating the workshop, especially the Transitional Zone Agriculture Research Institute, Eskisehir.

Sustainable intensification in China: doing more with less

Written by on September 21, 2015. Posted in Features.

Transplanting rice seedlings into ZT wheat stubble in Litong, China. Photo: Yuan Hanmin

As part of CIMMYT’s ongoing collaboration with the Ningxia Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences and the building of an innovation platform there, we have refurbished our site and undertaken a number of trials that reflect the concepts of sustainable intensification, which increases food production from existing farmland while minimizing pressure on the environment.

The site at Litong just outside the city of Wuzhong in Ningxia Province has been modified and now boasts a paved parking area, all-weather access roads and field paths, and an array of signage that explains CIMMYT’s activities and the history of conservation agriculture undertaken by CIMMYT-China in this part of the country.

Zero-till rice transplanting

On the left, an irrigated ZT field; on the right, a conventionally prepared field (yet to be irrigated), 35 days after transplanting. Photo: Jack McHugh/CIMMYT — On the left, an irrigated ZT field; on the right, a conventionally prepared field (yet to be irrigated), 35 days after transplanting.
Photo: Jack McHugh/CIMMYT

CIMMYT recently tested a zero-tillage (ZT) rice transplanting operation with a 9 row transplanter from Jiangsu province. The idea came from viewing a short video taken some years ago of a conventional transplanter being used under ZT conditions in Bangladesh. In Ningxia, recently harvested wheat fields were irrigated and rice seedlings were planted into standing wheat stubble without any further modification to the planter. In contrast, rice was conventionally transplanted in an adjacent field, which required two days of field preparation including inversion plowing, leveling and puddling at an extra cost of USD $375 per hectare.

Zero-till rice transplanting not only saves time, labor and fuel, but also minimizes soil disturbance, maximizes residue retention, and mitigates moisture and nutrient loss. Results from these trials will demonstrate the effectiveness of transplanting rice into ZT winter wheat standing stubble.

Relay and intercropping

Monocropping farming systems are predominant in Ningxia, with the same crop planted year after year. The region has very cold winters and short summers, but with the use of short season varieties and relay cropping, double-cropping and crop rotations can be realized in the region. Double-cropping is a form of sequential cropping in which two crops are grown in sequence within a year on a piece of land by seeding or transplanting one before or after harvesting the other.

Winter wheat and peanut intercropping followed by relay-cropping maize into immature winter wheat. Photo: Jack McHugh/CIMMYT — Winter wheat and peanut intercropping followed by relay-cropping maize into immature winter wheat.
Photo: Jack McHugh/CIMMYT

To that end, five maize cultivars were relay-planted into winter wheat on 17 June, around two weeks before harvest; the plot was previously intercropped with 24 peanut varieties. The advanced winter wheat lines were harvested in late June and yielded quite well for the region. We expect to harvest the maize from late September to early October 2015.

Zero-till and early maturing grain crops are key to double-cropping in the region; however, the current wheat variety – Ningdong 11 – is late in maturing. Next year, the earlier maturing Ningdong 10 will be used, with emphasis on residue retention and increased stubble height during harvest, before seeding maize directly and/or transplanting rice. However, the current Chinese-made Turbo Happy Seeders will need to be modified to cope with the rougher soil surfaces encountered under ZT to ensure better seeding depth control.

Replacing gender myths and assumptions with knowledge

Written by on September 18, 2015. Posted in Director General's corner.

CIMMYT Director General Martin Kropff speaks on the topic of ‘Wheat and the role of gender in the developing world’ prior to the 2015 Women in Triticum Awards at the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative Workshop in Sydney on 19 September.

If we are to be truly successful in improving the lives of farmers and consumers in the developing world, we need to base our interventions on the best evidence available. If we act based only on our assumptions, we may not be as effective as we could be or, even worse, actively cause harm.

One example is the common perception that women are not involved in the important wheat farming systems of North Africa and South Asia. By recognizing and engaging with these myths, we are beginning to build a more sophisticated understanding of how agriculture works as a social practice.

Currently, there are only a few published studies that take a closer examination of the roles played by women in wheat-based farming systems. These studies have found that, in some cases, men are responsible for land preparation and planting, and women for weeding and post-harvest activities, with harvest and transport duties being shared. Between different districts in India, huge variations may be found in the amount of time that women are actively involved in wheat agriculture. This shows that some careful study into the complexities of gender and agricultural labor may hold important lessons when intervening in any particular situation.

We must also never assume that, just because women are not as involved in agriculture in a particular context, they can not benefit from more information. In a survey carried out by CIMMYT researcher Surabhi Mittal in parts of rural India, it was found that women used a local cellphone agricultural advisory service just as much as men, and that this knowledge helped them get more involved in farming-related decision-making.

Gender is not just about women

For all that it is important to include women, along with other identity groups in project planning, implementation and data collection, it is important not to get into the trap of thinking that gender-integrated approaches are just about targeting women.

For example, the World Health Organization estimates that micronutrient deficiency affects at least two billion people around the world, causing poor health and development problems in the young. The effects of micronutrient deficiency start in the womb, and are most severe from then through to the first two years of life. Therefore it would make sense to target women of childbearing age and mothers with staple varieties that have been bio-fortified to contain high levels of important micronutrients such as zinc, iron or vitamin A.

However, to do so risks ignoring the process in which the decision to change the crop grown or the food eaten in the household is taken. Both men and women will be involved in that decision, and any intervention must therefore take the influence of gender norms and relations, involving both women and men, into account.

The way ahead

To move forward, each component of the strategy for research into wheat farming systems at CIMMYT also has a gender dimension, whether focused on improving the evidence base, responding to the fact that both women and men can be end users or beneficiaries of new seeds and other technologies, or ensuring that gender is considered as a part of capacity-building efforts.

Already, 20 of our largest projects are actively integrating gender into their work, helping to ensure that women are included in agricultural interventions and share in the benefits they bring, supplying a constant stream of data for future improvement.

We have also experienced great success in targeting marginalized groups. For instance, the Hill Maize Research Project in Nepal, funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) alongside the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), focused on food-insecure people facing discrimination due to their gender or social group. By supporting them to produce improved maize varieties in community groups, the project managed not only to greatly increase their incomes, but also to improve their self-confidence and recognition in society.

CIMMYT researchers are also among the leaders of a global push to encode gender into agricultural research together with other international research partnerships. In over 125 agricultural communities in 26 countries, a field study of gender norms, agency and agricultural innovation, known as GENNOVATE, is now underway. The huge evidence base generated will help spur the necessary transformation in how gender is included in agricultural research for development.

Further information:

The Borlaug Global Rust Initiative, chaired by Jeanie Borlaug Laube, has the overarching objective of systematically reducing the world’s vulnerability to stem, yellow, and leaf rusts of wheat and advocating/facilitating the evolution of a sustainable international system to contain the threat of wheat rusts and continue the enhancements in productivity required to withstand future global threats to wheat. This international network of scientists, breeders and national wheat improvement programs came together in 2005, at Norman Borlaug’s insistence, to combat Ug99. The Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat (DRRW) project at Cornell University serves as the secretariat for the BGRI. The DRRW, CIMMYT, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) and the FAO helped establish the BGRI a decade ago. Funding is provided by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. For more information, please visit www.globalrust.org.

CIMMYT is the global leader in research for development in wheat and maize and related farming systems. CIMMYT works throughout the developing world with hundreds of partners to sustainably increase the productivity of maize and wheat to improve food security and livelihoods. CIMMYT belongs to the 15-member CGIAR Consortium and leads the Consortium Research Programs on wheat and maize. CIMMYT receives support from national governments, foundations, development banks and other public and private agencies.

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Twitter: @CIMMYT, @KropffMartin and @GlobalRust

The first heat tolerant maize hybrids are licensed for deployment in Bangladesh, India and Nepal

Written by on September 17, 2015. Posted in Features.

Women farmers at a HTMA hybrid demonstration at Dumarawana village, Bara District, Nepal. Photo: NMRP, Rampur

The Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), Bangladesh’s ACI Seeds, India’s Bihar Agricultural University, Sabor, and the University of Agricultural Sciences, Raichur, Ajeet Seeds, and Nepal’s Hariyali Community Seeds and Sean Seeds are the first proud institutions/companies to receive a license for the deployment of heat tolerant maize hybrids. B.M. Prasanna, Director of CIMMYT’s Global Maize Program, formally presented the product licensing certificates to the heads/representatives of these organizations during the Heat Tolerant Maize for Asia (HTMA) project’s 3^rd Annual Progress Review and Planning Meeting held from 10-12 August 2015 in Hyderabad, India. Other project partners, including national program and seed companies from Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh, have shared their choice of hybrids, and asked to submit them for formal licencing. The hybrids were developed under the HTMA project funded by United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the Feed the Future (FTF) initiative, a public-private alliance that targets resource-poor people of South Asia who face weather extremes and climate-change effects.Women farmers at a HTMA hybrid demonstration at Dumarawana village, Bara District, Nepal.

At the event’s inaugural session, Nora Lapitan, Senior Science Advisor, Bureau for Food Security, USAID, gave an update on the FTF initiative and highlighted its priorities, which include reducing poverty and malnutrition in children in target countries through accelerated inclusive agricultural growth and a high-quality diet. This was followed by an overview by B.M. Prasanna of the new CGIAR research program on Maize Agri-food system, its focus and priorities and the importance of stress-resilient maize in food security and livelihoods, especially in climate-change vulnerable regions, such as the Asian tropics.

The inaugural session was followed by technical sessions, during which Raman Babu, CIMMYT molecular maize breeder, M.T. Vinayan, CIMMYT maize stress specialist for South Asia, A.R. Sadananda, CIMMYT maize seed system specialist, and CIMMYT socioeconomist Christian Boeber presented their latest research results.

Mohammad Jalal Uddin, BARI Director of Research, receiving a licence for HTMA hybrid deployment from Prasanna. Photo: CIMMYT-India

Mohammad Jalal Uddin, BARI Director of Research, receiving a licence for HTMA hybrid deployment from Prasanna.P.H. Zaidi, HTMA project leader and senior maize physiologist at CIMMYT, described the progress achieved at the end of the project’s third year. Representatives from public and private sector partners presented the results of the HTMA trials conducted at their locations, and shared a list of top-ranking, best-bet heat-tolerant maize hybrids to take forward for large-scale testing and deployment. Collaborators from Pakistan’s Maize and Millet Research Institute (MMRI) and Bhutan’s Maize Program could not participate in the meeting but their progress reports were presented by K. Seetharam and Zaidi, respectively. It is quite impressive that within the first three years of the project, each partner has identified promising and unique maize hybrids suitable for their target markets/agro-ecologies.

Participants visited a demonstration of elite HTMA hybrids and their parents, where they observed the performance of their selected hybrids under Indian conditions. They were able to see the hybrids and their parents side by side, assess their performance and request seed of parental lines.

The project is also involved in capacity building, including providing support to a total of nine M.Sc./Ph.D. students, as well as workshops and in-country training courses in Nepal, Bangladesh and India, where over 100 researchers have been trained on developing stress resilient maize. In a special session dedicated to student research projects, four HTMA students, including Mahender Tripathi from Nepal, Ashraful Alam from Bangladesh and Akula Dinesh and C.N. Ranganath from India, presented their research projects.

The project’s progress was critically reviewed by the project steering committee (PSC) headed by Prasanna, who expressed great satisfaction with its overall progress and acheivements. Speaking for USAID, Lapitan said they are highly impressed with the progress of the HTMA project and consider it a model project. Other PSC members also expressed their satisfaction and agreed that the HTMA team deserves special appreciation for remarkable achievements within a period of just three years.

The HTMA project meeting was attended by program leaders, scientists and representatives from collaborating institutions in South Asia, including BARI, Nepal’s National Maize Research Program (NMRP) and two of India’s state agriculture universities. Seed companies operating in the region, including Pioneer Hi-bred, Kaveri Seeds and Ajeet Seeds from India, and Sean Seeds and Hariyali Community Seeds from Nepal, and international institutions such as Purdue University, USAID and CIMMYT also participated in the event.