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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.

‘The 50 PACT’ Conference: collaborate for better food security in South Asia

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The-50-PACTFarmers need to be more involved in developing and refining technology. This was one of the key conclusions of a technology working group comprised of leading Asian scientists, representatives of farmer groups and entrepreneurs who met during “The 50 Pact,” an international conference jointly organized by the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA) and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) to celebrate 50 years of Dr. Norman Borlaug’s first visit to India. Held in New Delhi during 16-17 August, the event brought together more than 200 participants from agriculture institutions, the government, think tanks, industry, and civil society of various countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Belgium, Germany, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and the United States.

South Asia is the most populous region in the world and several models predict that this region is going to be dramatically impacted by climate change. “We must devise new ways to feed more people with less land, less water and under more difficult climate change conditions,” said Thomas Lumpkin, Director General of CIMMYT, highlighting a significant challenge that requires critical innovations, collaborations and commitments to solve food insecurity and strengthen agriculture in South Asia. This sentiment was echoed by others in the opening session of the conference, including S. Ayyappan, director general of ICAR, government of India, R.S. Paroda, president of Trust for Advancement of Agricultural Sciences (TAAS), R.B. Singh, president of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS), Swapan Datta, ICAR and Marianne Bänzinger of CIMMYT. Remembering their personal interactions with Dr. Borlaug, “the Nobel laureate with a heart for the poor,” and his association with CIMMYT and India, they also felt the need to make a pact to bring about a second green revolution in the South Asia region. M.S. Swaminathan, a legendary figure in Indian agriculture, paid tribute to Dr. Borlaug for his immense contribution in agriculture during the opening ceremony. “From Bengal famine to Right to Food Act of India, it has been a historic transition and Dr. Borlaug played a very important role in this transition through his work in the last 50 years,” Swaminathan said. Jeanie Laube Borlaug, chairperson of BGRI and the daughter of Dr. Norman Borlaug, presented Swaminathan with the Dr. Norman Borlaug Award.

The-50-PACT2Technology and innovations will play a key role
Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka will have to work together to find regional solutions to food insecurity. Representatives from these countries talked about different agricultural developments during the post-green revolution period and emerging challenges and opportunities. They also highlighted how the BISA, with its mandate, furthers research on farming systems in addition to focusing on an eco-regional approach involving other CG centers. Utilizing all technologies, including molecular breeding, biotechnology, precision agronomy, and mobile-based decision making will be crucial. The session on technology highlighted this and also pushed for greater involvement of farmers at every step of new technology development. It is important to capture the process of adoption of innovation by farmers and use new technology to provide feedback to the researchers. The group advocated for increased political will and a better policy environment on the adoption of GM crops. Making agriculture profitable is important for producers and the entire agricultural value chain. Ramesh Chand of ICAR said that his recent analysis in India shows the real farm income is not declining, but the income gap between agricultural and non-agricultural income is widening. Agricultural infrastructure is not well developed, investments are low and land fragmentation is increasing. These are major concerns for this sector. The participants talked about a need for an enhanced cyber infrastructure for crop research, open access to agriculture database, and strengthening the value chain balancing the role of market, price, and technologies.

Greater regional synergy needed
More emphasis on synergy, partnerships, farmer’s welfare, productivity, profitability, and nutrition will be critical to address the problem of hidden hunger and food security in this region. Other areas to focus on include providing access to and the use of cutting edge research and new technologies that are not yet available in the region, ensuring commitments from governments and other donors for investments in agricultural research, advocating for a policy environment that embraces new technologies and invests in agricultural research, building a regional platform of collaboration with partners from all sectors, research centers, governments, the scientific world, and the farming community who share our mandate to transform farmers’ lives in the region.

Farming systems design: to feed a changing world

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Farming-systems2Farming systems all over the world face complex problems in terms of production, such as natural resource depletion, climate change, increasing food demand, and volatile prices. Farmers have to adapt to continuously changing conditions to produce food. ‘Farming systems design’ is an approach that aims at modifying designs of farming systems to sustainably increase the overall productivity and profitability of the systems—and, hopefully, the welfare of individual farming families—while considering interactions in the system. Interactions are important features of farm system structure and operation. They may occur between the various components, including crop-crop, crop-livestock, and farm-household as well as on-farm-off-farm activities as they compete for the same resources.

More than 70 papers on systems research were recently presented at the 4th International Farming Systems Design Symposium in Lanzhou, China. CIMMYT researchers were represented by Bruno Gérard, director of the Conservation Agriculture Program, and CIMMYT agronomists Santiago López Ridaura, Tek Sakpota, Isaiah Nyagumbo, and Jack McHugh. The conference took place from 19- 22 August and was organized by WHEAT CRP Chinese partner Gansu Academy of Agricultural Sciences and others. Research with a farming systems perspective can have various objectives ranging from increasing the amount of knowledge about farming systems to solving specific problems in the farming system. If it is commonly agreed that cross-links between disciplines and participatory approaches are needed to provide solutions, “there is no silver bullet approach to be expected,” said keynote speaker David Norman, professor emeritus of agricultural economics at Kansas State University and pioneer in the field of Farming Systems Research (FSR). “The most important is to take into account the whole farming system and bring together all stakeholders,” Norman explained. “If a project works on one crop, like CIMMYT on maize for instance, FSR would look at how maize impacted if they have livestock, the influence on livestock components, etc. The reductionist approach would look at how improving productivity of one item without considering the whole farming system.”

Farming-systems3For Peter Carberry, chair of the Program Committee and deputy director at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), “this conference is about bringing those who are interested in a more integrative science together, and have all the different disciplines articulating possibilities for the future in terms of agriculture and farming.” One of the benefits of the conference for him is that among the 300 participants, there were 200 Chinese researchers and students, some who may not have been exposed to this thinking before. “We have a mix of people who are familiar with Farming Systems Design and others who are just starting learning about it; it is a great opportunity,” Carberry said. LingLing Li, professor at Gansu Agricultural University and keynote speaker, shared a similar point of view. “This platform is a really good start for all experts and students involved in Farming Systems Design, as we do not yet have many scientists doing this type of research in China,” Li said.

On day one and two, there were several presentations on Africa and on the Sustainable Intensification of Maize-Legume Systems for Food Security in Eastern and Southern Africa (SIMLESA) program led and mentored by CIMMYT. “SIMLESA has been innovating in so many different ways, firstly about systems and farming systems, participatory approaches and new experiments in research methodology by targeting not only productivity but also reduced risks, which we have heard a lot in this conference. Because for farmers risks are sometimes more important than total yields,” said John Dixon, senior advisor in the Australian Center for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) and principal regional coordinator for Africa. Important questions raised throughout the conference included how to get better participation with farmers, how to get the private sector involved for marketing through innovation platforms, how to manage risks and how scientists can work much better at systems productivity to understand better nutrition, as one of the outcomes, “to better feed our future farmers,” Dixon insisted. On the last day, a special session brought together Australian and Chinese farmers to discuss farming operations. This opportunity to exchange information and share experiences related to climate risks, prices or yields created enthusiasm on both parts.

Cereal Systems Initiatives for South Asia-Mechanization and Irrigation project launched

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CIMMYT and International Development Enterprises (iDE) announced the initiation of the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia-Mechanization and Irrigation in Bangladesh
CIMMYT and International Development Enterprises (iDE) announced the initiation of the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia-Mechanization and Irrigation in Bangladesh

In south-western Bangladesh, the world’s largest delta with plentiful fresh surface water, more than 600,000 hectares of land are fallowed without crop in the dry season.

Responding to this problem, CIMMYT and International Development Enterprises (iDE) are pleased to announce the initiation of the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia-Mechanization and Irrigation (CSISA-MI) project to sustainably intensify cropping on fallow and low-productivity lands. This US$13-million, five-year project, supported by the Feed the Future Initiative and administered by the USAID mission in Bangladesh, was launched on 1 July 2013.

CSISA-MI is a sister initiative falling under the CSISA-Bangladesh program, connecting CIMMYT, IRRI, and WorldFish as partners. The MI initiative aims to unlock agricultural productivity in southern Bangladesh by conducting research and market development to increase the availability and adoption of resource-conserving irrigation equipment, and to scale farm machineries to respond to rural labor scarcity and high costs, while also encouraging crop management practices based on conservation agriculture (CA). Southern Bangladesh is constrained by numerous factors, including farmers’ inability to invest in resource-conserving and productivity-enhancing machinery, high cost of water pumping, and lack of awareness about the potential for dry season crops like wheat, maize, sunflower, and legumes.

CSISA-MI responds to these problems by developing smart business models to link farmers with agricultural service providers, and service providers with machinery and irrigation equipment dealers, to boost the use of irrigation and machinery for CA throughout the region. The project will also bridge the gap between the public and private sectors by facilitating partnerships with the government of Bangladesh and private sector partners engaged in irrigation, agricultural mechanization, and extension.

CSISA-MI will create broad access to low-cost surface water irrigation and smart agricultural machinery and other services to enable farmers to optimize water, labor, time, seed, and fertilizer use in their fields during the dry season. Research topics will focus on the improvement of irrigation water use efficiency and agricultural water management as well as enhancement of the use of fuel-saving axial flow pumps (AFPs) and other equipment for surface water irrigation. Further research and the development of value chains will focus on seed-fertilizer drills compatible with two-wheeled tractors for strip tillage, bed planters, multi-crop reapers, and rice transplanters used to reduce turn-around time between crops.

Machineries and cropping practices will be fine-tuned to the diverse agro-ecological conditions of the region through on-farm action research and experimentation in farmers’ fields. CSISA-MI harnesses the power of the market to align incentives toward large-scale, smart-technology adoption. The initiative has already made significant progress. Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) with leading firms, including RFLP ran Group and ACI Agribusiness, have been signed to accelerate the commercial availability of AFPs, bed planters, and seed-fertilizer drills.

Focus on heat stress resilient maize for Asia

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HTMA-meetingScientists from the Heat Stress Tolerant Maize for Asia (HTMA) project and representatives from collaborating public and private sector institutions from the region, Purdue University, and CIMMYT gathered together during 30-31 July 2013 in Kathmandu, Nepal, for the 1st HTMA Annual Progress Review and Planning Meeting. The meeting was jointly organized by the National Maize Research Program (NMRP) and CIMMYT to discuss progress to-date and future HTMA work plans. HTMA, supported by USAID under the Feed the Future initiative, is a public-private alliance targeting resource-poor people in South Asia who rely on growing maize for subsistence or income in rainfed conditions and whose welfare is directly dependent on maize yields and negatively affected by crop failures.

K.B. Koirala, National Maize Coordinator for Nepal, welcomed all participants and highlighted the importance of the public-private alliance through HTMA, especially for addressing such complex issues as developing and distributing heat stress resilient maize. CIMMYT Global Maize Program director B.M. Prasanna reiterated the need for and importance of maize breeding for heat-stress resilience in his opening remarks, while USAID’s Larry Beach stressed the project’s significance in addressing the emerging effects of climate change.

The first day was devoted to an annual progress review, which was initiated by senior maize physiologist and CIMMYT and HTMA project leader P.H. Zaidi, who presented updates on the project execution and status of progress during the project’s first year. The following session, chaired by Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) executive director D.B. Gurung, covered membrane lipid profiling in relation to heat stress; identifying quantitative trait loci (QTL) for heat-stress tolerance and component traits by joint linkage analysis; association mapping for heat tolerance; latest marker statistics on genotyping-by-sequencing; genomic selection for heat stress tolerance; and development of target populations for rapid-cycle genomic selection. The afternoon session was chaired by Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) chairman Iftikhar Ahmad and focused on phenotyping for heat-stress tolerance; crop modeling and the IMPACT model component; a road map for development and distribution of heat resilient maize; seed distribution systems; and seed companies’ perspectives on target markets.

During day two, participants discussed and developed a workplan and activities for the second year of the project for each collaborating institution. This was followed by a special session on “Exploring linkages & synergy among USAID-funded projects in South Asia.” Representatives from various ongoing projects in the region, including the Hill Maize Research Project (HMRP), Cereal System Initiative for South Asia (CSISA), and HTMA, as well as NARC and the Nepalese Ministry of Agriculture, joined in the lively discussion, which helped to identify opportunities for potential linkages among the region’s initiatives and a synergy between them. The linkages could offer a win-win situation for all stakeholders.

The meeting was concluded with an HTMA project steering committee meeting chaired by B.M. Prasanna. The committee members expressed their satisfaction with the strategy, ongoing activities, and the progress being made.

Making villages ‘climate smart’

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Making-villages1“Climatic extremes and variability are  becoming more frequent and resulting in losses for farmers. This issue cannot be addressed in isolation; it needs collective participation of all stakeholders, at all levels,” stated Clare Stirling, leader of the CIMMYT component of the Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) CRP, at a stakeholder consultation on ‘Climate Smart Agricultural Technologies for Smallholder Farmers of Bihar’ held on 22 July 2013.

The talks were organized by CIMMYT and BISA, under the aegis of CCAFS, and in collaboration with national research and extension partners such as the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), Rajendra Agriculture University, the State Department of Agriculture, and the Government of Bihar; international centers Bioversity International, the International Water Management Institute, and the International Food Policy Research Institute; local NGO and private sector partners; and farmer groups of the Climate Smart Village (CSV) clusters, Vaishali district, Bihar.

Making-villages3The lively discussions included almost 200 participants, including innovative CSV farmers from Bhatthadasi, Rajapakar, and Mukundpur (Vaishali district); agriculture advisors from various Village Panchayats; climate smart farmer groups, research students, and local service providers. M.L. Jat, CIMMYT-CCAFS South Asia Leader, explained the concept of CCAFS CSVs in South Asia, and the key climate smart activities they are implementing for the benefit of smallholder farmers in Bihar’s Vaishali district. Participants visited demonstration plots where R.K. Jat, CIMMYT-BISA Cropping Systems Agronomist, showed how mechanization and conservation agriculture-based management practices are being implemented even on small, fragmented land holdings. By effectively ‘pooling’ their land for operational purposes, farmers have improved efficiency, reduced costs, and established timely crop management even with uncertain rainfall. R.K. Jat also explained the main advantages of the key climate smart interventions such as zero tillage, Direct Seeded Rice (DSR), raised bed planting, residue management, crop diversification, and nutrient management in managing climate risks and optimizing resources for higher profitability for the smallholders.

Making-villages2The active participation of about 80 female farmers allowed for a balanced and varied consultation. All the farmers expressed their concerns regarding climate variability and how it is affecting their livelihoods. They shared their experiences of turning their villages into CSVs, and how the new practices have benefitted them; after planting their wheat under zero till in the winter of 2012-13, farmers were initially skeptical of these changes to age-old practices, but having now reaped higher yields with less input costs, all the farmers have committed to planting under zero tillage next season. DSR has also been recently introduced, and the farmers thought the technology seemed promising in that it would reduce cultivation costs and provide some security under the increasing uncertainties of rainfall and labor shortages. The women farmers praised the intoduction of the ZT machine by CIMMYT under CCAFS. With many men migrating to cities, the women highlighted the reduced labor load with the increased availability of machinery and bed planting of maize and legumes.

I.S. Solanki, IARI Regional Station Head, emphasized the need for farmers to work with scientists in adopting resilient farm technologies and locally-adapted seed. This was reiterated by Stirling: “The concept of CSVs is just one example of making synergies among different programs, investments, institutions, and stakeholders, for adaptation, risk management, and mitigation of climate change effects,” she said.

Research battles wheat spot blotch disease

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wheat-spot-blotch-diseaseAfter screening some 500 wheat lines and varieties at 6 sites in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal, a group of scientists were able to identify 35 genotypes that resist spot blotch. This is the number-one disease of wheat in the Eastern Gangetic Plains, seriously damaging the crops of farmers—who are mostly smallholders—on some 9 million hectares.

The results were reported at a meeting of participants in two projects of WHEAT, the CGIAR Research Program on this crop, at Mohanpur Campus of IISER-Kolkata, India, on 24 June 2013. Funded through multi-year competitive grants from WHEAT, the two project are “Deciphering phytohormone signaling in modulation of resistance to spot blotch disease for identification of novel resistance components for wheat improvement,” led by Shree P. Pandey, IISER-Kolkata, and “Spot blotch of wheat: Delivering resistant wheat lines and diagnostic and molecular markers for resistance,” led by Ramesh Chand of Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. Among other things, participants discussed year-one outcomes and laid plans for the coming crop cycle.

Chand reported on the seedling stage resistance found in the wheat tested. In this type of resistance, the pathogen is present on wheat seedlings for up to 25 days without any infection, exhibiting responses such as lesion mimic and tissue necrosis, which appear to attenuate pathogen effects. The resistance gene Sr2 was also found in most of the resistant seed.

Exciting moments in the meeting were the discussions of biochemical and histo-pathological parameters and their possible integration in the resistance screening. Pandey and his team reported novel research to understand phytohormone signals that regulate wheat’s resistance against Bipolaris sorokiniana–the causal pathogen of spot blotch—and which are synthesized in response to the pathogen’s attack. The IISER group is assembling a dictionary of signaling genes that can serve as genomic tools for resistance breeding in wheat. “Expression of these DNA ‘words’ changes when plants are attacked by the spot blotch pathogen,” said Pandey. “Deciphering this word choice can elucidate the chain of command in plants in to the pathogen, helping breeders to design plants better-equipped with resistance genes.”

Finally, there was a report on the field performance of the 500 lines at two other locations, UBKV Coochbehar and RAU Pusa.

In addition to the scientists mentioned above, participants included WHEAT manager Victor Komerell; CIMMYT researcher Arun Joshi; Prof. V.K. Mishra, BHU, Varanasi; Prof. Apurba Chowdhury; Dr. P.M. Bhattacharya, UBKV; and Dr. Rajiv Kumar, Rajendra Agricultural University, Pusa, Bihar; as well as other wheat researchers from IISER-K.

“The partners here submitted separate proposals for the projects,” said Komerell. “This meeting furnishes an example of how WHEAT has encouraged them to collaborate.”

CIMMYT/CCAFS in India: Gender, action, research

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CIMMYT_CCAFSIn June 2013, ML Jat (Global Conservation Agriculture Program) and research teams in Bihar and Haryana, India, welcomed CIMMYT gender specialist Tina Beuchelt and gender consultant Cathy Farnworth to discuss integration of gender perspectives into their daily research routine. The visit was triggered by the request from the CRP on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) to enhance women’s access to and use of agricultural and climate-related services and information (IDO5).

The visit began with discussions held with individual researchers on how to include a gender perspective in their work plans and field experiments, demonstration plots, out-scaling efforts, and surveys. The team visited farmers participating in CIMMYT/CCAFS projects in Bihar and Haryana, where lively small group discussions helped the visitors to gain a deeper understanding of the situation of women and men, their roles and responsibilities, and gender-related constraints existing in their small-scale farming systems. The team met with smallholder and better-off farmers, as well as landless workers and female-headed households to obtain a representative picture of those involved in agriculture in CIMMYT/CCAFS target areas. Men and women were interviewed separately, and CIMMYT staff helped to explain the production systems and the basket of climate-smart farming options currently available, and shared their thoughts on how to respond to specific gender challenges.

Given the varying agro-ecological environments and socioeconomic characteristics of farmers in each state, it was agreed that in order to address IDO5 successfully, new partners, new allies, and new ideas are needed. While the discussions proceeded well, one of the female participants made a timely and heart-felt warning: “You ask us to take risks, but where will you be if we fail?”

The trip culminated with a workshop on “Pathways of gender-equity led climate-smart farming: learning from stakeholders” organized jointly by the Directorate of Wheat Research (DWR), the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), and CIMMYT/CCAFS in Haryana on 7 June 2013. A wonderful mix of male and female farmers; farmer organizations; researchers from ICAR, Haryana Agricultural University, and CGIAR; extension and developmental organizations, including the State Department of Agriculture, NGOs; private sector organizations; and politicians – about 65 participants in total – joined the workshop and contributed with great enthusiasm to discussions on advantages and disadvantages of different climate-smart technologies for women, more effective types of institutional support required to support women etc. Participants then formed small groups to discuss concrete ideas for action to support women in agriculture, which was followed by presentations and discussions in a plenary session chaired by DRW director Indu Sharma.

The workshop was concluded with dinner wherein Suresh Gahalawat, Deputy Director for Agriculture in Karnal at the Government of Haryana, who had showed great enthusiasm regarding the topic during the workshop, announced that: “Gender will become part of the agricultural policies of Haryana”. “To start with, we will include the gender component in all schemes operated in the district,” he added, confirming the importance and success of the workshop.

The Indian research team is strongly committed to integrating gender into their research activities

CIMMYT_CCAFS2.

Nutrient Expert™ decision support tools for maize and wheat launched

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Nutrient-Expert™The Nutrient Expert™ decision support tools for maize and wheat in India were officially launched for public use on 20 June 2013 at the National Agricultural Science Centre Complex in New Delhi during a meeting jointly organized by the International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI) and CIMMYT.

Beginning in 2009 under the umbrella of the Cereal System Initiative in South Asia (CSISA) and later CRPs MAIZE, WHEAT, and CCAFS, the tools were developed through a joint effort of IPNI, CIMMYT, and national agricultural research systems to help Indian farmers achieve higher yields and profits. These easy-to-use, interactive, computer-based tools capture spatial and temporal variability to provide precise nutrient recommendations to smallholder farmers in the wheat and maize systems of India.

The Nutrient Expert™ was developed in collaboration with target users and local stakeholders from public and private sectors through a series of dialogues and consultations, using site-specific nutrient management principles. As a result, the tools reflect resource constraints of smallholder farmers, lack of access to soil testing, and absence of tillage-specific nutrient management strategies in India. In a three-year validation process assessing their efficacy under contrasting management scenarios, conducted across a large number of locations in collaboration with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), state agricultural universities, state agriculture departments, and fertilizer and seed industries, the tools have shown improved productivity, profitability, efficiency, and reduced environmental footprints over existing fertilizer management practices. According to Bruno Gerard, Global Conservation Agriculture Program director, “the excellent outputs of the IPNI-CIMMYT partnership will benefit not only South Asia but also other regions.” Adding to the positives of the tools, IPNI vice president Adrian M. Johnston praised their unique ability to link databases for output.

The tools were launched at the presence of CIMMYT director general Thomas Lumpkin, ICAR Crop Sciences deputy director general Swapan K. Datta, agricultural commissioner with the Government of India JS Sandhu, Adrian M. Johnston, Bruno Gerard, and ICAR assistant director general for Natural Resource Management B. Moham Kumar. As India faces many challenges to feed its growing population with changing food habits, Lumpkin emphasized the need for new tools: “We need to apply precision agriculture on each square meter; we need tools like the Nutrient Expert™ and remote-sensing technology to be able to do so.”

During panel discussions following the launch, participants stressed the importance of the tools and charted out the future course of action for their large-scale dissemination. “The challenges currently faced by South Asia should be used as an opportunity to create impact. Enabling farmers to apply fertilizer nutrients correctly and in a more precise way is one such opportunity,” said Datta. The Nutrient Expert™ tools will also help reduce the knowledge gap between extension workers and farmers, he added. Concerned about the degradation of natural resources, Kumar stressed that “excessive and imbalanced use of chemicals significantly contributes to nonpoint source pollution. A precise, site-specific nutrient management approach is a welcome solution to this problem.”

The concluding session, chaired by KD Kokate, ICAR deputy director general for extension, and co-chaired by CIMMYT’s Raj Gupta, provided necessary guidance for dissemination throughout the national system and other stakeholders.

The program was coordinated by IPNI-South Asia director Kaushik Majumdar and CIMMYT senior cropping systems agronomist ML Jat.Nutrient-Expert™3

Nepal wheat scientists receive government award

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NepalThe Government of Nepal and the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) awarded Madan Raj Bhatta, Sarala Sharma, Deepak Bhandari, Dhruba Bahadur Thapa, and Nutan Raj Gautam — winners of the first-ever Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI) Gene Stewardship Award — for their outstanding contribution to food security through development and promotion of rust resistant wheat varieties in the country and for highlighting the country’s research globally. The award – one million Nepalese rupees (11,440 US$) and a plaque – was presented by the Minister of Agricultural Development Tek Bahadur Thapa Gharti on 8 May 2013 on the occasion of the 22nd anniversary of NARC in Khumaltar, Lalitpur.

On behalf of the awardees, Bhatta and Sharma thanked the Government of Nepal and NARC for recognizing their contributions and praised the role of CIMMYT’s Global Wheat Program and BGRI in promoting agronomically superior rust-resistant wheat varieties crucial for food security in the region. “I am going to use 100,000 rupees of my prize money to establish a fund awarding two farmers or technicians every year for significant contributions towards wheat rust management,” said Sharma in her award acceptance speech. On behalf of CIMMYT, wheat breeder Arun Joshi congratulated the award-winning team and NARC for their remarkable contributions in bringing about excellence in development and release of rust-resistant wheat varieties, seed multiplication of resistant varieties with diverse genetic backgrounds, disease surveillance, participatory research with farmers, and improvement of livelihoods of small-scale farmers to combat the problems of food security.

“Wheat has played a great role in internal food supply in the country, a role equivalent to more than 26 billion rupees annually,” said B.B. Gurung, NARC executive director. “The new technologies and wheat varieties introduced by the team have brought a significant increment in wheat area and productivity in the last five years,” he added, referring to the increase in wheat area from 0.7 million hectares to 0.8 million, production from 1.4 million tons to 1.8 million, and productivity from 2.1 t/ha to 2.3 t/ha.

ATMA annual review meeting and maize farmer-scientist interaction

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meeting-with-farmersRajasthan is one of the most stress-prone dry states of India, where farmers grow maize as major crop for food and domestic consumption. As such, it provided a perfect setting for the 2nd Annual Progress Review and Planning Meeting for the Abiotic Stress Tolerant Maize for Asia (ATMA) project. The meeting, jointly organized by the Maharana Pratap University of Agriculture and Technology (MPUAT) and CIMMYT, took place at MPUAT in Udaipur, Rajasthan, during 5-6 June 2013.

ATMA is an Asian regional collaborative initiative led by CIMMYT aimed at increasing income and food security of the resource-poor in South and Southeast Asia. The project connects national agricultural research systems, including the Directorate of Maize Research (DMR), India; MPUAT, India; Acharya NG Ranga Agricultural University, India; National Maize Research Institute (NMRI), Vietnam; Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI); Institute of Plant Breeding at the University of the Philippines, Los BaĂąos (IPB-UPLB), Philippines; and the University of Hohenheim, Germany. The project is supported by Deutsche Gesellschaft fĂźr Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).

During his welcome speech addressing participants representing all ATMA collaborators, R.B. Dubey (MPUAT) highlighted the importance of partnerships between CIMMYT and regional institutions, especially for addressing such complex issues as tolerance to abiotic stresses in maize. The welcome address launched the opening session chaired by vice-chancellor of MPUAT-Udaipur Om Prakash Gill. This session consisted of presentations by MPUAT research director P.L. Paliwal, who focused on the university’s contributions to agricultural development in general and maize improvement for food security and income of Rajasthan farmers in particular, and by B.S. Vivek (CIMMYT) who talked about the importance of abiotic stresses in maize production in Asia.
Photo-with-farmer-groupThe session’s chairman added: “Our maize farmers have many choices regarding high-yielding varieties and technologies for optimal conditions, and they are experts in achieving high yields under such conditions. But when it comes to stress conditions they have very few choices, and that is where they need our intervention.”

During a session on annual progress review, the ATMA project leader P.H. Zaidi gave a brief overview of the project, indicating the commitments and milestones. Avinash Singode (DMR), Dang Ngoc Ha (NMRI), Reshma Sultana (BARI), and Ayn Christina (IPB-UPLB) then presented on the project’s progress over the past year, and CIMMYT’s Zaidi and Raman Babu covered the work done by CIMMYT and partners, as well as the status of progress on various outputs of the project. Christian Boeber (CIMMYT) and V.K. Yadav (DMR) jointly summarized the socioeconomic component and provided field survey results, and CIMMYT’s Kai Sonder and Pardhasaradhi Teluguntla discussed spatial analysis with focus on the progress in mapping maize production zones and stress-prone target ecologies in South Asia.

The afternoon session, led by CIMMYT-Hyderabad post-doctoral fellow M.T. Vinayan, focused on work plan creation, assigning tasks to partners, and activities for next year. Opportunities for further research and learning provided by ATMA were also discussed, reflecting upon previous events, including a capacity building workshop on doubled haploid in maize breeding attended by ATMA partners at the University of Hohenheim, Germany, during 12-15 April 2012, and training on precision phenotyping for abiotic stress tolerance in maize during 29 August – 1 September 2012 at CIMMYT-Hyderabad. Furthermore, two interns – one from Bangladesh and one from Vietnam – were trained on the key aspects of breeding for enhancing water-logging and drought tolerance in maize at CIMMYT-Hyderabad from 1 August to 16 September 2012.

On the second day of the meeting, the team visited a nearby village to interact with maize farmers living in a stressprone agro-ecology. Dilip Singh, MPUAT, introduced the participants to farmers of the Fathnagar village where Bhanwar Lal Paliwal, an 84-year-old farmer who still spends four to six hours per day in the field, shared his experience with agriculture and maize. “I have been growing maize since I was a child,” he said, “maize is major part of my daily diet which is why I am still strong and fit even at the age of 84.” Paliwal then shared a famous local saying – Makki ki roti khayege, Rajasthan chhor ke kahi nahi jayege, meaning “we will eat corn bread and never leave Rajasthan” – and added that although there have been many new maize varieties introduced in the region in recent years, they are less stress tolerant in comparison to the old local varieties. “New high-yielding hybrids with tolerance to drought stress are much needed, as rainfall is declining, or becoming more erratic, every year,” he urged the ATMA team to continue their much appreciated work. “I am looking forward to stress resilient maize varieties that will help us harvest good yields even in bad years,” added Paliwal.

meeting-in-progressThe farmer-scientist interaction produced very useful insights into the issues faced by maize farmers in the region and reiterated the importance of stress tolerant maize varieties for their livelihood. To conclude the day, farmers prepared and shared various maize dishes with the delegation.

International Conservation Agriculture Forum in Yinchuan

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The International Conservation Agriculture Forum, held at the Ningxia Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences in Yinchuan during 27-31 May, was attended by a significant number of provincial government officials and private sector representatives who joined to discuss national and international partnerships in farming system intensification, mechanization, nutrient-use efficiency, precision agriculture, and training; gain better understanding of what conservation agriculture is; jointly identify needs, priorities, and constraints to broad adoption of conservation agriculture in China; and explore the Cropping Systems Intensification Project for North Asia (CSINA).

Key academic leaders from across China briefed the international participants, including Bruno Gerard, Ivan Ortiz-Monasterio, M.L. Jat, Scott Justice, Dan Jeffers, and Garry Rosewarne from CIMMYT, Wang Guanglin from ACIAR, and Rabi Raisaily, international liaison for Haofeng Machinery. Some key constraints to adoption of conservation agriculture were covered, including the lack of financial, political, and personal incentives; inadequate or unavailable zero-till machinery; inflexible irrigation-water distribution and fixed pricing; narrow approach to research, development, and engineering without linkages to the larger issues of farming and cropping systems; and limited knowledge of rural socioeconomic conditions. Consequently, the participants defined future priorities: a socioeconomic study covering labor, gender, impacts of previous projects, and adoption issues; and mechanization development and plant residue trade-offs and handling, especially of rice/wheat systems.

One of the most important outcomes of the forum was the establishment of new relationships with the China Agricultural University, Nanjing Agricultural University, Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the Northwest Agricultural and Forestry University, and others. Similarly, invigorating of old partnerships with the Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Gansu Academy of Agricultural Sciences is expected to be highly beneficial for future research platform development.

As partnerships with machinery manufacturers are often crucial in driving the uptake of conservation agriculture by creating a push demand for conservation agriculture machinery, the presence of private sector representatives, including the Henan Haofeng Machinery Manufacturing Company (Henan province), Qingdao Peanut Machinery Company (Shandong province), Jingxin Agricultural Machinery (Sichuan province), and the International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI), was crucial. The importance of such partnerships has been proven before; for example, the research and development activities of the Qingdao Peanut Machinery Company have seen a considerable advancement of the Chinese Turbo Happy Seeder, which has been downsized through a number of iterations to suit tractors with less than 30 hp. Thanks to this public-private interaction, the forum participants learned about preliminary discussions to prototype the two-wheel tractor Happy Seeder specifically for Africa and joint CIMMYT/ACIAR projects. “We are hopeful that one of the companies present at the forum will take up this opportunity to create demand for conservation agriculture machinery for the small landholder,” said CIMMYT senior cropping systems scientist Allen McHugh.

The forum, jointly organized by the Ningxia Provincial Government Foreign Experts Bureau, Ningxia Academy of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences, and CIMMYT, was regarded very successful, as it has advanced CIMMYT’s stakes in future funding requests. “Overall, we have had a very good start toward the development of integrated research platforms in three distinct agro-ecological zones. The next step is to consolidate the outcomes from the forum and commence the iterative process of project development,” McHugh added, summarizing the results of the event.

Allen McHugh reports on conservation agriculture in China

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caunews_-China3The past few weeks have been busy and interesting in China: preparing for the International Conservation Agriculture Forum in Yinchuan and work travels to Beijing, Yangling (Shaanxi province), and Xuchang (Henan province) are a sure way to keep oneself occupied.

Strengthening partnerships in Beijing

I travelled to Beijing during 2-4 May to discuss future cooperation between the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) and the China Agricultural University (CAU) at a meeting with Jan Thomas, USQ vice-chancellor, and K.E. Bingsheng, CAU president, accompanied by the USQ delegation and CAU senior professors. What does this have to do with CIMMYT? Part of my mandate in China is to forge new partnerships, especially with universities seeking to expand internationally. This requires putting on the CIMMYT uniform to demonstrate presence and reinforce linkages with old and new colleagues. As a result, we hope to see a memorandum of understanding and the facilitation of staff and student exchanges between these universities, Ningxia institutions, and CIMMYT.

Water-use efficiency in Yangling

The Northwest Agricultural and Forestry University in Yangling hosted the final review of the ACIAR “More effective water use by rainfed wheat in China and Australia” project led by Tony Condon (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, CSIRO), in which the Ningxia Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences is a partner (led by Yuan Hanmin). The project aims to improve and stabilize farmer returns from growing wheat in dry, rainfed environments in northwest China through development of higher-yielding wheat germplasm that uses water and soil resources more effectively. I spent 6-10 May first hearing about and seeing the extensive breeding work with Australian and Chinese lines, and later discussing the role of conservation agriculture and soil management in breeding with the reviewers and other participants, including Greg Rebetzke from CSIRO. During a Combined China-EU-Australia Workshop on Phenotyping for Abiotic Stress Tolerance and Water-Use Efficiency in Crop Breeding, which followed the review, Richard Richards (CSIRO) presented a very pertinent paper on “Opportunities to improve cereal root systems for greater productivity.” His focus on below-ground processes provides considerable and significant support for conservation agriculture and associated management practices in improving root system functions.

Farm mechanization in Xuchang

The 30th anniversary of the Henan Haofeng Machinery Manufacturing Company in Xuchang, Henan province, provided an excellent opportunity to present conservation agriculture and small machinery requirements for developing countries to 4 academicians, about 10 high level officials from the Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Agriculture, Henan Provincial Government, and many highly regarded Chinese mechanization scientists and extension workers.

During 16-18 May, the factory hosted two forums, one focused on combination of wheat agricultural machinery and agronomy, and another on scientific innovation and development of Chinese agricultural machinery. Although the language of the forums was Chinese, my presentation in English was understood by the senior people, some of whom later inquired about the new Chinese Turbo Happy Seeder developed by CIMMYT. The discussion on conservation agriculture per se was limited, but I was able to meet many old Chinese friends and strengthen new relationships for CIMMYT and the Global Conservation Agriculture Program.

Promoting resilient diversification options through maize and climate smart practices in India

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“Declining water table, deteriorating soil health, labor shortages, increasing energy prices, and more frequent climate extremes are among the major long-term threats to food security in India,” stated ML Jat, CIMMYT senior cropping systems agronomist, at the Stakeholders’ Consultation on Promoting Resilient Diversification Options through Maize and Climate Smart Practices on 20 May 2013 in Karnal, Haryana, India.

India5
About 300 stakeholders from a range of public and private organizations attended the consultation, including representatives from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Central Soil Salinity Research Institute (CSSRI), Directorate of Wheat Research (DWR), Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India, the Indian Maize Development Association (IMDA), the International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI), the Haryana Agricultural University (HAU), and the State Department of Agriculture, Government of India. After a welcome speech by DK Sharma, CSSRI director, RS Paroda, chairman of the Haryana Farmers Commission at the Government of Haryana and the chief guest of the function, explained the reasons behind the meeting, stressing the criticality of the current situation. “On one hand, we are facing many problems threatening our agricultural system,” he said, “on the other, we are exploring the possibilities of a second Green Revolution for sustainable food and nutritional security in India.” This cannot be achieved without multistakeholder partnerships, as the tasks are numerous: “We need to combine new technologies with active and strategic partnerships, establish an environment in which farmers can easily access markets, and create new business models to make agriculture more attractive to the youth and to women.”

JS Sandhu, agriculture commissioner at the Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India, and the event’s guest of honor, commented on climate extremes which caused a decline in food production during 2012- 13. He stressed the importance of technologies helping with adaptation to and mitigation of climate change effects, such as zero tillage, direct seeded rice, or tools like GreenSeeker, but also the need to diversify rice with maize and other economically competitive and more water efficient crops in the north-western part of India. “Maize is the queen of cereals,” added Alok K Sikka, the event’s chair and deputy director general of the Natural Resource Management at ICAR, “but there has been a 66% decline in maize growing areas in Haryana since the Green Revolution in 1966.” To achieve long-term sustainable ecological intensification of farming systems, Sikka added, conservation agriculture is crucial. Accordingly, several new research initiatives have begun at ICAR focusing on natural resource management. “Partnerships and synergies with advanced research institutes like CIMMYT, CRPs MAIZE, WHEAT, and Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), and other research-for-development organizations are critical for impact at scale,” concluded Sikka.

As part of the consultation, panel discussions were held on resilient diversification options through maize (chaired by Sain Dass, IMDA president) and on promoting climate smart practices (chaired by Indu Sharma, DWR director); the discussions were followed by a plenary session chaired by DP Singh (Natural Resource Management expert, Haryana Farmers Commission). The panel discussions reiterated what was said during the presentations and added several new areas of focus, for example the use of information and communication technologies and knowledge networks to provide farmers with real time access to information in an easy-to-understand form.

The event was jointly organized under the aegis of CRPs CCAFS and WHEAT by CIMMYT in collaboration with CSSRI, ICAR, Haryana Farmers Commission, HAU, State Department of Agriculture, Government of Haryana, Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India and Farmer Cooperatives of Climate Smart Villages.

Affordable, Accessible, Asian (AAA) Drought Tolerant Maize Annual Meeting 2013

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5191222904_7cd74cf803_z“This project is a rare example of a public-private partnership capable of delivering products to farmers,” said Mike Robinson of the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture (SFSA) at the Affordable, Accessible, Asian (AAA) Drought Tolerant Maize Annual Meeting organized by CIMMYT-Asia at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) campus during 20-21 May 2013.

Twenty-seven participants from CIMMYT, Syngenta, and national partners from Indonesia and Vietnam were welcomed by B.M. Prasanna, CIMMYT Global Maize Program director, who elaborated CIMMYT-Asia senior maize breeder B.S. Vivek presented a graphical overview of the project covering its objectives and discussing the progress achieved in 2012. Syngenta’s Naveen Sharma, Srinivasu Bolisetty, and Pathayya Ravindra then reported on the progress made in product development and product testing under managed and targeted stress environments. Future breeding plans were also discussed. Ian Barker, SFSA, discussed plans for delivering AAA products to farmers, Prasanna explained issues related to germplasm export and remedial strategies, and Manuel Logrono of Syngenta elaborated on the plans for testing and seed production. At the end of the first day, Vivek provided an overview of the association mapping project, and CIMMYT-Asia senior maize physiologist P.H. Zaidi gave a talk on the progress in root phenotyping.

The second day began with a visit to the rhizotronics facility at ICRISAT, followed by detailed presentations on genotyping and genome-wide association study (GWAS) analysis by CIMMYT Asia maize molecular breeder Raman Babu, and the progress on Syngenta’s side by Aparna Padalkar. Vivek then took over the stage again to compare the gains made by markers viza- viz conventional approach when talking about CIMMYT’s progress with Marker Assisted Recurrent Selection (MARS) and Genome Wide Selection (GWS). Hu Hung from the Vietnamese National Maize Research Institute and Muhammad Azrai from the Indonesian Cereals Research Institute then reported on the progress made in Vietnam and Indonesia, respectively.

After comparing CIMMYT’s and Syngenta’s approaches to drought phenotyping and the merits and demerits of biparental versus multiparental approaches to GWS, CIMMYT-Asia maize breeder Kartik Krothapalli concluded the meeting with a summary of the action plans discussed during the meeting.Group

Nepalese wheat researchers trained on spot blotch disease in India

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Spot blotch is one of the major diseases in the wheat growing regions of Nepal and the knowledge allowing researchers to identify and understand the disease is thus crucial. A group of 12 wheat technical research staff from Nepal visited Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in Varanasi, India, during 18-21 March 2013 with that purpose exactly: to learn more about the spot blotch disease and participatory varietal selection. The training was coordinated by CIMMYT wheat breeder Arun Joshi under the CRP WHEAT Strategic Initiative 5: durable resistance and management of diseases and insect pests. The main resource persons for the training were Ramesh Chand, Vinod Kumar Mishra, and B. Arun; Naji Eisa (Yemen), Conformt Sankem (Nigeria), Chhavi Tiwari, and Punam Yadav (India), all PhD students from BHU, facilitated the program.

The training covered identification of spot blotch pathogen Bipolaris sorokiniana in the field and the lab; preparation of Bipolaris inoculum using colonized sorghum grain; understanding the spot blotch disease infection process; creating artificial epiphytotic in the polyhouse and the field; screening wheat genotypes under high humidity and temperature in the polyhouse; recording disease severity in field and polyhouse conditions; and increasing data reliability in research on spot blotch of wheat and barley.

Participants first visited the pathology laboratory in the Mycology and Plant Pathology department, where they learned to identify B. sorokiniana under the microscope and to prepare Bipolaris inoculums from colonized sorghum grain. The infection process was explained using different samples available in the lab, as was a new technique for evaluation of spot blotch resistance in barley and wheat using monoconidial culture of the most aggressive isolate of B. sorokiniana developed at BHU. Participants observed the collection of the blotched portions of infected leaves for the production of conidia by associated fungal hyphae. They were also trained in conidia collection for further multiplication and categorization into different classes based on the aggressiveness of isolates.

In-FieldOn the second day, participants visited the polyhouse and research station to learn about screening wheat genotypes
under high humidity and temperature. They recorded the disease severity a number of times and saw that if inoculation is done properly the susceptible genotypes burn. The variation among genotypes for resistance to spot blotch disease was explained with the help of repeated disease notes and developing area under disease progress curve. Participants also observed the CRP project on spot blotch carried out at BHU in collaboration with the Nepal Wheat Research Program. The visiting team fruitfully interacted with the BHU wheat researchers, especially with Chand and Mishra, as well as with master’s and doctoral students working on spot blotch. A planned one-hour question-and-answer session expanded to three hours due to the visitors’ enthusiasm and wide-ranging questions.

On their final day, the team visited three participatory varietal selection sites where Harikirtan Singh, the lead farmer, demonstrated the performance of the most popular and newly developed lines under different seeding conditions (surface seeding, zero tillage, and conventional tillage) and multiplication of a number of agronomically superior zinc-rich wheat lines selected from the HarvestPlus project.

The training also allowed participants to visit other research experiments and trials associated with the Cereal System Initiative South Asia (CSISA) and HarvestPlus projects, and to learn to identify agronomically superior biotic and abiotic resistant varieties.

The Nepalese team regarded the visit highly successful as it provided an excellent opportunity to work with the most recent tools and techniques in spot blotch and other wheat researches and to enrich their experience on proper data recording and conduct of participatory varietal selection trials.