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.

Diversifying rice cropping systems in Karnataka, India

Written by on April 26, 2012. Posted in News.

Farmers in the Upper Krishna Project (UKP) command area of Karnataka State in southwestern India traditionally grow two crops of rice each year, but recent water shortages have seriously cut into harvests and farm profits for the winter crop. As part of the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) satellite hub in Karnataka, the University of Agricultural Sciences-Raichur (UAS), in collaboration with CIMMYT, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), and other public and private sector partners, have begun testing and promoting winter maize sown using zero tillage as an alternative. Coverage the first year (2011) reached 1,200 hectares and the practice has caught the attention of farmers, as well as several research and development organizations.

On 18 March 2012, the UAS, CIMMYT, and IRRI, together with the company Ganga-Kavery Seeds and the Directorate of Maize Research of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), organized a multi-stakeholder consultation on cropping diversification through the promotion of zero-till maize in fields at Devapur Cross, Bairamaddi Village Clusters, Shahpur Block, Yadgir District, Karnataka. The event drew more than 200 participants, including 160 farmers from Gulbarga, Koppal, Raichur, and Yadagir Districts, and 45 scientists and extension agents from various research stations of UAS-Raichur, the State Department of Agriculture, and Ganga-Kaveri Seeds.

Karnataka Discussions covered laser leveling, direct-seeded rice, zero-till maize, conservation agriculture machinery, the turbo seeder for residue management, weed management, pest management, cultivar choices, potential diversification options using resource-conserving technologies, and the potential for diversification and the adoption of water-wise practices to make more efficient and productive use of irrigation water. The operation and benefits of conservation agriculture machinery, including the laser land leveler, zero-till multi-crop planter, and turbo seeder, were demonstrated and explained. Farmers who have adopted the technologies shared their views and encouraged others to adopt.

CIMMYT cropping systems agronomist, M.L. Jat, explained the benefits of conservation agriculture for diverse cropping systems and specifically the practices CSISA is promoting in Karnataka. S.G. Patil, director of education at UAS-R and the person in charge of the Karnataka hub, highlighted activities and progress under the project. R. Sai Kumar, director of the Directorate of Maize Research of ICAR-New Delhi, explained the advantages of single-cross maize hybrids and the importance of quality protein maize (QPM) for nutritional security. B.V. Patil, the vice-chancellor of UAS, Raichur, concluded the meeting by highlighting the need to link farmers and scientists for mutual benefit and learning.

Other participants included B.T. Pujari, director of research, and S.N. Hanchinal, director of extension at UAS-Raichur; B.M.Chittapur, dean of agriculture, College of Agriculture, Bheemarayanagudi; T. Satyanarayana, deputy director, IPNI-South India at Hyderabad; Dr Balaraj, assistant director of agriculture, Surapur; M.R. Ravikumar, marketing manager, Ganga Kaveri Seeds Pvt Ltd, Bengaluru; and U.B. Chandrashekhar, distributor in Karnataka for National Agro-Industries, Ludhiana.

CIMMYT lauded for outstanding technical support and partnership in Nepal

Written by on April 25, 2012. Posted in News.

On 04 April 2012 CIMMYT received an “Award of Honor” from the Society of Agricultural Scientist of Nepal (SAS-N). The award, in a form of a plaque, was handed over by Mr. Om Prakash Yadav, Chief Guest and Honorable Minister of State for Agriculture and Cooperatives. “This recognition is given to CIMMYT International for the many contributions in maize and wheat research and development in Nepal,” said Yadav.

The-award Receiving the prize on behalf of CIMMYT, Nepal country representative Guillermo Ortiz-Ferrara thanked the Society for the recognition. “On behalf of the director general of CIMMYT, Dr. Thomas Lumpkin, the center’s management, and colleagues who have been based in Nepal and the region for more than 26 years, we thank SAS-N for this great honor,” he said. “I would like to give special thanks to the government of Nepal and the MoAC for hosting CIMMYT’s regional office. Finally, we thank the many government and non-government organizations for their long-standing partnership and collaboration.”

SAS-N is a non-profit professional organization dedicated to agricultural research and development in Nepal. It serves as a shared forum for agricultural scientists and researchers throughout the country and in various agricultural and related institutions. The Society aims to safeguard their professional integrity and improve research standards, thereby fostering economic development through agriculture growth. Some 300 participants in the meeting presented 135 papers on food security, agro-biodiversity, horticulture, livestock, fisheries, nutrition, plant breeding, pathology, crop and soils management, physiology, micro nutrients, irrigation, agro forestry, climate change, and socioeconomics.

In a personal message to Dr. Hira Kaji Manandhar, President of SAS-N, Lumpkin sent his regrets for not being able to attend the event and said: “CIMMYT is very honored by your award. The agriculture research and farmer community of Nepal has been of priority importance to CIMMYT for over 40 years. Many Nepali scientists and staff are and have been part of the CIMMYT team. In recent years we have been expanding our portfolio of development projects in Nepal and are even planning construction of a building, perhaps as Nepal’s part of CIMMYT’s Borlaug Institute for South Asia, near Kathmandu”.

In a message of congratulations to SAS-N, Marianne Bänziger, CIMMYT deputy director general for research and partnerships, said: “We are very honored indeed for CIMMYT to receive this prestigious Award of Honor from the Society of Agricultural Scientists in Nepal. It should be testimony to the extremely fruitful and highly-valued collaboration that we have with scientists and institutions in Nepal for more than two decades. It is a partnership of mutual respect, complementary skills, joint leanings, and successes. We highly appreciate the support, hospitality and friendship that our staff experience, both those that are posted in Nepal as well as when others who visit. Without our collaboration with Nepal, CIMMYT and its programs would be less.”

Helping farmers select varieties in Nepal

Written by on April 24, 2012. Posted in News.

Nepal98 A training program on wheat participatory variety selection (PVS) was held in Nepal during 28-29 February 2012. Organized by the National Wheat Research Program (NWRP), Bhairahawa, Nepal Agriculture Research Council (NARC) and CIMMYT, the event attracted 17 scientists, technical officers and seed technicians from NARC’s research stations and private seed companies. The two-day training program focused on current challenges of wheat breeding and production in Nepal, wheat diseases, and participatory selection of varieties.

The field training was held at Sukaurali Village, Rupendehi District. Participants visited three mother-baby trials of eight wheat varieties, including CIMMYT’s newly-developed Ug99 resistant varieties, and the local check, Gautam. Janmejai Tripathi, wheat coordinator, NWRP, opened the event with an explanation of the importance of new resistant varieties. Touring the wheat plots, the group observed varieties’ qualities and differences, including maturity type, yield potential, and resistance to diseases.

Nepal27 NARC scientists SR Upadhyay and NR Gautam explained the steps of participatory selection and participants scored varieties in the mother trial.

In addition to the technical knowledge gained, there was an increased interest in collaboration among farmers, scientists, and development agencies. The training is also expected to improve the quality of data from research stations and of PVS trials for seed release and multiplication.

Farmers in the Charlands of Bangladesh benefit from new wheat and maize interventions

Written by on April 23, 2012. Posted in News.

CIMMYT-CSISA-Bangladesh organized a field day in collaboration with the Wheat Research Centre (WRC) and the Department of Agriculture and Extension (DAE). In all, 162 farmers from Mymensingh, Bangladesh, attended the field day, held on 21 March 2012. CSISA–BD is a collaborative venture funded by USAID that includes CIMMYT, IRRI, WorldFish, and relevant national research and development partners. Also participating in the field day were other partners who work with CSISA-BD, CIMMYT, and Mymensingh Hub, such as the Directorate of Agricultural Extension and Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), and NGOs, such as CARE, ASPADA, POPI, and JABC.

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Although cropping intensity in the region is 212%, just one crop (black gram) is grown in the charlands of the Brahmaputra River. Charlands are formed through the sedimentation, over time, of huge amounts of sand, silt, and clay carried by rivers. Growing the preferred crop (Boro rice) in these lands is not feasible for lack of surface water.

CSISA–CIMMYT identified the charlands as a potential area for new wheat and maize hybrids, and organized demonstrations and on-farm participatory research on Ug99 tolerant wheat varieties BARI Gom 26 and BARI Gom 27 (Francolin) and hybrid maize. Farmers were happy to see both wheat and maize growing in demonstrations with limited irrigation. They said this was the first time in history that maize and wheat could be grown in charland areas with this level of success, and expressed an interest in significantly expanding the area sown to these materials next year. It has been estimated that such technologies could impact hundreds of hectares in this region and thousands of hectares across Bangladesh.

During the demonstrations, Dr. DB Pandit, cropping systems agronomist for CSISA-CIMMYT, gave an overview of CSISA-BD activities in the charlands. DAE Adjunct Director Dr. ASM Affazuddin and WRC Director Dr Jalal Uddin Ahmed spoke very highly of these efforts and assured farmers they would establish more wheat and mungbean demonstrations next year. Dr. TP Tiwari, CIMMYT-BD cropping systems agronomist, asked farmers to share the knowledge and skills they have gained so far from CSISA-BD interventions with their neighbors and relatives. He also initiated discussions on improved maize production technologies. All NGO participants expressed their determination to support the implementation of CIMMYT-CSISA activities aimed at achieving sustainable food security and improving the livelihoods of charland farmers. M. Islam, administrative coordinator of the Mymensingh Hub who led the organization of the field day, ended the program by thanking all participants.

Annual meeting of the Affordable, Accessible, Asian Drought Tolerant Maize Project

Written by on April 23, 2012. Posted in News.

The Affordable, Accessible, Asian (AAA) Drought Tolerant Maize Project, a Syngenta/ CIMMYT partnership, held its annual meeting at the ICRISAT-Patancheru campus in Hyderabad, India, on 15 March 2012. Funded by the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture (SFSA), the five-year project aims to help smallholder farmers in Asia grow more food and better provide for their families through the development of improved maize varieties. It supports smallholder farmers who lack access to irrigation by developing affordable and accessible drought tolerant maize in partnership with other National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) in Asia.

AAA-Group

The meeting was attended by 30 representatives of Syngenta, national agricultural research programs, and CIMMYT. BM Prasanna, director of CIMMYT’s global maize program, began the meeting, M Robinson of SFSA gave an overview on public/ private partnerships in the seed development and distribution industry, and BS Vivek, CIMMYT senior maize breeder, outlined the progress made in the first year of this project. P Zaidi, CIMMYT senior maize physiologist, reported on progress in root phenotyping, and Girish Kumar, CIMMYT maize molecular breeder, summarized advances in genotyping. Other presentations highlighted progress made by Syngenta (RP Singh, AAA lead for Syngenta and M Longrono, Asia corn breeding lead), national program of Vietnam (Van Vang, Vice Director, NMRI), and national programs of Indonesia (M Azrai, maize breeder, ICeRI). The meeting concluded with a visit to the drought trials at ICRISAT.

During this first year, the AAA project and the International Maize Improvement Consortium for Asia (IMIC-Asia) jointly conducted the course “Phenotyping for Drought Tolerance in Maize” held at ICRISAT on 19 December 2011. The course was attended by 70 breeders and technicians from 26 seed companies; PH Zaidi and BS Vivek served as resource persons. Training on all aspects of how to achieve adequate stress in drought trials was included, as well as data recording, analysis, and interpretation.

Pakistani representatives make a welcome return to CIMMYT Mexico

Written by on April 6, 2012. Posted in News.

For some attendees, the unveiling of the new Norman E. Borlaug statue at CENEB was particularly poignant. It was a young Pakistani researcher who, in 1961, selected the variety that later became known asMexipak; a high-yielding, white grain wheat that became one of the mega-varieties that launched the Green Revolution. In 1966, Pakistan imported 41,000tons of Mexipak seed from Mexico – one of the biggest seed imports in history. Quarantine restrictions would make this a difficult task today, but it is estimated thatthis large-scale mission saved one million people from starvation and famine during the Green Revolution.

Norman Borlaug continued his relationship with Pakistan, though CIMMYT had to close it’s office there in the 1980s. This office was reopened in 2010,and during this year’s Visitors Week at CENEB, Ciudad Obregon, CIMMYT was delighted to welcome a delegation of eight Pakistanis, representing thePakistani Agricultural Research Council (PARC), the Ministry of Food Security and Research, the Nuclear Institute for Food and Agriculture, and the Directors General of Agriculture Research from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) and Sindh, two of Pakistan’s fourprovinces. Rick Ward, Head of CIMMYT’s office in Pakistan, accompanied the delegates, who joined four Pakistani Borlaug Fellows currently conducting research at CENEB.

Syed Ghanzanfar Abbas, Director of Mechanization, PARC, said that visiting CIMMYT-Mexico was “a dream come true”. The delegates were delighted to see the research that CIMMYT is conducting at CENEB, and enjoyed hearing the presentations and meeting CIMMYT staff.

BISA welcomes Bihar Cabinet Minister

Written by on March 28, 2012. Posted in News.

The BISA facilities at Pusa, India, received a welcome guest on 17 March 2012, when Bihar Cabinet Minister, Giriraj Singh, visited to participate in a farm festival organized by the regional station of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI). Accompanied by CIMMYT researchers Raj Gupta, Ajai Kumar, and Raj Kumar, Singh visited wheat varietal and long-term conservation agriculture (CA) trials, and even took made some observations himself on penetration resistance (soil compaction) in eight CA plots.

Planet under pressure: A numbers game–but which numbers are the numbers that matter?

Written by on March 27, 2012. Posted in News.

By Susan MacMillan, ILRI

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Speaking on ‘Sustainable food systems for food security’, Marianne Banziger, a scientist at the CGIAR maize and wheat centre (CIMMYT), this afternoon gave a ‘Rank Lecture’ at the Planet Under Pressure Conference in London.

She began with a bald statistic: To meet the food security challenges converging over the next 50 years, she said, we will have to produce as much food as has been consumed over the entire history of humankind.

Things did not get better after that.

We can expect more food price hikes, she argued, like those the world experienced in 2008 and 2010. Those peaks were due to low stocks; food prices went up three-fold and food prices have never returned to 2006 levels.

A large part of the changing food situation, Banziger explained, is due to the many people in developing countries that are newly incorporating into their largely starch-based diets meat, milk and eggs. However, most people gaining a bit of disposable income for the first time and using it to buy animal-source foods are still consuming far less of these foods than people in rich countries.

Biofuels are complicating the situation further: some 40% of the US maize crop now goes to biofuel, which is more than what is produced for animal feed.

Food price increases push people back into poverty, she reminded her audience. As food prices increase, and people find food less and less affordable, the proportion of their consumption of staple crops increases. If we do not act, food and energy price inflation will exceed income growth of the poor—pushing them further into poverty.

Living on borrowed resources

What goes up must come down: As fertilizer prices go up, the profitability and yields of smallholder farmers in developing countries go down.

Some 300 million people in India and China are sustained with grain grown from the over-pumping of water (that is, water resources not renewed by rainfall).

Social unrest is likely to come back again and again; deforestation, water scarcity and human migration are all likely to increase,

We still have the time to act.

Science usefully provides us with options.

We could reduce our consumption of food. How many of us now recycle and conserve water? Reduce food wastage? Eat less meat? These actions reduce demand. Those people now climbing out of poverty have as much right as we do to eat well.

On the other hand, we could increase our production of food.

The more we delay investments in this, the steeper will be the challenges we face.

Among new opportunities for increasing productivity are use of precision agriculture and cell phones (for conducting financial transactions, buying crop and input insurance).

We should not make the same mistakes as in the past by focusing on higher productivity alone. Farmers also need to generate greater income, to build greater resilience to shocks, to conduct sustainable farming, and to access viable markets and value chains.

Eyes wide open

Closing the yield gap among today’s marginalized farmers will not be enough, Banziger said. Farmers in the Indo-Gangetic Plains now grow wheat for 700 million people. But the encroachment of heat on these plains is expected to reduce yields 20–30% by 2050.

We need to explore the untapped biodiversity of staple crops. Drought-tolerant maize varieties have succeeded in the past. We’re looking for heat tolerance in wheat. Will transgenics be needed? The challenges are extreme, so ‘we need to keep our eyes open’.

Catch 22

At the close of Banziger’s presentation, a population expert in the audience asked what he might have presumed to be a rhetorical question: Why had Banziger omitted all reference to reducing the human population as a main method of ensuring food security?

Banziger responded forthrightly: It is not the increasing numbers of people per se that is the greatest factor in our food challenges, she said. Rather, it is the great numbers of people who are escaping absolute poverty (especially in India, China and Southeast Asia), and who are improving the quality of their diets as they do so by adding animal-source and other highly nutritious foods to their daily meals.

The implications are that reducing the numbers of people on the planet will not solve our food problems if great numbers of those people that remain keep moving out of poverty–a trajectory that many of this conference’s delegates are spending their professional lives working to advance.

9th workshop on QTL Mapping and Breeding Simulation well received at University of Sydney

Written by on March 23, 2012. Posted in News.

A three-day workshop on QTL Mapping and Breeding Simulation was held during 7–9 March 2012, at the Plant Breeding Institute of the University of Sydney, Cobbitty, Australia. It was attended by 35 participants, included plant geneticists, breeders, and graduate students from across Australia. The workshop was the ninth in a series organized by CIMMYT’s Jiankang Wang with the help of the CIMMYT Biometric and Statistics Unit and his team in China. Previous workshops were held in China, Mexico, and at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

taller-QTL-EQ

The workshop format included lectures, practice exercises and discussions. The themes covered included: an introduction to plant breeding and quantitative genetics; linkage analysis and genetic map construction; QTL mapping methods; and principles of breeding simulation. The practice exercises provided for comments and suggestions on using the QTL IciMapping software and QU-GENE simulation tools, and allowed for closer interaction between the trainers and participants.

Primary lecturers at the workshop included Richard Trethowan (University of Sydney), Jiankang Wang (CIMMYT-China and Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences), and Luyan Zhang (Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and CIMMYT consultant). Richard worked at CIMMYT from 1996 to 2006 as head of wheat breeding for rainfed environments, and continues to be a valued collaborator and member of the CIMMYT family. Jiankang is a quantitative geneticist based in Beijing, and Luyan is currently working with him on QTL mapping methodology.

Francolin: Ug99-tolerant wheat variety released in Bangladesh

Written by on March 23, 2012. Posted in News.

The danger posed by the Ug99 strain of the disease stem rust to global wheat production is well recognized, and Bangladesh is no exception. Wheat is one of the major cereals in Bangladesh, ranking second after rice with a cultivated area of 0.38 m ha and average yield of 2.6 t/ha. In a major step in countering the disease threat, a new wheat variety, named Francolin, was released on 06 March 2012. Also known as BARI Gom 27 (previously BAW 1120), Francolin, first introduced to Bangladesh in 2008 from CIMMYT-Mexico, possesses good resistance to all variants of Ug99 along with an impressive agronomic performance. It yielded approximately 10% more than the most popular variety Shatabdi in three years of multi-location testing in Bangladesh.

Its performance in on-farm testing was also significantly superior to all check varieties. “Francolin is popular among the participating farmers because of its high grain yield potential and good agronomic traits,” said T.P. Tiwari, cropping systems agronomist at CIMMYT-Bangladesh, adding that it also performed better than other varieties during on-farm testing.

Francolin is already under demonstration in farmers’ fields through participatory variety selection (PVS), the multi-location testing (MLT) program of the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), and a participatory seed multiplication program. These activities are being jointly implemented by BARI’s Wheat Research Centre (WRC) and CIMMYT, and are also well integrated into the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) validation and demonstration programs in Bangladesh. According to CIMMYT scientists T.P. Tiwari and Arun K. Joshi, seed multiplication of this variety is in progress on 55 ha in 23 different locations in Bangladesh during the current crop cycle. This is expected to produce around 150 tons of seed that will be available for the next planting season, meeting the needs of the Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation (BADC) and the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), the government agencies responsible for large-scale seed production and distribution. Francolin is also being disseminated through informal channels (farmer-to-farmer).

This step toward mitigating the threat of Ug99 was made possible in part by a USAID seed-multiplication famine fund program. The WRC and CIMMYT-Bangladesh are working together under this program to identify suitable Ug99-resistant varieties, and carry out seed production and delivery. Israel Hossain, Abu Zaman Sarker (WRC), T.P. Tiwari, M. Gathala, and T. Krupnik (CIMMYT) also report that Francolin is performing exceedingly well under conservation agriculture (CA) practices such as strip- and zero-tillage.

The WRC and CIMMYT are developing linkages between seed producers and traders to facilitate marketing. Additionally, information regarding the benefits of growing Ug99-resistant varieties is disseminated through media outlets such as newspapers, radio, and television. The first Ug99-resistant wheat variety to be released in Bangladesh was BARI Gom 26 (previously known as BAW, and popularly called Hashi), in 2010. The two new varieties are expected to cover just over 5% of the total wheat area in 2012/13.

Wheat scientists involved in the development of Francolin include Naresh C.D. Barma, Paritosh Kumar Malaker, Dinabandhu Pandit, Md. Abdul Hakim, and Jalal Uddin, among others. Agronomists and soil scientists from BARI and CIMMYT-Bangladesh were also involved in its validation and promotional activities.

Wheat biofortification meeting held in India

Written by on March 12, 2012. Posted in News.

IndiaGroup Meeting was held in the Indian holy city of Varanasi during 27 February to 01 March 2012. It was organized jointly by Banaras Hindu University (BHU), HarvestPlus, and CIMMYT to discuss wheat biofortification research outputs and future plans. The meeting was attended by about 40 scientists, including Hans Braun, Ravi Singh, Kevin Pixley, Velu Govindan, Etienne Duveiller, Arun Joshi, and Iván Ortiz-Monasterio from CIMMYT, along with participants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, HarvestPlus, the Indian national agricultural research system, the private sector, and more than 200 farmers from the eastern part of the state of Uttar Pradesh.

This meeting was inaugurated by the Honorable Vice-Chancellor of BHU, Dr Lalji Singh, which he followed by a meeting with the press. He honored CIMMYT distinguished scientist Ravi Singh as BHU’s greatest alumnus for his ongoing efforts in developing improved bread wheat varieties that are grown across the world. Standing out in a week of fruitful meetings, the highlight for many was the farmer field day on 29 February, during which more than 200 farmers participated in discussions and expressed their interest in CIMMYT-derived biofortified wheat varieties.

Understanding local needs and looking to the future: A visit to the BISA sites

Written by on February 23, 2012. Posted in News.

BISA-India-visit-Day-2-088 During 21 January-05 February, a delegation consisting of Director General Thomas Lumpkin, Global Wheat Program Associate Director and Head of Pathology, Etienne Duveiller, Board member Andy Barr, and Development Officer Cheraé Robinson travelled from El Batán to visit the three sites of the newly established Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA). They were accompanied by Ajai Kumar and Raj Gupta, from CIMMYT’s New Delhi office.

Duveiller, who will be relocating from Mexico to India as the Head of Research for BISA stated “it is amazing what has been done in such a short span of time. But there is still a great deal of work to do and very exciting opportunities for research in a fast changing environment —not only economically in India, but also considering global change and climate change.”

The visit offered an opportunity not only for the delegation to gain an understanding of the new institute, but also to speak with local farmers about their concerns and specific challenges they are experiencing in their region. The group met with agricultural producers, students of the local agricultural universities, and state agricultural research institutes to develop ties with local stakeholders and understand the challenges and needs currently facing communities surrounding the BISA sites.

Towards the end of the visit, Lumpkin also participated in a gathering in Bihar, which brought together over 1,000 farmers from India’s poorest state to address current shortcomings and needs of agricultural producers in the region. The event gathered not only local producers, but also government officials and representatives including Nitish Kumar, Chief Minister of Bihar and Mangala Rai, Agriculture Advisor to the Chief Minister of Bihar.
BISA was officially launched on 05 October 2011. In less than four months, the three BISA sites have begun research activities, a process which has included demarcating the boundaries of the properties and preparing the land and seeding. The official groundbreaking ceremony for the sites will be held later this year.

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Remote sensing shows the importance of keeping wheat cool

Written by on February 21, 2012. Posted in News.

TheSun A recent study co-authored by CIMMYT agronomist Iván Ortiz- Monasterio has demonstrated how temperatures greater than 34°C can significantly cut wheat yields. Using nine years of satellite data for wheat grown in northern India, the team showed how previous models had underestimated the effects of high temperatures on senescence and yield. The onset of senescence seriously limits grain filling, and senescence is hastened by high temperatures. In South Asia, if wheat is not sown early enough, the crop reaches grainfilling stage during pre-Monsoon hot spells. Existing models may have underestimated grain losses by as much as 50%, for some sowing dates. “This study shows how innovative research tools like remote sensing can provide important information in the area of agriculture and climate change,” said Ortiz-Monasterio.

The study was led by Stanford University scientist David Lobell, who has recently published several important works on climate change and crop yields. The results are particularly significant because India and Mexico are among the countries expected to be most sorely affected by climate change. The Indo-Gangetic Plains are the bread basket of South Asia, providing food and incomes for hundreds of millions.

Since being published in Nature Climate Change on 29 January 2012, the study has received coverage in New Scientist, SciDev.Net, and Reuters, amongst others. CIMMYT breeders are already selecting for wheat lines with more extensive roots, allowing them to find and take up moisture and reduce the effects of heat on the plant. The center has also begun investigating varieties that can be sown earlier and harvested before spring heat.

BISA in Bihar

Written by on February 3, 2012. Posted in News.

The Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA) received another boost this week when the Bihar government pledged to provide 200 acres to the center, at a price of just 1 Rupee (0.02 USD) per acre. This center will be located in Pusa, Samastipur district, with a further two centers in Ludhiana, Punjab, and Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh.

You can read more about these recent developments in The Bihar Times.

CIMMYT strengthens links with China

Written by on January 23, 2012. Posted in News.

On 11 January 2011, CIMMYT welcomed a delegation of representatives from the Chinese embassy to Mexico. The Ambassador’s wife, Linge Liu, was accompanied by Wenling Ding, First Secretary of Education, and Yue Lan, Third Secretary of Science and Technology.

The delegation toured CIMMYT’s facilities including the Wheat Quality Laboratory, Applied Biotechnology Center, and the Wellhausen- Anderson Plant Genetic Resources Center. They met with Director General Thomas Lumpkin, who stressed CIMMYT’s vision and objective to develop stronger relations and promote South- South cooperation between India, China, and Mexico. “China and CIMMYT have a long history of bilateral relations. Today, China is becoming the strongest country in the world. China and CIMMYT must work very closely together as the future develops,” stated Lumpkin.

CIMMYT currently has five senior scientists based in China: Zhonghu He, Jiankang Wang, and Yunbi Xu are posted at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) in Beijing, Daniel Jeffers is based at the Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Science, and Garry Rosewarne at the Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Science.

For the first time this year, China became a net importer of maize, and it recently overtook rice as the country’s primary crop. Maize is currently produced on 30.2 million hectares in China compared to 29.5 for rice and 23.9 for wheat, and Lumpkin expressed concern over the current maize market and importexport trends. By 2015, China is expected to import 15 million metric tons of maize from the US alone. Both Mexico and China are current importers of maize, and may compete for maize in the future.

Zhonghu He, Country Liaison officer for China, also joined the meetings and highlighted CIMMYT’s strong training component to develop the next generation of Chinese agricultural science researchers. CIMMYT currently has a total of 16 Chinese Postdoc students pursuing specialized research in maize and wheat genetics, diseases, and breeding, and in addition to recruiting these specialized scientists, over half of China’s maize seed bank genetic resources are sourced from CIMMYT.