Location: Pakistan

For more information, contact CIMMYT’s Pakistan office.

Innovation key to wheat yield potential advances, says in-coming CIMMYT DG

Written by on April 13, 2015. Posted in Features.

Photos: Alfredo Sáenz/CIMMYT — Outgoing CIMMYT Director General Thomas Lumpkin, incoming CIMMYT Director General Martin Kropff, Nynke Nammensma and Jeannie Laube Borlaug (L to R) chat during Visitors’ Week in Obregon, Mexico. CIMMYT/Alfredo Sáenz

CIUDAD OBREGON, Mexico (CIMMYT) — Martin Kropff, who will take the helm as director general of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in June, joined scientists, and other members of the global wheat community at the CIMMYT experimental research station near the town of Ciudad Obregon in Mexico’s northern state of Sonora for annual Visitors’ Week.

Following a tour of a wide range of research projects underway in the wheat fields of the Yaqui Valley made famous around the world by the work of the late Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug, who died in 2009 at age 95, Kropff shared his views.

Borlaug led efforts to develop high-yielding, disease-resistant, semi-dwarf wheat varieties in the mid-20th century that are estimated to have helped save more than 1 billion lives in Pakistan, India and other areas of the developing world.

“I’m very impressed by what I’ve seen in Obregon,” said Kropff, who is currently chancellor and vice chairman of the executive board of Wageningen University and Research Center in the Netherlands.

“From the gene bank in El Batan, the breeding and pre-breeding and the work with farmers on a huge scale, it’s extremely high quality and innovative,” added Kropff, who with his wife Nynke Nammensma also visited CIMMYT’s El Batan headquarters near Mexico City earlier in the week.

“The MasAgro program is very impressive because it takes the step of integrating scientific knowledge with farmers’ knowledge – it’s a novel way to aid farmers by getting new technology working on farms at a large scale. It is a co-innovation approach,” Kropff said.

The Sustainable Modernization of Traditional Agriculture, led by country’s Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food (SAGARPA) and known locally as MasAgro, helps farmers understand how minimal soil disturbance, permanent soil cover and crop rotation can simultaneously boost yields and sustainably increase profits.

“The program is an example of how farmers, scientists and other stakeholders can think about and create innovations through appropriate fertilizer applications, seed technologies and also through such instruments as the post-harvesting machines,” Kropff said.

“This is fantastic. That’s what the CGIAR is all about.”

Left to right: Tom Lumpkin, John Snape and Martin Kropff. — Thomas Lumpkin, John Snape and Martin Kropff (L to R). CIMMYT/Alfredo Sáenz

“The HarvestPlus program, which adds more zinc and iron into the crop through breeding, also plays a key role in CIMMYT’s research portfolio,” Kropff said.

Zinc deficiency is attributed to 800,000 deaths each year and affects about one-third of the world’s population, according to the World Health Organization. Enhancing the micronutrient content in wheat through biofortification is seen as an important tool to help improve the diets of the most vulnerable sectors of society.

The climate change adaptation work he observed, which is focused on drought and heat stress resilience is of paramount importance, Kropff said.

Findings in a report released last year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change state it is very likely that heat waves will occur more often and last longer throughout the 21st Century and that rainfall will be more unpredictable.

Mean surface temperatures could potentially rise by between 2 to 5 degrees Celsius or more, the report said.

“To safeguard food security for the 9 billion people we’re expecting will populate the planet by 2050, we need innovations based on breeding, and solid agronomy based on precision farming,” Kropff said.

“There’s no other organization in the world that is so well designed as the CGIAR to do this type of work. CIMMYT is the crown jewel of the CGIAR together with the gene banks. No other organization can do this.”

“We’ve done a lot of work in getting higher yields, but not much through increased yield potential, and that’s what we have to work on now,” he added.

“If you raise the yield through agronomy, you still need to enhance yield potential and there’s very good fundamental work going on here.”

“The partnerships here are excellent – scientists that are here from universities are as proud as CIMMYT itself about all the work that is being done. I’m really honored that from 1 June, I have the opportunity to be the director general of this institution. I cannot wait to get started working with the team at CIMMYT and I’m extremely grateful for the warm welcome I’ve received – a smooth transition is already underway.”

Follow Martin Kropff on Twitter @KropffMartin

“First Lady of Wheat” in Mexico to celebrate her father, Norman Borlaug

Written by on April 13, 2015. Posted in Features.

The late wheat breeder Norman Borlaug was so dedicated to his work that he was away from home 80 percent of the time, either travelling or in the field, recalls his daughter, Jeanie Borlaug Laube.

Photo: Alfredo Sáenz/CIMMYT

Scientist Borlaug, who died in 2009 at age 95, led efforts in the mid-20th century to develop high-yielding, disease resistant, semi-dwarf wheat varieties that helped save more than 1 billion lives in Pakistan, India and other areas of the developing world.

Wheat breeders, scientists and members of the global food security community celebrated his birthday at a week-long meeting hosted by CIMMYT in the vast wheat fields of the Yaqui Valley near the town of Ciudad Obregón in Mexico’s northern state of Sonora.

Each year, CIMMYT Visitors’ Week serves as an opportunity to brainstorm, exchange ideas and celebrate Borlaug’s legacy on the anniversary of his birthday.

Borlaug, who would have been 101 this year, started work on wheat improvement in the mid-1940s near CIMMYT headquarters outside Mexico City.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 partly for his experimental work, much of which took place in the hot, dry conditions of Obregón, which resemble conditions in many developing countries where CIMMYT works.

This year, his daughter, who is co-chair of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative, a partnership to study and and control devastating stem, yellow and leaf wheat rust disease, spoke on women and agriculture at the event. She is also involved with the Jeanie Borlaug Laube Women in Triticum Mentor Award, which honors mentors of both genders who aid women working in Triticum species and near relatives. Additionally, she sits on the board of directors of the Borlaug Training Foundation, established to provide agricultural education and guidance to scientists from developing nations.

She shared her views in the following interview.

Q: What is your current involvement in agriculture?

I’m not officially in agriculture – I’m a Spanish teacher. I taught for 40 years in high school until I retired three years ago. In the last 25 years of my career I had started a community service program at two different schools in Dallas and ran it. This involves 750 kids a year out doing community service. I still taught one Spanish class but my basic job was community service director. I haven’t been involved in agriculture directly. Indirectly, I have been because I was Norman Borlaug’s daughter so I’ve been around it, but I wasn’t raised on a farm, never lived on a farm, didn’t study agriculture or science in school.

What is your current involvement with wheat?

I’m co-chair of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative – I go to the conferences once a year where all the wheat scientists of the world get together. I go to all the conferences and sit and listen and try to learn and follow what is going on with rust and the different problems they are having with wheat. I’m involved with the Women in Triticum Award. I visit and follow up with them and they are the ones who are out in the field learning how to become scientists and continue the profession. That’s how I’m involved in wheat.

Q: What are your views on women in agriculture?

I was in Pakistan last year and the U.S. Department of Agriculture set up a meeting with women who were all scientists working on their doctoral degrees – or already had a Ph.D. in agriculture. The discussions were very interesting as far as the difficulties that women find in this field and the pluses and minuses that are involved with that. It was interesting to hear different aspects of what they were feeling. The academic studies were not a difficult thing for them, but the reality of raising a family and keeping a profession going and taking care of a husband or children at the same time as being away from home presented problems.

No matter what profession women are in, challenges confront them because we have to multi-task. It doesn’t matter whether you are an accountant, a geneticist or a teacher – as a mother or trying to run a family and a profession, I think it’s challenging for a lot of women.

Q: What impresses you about women in agriculture?

I’m always amazed at the women scientists who are out there working at these wheat conferences and out in the in the field and taking care of their families from afar or even before they get married or have children, just the dedication they have to helping feed the world.

Q: What are your views on food security?

I don’t think the general population has any clue as to what goes on with agriculture. As my dad used to say, everybody just thinks the food comes from the grocery store and that’s where it is – it just pops in there. The average person doesn’t have a clue about that.

Q: What has changed since your father’s time?

I imagine he’d be facing the same challenges. I think it would be really interesting if he were still around because he’d be going crazy right now with all of this fighting about gluten-free and over genetically modified plants. He was so dedicated. His mission was to feed the world.

I think it is still the same mission. I think it is probably just a little harder because you have more public opinion and lack of info for what you need. He was changing genes and they are still doing that and they need to because they need to find plants that require less fertilizer and less water and provide more protein. What is amazing to me is to think about how they are working with computers now and he did all this in his head with notebooks.

He’d leave home at five in the morning and get home at eight at night. When he was in town he was gone about 80 percent of the time. When he first started this shuttle breeding program he’d come to Sonora. That was in the 40s – he had to go up through Arizona and back down at first because there were no roads. He’d be up here for three months, then he’d go back down, then he’d go to Toluca and South America, then he started going to India and Pakistan. In later years he was going Africa, so he was never home.

Q: Where did you grow up?

I was raised in Mexico City. My brother was born in Mexico and I came here when I was 14 months old. I lived here until I went to college. I did my schooling down here.

Q: Did your father try and encourage women in science and agriculture?

Yes he did. Back then there weren’t very many women in agriculture and scence. I think he’d be very pleased to see the turn with what’s happening with women in agriculture.

Q: What is it like celebrating your father?

It’s really neat. When my dad realized that he was going to die he asked me to bring ashes back to Mexico so I did. The last two years we came before he died, we came in a private jet because he couldn’t travel. It was so hard to get here. I remember I looked at his face as we were approaching Obregón. His face was just pure relief. He loved this place and he’d see the wheat fields and it was magical for him. Coming back is kind of bittersweet, realizing how much he loved the farmers too as they loved him.

Happy Seeder, happy farmers: tillage in a single pass

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

Gulshad Nabi (Chand) is a progressive farmer from Chak Dahir, Tehsil Muridke in the Sheikhupura District of Punjab Province, Pakistan. He cultivates wheat and basmati rice, which constitute his family’s only source of livelihood. Heavy tillage and burning of rice residues are the common practices for growing wheat in the region, resulting in the loss of soil nutrients, air pollution and poor food security and livelihoods for farmers like Gulshad.

Farmer Chand sharing his experience with Sikandar Hayat Bosan (left), Pakistan’s Federal Minister of Food Security & Research.Photo: Amina Nasim Khan — Farmer Chand sharing his experience with Sikandar Hayat Bosan (left), Pakistan’s Federal Minister of Food Security & Research.
Photo: Amina Nasim Khan

The Agricultural Innovation Program (AIP), led by CIMMYT and funded by USAID, has begun testing with Punjab farmers the Zero-Tillage Happy Seeder, which sows wheat seed with fertilizer directly into the residues of the preceding rice crop in one pass and without tillage. “This practice offers a more sustainable and productive way to manage rice residues and raise wheat yields,” said Imtiaz Hussain, CIMMYT cropping systems agronomist. “It allows earlier sowing of wheat, which increases yields, and dramatically cuts the time, labor and fuel needed to plant wheat, which normally requires as many as seven tractor passes. Because the rice residues decompose on the soil rather than being burned, there is less pollution.”

In Sheikhupura District and in partnership with Engro EXIMP AgriProducts Private Limited, CIMMYT has promoted the seeder with 13 progressive farmers, including Nabi, who also received technical training in its use and in conservation agriculture practices and benefits.

After the training, Nabi used the seeder to sow wheat on just over three hectares without burning rice residues and saving more than 260 liters of diesel. At the Pakistan Agriculture Conference and Expo in Islamabad, Nabi described his experience to Mr. Sikandar Hayat Bosan, Federal Minister of Food Security & Research. “CIMMYT helped me improve my farming practices. The crop growth is great. Planting wheat with the Zero Tillage Happy Seeder is a new experience – a very modern practice that saves my time and resources,” said Nabi.

CIMMYT showcases advances in agricultural technology and development in Pakistan

Written by on March 23, 2015. Posted in News.

Mr. Sikandar Hayat Bosan (left), Federal Minister of Food Security & Research, and Mr. Gregory Gottlieb (red tie), Director for USAID Pakistan, visited the stand and talked to Imtiaz Muhammad (far right), CIMMYT Country Representative in Pakistan, and AIP component leads about their programs.Photos: Amina Nasim Khan — Mr. Sikandar Hayat Bosan (left), Federal Minister of Food Security & Research, and Mr. Gregory Gottlieb (red tie), Director for USAID Pakistan, visited the stand and talked to Imtiaz Muhammad (far right), CIMMYT Country Representative in Pakistan, and AIP component leads about their programs.
Photos: Amina Nasim Khan

The Agricultural Innovation Program (AIP), led by CIMMYT and funded by USAID, presented the latest advances in agricultural technology and provided a platform for local industry to explore innovative technologies, products and services at the Pakistan Agriculture Conference and Expo 2015 in Islamabad.

The main attractions were the Zero-Tillage Happy Seeder, durum wheat, biofortified maize, goats bred through artificial insemination, alternate wetting and drying in rice, rice storage in hermetic bags and protected vegetable cultivation models. The AIP exhibit attracted many visitors including farmers, policymakers, agriculture experts and scientists from both public- and private-sector organizations, opening new avenues for AIP to connect with target groups and explore agricultural opportunities in Pakistan.

Imtiaz Muhammad, CIMMYT Country Representative, Pakistan, at the AIP-maize component display.

Floodwaters put food security at risk by halting crop production

Written by on March 19, 2015. Posted in News.

Water plays a vital role in crop production, but flooding in vulnerable regions also ruins crops and hinders aid agencies’ efforts to reach people affected by crisis.

In this picture from the World Food Programme (WFP) taken by Amjad Jamal in 2012, vehicles laden with emergency supplies motor through floodwaters to deliver food aid to around 20,000 people stranded in Pakistan’s Sindh Province.

This third successive year of flooding caused the deaths of around 400 people and destroyed homes and agricultural livelihoods. WFP provided one-month food rations, including fortified wheat flour, pulses, vegetable oil, iodized salt and high energy biscuits.

For more information, follow WFP on Twitter @WFP

Men’s roles and attitudes are key to gender progress, says CIMMYT gender specialist

Written by Mike Listman on March 4, 2015. Posted in Features.

Gender research and outreach should engage men more effectively, according to Paula Kantor, CIMMYT gender and development specialist who is leading an ambitious new project to empower and improve the livelihoods of women, men and youth in wheat-based systems of Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Pakistan.

“Farming takes place in socially complex environments, involving individual women and men who are embedded in households, local culture and communities, and value chains — all of which are colored by expectations of women’s and men’s appropriate behaviors,” said Kantor, who gave a brownbag presentation on the project to an audience of more than 100 scientists and other staff and visitors at El Batán on 20 February. “We tend to focus on women in our work and can inadvertently end up alienating men, when they could be supporters if we explained what we’re doing and that, in the end, the aim is for everyone to progress and benefit.”

Funded by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the new project will include 14 village case studies across the three countries. It is part of a global initiative involving 13 CGIAR research programs (CRPs), including the CIMMYT-led MAIZE and WHEAT. Participants in the global project will carry out 140 case studies in 29 countries; WHEAT and MAIZE together will conduct 70 studies in 13 countries. Kantor and Lone Badstue, CIMMYT’s strategic leader for gender research, are members of the Executive Committee coordinating the global initiative, along with Gordon Prain of CIP-led Roots, Tubers and Bananas Program, and Amare Tegbaru of the IITA-led Program on Integrated Systems for the Humid Tropics.

“The cross-CRP gender research initiative is of unprecedented scope,” said Kantor. “For WHEAT, CIMMYT, and partners, understanding more clearly how gendered expectations affect agricultural innovation outcomes and opportunities can give all of our research more ‘ooomph’, helping social and biophysical scientists to work together better to design and conduct socially and technically robust agricultural R4D, and in the end achieve greater adoption and impact.”

To that end, outcomes will include joint interpretation of results with CRP colleagues and national stakeholders, scientific papers, policy engagement and guidelines for integrating gender in wheat research-for-development, according to Kantor. “The research itself is important, but can’t sit on a shelf,” she explained. “We will devise ways to communicate it effectively to partners in CGIAR and elsewhere.”

Another, longer-term goal is to question and unlock gender constraints to agricultural innovation, in partnership with communities. Kantor said that male migration and urbanization are driving fundamental, global changes in gender dynamics, but institutional structures and policies must keep pace. “The increase in de facto female-headed households in South Asia, for example, would imply that there are more opportunities for women in agriculture,” she explained, “but there is resistance, and particularly from institutions like extension services and banks which have not evolved in ways that support and foster the empowerment of those women.”

“To reach a tipping point on this, CGIAR and the CGIAR Research Programs need to work with unusual partners — individuals and groups with a presence in communities and policy circles and expertise in fostering social change,” said Kantor. “Hopefully, the case studies in the global project will help us identify openings and partners to facilitate some of that change.”

Kantor has more than 15 years of experience in research on gender relations and empowerment in economic development, microcredit, rural and urban livelihoods, and informal labor markets, often in challenging settings. She served four years as Director and Manager of the gender and livelihoods research portfolios at the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) in Kabul. “AREU has influenced policy, for example, through its work on governance structures at the provincial and district levels,” Kantor said. “They will be a partner in the Afghan study.”

She added that working well in challenging contexts requires a complex combination of openness about study aims and content in communities, sensitivity and respect for relationships and protocol, careful arrangements for logistics and safety, diverse and well-trained study teams and being flexible and responsive. “Reflections on doing gender research in these contexts will likely be an output of the study.”

After her first month at CIMMYT, Kantor, who will be based in Islamabad, Pakistan, said she felt welcome and happy. “My impression is that people here are very committed to what they do and that research is really a priority. I also sense real movement and buy-in on the gender front. An example is the fact that, of all the proposals that could’ve been put forward for funding from BMZ, the organization chose one on gender. That’s big.”

USAID’s Feed the Future initiative highlights CIMMYT heat tolerant maize breeding

Written by on February 23, 2015. Posted in News.

The Feed the Future initiative of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) featured CIMMYT’s Heat Tolerant Maize for Asia (HTMA) project in a recent newsletter, highlighting it as an exemplary public-private partnership. Launched in 2013, the project is developing heat-resilient hybrid maize for resource-poor smallholder farmers in South Asia whose livelihoods are threatened by climate change.

The damaging effects of climate change on agriculture have already been felt throughout much of South Asia, and climate model studies predict that this trend will not end anytime soon. According to a 2009 report from the Asian Development Bank, maize production capacity in South Asia could decrease by 17 percent by the year 2050 if current climate trends continue. Due to the temperature sensitivity of key crops such as maize, farmers in the region urgently need access to seed of varieties that can withstand temperature stress. As climate change-related weather extremes threaten agriculture in South Asia, research and development partners are seeking solutions.

The HTMA “…balances up-stream and down-stream research-for-development by leveraging CIMMYT germplasm with the research capacity and expertise of partners such as Purdue University, Pioneer-Asia and national programs in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan,” said P.H. Zaidi, the project leader. HTMA private partners such as DuPont Pioneer and the regional seed companies Kaveri Seeds and Ajeet Seeds have direct ties to local markets and farming communities that will foster the widespread availability and use of the new hybrids, according to Zaidi.

Outputs of this partnership include new breeding lines with enhanced levels of heat tolerance. The first generation of heat-tolerant hybrids from those lines became available after the second year of the project, and a new set of elite, stress-resilient hybrid varieties will be released by the project every two years. Apart from this, early-generation lines are being shared for use in partners’ breeding programs, strengthening their germplasm base and ensuring the continued development and delivery of heat-stress-resilient maize after the project ends, Zaidi said. According to the Feed the Future report: “The new varieties…show great promise to be taken to scale and deployed in tropical climates beyond South Asia.”

Zero tillage for smallholder wheat farmers in Balochistan, Pakistan

Written by on February 10, 2015. Posted in News.

Participants in zero tillage wheat field. Photos: Naveed Ahmed Sheikh from Balochistan.

Under the Agricultural Innovation Program (AIP) for Pakistan and in collaboration with Balochistan Agriculture Research, CIMMYT has begun testing and spreading with farmers the practice known as “zero tillage” to sow wheat in Balochistan, a province in southwest Pakistan that accounts for more than 40 percent of the country’s land area but only five percent of the population.

Jaffarabad and Nasirabad are major rice- and wheat-growing districts in Balochistan. The predominant cropping systems are either fallow or rice, followed by a crop of wheat. Soils after rice are poorly-drained and hamper tilling for wheat, so wheat is not sown soon enough to avoid the high temperatures that arrive in spring, when the crop is filling grain. This seriously reduces yields.

Participants in field day at Usta Muhammad.

On 10 January, more than 100 participants gathered for a field day organized by AIP in Balochistan province to promote zero tillage for wheat. Involving the direct sowing of wheat seed into residues of the preceding rice crop, with no plowing, the practice has multiple benefits for farmers, soils and water use. These include more timely wheat planting, reduced land preparation costs, higher wheat yields and increased cropping system intensity (hence, productivity), according to agricultural experts Mr. Asmatullah Taran and Mr. Mehdi Hassan.

Intended for smallholder farmers, the event also drew progressive farmers, agricultural extension specialists and researchers from the Directorate of Agriculture Research Usta Muhammad Farm, Jaffarabad District, as well as renowned parliamentarians Mr. Khan Muhammad Khan Jamali, Mr. Changaiz Khan Jamali and Mr. Mir Jan Muhammad Jamali, Speaker, Balochistan Provincial Assembly.

Mir Jan Muhammad Jamali addressing the farmers.

Dr. Muhammad Javaid Tareen, Director General of Balochistan Agriculture Research, praised AIP and partners’ efforts to promote conservation agriculture practices such as zero tillage, said the practices would improve farmers’ livelihoods in the Nasirabad Zone and called on scientists to address the Province’s crop productivity constraints. Mr. Changaiz Khan Jamali, former Federal Minister for Science & Technology, said that agricultural research must address small farmers’ concerns and provide new techniques to the farming community.

Mr. Jamali was grateful for the efforts of USAID and CIMMYT to improve smallholder famers’ incomes and assured the farmers and agricultural professionals that efforts would be made to improve research facilities and access to new technologies in Balochistan.

Pakistan wheat farmers call for quality seed of the right varieties

Written by Mike Listman on February 10, 2015. Posted in Features.

A Pakistani farmer carries seed of a new wheat variety for on-farm testing. Photo: Anju Joshi/CIMMYT

Lack of good seed of appropriate varieties is holding back harvests of smallholder wheat farmers in rugged, rain-fed areas of Punjab, Pakistan, said a group of farmers to some 50 representatives of seed companies, input dealers, and research, extension and development organizations, at a workshop in Chakwal, Punjab, on 18 September 2014.

“Ninety-five percent of farmers in Pothwar, a semi-arid region of bare and broken terrain, use farm-saved seed of obsolete varieties, invariably with limited use of modern agricultural technologies and inputs, resulting in poor crop establishment and low yields,” said Krishna Dev Joshi, CIMMYT wheat improvement specialist based in Pakistan. “Their yields average only 0.6 tons per hectare, whereas progressive farmers in irrigated areas get ten times that much.”

Joshi said only three varieties cover 83 percent of the region’s wheat area and the same cultivars have been used for an average of 24 years. “One of these, C591, is a variety that was recommended in 1934 and is still grown on about 14 percent of the region’s nearly 0.6 million hectares of wheat area.”

According to Akhlaq Hussain, ex-Director General, Pakistan Department of Federal Seed Certification and Registration, one problem is that, despite their low yields, the older varieties have many traits that the farmers like. For example, they give stable yields under low inputs and harsh growing conditions and provide the preferred flavor and long-lasting good texture in chapattis.

Muhammad Tariq, Director of the Barani Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), Chakwal, Punjab, said there are few producers or suppliers of suitable, quality seed, fertilizer or other farm inputs for such marginal areas. They may be considered unattractive markets, but more than 70 percent of Pakistani wheat farmers are smallholders, cultivating between one and five hectares of land, according to Tariq.

Such farmers harvest on average only 1.5 tons per hectare and urgently need better seed and technology to raise their yields, said Joshi. “Farmers at the workshop complained they could not get access to high-yielding varieties of their choice,” he explained. “They also criticized the long time — typically three years — required to obtain seed of new varieties, once the varieties are officially released.”

Given this need and the lack of legitimate suppliers, fraudulent seed dealers and middlemen often market inferior or false products. “Last year I bought a bag of seed labelled ‘Galaxy,’ a new, high-yielding variety,” said Haji Muhammad Aslam Ochallee, a farmer from Khushab District, “but the seed inside was of an entirely different variety.”

Some seed dealers may mix seed or sell grain in bags labelled ‘certified seed’ at low prices to lure smallholders, and big landlords may sell cheap seed illegally to neighbors, said Qaiser Rasheed, Managing Director of the company Robert Cotton Association. “All these practices cheat farmers, distort markets and erode farmers’ trust in the formal seed sector,” Rasheed observed.

Pothwar’s problems reflect Pakistan’s overall food security challenge, according to Joshi. “A 2014 bulletin by the World Food Program shows that more than 27 million people in Pakistan are highly-to-severely food insecure,” he said. “The big concern is that most smallholders and vulnerable people live in districts that will need special attention to improve food security.”

Activating the Wheat Seed Value Chain

As a part of the Agricultural Innovation Program (AIP) for Pakistan, a project funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), CIMMYT is working with the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC), BARI in Punjab, seed companies and farmers to close gaps in the wheat seed value chain for rain-fed Punjab.

Workshop participants cited the need for better communication and coordination of research and extension agencies with commercial input suppliers sector and, especially, better marketing of new wheat varieties to farmers. “If stakeholders don’t integrate and coordinate, small-scale farmers will remain deprived of modern technologies and innovations, such as wheat varieties that resist new and virulent disease strains,” said Joshi.

“If stakeholders don’t integrate and coordinate, small-scale farmers will remain deprived of modern technologies and innovations, such as wheat varieties that resist new and virulent disease strains”

– Krishna Dev Joshi

CIMMYT Wheat Improvement Specialist

Farmers recommended establishing village committees to choose and access seed of new varieties and help foster truth in labeling. They particularly called for strict punishment for those selling fake seed.

For their part, seed companies said the lack of reliable irrigation or storage facilities hinders seed production in Pothwar. “Because of this, seed must be transported over long distances, raising costs, which in turn discourages buyers and cuts profits,” said one company representative.

The workshop forged an agreement to allow private seed companies to produce pre-basic and basic seed, supervised by concerned breeders and with support from Federal Seed Certification and Registration Department, to speed the marketing of new varieties. One result was that Robert Cotton Association has received pre-basic and basic seeds of two wheat varieties, Chakwal50 and Dharabi11, originally developed and released by BARI, which will provide technical backstopping.

Other action points agreed on at the workshop included the following:

On-farm trials and demonstrations that allow farmers to learn about and choose from new, high-yielding wheat varieties. To address this, AIP-wheat has already launched participatory varietal selection trials in which farmers and researchers jointly evaluate 14 new, high-yielding, disease resistant wheat varieties of diverse genetic backgrounds on the farms of 65 smallholders across Pothwar. In addition, to help farmers assess and improve crop management practices, the project is conducting 20 on-farm, participatory experiments on fertilizer use and 107 trials on pre-soaking seed, a practice that improves germination and crop establishment.
Community-based seed production linked with private companies and supported by proper equipment and training in quality seed production. Achievements to date include seed of 9 new varieties being multiplied directly with 52 Pothwar farmers on more than 42 hectares.
Group. Photo: CIMMYT

Pakistan marks Borlaug’s 100th birthday with commemorative stamp

Written by Mike Listman on January 19, 2015. Posted in News.

Pakistan’s National Philatelic Bureau issued a commemorative postage stamp to honor the 100th birthday, last 25 March, of late wheat scientist and Nobel Peace Laureate, Dr. Norman E. Borlaug.

Pakistani researchers and policymakers were instrumental to the work of Borlaug and the Green Revolution in South Asia, said Imtiaz Muhammad, CIMMYT wheat scientist and country representative in Pakistan, speaking at a 22 December unveiling ceremony.

Mr. Sikhandar Hayat Khan Bossan, Federal Minister for Food Security and Research, Pakistan, unveils a new stamp to commemorate the 100th birthday in 2014 of late wheat scientist and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Dr. Norman E. Borlaug. Photo: Amina Khan/CIMMYT

Pakistan breeders have sown and returned data on CIMMYT international maize and wheat trials for more than four decades, and over 150 Pakistani wheat specialists have participated in training courses at CIMMYT.

Held at the National Agricultural Research Center (NARC), Islamabad, the unveiling was organized by CIMMYT, the Pakistan Agriculture Research Council (PARC) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and drew more than 50 participants, including agricultural scientists, media representatives and staff of Pakistan’s Ministry of National Food Security and Research (MNFSR).

The Federal Minister for Food Security and Research, Mr. Sikhandar Hayat Khan Bossan, formally unveiled the stamp. Speakers included Dr. Iftikhar Ahmed, Chairman of PARC, Dr. Shahid Masood, PARC plant scientist,and Mr. Seerat Asghar, Federal Secretary for National Food Security and Research. Thomas A. Lumpkin, CIMMYT director general, and Ronnie Coffman, vice-chair of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI), addressed the audience through video messages.

Through a personal message read during the ceremony, Jeanie Borlaug Laube, daughter of Norman Borlaug and BGRI chair, thanked the Pakistan government. “I know my father would be very proud to be on a stamp in Pakistan,” she said.

Pakistan: maize needed for marginal areas

Written by on December 26, 2014. Posted in News.

Farmers in the farthest reaches of Pakistan need access to white- grained maize, according to Dr. Iftikhar Ahmad, chairman of the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC). “There is a good progress in the productivity of yellow maize varieties in the areas of Punjab and KPK provinces,” Ahmad said, “but we need white maize varieties to reach farmers in the marginal areas of KPK, Sindh, Balochistan and Gilgit Baltistan provinces.”

From left to right: Shahid Masood, Md. Imtiaz, Iftikhar Ahmad and AbduRahman Beshir.

Speaking at the first National Maize Workshop-Annual Progress Review of Pakistan, held in Islamabad during 19-20 November, Ahmad also mentioned the importance of public-private partnerships to reduce the cost to farmers of hybrid seed, which is more expensive in Pakistan than elsewhere in South Asia.

There is good progress in the productivity of yellow maize varieties in the areas of Punjab and KPK provinces, but we need white maize varieties to reach farmers in the marginal areas of KPK, Sindh, Balochistan and Gilgit Baltistan provinces.” –Dr. Iftikhar Ahmad Chairman of the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC).

Dr. Beshir explains the traits of yellow maize at NARC, Islamabad.

Jointly organized by PARC and CIMMYT, the workshop was an activity of the Agricultural Innovation Program (AIP) for Pakistan and its 50 participants represented public and private maize research and development institutions, local and multinational seed companies, higher learning institutions, and departments of extension and food processors from all provinces of Pakistan.

Dr. Md. Imtiaz, project leader of AIP, highlighted the role of CIMMYT in enhancing local capacity and requested the full collaboration of national institutions.

During the concluding session, Dr. Shahid Masood, Member of Plant Science and AIP focal person at PARC, mentioned the importance of deploying biofortified and specialty maize, providing farmers with agronomy training, diversifying maize uses and developing and deploying dual purpose maize for food and feed.

Dr. Iftikhar Ahmad, PARC Chairman, addresses participants.

The workshop was followed by a field visit to the National Agricultural Research Center (NARC), where participants saw the performance of AIP-maize varieties and lines from CIMMYT breeding programs in Colombia, Mexico and Zimbabwe.

AbduRahman Beshir, CIMMYT maize improvement and seed systems specialists, said the event helped to define shared objectives for AIP-maize partners and a common goal to work towards and helped CIMMYT to reactivate maize research and development activities in Pakistan. Finally, partners discussed “seed road maps” that describe and illustrate varietal release pathways and seed production targets.

Reaching out to smallholder farmers in Pakistan

Written by on December 16, 2014. Posted in Features.

CIMMYT entered an important new partnership with Pakistan’s National Rural Support Program (NRSP) on 7 November 2014 for wheat varietal evaluation, promotion and deployment, as well as on-farm agronomic interventions and community-based seed production enterprises.

A not-for-profit development organization established in 1991 that fosters a countrywide network of more than 200,000 grassroots organizations across 56 districts, NRSP enables rural communities to plan, implement and manage development programs for employment, poverty alleviation and improved quality of life. Through direct linkages with some 400,000 smallholder farming families, the organization will help extend the reach of the CIMMYT- led Agricultural Innovation Program for Pakistan (AIP), according to Dr. Rashid Bajwa, chief executive officer of NRSP. “We can now jointly scale out to a vast number of smallholders with average daily earnings of less than two dollars a day,” Bajwa said, mentioning the organization’s activities like microfinance enterprise development.

The work of Pakistan’s National Rural Support Program benefits millions of small-scale farmers and landless families. Photo: Mike Listman/CIMMYT.

Aiming to benefit the disadvantaged

The partnership paves the way for a new and different kind of innovation platform focusing on smallholders, tenants and the landless, female-headed households and vulnerable groups such as flood victims, said Muhammad Imtiaz, CIMMYT liaison officer for Pakistan and AIP Chief of Party: “This will contribute directly to the Center’s mission of improving the food security and resilience of those most at risk, not to mention opening avenues for other AIP partners to join hands in testing and promoting appropriate agricultural innovations.”

Taking advantage of NRSP’s gender-responsive approach, the partnership will work directly with and seek to empower women farmers, identifying wheat varieties and technologies that help increase their food security and incomes. Work will identify, test and deploy high-yielding and rust resistant wheat varieties across 23 districts and include improved farming practices for diverse settings from rain-fed to fully-irrigated.

A major focus will be to develop community-based seed enterprises linked with NRSP, small seed companies, farmer associations and seed regulatory bodies, serving remote villages that have heretofore lacked access to improved varieties.

“This will contribute directly to the Center’s mission of improving the food security and resilience of those most at risk” –Muhammad Imtiaz CIMMYT liaison officer for Pakistan and AIP Chief of Party

A group photo was taken at the NRSP inception meeting and staff training. Photo: Raja Zulfiqar Ali.

Getting Off on the Right Foot

A partnership inception meeting and staff training for NRSP were organized on 10 November in Islamabad, with 32 participants from NRSP and 11 from CIMMYT, including senior management from both the organizations, and with Malik Fateh Khan, NRSP Regional Manager, providing a welcome address.

Imtiaz Hussain, CIMMYT cropping systems agronomist, highlighted conservation agriculture technologies and their relevance for the partnership. Krishna Dev Joshi, CIMMYT wheat improvement specialist, discussed various types of varietal testing, including participatory varietal selection, mother-baby trials and on-farm demonstrations, to creating awareness and demand for improved seed among farmers. Three CIMMYT colleagues who also spoke at the event were: Shamim Akhter, AIP project manager; Amina Nasim Khan, communications specialist; and Ghazi Kamal, monitoring and evaluation specialist.

Scientists ship 2 tons of wheat seed samples around the world

Written by on November 12, 2014. Posted in Features.

EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — Wheat farmers can boost yields and protect crops from pests and disease by using improved seed varieties, but in the developing world more than 80 percent of farmers use poor quality varieties, losing potential earnings and putting food security at risk, according to research.

Farmers often sell and trade wheat seed among themselves without having much knowledge about the size of the yield they can expect and how a particular variety fares with regard to climate, soil type or disease resistance.

Scientists at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) are continuously developing improved varieties and each year seed samples — known as International Wheat Nurseries — are sent out to government and university research institutions and national agricultural research systems around the world.

“Wheat plays a vital role in food security,” said Tom Payne, head of CIMMYT’s Wheat Germplasm Bank, which stores almost 145,000 wheat varieties collected over the past 60 years. “We’ve been sending out wheat samples each year since 1974, so if you do the math that’s 367 tons over the years.”

In October, 1,720 kilograms (3,790 pounds) of experimental seeds were shipped to India, one of 75 current recipient countries.

Overall, the 2014 international shipment of seeds delivered in 351,990 sample envelopes weighed 9,230 kilograms. Recent recipient countries included Algeria, Pakistan, Turkey, Ukraine and Sudan.

SORTING SEEDS

Over the past 24 years, Efren Rodriguez, head of CIMMYT’s Seed Distribution Unit has overseen the five-month process of preparing, packaging and shipping of wheat seed samples.

“This year the seed requests we received filled 94 boxes,” Rodriguez said. “Seeds are requested at the end of summer prior to planting season. Each box is filled with envelopes of wheat seed and weighs up to 10 kilograms (22 pounds).”

Seeds arrive at CIMMYT’s headquarters near Mexico City in June in bags weighing from 10 to 35 kilograms from CIMMYT’s research station in Mexicali in northeastern Mexico accompanied with paperwork naming the varieties for inclusion in the shipment.

The seed is sorted according to instructions from the wheat breeders, cleaned with chlorine, rinsed in an industrial restaurant-style dishwasher, doused in protective fungicide, dried, placed in small envelopes by machine, then boxed.

“Research institutions plant the seeds, which have different characteristics designed to solve particular problems – for example, they may be heat, drought- or disease-resistant – and then recommend varieties for general release and sale to farmers,” Rodriguez said, explaining that the seeds tested and selected by the international research programs are incorporated into national wheat breeding or growing programs.

CIMMYT also distributes wheat nurseries as part of a partnership with Turkey and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA).

Globally, wheat provides 20 percent of the world’s daily protein and calories.

Research on climate-resilient wheat keeps Green Revolution on track

Written by on November 12, 2014. Posted in Features.

EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — Hans Braun, director of the Global Wheat Program at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), gestures toward an expansive field of green wheat shimmering in the hot sunlight outside his office.

“If we don’t prepare crops resilient to heat and drought, the effects of climate change will increase the risk of worldwide famine and conflict,” he explained. “That’s why CIMMYT is part of an international research program to develop new climate change-resistant varieties.”

As the global population grows from a current 7 billion to a projected 9.6 billion by 2050, wheat breeders involved in the battle to ensure food security face many challenges.
Already, U.N. food agencies estimate that at least 805 million people do not get enough food and that more than 2 billion suffer from micronutrient deficiency, or “hidden hunger.”

Globally, wheat provides 20 percent of the world’s daily protein and calories, according to the Wheat Initiative. Wheat production must grow 60 percent over the next 35 years to keep pace with demand, statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations show – an achievable goal only if wheat yields increase from the current level of below 1 percent annually to at least 1.7 percent per year.

The scientists that Braun leads are on the front lines – tackling the climate change threat in laboratories and at wheat research stations throughout Mexico and in 13 other countries.

LIFE-SAVING GRAIN

Wheat is vital to global food security. In particular, since CIMMYT scientist Norman Borlaug, who died in 2009 at age 95, led efforts to develop semi-dwarf wheat varieties in the mid-20th century that helped save more than 1 billion lives in Pakistan, India and other areas of the developing world.

Borlaug started work on wheat improvement in the mid-1940s in Mexico – where CIMMYT is headquartered near Mexico City. The country became self-sufficient in wheat production in the early 1960s.

Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work, and in his acceptance speech paid tribute to the “army of hunger fighters” with whom he had worked.
However, in contemporary times, some critics have cast a shadow over his work, questioning the altruistic aims of the project that became widely known as the Green Revolution.

They argue that the modern high-yielding crop varieties did not help poor farmers, but caused environmental damage through overuse of fertilizers, water resources and the degradation of soils.

Other condemnations include claims that food scarcity is a mere political construct, that food provision has helped governments suppress disgruntled masses and that vast wheat mono-croplands compromise agricultural and wild biodiversity.
However, a 2003 report in “Science” magazine analyzed the overall impact of the Green Revolution in the 20th Century. The authors, economists from Yale University and Williams College, found that without the long-term increase in food crop productivity and lower food prices resulting from the Green Revolution, the world would have experienced “a human welfare crisis.”

“Caloric intake per capita in the developing world would have been 13.3 to 14.4 percent lower and the proportion of children malnourished would have been from 6.1 to 7.9 percent higher,” authors Robert Evanson and Douglas Gollen wrote.

“Put in perspective, this suggests that the Green Revolution succeeded in raising the health status of 32 to 42 million preschool children. Infant and child mortality would have been considerably higher in developing countries as well.”

Braun acknowledges certain points made by critics of the Green Revolution, but asks how else developing countries would have met the food demands of their rapidly-expanding populations with less environmental impact.

“It’s very easy to look back 50 years and criticize,” Braun said. “People forget that at the time, new farm technologies were an incredible success. We have to put it into context – saving hundreds of millions of lives from starvation was the priority and the Green Revolution did just that.”

CLIMATE-RESILIENT WHEAT

Fast-forward and today much of CIMMYT’s current work remains steadily focused on improving wheat yields, but now with an emphasis on ensuring sustainable productivity and reducing agriculture’s environmental footprint.

Scientists are engaged in an international five-year project to develop climate-resilient wheat. They estimate that in tropical and sub-tropical regions, wheat yields will decrease by 10 percent for each 1-degree rise in minimum night-time temperature, which means that production levels could decline by 30 percent in South Asia. About 20 percent of the world’s wheat is produced in the region.

CIMMYT is collaborating with Kansas State University, Cornell University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture on the project, which is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as part of Feed the Future, the U.S. government’s global hunger and food security initiative.

Field evaluations are conducted in Mexico, Pakistan and at the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA) in India.

BOOSTING INFRASTRUCTURE

According to Braun, one of the biggest challenges over the next 30 years is to develop better production systems in addition to resource-efficient crops.

For example, a great deal of water is used in food production and demand can and should be cut in half, he said. “We need to focus on sustainable intensification in ways that won’t overuse natural resources.”

To aid in these efforts, CIMMYT has developed international research programs on conservation and precision agriculture.

In conservation agriculture, farmers reduce or stop tilling the soil, leaving crop residues on the surface of the field and rotate crops to sustainably increase productivity. Precision agriculture involves such technologies as light sensors to determine crop vigor and gauge nitrogen fertilizer dosages to determine exactly what plants need.

“This reduces nitrate runoff into waterways and greenhouse gas emissions,” Braun explained. CIMMYT and its partners are also breeding wheat lines that are better at taking up and using fertilizer.

“Wheat in developing countries currently uses only 30 percent of the fertilizer applied,” he said. “There are promising options to double that rate, but developing and deploying them require significant investments.”

“I’m very optimistic that we can produce 60 to 70 percent more wheat to meet demand – society is beginning to recognize that food production is one of humanity’s biggest challenges – today and in the future,” Braun summarized.

“We have or can develop the technologies needed, but politicians must recognize that investment in agriculture is not a problem, it’s a solution – the longer we wait the bigger the potential problems and challenges we face.”

Braun continued, “We also need policymakers to reach agreement that global climate change is a big problem that absolutely must be addressed so that we can gain access to sufficient resources and more fully develop appropriate technologies.”

Scale-appropriate mechanization: the intercontinental connection

Written by on October 26, 2014. Posted in Features.

CIMMYT aims to improve the livelihoods of poor farmers in the developing world by providing practical solutions for more efficient and sustainable farming. Among the options to improve efficiency, scale-appropriate and precise planting machinery is a crucial yet rarely satisfied need.

Mechanization efforts are ongoing across CIMMYT’s projects, with a strong focus on capacity building of functional small- and medium-scale engineering and manufacturing enterprises. Projects involved include ‘Farm Power and Conservation Agriculture for Sustainable Intensification’ in eastern and southern Africa, funded by the Australian Center for International AgriculturalResearch (ACIAR) and the Cereal Systems Initiative in South Asia (CSISA), funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID. CSISA collaborates closely with the machinery research and development work done on the farms of the Borlaug Institute for South Asia in India, CIMMYT conservation agriculture (CA) projects funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, the Agri-Machinery Program based in Yinchuan, Ningxia, China, and the MasAgro Take It to the Farmer machinery and intelligent mechanization unit based in Mexico.

Applied research scientists and technicians assisting these projects work specifically to tackle problems in diverse farming conditions and for varying production systems. Despite their geographically diverse target areas, this team strives to reach a common focal point from which they can learn and compare technical advancements. These advancements are achieved through mutual machine technology testing programs, exchanging machines and expertise and evaluations of best solutions for scale-appropriate mechanization to boost sustainable intensification for resource poor farmers.

Recently, this collaboration model led to the export of several units of a toolbar-based, two-wheel tractor implement for bed shaping, direct seeding of different crops and precise fertilizer application. They will be tested by CIMMYT projects in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Nepal. This multi-purpose, multi-crop equipment was developed to be CA-compatible and has been fine-tuned in Mexico, with design priorities that kept in mind the implement’s usefulness for smallholder farmers in other parts of the world. The machinery will be tested next in Zimbabwe and possibly India and Pakistan.

The team’s goal is to help developing countries and viable business models of local enterprises in specific regions to have access to good quality implements and tools at reasonable prices. This open-source prototyping strategy is based on the free sharing of technical designs and machinery construction plans. The strategy combines patent-free, lowcost replication blueprints of promising technologies with strong agronomical testing as the ultimate ‘make or break’ criterion. This crucial interaction sets CIMMYT’s engineering platforms apart from commercial options that determine research and development priorities based mainly on sales projections and marketing objectives.

The mechanization team strongly believes in the power of cross regional collaboration – a multidisciplinary work environment, connected intercontinentally with social stewardship and the potential to bring transformative changes to farmers’ fields across the developing world.