CIMMYT scientists are using biodiversity, testing forgotten wheat varieties from across the world, to find those with heat- and drought-tolerant traits. The aim is to outpace human-made global heating and breed climate-resilient varieties so yields do not collapse, as worst-case scenarios predict.
Reporter Nina Lakhanivisited CIMMYT’s experimental station in Ciudad Obregon, in Mexico’s Sonora state, and witnessed CIMMYT’s unique role in fighting climate change through the development of resilient varieties as “international public goods”.
Written by Bea Ciordia on . Posted in Uncategorized.
The Mining Useful Alleles for Climate Change Adaptation from CGIAR Genebanks project, led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), is expanding the use of biodiversity held in the world’s genebanks to develop new climate-smart crop varieties for millions of small-scale farmers worldwide. It aims to identify plant accessions in genebanks that contain alleles, or gene variations, responsible for characteristics such as heat, drought or salt tolerance, and to facilitate their use in breeding climate-resilient crop varieties.
Through this project, breeders will learn how to use genebank materials more effectively and efficiently to develop climate-smart versions of important food crops, including cassava, maize, sorghum cowpea, and rice.
Building on 10 years of support to CIMMYT from the Mexican government, CGIAR Trust Fund contributors, and the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Mining Useful Alleles for Climate Change Adaptation from CGIAR Genebanks project combines the use of cutting-edge technologies and approaches, high-performance computing, GIS mapping, and new plant breeding methods to identify and use accessions with high value for climate-adaptive breeding of varieties needed by farmers and consumers.
Support faster and more cost-effective discovery and deployment of climate -adaptive alleles from the world’s germplasm collections
Test integrated approaches for five major crops (i.e., cassava, maize, sorghum, cowpea, and rice), providing a scalable model for the rapid and cost-effective discovery and deployment of climate-adaptive alleles.
A recent portrait of Rosalind Morris. (Photo: Courtesy)
Rosalind Morris, a celebrated wheat cytogeneticist and professor, peacefully passed away on March 26, 2022, just a few weeks shy of her 102nd birthday. Morris fought a long battle with cancer in her 90s and, most recently, an infection of COVID-19, which proved fatal to her health.
According to her wishes, there was no funeral or memorial service. Morris’s body was cremated, and her ashes deposited in her family’s plot in Ontario, Canada.
Born in Ruthin, United Kingdom, in 1920 to schoolteacher parents, Morris pursued studies in agricultural sciences at the University of Guelph and earned a bachelor’s degree in horticulture. Morris would later earn a Ph.D. from Cornell University’s department of plant breeding, becoming one of the first two women to accomplish this feat, along with Leona Schnell.
Morris dedicated her life and career to understanding and developing wheat genes.
A pioneer in agricultural science and one of the first women scientists of her time, Morris dedicated her life and career to understanding and developing wheat genes. Her contributions include the development of wheat genetic stocks, or wheat populations generated for genetic studies, with far-reaching impact globally in explaining wheat genetics. The work of Morris provided a premier resource base for the emerging field of functional genomics, which explores how DNA is translated into complex information in a cell.
During World War II, Morris’s deep concern over the effects of atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki led her to study and experiment with the effects of X-rays and thermal neutrons on crop plants. In 1979, Morris became the first woman honored as a fellow of the American Society of Agronomy.
While being an acclaimed scientist internationally, Morris was also known for her passion for teaching. In the same year Morris earned her doctoral degree from Cornell University, she was hired as the first female faculty member in the agronomy department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) in 1947. This career would last 43 years: first as an assistant professor in 1947, becoming a professor in 1958 and remaining in that role until 1990, when she gained the title of emeritus professor of plant cytogenetics.
Morris was a trailblazer for women in agronomy during a point in history when few women were given the opportunity to pursue a career in the sciences. Morris is remembered by her peers not only for her lifelong contribution to agricultural sciences but also her immense kindness and patience.
“We’ll never get back all the diversity we had before, but the diversity we need is out there,” says Matthew Reynolds, head of wheat physiology at CIMMYT.
As climate breakdown and worldwide conflict continue to place the food system at risk, seed banks from the Arctic to Lebanon try to safeguard biodiversity.
Shelves filled with maize seed samples make up the maize active collection at the germplasm bank at CIMMYT’s global headquarters in Texcoco, Mexico. It contains around 28,000 unique samples of maize seed — including more than 24,000 farmer landraces — and related species. (Photo: Xochiquetzal Fonseca/CIMMYT)
A new $25.7 million project, led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), a Research Center part of CGIAR, the world’s largest public sector agriculture research partnership, is expanding the use of biodiversity held in the world’s genebanks to develop new climate-smart crop varieties for millions of small-scale farmers worldwide.
As climate change accelerates, agriculture will be increasingly affected by high temperatures, erratic rainfall, drought, flooding and sea-level rise. Looking to the trove of genetic material in genebanks, scientists believe they can enhance the resilience of food production by incorporating this diversity into new crop varieties — overcoming many of the barriers to fighting malnutrition and hunger around the world.
“Better crops can help small-scale farmers produce more food despite the challenges of climate change. Drought-resistant staple crops, such as maize and wheat, that ensure food amid water scarcity, and faster-growing, early-maturing varieties that produce good harvests in erratic growing seasons can make a world of difference for those who depend on agriculture. This is the potential for climate-adaptive breeding that lies untapped in CGIAR’s genebanks,” said Claudia Sadoff, Managing Director, Research Delivery and Impact, and Executive Management Team Convener, CGIAR.
Over five years, the project, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, aims to identify plant accessions in genebanks that contain alleles, or gene variations, responsible for characteristics such as heat, drought or salt tolerance, and to facilitate their use in breeding climate-resilient crop varieties. Entitled Mining useful alleles for climate change adaptation from CGIAR genebanks, the project will enable breeders to more effectively and efficiently use genebank materials to develop climate-smart versions of important food crops, including cassava, maize, sorghum, cowpea and rice.
Wild rice. (Photo: IRRI)
The project is a key component of a broader initiative focused on increasing the value and use of CGIAR genebanks for climate resilience. It is one of a series of Innovation Sprints coordinated by the Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate (AIM4C) initiative, which is led by the United Arab Emirates and the United States.
“Breeding new resilient crop varieties quickly, economically and with greater precision will be critical to ensure small-scale farmers can adapt to climate change,” said Enock Chikava, interim Director of Agricultural Development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “This initiative will contribute to a more promising and sustainable future for the hundreds of millions of Africans who depend on farming to support their families.”
Over the past 40 years, CGIAR Centers have built up the largest and most frequently accessed network of genebanks in the world. The network conserves and makes nearly three-quarters of a million crop accessions available to scientists and governments. CGIAR genebanks hold around 10% of the world’s plant germplasm in trust for humanity, but account for about 94% of the germplasm distributed under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, which ensures crop breeders globally have access to the fundamental building blocks of new varieties.
“This research to develop climate-smart crop varieties, when scaled, is key to ensuring that those hardest hit by climate shocks have access to affordable staple foods,” said Jeffrey Rosichan, Director of the Crops of the Future Collaborative of the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR). “Further, this initiative benefits US and world agriculture by increasing genetic diversity and providing tools for growers to more rapidly adapt to climate change.”
“We will implement, for the first time, a scalable strategy to identify valuable variations hidden in our genebanks, and through breeding, deploy these to farmers who urgently need solutions to address the threat of climate change,” said Sarah Hearne, CIMMYT principal scientist and leader of the project.
Building on ten years of support to CIMMYT from the Mexican government, CGIAR Trust Fund contributors and the United Kingdom’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the project combines the use of cutting-edge technologies and approaches, high-performance computing, GIS mapping, and new plant breeding methods, to identify and use accessions with high value for climate-adaptive breeding of varieties needed by farmers and consumers.
INTERVIEW OPPORTUNITIES:
Sarah Hearne – Principal Scientist, International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)
FOR MORE INFORMATION, OR TO ARRANGE INTERVIEWS, CONTACT THE MEDIA TEAM:
Marcia MacNeil, Head of Communications, CIMMYT. m.macneil@cgiar.org, +52 5558042004 ext. 2070.
The findings, published in Nature Food, extend many potential benefits to national breeding programs, including improved wheat varieties better equipped to thrive in changing environmental conditions. This research was led by Sukhwinder Singh of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) as part of the Seeds of Discovery project.
Since the advent of modern crop improvement practices, there has been a bottleneck of genetic diversity, because many national wheat breeding programs use the same varieties in their crossing program as their “elite” source. This practice decreases genetic diversity, putting more areas of wheat at risk to pathogens and environmental stressors, now being exacerbated by a changing climate. As the global population grows, shocks to the world’s wheat supply result in more widespread dire consequences.
The research team hypothesized that many wheat accessions in genebanks — groups of related plant material from a single species collected at one time from a specific location — feature useful traits for national breeding programs to employ in their efforts to diversify their breeding programs.
“Genebanks hold many diverse accessions of wheat landraces and wild species with beneficial traits, but until recently the entire scope of diversity has never been explored and thousands of accessions have been sitting on the shelves. Our research targets beneficial traits in these varieties through genome mapping and then we can deliver them to breeding programs around the world,” Singh said.
Currently adopted approaches to introduce external beneficial genes into breeding programs’ elite cultivars take a substantial amount of time and money. “Breeding wheat from a national perspective is a race against pathogens and other abiotic threats,” said Deepmala Sehgal, co-author and wheat geneticist in the Global Wheat program at CIMMYT. “Any decrease in the time to test and release a variety has a huge positive impact on breeding programs.”
Deepmala Sehgal shows LTP lines currently being used in CIMMYT trait pipelines at the experimental station in Toluca, Mexico, for introgression of novel exotic-specific alleles into newly developed lines. (Photo: CIMMYT)
Taking into genetic biodiversity
The findings build from research undertaken through the Seeds of Discovery project, which genetically characterized nearly 80,000 samples of wheat from the seed banks of CIMMYT and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA).
First, the team undertook a large meta-survey of genetic resources from wild wheat varieties held in genebanks to create a catalog of improved traits.
“Our genetic mapping,” Singh said, “identifies beneficial traits so breeding programs don’t have to go looking through the proverbial needle in the haystack. Because of the collaborative effort of the research team, we could examine a far greater number of genomes than a single breeding program could.”
Next, the team developed a strategic three-way crossing method among 366 genebank accessions and the best historical elite varieties to reduce the time between the original introduction and deployment of an improved variety.
Sukhwinder Singh (second from left) selects best performing pre-breeding lines in India. (Photo: CIMMYT)
Worldwide impact
National breeding programs can use the diverse array of germplasm for making new crosses or can evaluate the germplasm in yield trials in their own environments.
The diverse new germplasm is being tested in major wheat producing areas, including India, Kenya, Mexico and Pakistan. In Mexico, many of the lines showed increased resistance to abiotic stresses; many lines tested in Pakistan exhibited increased disease resistance; and in India, many tested lines are now part of the national cultivar release system. Overall, national breeding programs have adopted 95 lines for their targeted breeding programs and seven lines are currently undergoing varietal trials.
“This is the first effort of its kind where large-scale pre-breeding efforts have not only enhanced the understanding of exotic genome footprints in bread wheat but also provided practical solutions to breeders,” Sehgal said. “This work has also delivered pre-breeding lines to trait pipelines within national breeding programs.”
Currently, many of these lines are being used in trait pipelines at CIMMYT to introduce these novel genomic regions into advanced elite lines. Researchers are collaborating with physiologists in CIMMYT’s global wheat program to dissect any underlying physiological mechanisms associated with the research team’s findings.
“Our investigation is a major leap forward in bringing genebank variation to the national breeding programs,” Singh explained. “Most significantly, this study sheds light on the importance of international collaborations to bring out successful products and new methods and knowledge to identify useful contributions of exotic in elite lines.”
Cover photo: A researcher holds a plant of Aegilops neglecta, a wild wheat relative. Approximately every 20 years, CIMMYT regenerates wheat wild relatives in greenhouses, to have enough healthy and viable seed for distribution when necessary. (Photo: Rocío Quiroz/CIMMYT)
Seeds are a cornerstone of food security. That is why the maize and wheat genebanks have always been at the heart of the work of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).
Earlier this year, as the CIMMYT community wished farewell to Denise Costich, Terence (Terry) Molnar stepped into her shoes and took over the management of the world’s largest and most diverse collection of maize.
Molnar calls himself a curator, but unlike his counterparts at libraries and museums, his job is not only about registering and showcasing the 28,000 unique seed collections of maize. He and his team make sure that the rich maize biodiversity collected throughout time and geographies stays alive, viable and accessible to others.
We sat down with Molnar to learn more about his unique role and what we can do to celebrate biodiversity on the International Day for Biological Diversity — and every other day.
Germplasm banks around the world are protectors of genetic diversity, altogether preserving roughly 700,000 samples of wheat varieties from fields far and wide. Thomas (Tom) Payne, the head of CIMMYTs Wheat Germplasm Collection, or genebank, manages the Mexico-based collection of nearly 150,000 accessions from over 100 countries. He has been affiliated with CIMMYT since 1988, and has dedicated his career to wheat improvement and conservation, working in Ethiopia, Mexico, Syria, Turkey and Zimbabwe. In addition to managing the genebank, he is the chair of the CGIAR Genebank Managers Group, has served as secretary to the CIMMYT Board of Trustees, manages the CIMMYT International Wheat Improvement Network and was awarded the Frank N. Meyer Medal for Plant Genetic Resources in 2019.
In advance of his retirement in July 2021, CIMMYT senior scientist Carolina Saint Pierre sat down with Tom Payne over Zoom to ask him a few questions from the wheat breeding team about his lifetime of experience in wheat biodiversity conservation.
What is your favorite Triticum species?
Triticum aestivum, bread wheat, is my favorite. Bread wheat feeds around 2.7 billion people worldwide. In fact, more food products are made from wheat than from any other cereal. An interesting detail about Triticum aestivum, however, is that it’s a hexaploid, meaning that it is a distinct species formed from three separate species. The inherent genetic diversity resulting from its three ancestral species and its ability to naturally incorporate genetic diversity from other species gives breeders a broad palette of genetic diversity to work with for current and future needs.
How can genebank managers of vital food crops add diversity to existing collections?
Some of the thousands of samples that make up the wheat active collection in the Wellhausen-Anderson Plant Genetic Resources Center at CIMMYT’s global headquarters in Texcoco, Mexico. (Photo: X. Fonseca/CIMMYT)
There are many vital genebanks, with community, national, regional, and international affiliations. Harmonization of these efforts into a global conservation network is needed. In wheat, for example, we do not adequately understand the diversity of the crop’s wild relatives. A recent study from Kansas State University observed that two thirds of the accessions of Aegilops tauschii held by several key collections were duplicates. This is an alarm to the global wheat community. The ex-situ collection of a critical species is less representative and more vulnerable than the sheer number of accessions would imply. We need to conduct a thorough characterization of all crop wild relatives to assess the risks to diversity, and a gap analysis of newly collected materials to ensure that their long-term conservation adds unique diversity to existing collections.
Which of the Triticum species that you store in the CIMMYT wheat genebank should, in your opinion, be explored much more?
Species that can readily cross with cultivated wheat, both bread wheat and durum wheat, should have intensified conservation and characterization efforts. Examples of these include Triticum monococcum subspecies monococcum (Einkorn) and Triticum turgidum subspecies dicoccon (Emmer).
What were the most surprising results from the genetic diversity analyses of nearly 80,000 wheat accessions from the CIMMYT genebank?
Modern, molecular genetic tools confirmed, for the most part, the centuries-old Linnaean taxonomic classification of Triticum and Aegilops species. There are generally two broad schools of taxonomists, “lumpers” and “splitters.” The former groups species based on a few common characteristics, and the latter defines multiple taxa based on many traits. The Seeds of Discovery work, in partnership with Michiel van Slageren from Kew Gardens, is confirming the salient taxonomy of the Triticum genus. Van Slageren previously studied and published a taxonomic monograph on the wheat ancestral Aegilops genus.
How can a genebank managers help in pre-breeding?
Maintaining native genetic diversity for use in the future is an important role that genebank managers play in pre-breeding and applied breeding processes. Furthermore, the identification of rare and odd variation plays an important role in understanding trait expression. Genebank managers are now gaining a stronger understanding of the genetic representativeness of their collections, and they can identify where gaps in the conserved genetic diversity may exist. A better understanding of the collections will enable their sustainable conservation and use.
Tom Payne at the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway, for the official opening ceremony in 2008. He holds one of the sealed boxes used to store the nearly 50,000 unique maize and wheat seed collections deposited by CIMMYT. (Photo: Thomas Lumpkin/CIMMYT)
What would you consider the biggest challenge when striving for genetic diversity in breeding wheat for the future?
CIMMYT and other CGIAR Centers are rightfully proud of their stewardship of global public goods, and the free access to and distribution of germplasm and information. Yet outside of the CGIAR, the two-way sharing of germplasm and knowledge is often still not realized by many crop communities. International agreements have attempted to bridge recognition of intellectual property rights with guaranteed access and benefit-sharing mechanisms. However, the playing field remains uneven between public and private organizations due to varied levels of investment and exclusivity, access to technology and information, and marketability.
What is one way we can ensure long-term conservation of staple crops around the world?
In the past few years, several internationally renowned germplasm collections have been destroyed due to civil conflicts, natural disasters and fires — for example in Aleppo, Cape Town and Sao Paulo. Each time, we hear what a shame it was that the destroyed heritage was lost, that it was irreplaceable and beyond value. When a genebank loses an accession, the ancestral lineage extending hundreds of generations becomes permanently extinct. Genebank managers recognize this threat, and hence duplicate samples of all accessions are now slowly being sent to the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard for long-term preservation.
Cover photo: Tom Payne, Wheat Germplasm Collections & International Wheat Improvement Network Manager. (Photo: X. Fonseca/CIMMYT)
Maize ears of the newly released set of CIMMYT maize lines. (Photo: CIMMYT)
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is pleased to announce the release of a set of 12 new CIMMYT maize lines (CMLs). These lines were developed at various breeding locations of CIMMYT’s Global Maize program by a multi-disciplinary team of scientists in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. The lines are adapted to the tropical maize production environments targeted by CIMMYT and partner institutions.
CIMMYT seeks to develop improved maize inbred lines in different product profiles, with superior performance and multiple stress tolerance to improve maize productivity for smallholder farmers. CMLs are released after intensive evaluation in hybrid combinations under various abiotic and biotic stresses, besides optimum conditions. Suitability as either seed or pollen parent is also thoroughly evaluated.
To increase the utilization of the CMLs in maize breeding programs of partner institutions, all the new CMLs have been tested for their heterotic behavior and have been assigned to specific heterotic groups of CIMMYT: A and B. As a new practice, the heterotic group assignment is included in the name of each CML, after the CML number — for example, CML604A or CML605B.
Release of a CML does not guarantee high combining ability or per se performance in all environments. Rather, it indicates that the line is promising or useful as a parent for pedigree breeding or as a potential parent of hybrid combinations for specific mega-environments. The description of the lines includes heterotic group classification, along with information on their specific strengths, and their combining ability with some of the widely used CMLs or CIMMYT lines.
Plants of the newly released set of CIMMYT maize lines. (Photo: CIMMYT)
For further details regarding the released CMLs, please contact B.M. Prasanna, Director of the Global Maize Program, CIMMYT, and the CGIAR Research Program on Maize.
Seed viability test at the CIMMYT genebank. (Photo: Alfonso Cortés/CIMMYT)
The conservation of plant genetic diversity through germplasm conservation is a key component of global climate-change adaptation efforts. Germplasm banks like the maize and wheat collections at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) may hold the genetic resources needed for the climate-adaptive crops of today and tomorrow.
But how do we ensure that these important backups are themselves healthy and not potential vectors of pest and disease transmission?
“Germplasm refers to the source plants of either specific cultivars or of unique genes or traits that can be used by breeders for improved cultivars,” program moderator and head of the Health and Quarantine Unit at the International Potato Center (CIP) Jan Kreuze explained to the event’s 622 participants. “If the source plant is not healthy, whatever you multiply or use it for will be unhealthy.”
According to keynote speaker Saafa Kumari, head of the Germplasm Health Unit at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), we know of 1.3 thousand pests and pathogens that infect crops, causing approximately $530 billion in damages annually. The most damaging among these tend to be those that are introduced into new environments.
Closing the gap, strengthening the safety net
The CGIAR has an enormous leadership role to play in this area. According to Kumari, approximately 85% of international germplasm distribution is from CGIAR programs. Indeed, in the context of important gaps in the international regulation and standards for germplasm health specifically, the practices and standards of CGIAR’s Germplasm Health Units represent an important starting point.
“Germplasm health approaches are not necessarily the same as seed and plant health approaches generally,” said Ravi Khaterpal, executive secretary for the Asia-Pacific Association of Agricultural Research Institutions (APAARI). “Best practices are needed, such as CGIAR’s GreenPass.”
In addition to stronger and more coherent international coordination and regulation, more research is needed to help source countries test genetic material before it is distributed, according to Francois Petter, assistant director for the European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization (EPPO). Head of the CGIAR Genebank Platform Charlotte Lusty also pointed out the needed for better monitoring of accessions in storage. “We need efficient, speedy processes to ensure collections remain healthy,” she said.
Of course, any regulatory and technological strategy must remain sensitive to existing and varied social and gender relations. We must account for cultural processes linked to germplasm movement, said Vivian Polar, Gender and Innovation Senior Specialist with the CGIAR Research Program on Roots, Tubers and Bananas (RTB). Germplasm moves through people, she said, adding that on the ground “women and men move material via different mechanisms.”
“The cultural practices associated with seed have to be understood in depth in order to inform policies and address gender- and culture-related barriers” to strengthening germplasm health, Polar said.
The event was co-organized by researchers at CIP and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA).
The overall webinar series is hosted by CIMMYT, CIP, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), IITA, and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). It is sponsored by the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition (A4NH), the CGIAR Gender Platform and the CGIAR Research Program on Roots, Tubers and Bananas (RTB).
The third of the four webinars on plant health, which will be hosted by CIMMYT, is scheduled for March 10 and will focus on integrated pest and disease management.
Denise E. Costich, the recently retired head of the Maize Collection at the Germplasm Bank of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), sometimes likes to include a Woody Allen quote in her presentations.
“I have no idea what I’m doing,” declares the text over a photo of a befuddled-looking Allen. “But incompetence never stopped me from plunging in with enthusiasm.”
This is perhaps Costich’s tongue-in-cheek way of acknowledging the unusual trajectory that led her to the Germplasm Bank and her zeal for new and interesting challenges. But it is in no way an accurate reflection of the skill, knowledge and humane managerial style she brought to the job.
“CIMMYT requires individuals with a broad set of experiences,” says Tom Payne, head of the Wheat Collection at CIMMYT’s Germplasm Bank. Though she was not trained as a crop scientist, and despite having never worked in a genebank before, Costich’s rich set of professional and life experiences made her an ideal person for the job.
From Ithaca and back again
Born and raised in Westbury, NY, Costich spent much of her childhood on a tree nursery. Her grandfather was the manager, her father became the sales director and eventually her sister also went into the horticulture business. While her experiences on the nursery contributed to an early interest in plants and ecology, the business aspect of the nursery eluded her. “I just can’t sell things. I’m terrible,” Costich says. “But I really do like to study them.”
This studiousness took her to Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, where she initially declared as a wildlife biology major. Her notion of what it meant to “study things” was influenced by her early heroes, primatologists and field biologists Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall. It involved travel. Fieldwork in faraway places. So, when the opportunity arose at the end of her sophomore year to travel to Kenya with Friends World College, Costich didn’t hesitate.
Costich eventually spent four years in Kenya, studying baboons. When she finally returned to Ithaca, she knew two things. Fieldwork was absolutely her thing, and she wanted to pursue a doctorate.
A chance conversation with her housemates in her last semester led to a post-graduation fieldwork stint in the Brazilian Amazon under the supervision of the legendary tropical and conservation biologist, Thomas Lovejoy. But instead of a dissertation topic, she stumbled across a parasite, a case of leishmaniasis and the realization that the rainforest was not the work environment for her.
Unexpected influences and outcomes continued to mark Costich’s career throughout her graduate studies at the University of Iowa. She found her plant not in the field, but while reading a dusty review paper as an exchange student at the University of Wisconsin. Her study of Ecballium elaterium (a wild species in the Cucurbitaceae, or squash, family) did not take her back to the tropics — where most of her peers were working and where she expected to be headed as a grad student — but rather to Spain where, incidentally, she first learned Spanish.
Several years after defending, Costich landed a tenure-track position in the Biology Department at The College of New Jersey. She continued to publish on Ecballium elaterium. Her career appeared to be settling into a predictable, recognizable academic trajectory — one with no obvious intersection with CIMMYT.
Then Costich saw an ad in the Ecological Society of America bulletin for a managing editor position for all of the Society’s journals. Her husband, a fellow biology Ph.D., had been working as an academic journal editor for several years. When Costich saw the ad she immediately drove over to her husband’s office. “I slapped the thing on his desk and said, ‘Here’s your job!’” she recalls.
Costich was right. Soon after, she was on her way back to Ithaca — where the Society’s offices were located — with a family that now included three children. While it was the right move for her family, it came at the cost of her budding academic career. In Ithaca, she soon found herself stuck in the role of itinerant postdoc.
Denise Costich in Spain in 1986, doing fieldwork on Ecballium elaterium with her daughter Mara.
An amazing turn of events
Costich admits that, especially the beginning, the return to Ithaca was tough, even depressing. Her recollections of these years can sound a bit like a game of musical chairs played with research laboratories. As one post-doc or research project wound down, she’d find herself scanning the campus for her next perch. She became very adept at it. “In ten years, I never missed a paycheck,” Costich says.
The turn of the millennium found Costich scanning the horizon yet again. As the days wound down at her latest post, a maize geneticist moved into the lab next door. What started as hallway jokes about Costich jumping ship and joining the maize lab soon turned into an interview, then a job offer.
The job introduced her to nearly everyone at Cornell working in maize genetics. Costich soon found herself managing the Buckler Lab’s work on maize population genetics. Meanwhile, she dabbled in side projects on Tripsacum, a perennial grass genus that is closely related to maize, and managed a major project on switchgrass. At the end of her postdoc, Buckler set to work trying to create a permanent position for her. Once again, Costich’s trajectory was beginning to take a stable, predictable form.
Then CIMMYT scientist Sarah Hearne showed up. “I’d heard through the grapevine — or maybe through the corn field — that the position of manager of the Maize Collection of CIMMYT’s Germplasm Bank was open… and that they were having a hard time trying to find a person for the position,” Costich recalls. She had met Hearne previously and personally knew and had worked with Suketoshi Taba, the pioneering longtime director of the germplasm bank. Naturally the topic emerged as she and Hearne caught up in Ithaca.
Hearne admitted that the search hadn’t yet been successful. “But I know the perfect person for the job,” she added.
“Yeah, who’s that?” Costich asked, not getting the setup.
Denise Costich, the maize collection manager at CIMMYT’s Maize and Wheat Germplasm Bank, shows one of the genebank’s more than 28,000 accessions of maize. (Photo: Luis Salazar/Crop Trust)
A stranger in a strangely familiar land
Costich was not a little surprised by the suggestion. She had never worked at a germplasm bank before. She was finally finding some stability at Cornell.
At the same time, her early dreams of exploring new places through her work, especially the tropics, beckoned. Her youngest son was nearly college-aged. Against the advice of some who had watched her work so hard to establish herself at Cornell, she took the plunge.
By the time she reached the CIMMYT campus in Texcoco, Costich had crisscrossed a good part of the globe, picking up Spanish here, management skills there, a deep knowledge of maize and its biological and cultural evolution yonder. During this life journey, she developed a deep humanism that is all her own.
It all seemed like happenstance, perhaps, until she reached Mexico and — suddenly, counterintuitively — found herself in the field she was perfectly adapted for. “It turned out that being a germplasm bank manager was the perfect job for me, and I didn’t even know it!” Costich says. “I ended up using everything I learned in my entire career.”
That isn’t to say that it was easy, especially at first. Taba, her predecessor, had occupied the post for decades, was a trained crop scientist, and had grown the bank from a regionally-focused collection with 12,000 accessions to the preeminent maize germplasm bank globally with 28,000 accessions, a state-of-the-art storage facility, and a slew of pioneering practices.
Not only had Taba left enormous shoes to fill, during his tenure — as is common in the expansionary phase of many projects — it had been difficult for the bank to keep a full accounting and understanding of all the new material that had been added. According to germplasm bank coordinator Cristian Zavala, by the time Costich joined CIMMYT “we knew very little about the material in our vaults.”
“Taba was primarily a breeder,” Costich says. “I actually think this oscillation between a focus on breeding and a focus on conservation and curation is good for the bank.”
Visiting a newly-built community seed reserve in Chanchimil, Todos Santos Cuchumatanes, Huehuetenango, Guatemala, in 2016. From left to right: Mario Fuentes (collaborator), a member of the community seed reserve staff, Denise Costich, Carolina Camacho (CIMMYT), Miriam Yaneth Ramos (Buena Milpa) and Esvin López (local collaborator).
Visiting one of the oldest community seed reserves in the region, Quilinco, Huehuetenango, Guatemala, in 2016. From left to right: Pedro Bello (UC Davis), Esvin López (local collaborator), Denise Costich, José Luis Galicia (Buena Milpa), Ariel Rivers (CIMMYT) and Miriam Yaneth Ramos (Buena Milpa).
Costich with the winners of the Second Harvest Fair and Largest Mature Ear of Jala Maize Contest in Coapa, in Mexico’s Nayarit state.
Costich (left) measures ears of corn for the Second Harvest Fair and Largest Mature Ear of Jala Maize Contest in Coapa, in Mexico’s Nayarit state in 2019.
Costich (center) shares some comments from the stage at the Second Harvest Fair and Largest Mature Ear of Jala Maize Contest in Coapa, in Mexico’s Nayarit state. To her left is Angel Perez, a participating farmer from La Cofradía, and to her right, Rafael Mier, Director of the Fundación Tortillas de Maíz Mexicana.
A bank for farmers
However, according to Zavala, because of the limited knowledge of much material they were working with, many in the bank’s rank-and-file didn’t fully understand the importance of their work. Morale was mixed. Moreover, despite an assumption that her new job would see her working closely with local smallholders, Costich found that the institution was poorly known by everyday farmers in its host country. Where it was known, associate scientist on innovation and social inclusion, Carolina Camacho, notes, there was an assumption that CIMMYT only worked with hybrid varieties of maize and not the native landraces many smallholders in Mexico depend on.
These became the principal axes of Costich’s work at the bank: curation of backlogged material, staff development, and community outreach.
Thus, when Costich realized that records were being kept in a combination of paper and rudimentary digital formats, she sent Zavala, a promising young research assistant at the time, to an internship at the USDA’s Maize Germplasm Bank Collection in Ames, Iowa, to workshops at CGIAR germplasm banks in Colombia (CIAT) and Ethiopia (ILRI), and to meetings on specialized topics in Germany and Portugal.
Zavala had never left the country before, spoke little English, and remembers being “rebellious” at work. “I needed more responsibility,” he says. “Dr. Denise saw that and helped me grow.” Upon returning from an early trip, Zavala helped implement up-to-date traceability and data management processes, including migrating the genebank’s data onto the USDA’s GRIN-Global platform.
But as Payne points out, Costich’s tenure was never about simple bean — or, in this case, grain — counting. “She sees a more human aspect of the importance of the collections,” he says. The main tasks she set for the bank came to be subsumed into the overarching goal of a fuller understanding of the contents of the bank’s vaults, one that encompassed both their biological and sociocultural importance.
When Costich came across a collection of maize landraces from Morelos state assembled by Ángel Kato in the mid 1960s that conserved the name of the farmer who had donated each sample, she worked with Camacho and graduate student Denisse McLean-Rodriguez to design a study involving the donor families and their communities. McLean-Rodriguez, Camacho and Costich set out to compare the effects of ex-situ versus in-situ landrace conservation in both genetic and socioeconomic terms.
Similarly, when a colleague at INIFAP invited Costich to be a judge at a yearly contest for largest ear of Jala landrace maize in Mexico’s Nayarit state, they soon began discussing how they could contribute more than just their participation as judges to the community. Starting in 2016 Costich was a co-lead on a study of the landrace’s genetic diversity as well as an initiative to rematriate Jala seeds conserved at CIMMYT for over 60 years.
Costich and members of the Maize Collection team hosting Pedro Bello from UC Davis (center, glasses) at the CIMMYT Germplasm Bank in Texcoco, Mexico, for a workshop on seed longevity and conservation techniques.
A genebank is not an island
Genebanks are bulwarks against genetic erosion. But, as Camacho explains, this mission can be understood in both very narrow and very broad senses. The narrow sense focuses on genetic processes per se: the loss of alleles. The broad sense includes the loss of cultural practices and knowledge built and sustained around the cultivation of a given landrace. Through the initiatives the bank has undertaken during her tenure, Costich has tried to demonstrate, both scientifically and in practice, how germplasm collections such as CIMMYT’s can complement, reinforce, and be enriched by the work of smallholders — de facto germplasm conservators in their own right — while contributing to the difficult task of combating genetic erosion in the broad sense.
One gets the sense that in Costich’s view this isn’t about a one-way process of big institutions “helping” smallholders. Rather it’s about collaboration among all the participants in an interdependent web of conservation. As she argued at her recent exit seminar, Costich views germplasm banks as one link in a chain of food security backups that begins at the farm level.
Indeed, Costich’s most recent initiative demonstrated how innovations intended for one link in the chain can travel upwards and find applications at bigger institutions.
Costich recently led an initiative with community seed banks in the Cuchumatanes mountain range of Guatemala to study the use of DryChain technology in post-harvest storage of maize. This experiment showed the enormous benefits that incorporating such technologies could yield for energy-insecure or low-tech family and community seed reserves.
Ultimately, however, the study led to a second experiment at CIMMYT’s tropical-climate station at Agua Fría in Mexico. With advice from collaborators at UC Davis and an industry partner (Dry Chain America), the seed conditioning team retrofitted an old drying cabinet at the station to dry maize without using heat, but rather by forcing air to circulate through sacks of drying beads. Under the direction of Filippo Guzzon, a postdoc and seed biologist working with Costich, the long-term viability of seeds dried using the accelerated technique versus traditional, slower techniques was tested. The study showed no loss in long-term viability using the accelerated drying technique.
Denise Costich, CIMMYT director general Martin Kropff, and the Maize Collection team confer certificates of participation to two visiting interns, Jiang Li (to the left of Kropff), a doctoral student from CAAS, Beijing, China, and Afeez Saka Opeyemi (to the right of Costich), a staff member of the IITA Germplasm Bank in Nigeria.
Costich and the Maize Collection team at the 2018 CIMMYT Christmas party. Filippo Guzzon, seated to the right of Costich, had just been offered a postdoc with the team.
Costich and the Maize Collection team at the 2018 CIMMYT Christmas party.
A very busy retirement
At her exit seminar, Costich was presented a plaque in appreciation of her service at CIMMYT by Kevin Pixley, director of the genetic resources program. Terence Molnar, maize breeder with the Genetic Resources Team, has succeeded Costich as the Maize Germplasm Bank Head.
For some of her close colleagues, however, Costich’s departure is not the end of the road. “This is not a forever goodbye,” Guzzon says. “I will continue to be in touch with my cuatita,” says Camacho, who has also left CIMMYT.
For her part, Costich echoes that this is not a forever goodbye at all. Not to her friends and colleagues, and certainly not to her work. At a socially-distanced, maize-based farewell lunch Costich held just days before her departure, she was still busy weaving social connections and furthering collaborations among maize fanatics of all stripes — from chefs and designers to scientists and policy advocates.
She is already considering taking a part time position at her old lab at Cornell and a return to Tripsacum research. At the same time, she will be a visiting scientist at Mexico’s National Center for Genetic Resources (CNRG), where officially she will be heading up part of an international switchgrass study. Costich is hoping to leverage her tenure at CIMMYT by getting involved in a push to help improve the Mexican national system for plant genetic resources. Additionally, she has recently accepted an invitation from Seed Savers Exchange to join their board and she is looking forward to volunteering her time and expertise to various seed-saving initiatives within that organization and their many collaborators.
Asked what she’s looking forward to tackling in her retirement that isn’t work related, Costich betrays her deep allegiance to the plant world. “I don’t know,” she says, “I’m thinking of starting a big vegetable garden.”
Cover photo: Denise Costich stands for a photo during the inauguration of the CIMMYT Genebank museum in 2019. (Photo: Alfonso Cortés/CIMMYT)
Filippo Guzzon is a plant biologist dealing with seed biology and conservation of plant genetic resources (PGR).
He studies germination requirements, seed ecology, seed longevity, seed physiology as well as germination under abiotic stresses. In order to improve the conservation and use of PGR, his research aims also at bridging technical gaps that prevent their successful ex situ conservation.
Tonahuixtla, a small town located in Mexico’s state of Puebla, had suffered extreme environmental degradation due to deforestation and erosion. Agricultural land was in poor condition and the town had stopped producing many of their heirloom maize varieties, a loss to both biodiversity in the region and local culture. Poverty had increased, forcing many to migrate to bigger cities or to the United States for work. Those who were left behind, most of them women, had few ways to generate income to support their families.
Today, the story of Tonahuixtla is different. The town actively participates in reforestation and erosion-prevention activities. Landrace maize production is increasing, preserving the town and region’s biodiversity and customs. The residents have job opportunities that allow them to stay in their town and not migrate, all while preserving local biodiversity and protecting the environment.
What caused this change?
Corn husks.
Long considered a waste product, corn husks have been given a new lease on life through the Totomoxtle project. Named for the traditional indigenous Nahuatl word for corn husk, Totomoxtle turns the husks of native maize, found in a variety of colors, into a beautiful and sustainable veneer for furniture and walls. Founded by Mexican graphic designer Fernando Laposse, Totomoxtle has given farmers an incentive to plant native maize again, preserving invaluable biodiversity for future generations.
When Denise Costich, head of the maize collection of the germplasm bank at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), heard about the Totomoxtle project she knew she wanted to help. Passionate about preserving native maize, she and her team identified 16 landrace varieties from the CIMMYT maize collection that would produce husks in interesting colors and could grow well in the altitude and climate conditions of Tonahuixtla. She invited Laposse and project members to come visit the genebank and learn about CIMMYT’s work, and provided them with seed of the landraces they had identified.
“This is what we normally do in our work at the germplasm bank, we give people seed,” Costich said. “But this turned into a closer collaboration.”
In the dry and mountainous terrain surrounding the village of Tonahuixtla, native maize preservation and reforestation efforts have been key in protecting the local environment and culture. (Photo: Denise Costich/CIMMYT)
Colorful collaboration
The maize germplasm bank team arranged for Totomoxtle project members to receive training in how to make controlled pollinations in the native maize varieties, at one of CIMMYT’s experimental stations.
“The technicians at CIMMYT’s Agua Fria station loved meeting the project members from Tonahuixtla, and immediately became passionate about the Totomoxtle project,” Costich said. “To this day, the technicians still save all of the colored corn husks from CIMMYT maize trials and send them to Tonahuixtla to provide them with additional material for their project.”
In the village of Tonahuixtla, project members — many of them women — work to iron the corn husks flat and glue them on to a stiff backing, then send them via courier to Laposse’s workshop in London where he uses them to create beautiful furniture and wall panels. This work allows the residents of Tonahuixtla to stay in their village and not be forced to migrate, all while preserving maize biodiversity and protecting the environment.
“Part of what this project is doing is also helping to keep families together — providing livelihoods so that people can stay in their communities, so that they don’t have to send all of their young people off to Mexico City or to the United States. To me, it’s really all connected,” Costich said.
Native maize tassels against a bright blue sky in Tonahuixtla. (Photo: Denise Costich/CIMMYT)
In the town of Tonahuixtla, Puebla, Mexico, a native maize field sits below a tree-covered hillside. The town has been active in reforestation efforts to control erosion. (Photo: Denise Costich/CIMMYT)
Denise Costich (front right, sitting) poses for a photo with Tonahuixtla residents, members of the Totomoxtle project, and CIMMYT Germplasm Bank staff. (Photo: Provided by Denise Costich/CIMMYT)
The value of sustainability
The project also shows the intersection between biodiversity conservation and protecting the local environment. The maize husks used for the project are a sustainable and biodegradable material, and any residue from the maize husks that are not used for the Totomoxtle project are either fed to animals in the dry season or used to make fertilizer, which is then returned to the maize fields, a completely circular cycle in which nothing is wasted.
“I think that many of the communities that we work in really do understand the value and the importance of biodiversity,” Costich said. “In Tonahuixtla, the people are trying to reforest the hillsides in their region. They understand the connection between having no vegetation on the hills and having the rain water just roll right off the hills and into the temporary streams, thus losing that critically important resource. Over the years, as a result of the work they have done there, they have seen with their own eyes the improvement in the environment, not only that the hills are now covered with vegetation, but also they see a lot less runoff and erosion. I think that’s a really important lesson for everyone. I come from an ecology background, so I am always very excited to get involved in projects where it’s not just about maize, it’s about everything. It’s also about people’s lives, and nutrition, and the connections between them.”
Preserving local maize biodiversity is not just important for Tonahuixtla — it is important to all of humanity. Native maize varieties have adapted for thousands of years in farmers’ fields across Mesoamerica, developing natural resistance to local plant pests and diseases, as well as climatic conditions such as heat or drought. These native maize seeds, passed down generation to generation, could hold the key to developing improved maize varieties that can resist emerging maize diseases or extreme weather events related to climate change. If this biodiversity is lost, it represents a loss to global food security as a whole.
CIMMYT works to protect many of these native maize varieties in their germplasm bank, which is home to over 28,000 different collections of maize. Kept in cold storage under optimum conditions in the CIMMYT seed vault, these seeds are preserved for future generations and are available to anyone who needs them, including farmers such as those in Tonahuixtla, who had lost much of their native maize diversity.
“The biodiversity of cultivated plants is basically the guarantee for the future,” Costich said. “This is our security backup. Seed security is food security.”
Maize cobs and veneer made out of corn husks are on display at an exhibition of the Totomoxtle project in Mexico City. (Photo: Denise Costich/CIMMYT)
Members of the CIMMYT Germplasm Bank team stand for a photo with a variety of landraces at an exhibition of the Totomoxtle project in Mexico City. (Photo: Emilio Diaz)
Cover photo: Denise Costich (center, pink hat) stands with members of the Totomoxtle project and CIMMYT Germplasm Bank staff members near Tonahuixtla. (Photo: Provided by Denise Costich/CIMMYT)
Seed security is the first step towards food security. The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) preserves 28,000 unique seed samples of maize and 150,000 of wheat at its genebank in Mexico.
The Global Seed Vault in Svalbard opened in 2008. Since then, CIMMYT has duplicated and deposited 50 million seeds — 170,000 samples of maize and wheat — at Svalbard.
This year, CIMMYT sent 24 boxes of seed, with 332 samples of maize and 15,231 samples of wheat.
Join these seeds on a journey, as they travel more than 8,000 km from CIMMYT’s genebank in Mexico to the Global Seed Vault in the Arctic.
A supermarket, rather than a museum
This treasure, kept in the global network of genebanks, is key to ensuring sustainable, nutritious agricultural systems for future generations.
The purpose of genebanks is not just to preserve seed, but to use its biodiversity to address the needs of the future — and the needs of today.
Climate change is already impacting resource-poor farmers and consumers in low- and middle-income countries. Researchers and breeders at CIMMYT are rolling out solutions to these challenges, based on the diverse genetic resources kept in the genebank. As a result, farmers can use new varieties that yield more, need less inputs, and are more tolerant to drought or heat.
Our internal estimates show that about 30% of maize and more than 50% of wheat grown worldwide can be traced to CIMMYT germplasm.
Humanity’s legacy
Maize and wheat originated about 10,000 years ago. Since then, it’s survived war, drought, diseases, migration, birds, low yields — and the hard choice between feeding children or planting again.
Keepers of genebanks around the world are only the depositors of this legacy, which belongs to all humanity. CIMMYT will continue to preserve these seeds and to make their biodiversity available to researchers and famers, to solve today’s and tomorrow’s most pressing issues.
Cover photo: A NordGen staff member brings a box of seed into the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway. (Photo: Thomas Sonne/Common Ground Media for NordGen)
