Bekele Geleta Abeyo works on germplasm development, variety release, early generation seed multiplication, demonstration and popularization of new wheat varieties with recommended packages to realize better yield gains on farmers’ fields with NARS partners for nine sub-Saharan African countries.
He facilitates germplasm exchange among NARs within and across countries, NARS capacity building through training and mentoring of young professionals, material support by developing competitive and compelling projects pertinent to the country, data and experience sharing, and joint publication of new research findings.
He also organizes national, regional and international conferences and workshops, creating networks among NARs in the region, representing CIMMYT and the Global Wheat Program (GWP) in various forums. He liaises with government officials, institutions, and offices at various levels for collaboration effective partnerships.
CIUDAD OBREGĂN, Mexico (CIMMYT) â As more than 200 wheat science and food specialists from 34 countries gathered in northwestern Mexico to address threats to global nutrition and food security, 9 outstanding young women wheat scientists among them showed that this effort will be strengthened by diversity.
Winners of the Jeanie Borlaug Laube Women in Triticum (WIT) Early Career Award pose in front of the statue of the late Nobel Peace laureate, Dr. Norman E. Borlaug. Included in the photo are Amor Yahyaoui, CIMMYT wheat training coordinator (far left), Jeanie Borlaug Laube (center, blue blouse), and Maricelis Acevedo, Associate Director for Science, the Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat Project (to the right of Jeanie Borlaug Laube). Photo: CIMMYT/Mike Listman
âAs my father used to say, you are the future,â said Jeanie Borlaug Laube, daughter of the late Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Dr. Norman E. Borlaug, and mentor of many young agricultural scientists. Speaking to the WIT recipients, she said, âYou are ahead of the game compared to other scientists your age.â
Established in 2010 as part of the Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat (DGGW) project led by Cornell University, the WIT program has provided professional development opportunities for 44 young women researchers in wheat from more than 20 countries.
The award is given annually to as many as five early science-career women, ranging from advanced undergraduates to recent doctoral graduates and postdoctoral fellows. Selection is based on a scientific abstract and statement of intent, along with evidence of commitment to agricultural development and leadership potential.
Women who will change their professions and the world
Weizhen Liu. Photo: WIT archives
Weizhen Liu, a 2017 WIT recipient and postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University, is applying genome-wide association mapping and DNA marker technology to enhance genetic resistance in tetraploid and bread wheat to stripe rust, a major global disease of wheat that is spreading quickly and becoming more virulent.
âI am eager to join and devote myself to improving wheat yields by fighting wheat rusts,â said Liu, who received her bachelors in biotechnology from Nanjing Agricultural University, China, in 2011, and a doctorate from Washington State University in 2016. âThrough WIT, I can share my research with other scientists, receive professional feedback, and build international collaboration.â
Mitaly Bansal. Photo: WIT archives
Mitaly Bansal, a 2016 WIT award winner, currently works as a Research Associate at Punjab Agricultural University, India. She did her PhD research in a collaborative project involving Punjab Agricultural University and the John Innes Centre, UK, to deploy stripe and leaf rust resistance genes from non-progenitor wild wheat in commercial cultivars.
âI would like to work someday in a position of public policy in India,â said Bansal, who received the Monsanto Beachell-Borlaug scholarship in 2013. âThat is where I could have the influence to change things that needed changing.â
Networking in the cradle of wheatâs âGreen Revolutionâ
In addition to joining CIMMYT training for a week, WIT recipients will attend the annual Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI) technical workshop, to be held this year in Marrakech, Morocco, from 14 to 17 April, and where the 2018 WIT winners will be announced.
The CIMMYT training sessions took place at the Norman Borlaug Experiment Station (CENEB), an irrigated desert location in Sonora State, northwestern Mexico, and coincided with CIMMYTâs 2018 âVisitorsâ Week,â which took place from 19 to 23 March.
An annual gathering organized by the CIMMYT global wheat program at CENEB, Visitorsâ Week typically draws hundreds of experts from the worldwide wheat research and development community. Participants share innovations and news on critical issues, such as the rising threat of the rust diseases or changing climates in key wheat farmlands.
Through her interaction with Visitorsâ Week peers, Liu said she was impressed by the extensive partnering among experts from so many countries. âI realized that one of the most important things to fight world hunger is collaboration; no one can solve food insecurity, malnutrition, and climate change issues all by himself.â
A strong proponent and practitioner of collaboration, Norman E. Borlaug worked with Sonora farmers in the 1940-50s as part of a joint Rockefeller Foundation-Mexican government program that, among other outputs, generated high-yielding, disease-resistant wheat varieties. After bringing wheat self-sufficiency to Mexico, the varieties were adopted in South Asia and beyond in the 1960-70s, dramatically boosting yields and allowing famine-prone countries to feed their rapidly-expanding populations.
This became known as the Green Revolution and, in 1970, Borlaug received the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his contributions. Borlaug subsequently led CIMMYT wheat research until his retirement in 1979 and served afterwards as a special consultant to the Center.
When a new, highly virulent race of wheat stem rust, Ug99, emerged in eastern Africa in the early 2000s, Borlaug sounded the alarm and championed a global response that grew into the BGRI and associated initiatives such as DGGW.
âThis is just a beginning for you, but it doesnât end here,â said Maricelis Acevedo, a former WIT recipient who went on to become the leader of DGGW. Speaking during the training course, she observed that many WIT awardees come from settings where women often lack access to higher education or the freedom to pursue a career.
âThrough WIT activities, including training courses like this and events such as Visitorsâ Week and the BGRI workshop,â Acevedo added, âyouâll gain essential knowledge and skills but youâll also learn leadership and the personal confidence to speak out, as well as the ability to interact one-on-one with leaders in your fields and to ask the right questions.â
CIMMYT is a global leader in publicly-funded maize and wheat research and related farming systems. Headquartered near Mexico City, CIMMYT works with hundreds of partners throughout the developing world to sustainably increase the productivity of maize and wheat cropping systems, thus improving global food security and reducing poverty. CIMMYT is a member of the CGIAR System and leads the CGIAR Research Programs on Maize and Wheat and the Excellence in Breeding Platform. The Center receives generous support from national governments, foundations, development banks and other public and private agencies.
Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) under UK aid, the DGGW project aims to strengthen the delivery pipeline for new, disease resistant, climate-resilient wheat varieties and to increase the yields of smallholder wheat farmers.
Reducing the length of time it takes to naturally breed more productive crop varieties is key to feed the world’s growing population, say scientists. Photo: CIMMYT archives
EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — Crop genetic gains remain too low, and international scientists are making a concerted effort to determine how best to increase yields to ensure there is enough food to feed everyone on the planet by 2050.
The complex task of increasing genetic gains â the amount of increase in performance achieved per unit time through artificial selection â involves considering many variables, including genotypes and phenotypes â selecting crop varieties with desired gene traits and considering how well they perform in a given environment.
Two new research papers by scientists at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and partners at Australiaâs University of Queensland and Spainâs University of Barcelona published in âTrends in Plant Scienceâ highlight some of the best available tools and strategies for meeting the challenge.
Currently, crop breeding methods and agronomic management put annual productivity increases at 1.2 percent a year, but to ensure food security for future generations, productivity should be at 2.4 percent a year.
By 2050, the United Nations projects that the current global population of 7.6 billion will grow to more than 9.8 billion, making yield increases vital.
The results of grain yield increases each year are a function of the length of the breeding process, the accuracy of which breeders can estimate the potential of new germplasm, the size of the breeding program, the intensity of selection, and the genetic variation for the trait of interest.
âReducing the length of the breeding process is the fastest way for breeders to increase their gains in grain yield per year,â said HuiHui Li, quantitative geneticist based at CIMMYT Beijing.
Speed breeding and other new techniques have the potential to double gains made by breeders some crops. Speed breeding protocols enable six generations of crops to be generated within a single year, compared to just two generations using traditional protocols.
Pioneered by scientist Lee Hickey at University of Queensland, speed breeding relies on continuous light to trick plants into growing faster, which means speed breeding can only be undertaken in a controlled environment.
Tapping into larger populations increases the probability of identifying superior offspring, but breeding is an expensive and time consuming process due to the variables involved.
One challenge scientists face is high-throughput field phenotyping, which involves characterising hundreds of plants a day to identify the best genetic variation for making new varieties. New phenotyping tools can estimate key traits such as senescence, reducing the time of data collection from a day or more to less than an hour.
âIf breeders could reduce the cost of phenotyping, they can reallocate resources towards growing larger populations,â said Mainassara Zaman-Allah, a senior scientist at CIMMYT-Zimbabwe and a key contributor to the paper âTranslating High Throughput Phenotyping into Genetic Gain.â
âLimitations on phenotyping efficiency are considered a key constraint to genetic advance in breeding programs,â said Mike Olsen, maize upstream trait pipeline coordinator with CIMMYT, based in Nairobi. âNew phenotyping tools to more efficiently measure required traits will play an important role in increasing gains.â
New tools and techniques can only help contribute to food security if they are easily available and adopted. The CGIAR Excellence in Breeding Platform, launched in 2017, will play a pivotal role in ensuring these new tools reach breeding programs targeting the developing world.
Kevin Pixley is the Dryland Crops Program Director (DCP) and Wheat Program Director a.i. (GWP)
Pixley was formerly the Genetic Resources Program (GRP) director where he helped formulate, facilitate, and oversee inter-disciplinary strategies to enhance the relevance and impacts of wheat and maize research to improve livelihoods, especially for resource-poor farmers.
Pixley and his research team use genomics, phenomics and informatics to characterize and enhance the conservation and use of wheat and maize biodiversity through CIMMYT’s Seeds of Discovery initiative, where they explore the use of crop biodiversity to address novel opportunities, including enhanced sustainability of farming systems, improved nutritional or health outcomes or value-addition for farmers. They also look for opportunities to apply novel technologies to address needs of resource-poor farmers.
His current research includes:
1) The genomic characterization of maize and wheat germplasm bank diversity and enhancing the use of diversity in breeding
2) The use of novel breeding tools, especially gene editing, to complement traditional breeding techniques
3) The development of tools and approaches to enhance the use of genomics in teaching the use of biodiversity in plant breeding
4) The legal frameworks governing and opportunities promoting fair access and sharing of benefits from genetic resources
5) The role of provitamin A carotenoids (and other anti-oxidants) in maize grain towards reducing mycotoxin contamination of grain
6) Science and society, including how to ensure equitable opportunity for all to access the potential benefits of science
Wheat fields at the Campo Experimental Norman E. Borlaug (CENEB) near Ciudad ObregĂłn, Sonora, Mexico. Photo: M. Ellis/CIMMYT.
MEXICO CITY (CIMMYT) — Malnutrition is rising again and becoming more complex, according to the head of the worldâs leading public maize and wheat research center.
âThose people suffer from calorie malnutrition and go to bed hungry at night, which is a terrible thing,â Kropff added. âBut the diets of 2 billion persons worldwide lack essential micronutrients â Vitamin A, iron, or zinc â and this especially affects the health and development of children under 5 years old.â
Kropff noted that some 650 million people are obese, and the number is increasing. âAll these nutrition issues are interconnected, and are driven by rising population, global conflicts, and — for obesity — increasing prosperity, in developed and emerging economies.â
âThe solution? Good, healthy diets,â said Kropff, âwhich in turn depend on having enough food available, but also diverse crops and food types and consumer education on healthy eating.â
The worldâs quickly-rising population needs not only more food but healthier, more nutritious food, according to Julie Miller Jones, Professor Emerita at St. Catherine University, and Carlos GuzmĂĄn, who leads wheat quality research at CIMMYT.
Held in Mexico City during 11-14 March and co-organized by CIMMYT and the International Association for Cereal Science and Technology (ICC), the 4th Latin American Cereals Conference has drawn more than 220 participants from 46 countries, including professionals in agricultural science and production, the food industry, regulatory agencies, and trade associations.
âWe are dedicated to spreading information about cereal science and technology, processing, and the health benefits of cereals,â said Hamit Köksel, president of the ICC and professor at Hacettepe University, Turkey, to open the event. âRegarding the latter, we should increase our whole grain consumption.â
Köksel added that ICC has more than 10,000 subscribers in 85 countries.
Breeding micronutrient-dense cereals
One way to improve the nutrition and health of the poor who cannot afford dietary supplements or diverse foods is through âbiofortificationâ of the staple crops that comprise much of their diets.
Drawing upon landraces and diverse other sources in maize and wheatâs genetic pools and applying innovative breeding, CIMMYT has developed high-yielding maize and wheat lines and varieties that feature enhanced levels of grain zinc and are being used in breeding programs worldwide.
âIn the last four years, the national research programs of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan have released six zinc-biofortified wheat varieties derived from CIMMYT research,â said Hans Braun, director of the centerâs global wheat program. âZinc-Shakthi, an early-maturing wheat variety released in India in 2014 whose grain features 40 percent more zinc than conventional varieties, is already grown by more than 50,000 smallholder farmers in the Northeastern Gangetic Plains of India.â
New zinc biofortified maize variety BIO-MZN01, recently released in Colombia. Photo: CIMMYT archives
CIMMYT is focusing on enhancing the levels of provitamin A and zinc in the maize germplasm adapted to sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Improved quality protein maize (QPM) varieties, whose grain features enhanced levels of two essential amino acids, lysine and tryptophan, Â is another major biofortified maize that is grown worldwide, according to Prasanna Boddupalli, director of CIMMYTâs global maize program.
âQuality protein maize varieties are grown by farmers on 1.2 million hectares in Africa, Asia, and Latin America,â said Prasanna, in his presentation, adding that provitamin-A-enriched maize varieties have also been released in several countries in Africa, besides Asia.
âBiofortified crops have been released in 60 countries,â said Wolfgang Pfeiffer, HarvestPlus global director for product development and commercialization, speaking at the conference. âThe pressing need now is to âmainstreamâ biofortification, making it a standard component of breeding programs and food systems.â
Whole grains are good for you
A central issue on the conference agenda is promoting awareness about the importance of healthy diets and the role of whole grains.
âParticipants will discuss the large body of published studies showing that whole grain foods, including processed ones, are associated with a significantly reduced risk of chronic diseases and obesity,â said Carlos GuzmĂĄn, who leads wheat quality research at CIMMYT and helped organize the conference. âThere is a global movement to promote the consumption of whole grains and the food industry worldwide is responding to rising consumer demand for whole grain products.â
CIMMYTâs Maize Germplasm Bank has its entire collection backed up in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Photo: CIMMYT archives
EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — The âDoomsday Vault,â that safeguards fall-back collections of key food crop seeds in the arctic cold of Longyearbyen, Norway, marks its tenth anniversary this year. To celebrate, leaders in the conservation of crop genetic resources are gathering next week to discuss best practices and to encourage sustainable use of the resources.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault sits 1,300 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle; the farthest north commercial flights will take you. It is described as the world’s largest secure seed storage and was established by the Norwegian Government in February 2008. Repurposing an abandoned coal mine, the global seed vault is set deep into the natural permafrost of the Norwegian island of Svalbard.
Over the last decade, seed-preserving institutions worldwide have shipped backup collections of seed and other plant parts for storage in the vault, which now holds nearly 900,000 varieties of essential crops, representing over 4,000 plant species, which could be drawn upon to restart agriculture in case of a catastrophe.
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is the top contributor to the vault, with over 150,000 unique collections containing a total of nearly 50 million seeds and representing roughly 85 percent of the entire CIMMYT germplasm bank collection.
The target is to have 90 percent of the CIMMYT entire collection backed up at Svalbard within two years, according to Thomas Payne, head of CIMMYTâs Wheat Germplasm Bank, which is located in Mexico. CIMMYTâs Maize Germplasm Bank, led by Denise Costich, has already reached that goal.
âWe send seeds every other year, accumulating packets until we have a critical mass and sending them in a large, single shipment,â Payne said.
Preparing and shipping the seed involves intricate coordination and painstaking work. For starters, seed must be sent in the winter to avoid it sitting on hot airport tarmacs. Additionally, the Svalbard vault opens for new deposits only a few times a year, so shipping logistics need to match up those dates.
CIMMYT’s Wheat Germplasm Bank aims to have 90 percent of its collection backed up at Svalbard within two years. Photo: CIMMYT archives.
Only seed of the highest quality is sent to Svalbard, in part to ensure that the stored seed retains as long as possible its ability to germinate.
CIMMYT Germplasm Bank seed collections are regularly tested for germination capacity by placing a batch of seeds in a wet paper towel for 7-10 days. When less than 85 percent of a unique collection is viable, then the entire collection is replaced with fresh seed grown from the viable portion.
âThere are seed collections at CIMMYT that still meet the minimum viability standard after more than 50 years under storage,â Payne said, noting that the centerâs long-term collections are kept at minus 18 degrees Centigrade and in low humidity.
Payne said the center keeps duplicate collections in Mexico of all the seed it sends to Svalbard and monitors those Mexico back-ups to keep tabs on the viability of its Svalbard deposits.
Payne explained âTo check seed viability, we have to take seeds out of storage, representing a loss of several hundred seeds. Itâs almost a self-defeating process, balancing viability testing with sufficient quantities of seed to test and distribute.â
Payne said scientists are seeking new, non-invasive ways to test seed viability, potentially by checking seed respiration rates or rapid germination imaging technologies.
The government of Norway and the Global Crop Diversity Trust cover the cost of storage and upkeep of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, coordinating shipments in conjunction with the Nordic Genetic Resource Center. Established in 2006, the Crop Trust supports the conservation and availability of crop diversity for food security worldwide and helps to fund CIMMYTâs work to collect and conserve maize and wheat genetic resources. The CGIAR Genebank Platform also supports CIMMYTâs maize and wheat germplasm bank.
New study flattens claims that gluten and wheat are bad for human health. Photo: CIMMYT archives
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) â A new, exhaustive review of recent scientific studies on cereal grains and health has shown that gluten- or wheat-free diets are not inherently healthier for the general populace and may actually put individuals at risk of dietary deficiencies.
Based on a recent, special compilation of 12 reports published in the scientific journal Cereal Foods World during 2014-2017, eating whole grains is actually beneficial for brain health and associated with reduced risk of diverse types of cancer, coronary disease, diabetes, hypertension, obesity and overall mortality.
âClear and solid data show that eating whole-grain wheat products as part of a balanced diet improves health and can help maintain a healthy body weight, apart from the 1 percent of people who suffer from celiac disease and another 2 to 3 percent who are sensitive to wheat,â said Carlos GuzmĂĄn, wheat nutrition and quality specialist at the Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), which produced the compilation.
GuzmĂĄn said wheat and other grains are inexpensive sources of energy that also provide protein, digestible fiber, minerals, vitamins, and other beneficial phytochemicals.
âAmong wheatâs greatest benefits, according to the research, is fiber from the bran and other grain parts,â he explained. âDiets in industrialized countries are generally deficient in such fiber, which helps to regulate digestion and promote the growth of beneficial gut bacteria.â
Contributing to humankindâs development for the last 10,000 years, wheat is cultivated on some 220 million hectares (539 million acres) worldwide. The crop accounts for a fifth of the world’s food and is the main source of protein in many developing and developed countries, and second only to rice as a source of calories globally. In the many countries where milling flours are fortified, wheat-based foods provide necessary levels of essential micronutrients such as iron, zinc, folic acid and vitamin A.
Inhabitants in developing and industrialized countries are experiencing higher incidences of diabetes, allergies, inflammatory bowel disorder, and obesity. A profitable industry has developed around gluten- and wheat-free food products, which the popular press has promoted as beneficial for addressing such disorders. But much scientific evidence contradicts popular writings about these food products.
âMuch of the anti-grain messaging comes from publications produced by supposed âspecialistsâ who are not nutritionists, and are often built on faulty premises.â according to Julie Miller Jones, Distinguished Scholar and Professor Emerita at St. Catherine University, U.S.A., and a key contributor to the review studies in the compilation.
âCauses of obesity and chronic disease are complex, and it is not only simplistic but erroneous to name a single food group as the cause or the cure for these problems,” Miller Jones explained. “We do know that we consume large portions, too many calories, and too few fruits, vegetables, or whole grains. Instead todayâs lifestyles encourage consumption of many high calorie foods and beverages that contain few nutrients. Then the risks of poor diets are often amplified by our sedentary lifestyles.â
CIMMYT scientists are concerned that the negative portrayal of wheat to promote the lucrative gluten-free fad diet industry will discourage low-income families from consuming the grain as part of an affordable and healthy diet, particularly in areas where there are few low-cost alternatives.
Consumer Reports magazine reported in January 2015 that sales of âgluten-freeâ products soared 63 percent between 2012 and 2015, with almost 4,600 products introduced in 2014 alone. Retail sales of gluten-free foods in the United States were estimated at $12.2 billion in 2014 and by 2020 the market is projected to be valued at $23.9 billion, Statistica reports.
However, wheat biofortified through breeding or fortified during milling with zinc and iron can play a vital role in diets in areas where âhidden hungerâ is a concern and where nutritional options are unaffordable or unavailable. About 2 billion people worldwide suffer from hidden hunger, which is characterized by iron-deficiency anemia, vitamin A and zinc deficiency.
The compilation draws on more than 1,500 peer-reviewed studies regarding the dietary and health effects of eating cereals and wheat-based foods.
CIMMYTÂ specialists also worry that misinformation about wheat might affect investments in vital research to sustain wheat production increases of at least 60 percent by 2050, the output required to keep pace with rising population and demand, according to Hans Braun, director of the centerâs global wheat program.
âClimate change is already constraining wheat production in regions such as South Asia, where more than 500 million inhabitants eat wheat-based foods,â Braun said. âWorldwide, the crop is threatened by deadly pest and disease strains, water shortages, and depleted soils.â
âAs we have seen in 2008, 2011, and just recently in Tunisia and Sudan, grain shortages or price hikes in bread can lead to social unrest,” Braun added. “The international community needs to speed efforts to develop and share high-yielding, climate-resilient, and disease-resistant wheat varieties that also meet humanityâs varied nutritional demands.â
The compilation was produced with special permission from AACC International.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION OR INTERVIEWS
Mike Listman
Communications officer, CGIAR Research Program on Wheat
tel: +52 (55) 5804 7537
cel: +52 (1595) 114 9743
Email: m.listman@cgiar.org
Over the next 50 years, the world’s population is set to be more than 9 billion. To feed this amount of people food production will need to more than double.
Doing this will require us to grow food faster than ever before, a global task which will be even more challenging if we donât first improve the way we collect and share information, according to Carolina Rivera, a wheat physiologist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and data coordinator with the International Wheat Yield Partnership (IWYP).
Demand for wheat by 2050 is predicted to increase by 70 percent from todayâs levels due to population growth and dietary changes, but the challenges to wheat production are stark and growing. The crop is at risk from new and more aggressive pests and diseases, diminishing water resources, limited available land and unstable weather conditions related to climate change.
âThe data tells us that we wonât meet future demand unless weâre able to significantly increase genetic gains,â says Rivera. Current annual genetic yield gains of cereals range from 0.5 to 1 percent, meaning that genetic improvements made to crops by scientists are at best resulting in 1 percent higher yields than the previous year, notwithstanding the possibility of improvements due to crop management which are known to be much harder for resource-poor farmers to implement.
Since Rivera started as an IWYP data coordinator, sheâs helped release a new instance of the public database called âGerminate,â which hosts phenotypic, genotypic and other data on wheat collected by CIMMYT staff, IWYP project members, and partners around the world. She seeks to deploy new technologies to capture data and develop better systems to standardize, collect, compile and curate field data gathered by members of her CIMMYT research team and their partners.
âThree years ago, around 80 percent of CIMMYTâs wheat physiology field data in Mexico were collected manually,â said Rivera. âBut now, the use of tablets for data collection, improved protocols for data processing, among other tools allow us to have real-time quality control. By standardizing our results and facilitating data curation and analysis, we help scientists make faster, more informed decisions.â
Rivera has a unique perspective in crop data management because she applies her on-the-ground knowledge of wheat research to adopt and adapt new technologies and systems that meet the needs of scientists. As a wheat physiologist, she has identified new traits associated with the optimization of plant morphology aiming to boost grain number and yield.
âData management can seem like an afterthought to the research, but having more controlled and optimized workflows will become crucial for breeding programs as data volumes increase,â says Rivera. âAchieving high-quality data management is a challenge â like with any change in technology, it requires a huge shift in the way people do their job and tools they use.â
Despite this, more than 2 billion genotypic data from CIMMYT have been made available in the Germinate and Dataverse platforms, and Rivera believes that data sharing will eventually become part and parcel to the work wheat researchers conduct.
Before starting her current position at CIMMYT, Rivera received her doctorate in crop science from the University of Nottingham. Ultimately, she believes that the adoption of better data management practices across research institutions will soon become a cornerstone in the ability to create âidealâ wheat plants that produce more grains, feeding more people.
The International Wheat Yield Partnership (IWYP) is a long-term global collaboration with funding from public and private research organizations that seeks to increase the genetic yield potential of wheat by 50 percent in 20 years. Find a full list of funders here.
Chuanmai 42 at Zhongjiang. (Photo: Garry Rosewarne/CIMMYT)
A new commentary published today in the leading science journal Nature Plants highlights the importance of an ancient grass species for wheat breeding. The commentary was sparked by the recent publication of a reference genome from Aegilops tauschii, also called goat grass.
Bread wheat was created some 10,000 years ago by a natural cross of more simple, primitive wheats with a sub-species of goat grass. As such, goat grass genes constitute a major component of the very large wheat genome. The sequencing of goat grass DNA opens the way for wheat breeders to apply a number of advanced approaches to improve the speed and precision of wheat breeding for important traits that may be found in the goat grass segment of the wheat genome.
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) has produced many wheat x grass crosses, recreating the original, natural cross but using other goat grass species and thus greatly expanding wheat’s diversity. Wheat lines derived from those crosses have since been used in breeding programs worldwide and have helped farmers to boost yields by up to 20 percent. Goat grass is known for being highly adaptable and disease tolerant, so the crosses endow wheat with similar qualities. Varieties from these crosses make up over 30 percent of international seed stores.
Researchers expect that the sequencing of this grass species’ DNA will facilitate advanced approaches such as “speed breeding” â a technique that uses controlled variables to achieve up to seven rounds of wheat crops in one year. This will help allow wheat breeding to keep up with the rising global demand for the crop and to address the challenges of new, virulent diseases and more extreme weather.
Check out the full article: The goat grass genomeâs role in wheat improvement. 2018. Rasheed, A., Ogbonnaya, F.C., Lagudah, E., Appels, R., He, Z. in Nature Plants and check out other recent publication by CIMMYT staff below:
Molecular genetic diversity and population structure of Ethiopian white lupin landraces Implications for breeding and conservation. 2017. Atnaf, M., Yao, N., Kyalo, M. ,Kifle Dagne, Dagne Wegary Gissa, Tesfaye, K. In: PLoS One v. 12, no. 11, p. e0188696.
Determinants of participation in cavy marketing : evidence from the Democratic Republic of Congo. 2017. Simtowe, F., Paul, B. K., Wimba, B. M. M., Bacigale, S. B., Chiuri, W. L., Maass, B. L. In: Journal of Agriculture and Rural Development in the Tropics and Subtropics v. 118, no. 2, p. 245-257.
Food security, sweet potato production, and proximity to markets in northern Ghana. 2017. Glenna, L.L., Borlu, Y., Gill, T., Larson, J., Ricciardi, V., Adam, R. In: Facets v. 2, p. 919-936.
Evaluation of grain yield and related agronomic traits of quality protein maize hybrids in Southern Africa. 2017. Setimela, P.S., Gasura, E., Amsal Tesfaye Tarekegne. In: Euphytica v. 213, p. 289.
Medium-term effects of conservation agriculture on soil quality. 2017. Ivy Sichinga Ligowe, Patson Cleoups Nalivata, Njoloma, J., Makumba, W., Thierfelder, C. In: African Journal of Agricultural Research v. 12, no. 29, p. 2412-2420.
Predicting yield and stability analysis of wheat under different crop management systems across agro-ecosystems in India. 2017. Jat, M.L., Jat, R.K., Singh, P., Jat, S.L., Sidhu, H.S., Jat, H. S., Bijarniya, D., Parihar, C.M., Gupta, R.K. In: American Journal of Plant Sciences v. 8, p. 1977-2012.
Pathogenomic analysis of wheat yellow rust lineages detects seasonal variation and host specificity. 2017. Bueno Sancho, V., Persoons, A., Hubbard, A., Cabrera-Quio, L. E., Lewis, C. M., Corredor Moreno, P., Bunting, D. C. E., Sajid Ali, Soonie Chng, Hodson, D.P., Madariaga Burrows, R., Bryson, R., Thomas, J., Holdgate, S., Saunders, D. G. O. In: Genome Biology and Evolution v. 9, no. 12, p. 3282-3296.
Genotype by environment interactions and combining ability for strawberry families grown in diverse environments. 2017. Mathey, M.M., Mookerjee, S., Mahoney, L.L., GĂŒndĂŒz, K., Rosyara, U., Hancock, J.F., Stewart, P.J., Whitaker, V.M., Bassil, N.V., Davis, T.M., Finn, C.E. In: Euphytica v. 213, p. 112.
Genome-wide association study in Asia-adapted tropical maize reveals novel and explored genomic regions for sorghum downy mildew resistance. 2017. Rashid, Z., Kumar Singh, P., Vemuri, H., Zaidi, P.H., Prasanna, B.M., Nair, S.K. In: Scientific reports v. 8, p. 366.
Combining ability analysis in newly developed S6 inbred lines of maize (Zea mays L.). 2017. Gazala, P., Kuchanur, P.H., Zaidi, P.H., Arunkumar, B., Patil, A., Seetharam, K., Vinayan, M.T. In: Journal of Farm Sciences v. 3, no. 3, p. 315-319.
“The Wizard and the Prophet” looks at the worldâs most threatening challenges through the eyes of scientists Norman Borlaug (left) and William Vogt. (Photos: CIMMYT, AICBC)
Charles Mannâs The Wizard and the Prophetreleased today seeks to reconcile two worldviews spurred by agronomist Norman Borlaug and ecologist William Vogt, to help us better understand how we can feed 10 billion people by 2050; without destroying our planet in the process.
Borlaug, the âwizardâ of the book, launched his vision from a small parcel of âbadly damaged landâ near Mexico City that would become the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). He was a key figure in developing high-yielding wheat varieties that saved millions from starvation in the 1960s, launching a global Green Revolution and becoming an emblem for âtechno-optimism,â or the view that science and technology will meet humanityâs growing demands.
Vogtâs 1948 book âThe Road to Survivalâ became the blueprint for todayâs modern environmental movement, prophesizing that unless humankind drastically reduces consumption, its growing numbers and appetite will overwhelm the planetâs resources. His novels and speeches inspired conservationists from Rachel Carson to Paul Ehrlich, and defined our concept of âenvironmentâ as an entity that deserves respect and protection.
Mann uses the views of Borlaug and Vogt as endpoints on a âwizard-prophetâ spectrum to illustrate different approaches experts are taking to solve four great, complex challenges of our time: food, water, energy and climate change.
But who is right? We, humans, are the only species on Earth that have been able to bend nature to our will. For thousands of years we burned forests to kill insects and encourage the growth of useful species, then later turned the planet into our âpersonal petri dish,â as Mann puts it, with the rise of agriculture and creation of crops like maize, which allowed Mesoamerican civilizations to grow and flourish. Today, violence and poverty are at an all-time low due to the wizardly-successes of Borlaug and others
However, Mann cautions past successes are no guarantee of the future. Vogtâs Malthusian predictions didnât come to pass, but Borlaugâs wizardry also had unintended social and environmental consequences. Fertilizer runoff, over-extraction of groundwater and the burning of fossil fuels are creating an increasingly inhospitable planet and arguably pushing us closer to Vogtâs envisioned planetary limits than ever before.
Norman Borlaug works with researchers in the field. (Photo: CIMMYT archives)
Both Borlaug and Vogt identified as environmentalists trying to solve the same monumental challenge of having too many people to feed but not enough resources. Their ideological heirs are also working to solve equally challenging problems but are bitterly opposed, in large part because the argument is less about facts and more about values.
Prophets see humans as living in a finite world with constrained limits imposed by the environment, while wizards believe human ingenuity gives us an endless array of tools to manage the environment for our needs.
Mann doesnât take either side, but rather offers solutions proposed by both prophets and wizards. He cites efforts to change the way photosynthesis works in rice at the International Rice Research Institute, but also initiatives like the domestication of wild perennial plants at the Land Institute. Both prophets and wizards have multiple, on-going efforts to meet all four challenges that Mann covers in the book. He says that itâs possible individual efforts wonât work, but the odds of all efforts failing are equally small.
Most importantly, there are many individuals and organizations today that are attempting to embrace both ideologies. CIMMYT, an organization that was founded by the original wizard, now incorporates sustainable agriculture practices into its work globally, with an emphasis on social inclusion.
The Wizard and the Prophetâs in-depth mix of biographical, historical, philosophical and scientific detail allows us to confront our wizard/prophet bias, and leaves one with a greater sense of respect for those with differing views on how we should shape our world in the 21st century.
With increasing global demand for wheat and increasing constraints (high temperatures, diseases) to wheatâs productivity, wheat breeders are looking for new methodologies to make breeding more efficient. A new study looks at refinements of genomic prediction models to help achieve this.
The authors write that genomic selection is becoming a standard approach to achieving genetic progress in plants, as it gets around the need to field-test the offspring at every cycle, but that the models commonly used in plant breeding are based on datasets of only a few hundred genotyped individual plants.
This study used pedigree and genomic data from nearly 59,000 wheat lines evaluated in different environments, as well as genomic and pedigree information in a model that incorporated genotype X environment interactions to predict the performance of wheat lines in Mexican and South Asian environments.
They found that models using markers (and pedigree) had higher prediction accuracies than models using only phenotypic data. Models that included genomic x environment had higher prediction accuracies than models that do not include interaction.
Association mapping reveals loci associated with multiple traits that affect grain yield and adaptation in soft winter wheat. 2017. Lozada, D. N., Mason, E.R., Md Ali Babar, Carver, B. F., Guedira, G. B., Merrill, K., Arguello, M. N., Acuna, A., Vieira, L., Holder, A., Addison, C., Moon, D. E., Miller, R. G., Dreisigacker, S. In: Euphytica v. 213 : 222.
Effect of trait heritability, training population size and marker density on genomic prediction accuracy estimation in 22 bi-parental tropical maize populations. 2017. Ao Zhang, Hongwu Wang, Beyene, Y., Fentaye Kassa Semagn, Yubo Liu, Shiliang Cao, Zhenhai Cui, Yanye Ruan, Burgueño, J., San Vicente, F.M., Olsen, M., Prasanna, B.M., Crossa, J., Haiqiu Yu, Zhang, X. In: Frontiers in Plant Science v. 8 : 1916.
Genomic prediction unifies animal and plant breeding programs to form platforms for biological discovery. 2017. Hickey, J.M., Tinashe Chiurugwi, Mackay, I., Powell, W., Eggen, A., Kilian, A., Jones, C., Canales, C., Grattapaglia, D., Bassi, F., Atlin, G.N., Gorjanc, G., Dawson, I., Rabbi, I., Ribaut, J.M., Rutkoski, J., Benzie, J., Lightner, J., Mwacharo, J., Parmentier, J., Robbins, K., Skot, L., Wolfe, M., Rouard, M., Clark, M., Amer, P., Gardiner, P., Hendre, P., Mrode, R., Sivasankar, S., Rasmussen, S., Groh, S., Jackson, V., Thomas, W., Beyene, Y. In: Nature Genetics v. 49, no. 9, p. 1297â1303.
The idea that âEducating women/girls is nothing but a loss,â used to be a common sentiment amongst members of rural Ethiopian communities where the Nutritious Maize for Ethiopia (NuME) project works. Now one is more likely to hear âWomen are the foundation for change.â
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)-led NuME project is reducing food insecurity in Ethiopia by increasing the countryâs capacity to feed itself. The project is improving household food and nutritional security, especially for young children and women, through shifting gender norms and the adoption of Quality Protein Maize (QPM).
QPM refers to a type of maize biofortified with two essential amino acids through traditional breeding to improve the inadequacy of protein quality of the conventional maize grown widely by farmers. Consumption of QPM instead of conventional maize leads to increase in the rate of growth in infants and young children with mild to moderate undernutrition from populations in which maize is the major staple food.
According to the World Bank, women contribute 40-60 percent of the labor in agricultural production in Ethiopia and play an important role in income generation, as well as unpaid household tasks. However, many women face severely restricted access to resources and services and lack control over income, greatly hindering their participation in and benefit from new innovations.
A community conversation session in Shebedino, Ethiopia. Photo: Tsegaye, M./SNNPR.
Few programs have specifically considered gender relations when implementing new initiatives in communities, however, when NuME found lower participation of women in the community-based promotion and dissemination of QPM, adapted community conversations were launched in two selected project woredas, or districts â Shebedino and Meskan â for a nine-month pilot in an attempt to raise womenâs role in the project.
Community conversation (CC) is a facilitated approach based on the principle that communities have the capacity to identify their societal, economic and political challenges; set priorities; mobilize human, physical and financial resources; plan for action and address their challenges sustainably. It focuses on peopleâs strengths, resources and how they relate to challenges or problems communities face.
The people benefiting from a CC-driven project set priorities and create a plan of action to mobilize resources to address their challenges sustainably. This helps communities develop a sense of ownership, use local resources and take responsibility to bring about sustainable changes.
Because this approach involves the entire community, it also includes traditionally marginalized groups like women and youth.
When NuME first started community conversations, seating was very rigid due to cultural and religious traditions, but as the sessions continue paving the way for more community awareness on issues around gender norms and stereotypes, the seating has become much more mixed.
A facilitator from Shebedino woreda said, âParticipants canât wait for the bi-monthly conversations and they never want to miss them. These exchanges have helped men and women to get together and discuss their concerns, which was not a common practice before.â
âWomen have begun raising their voices during community conversation meetings, while they used to be too shy and afraid to speak and very much reserved about sharing their ideas in public,â a female participant from Meskan woreda reported.
Community conversation participants have started changing the traditional gender stereotypes.
Through debate and the sharing of opinions, and more active participation from women, community conversations have educated participants on gender inequality, its prevalence and harm and have allowed men and women community members to exchange ideas about nutrition more effectively.
The NuME project will continue into 2019. Read more about how CIMMYT is working to equally boost the livelihoods of women, youth and men here.
A Financial Times editorial by CIMMYT wheat physiologist Matthew Reynolds presents a new proposal for expanding the wheat network to include other major food crops and speed farmersâ adoption of vital technologies that can end hunger and address climate change. The idea has the support of experts from leading funding and development agencies.
Leading nutritionist Julie Miller Jones promotes the benefits of whole grains. (Photo: CIMMYT)
People who eat the most whole grain foods have a lower risk of almost all chronic diseases and are less likely to gain weight as they age, according to Julie Miller Jones, Distinguished Scholar and Professor Emerita at St. Catherine University, U.S.A.
âAll kinds of epidemiological research shows that whole grain intake reduces obesity and the risk of diabetes, coronary heart and cardiovascular diseases, stroke, cancers, and death from all causes,â said Miller Jones, speaking to representatives of food processing companies and associations and scientists at the first âMaize and Wheat Quality and Nutrition Dayâ held near Mexico City on September 14.
Miller Jones emphasized that relatively modest amounts of grain in diets can deliver important health impacts. âWeâre talking about eating around three slices of bread, or a bowl of oatmeal with a sandwich, or oatmeal in the morning, with pasta at lunch and rice at night,â she explained.
Hosted by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), a publicly-funded organization that works with hundreds of partners throughout the developing world to increase the productivity and quality of maize and wheat cropping systems, the event highlighted the critical connections between farmers, crop breeding and the quality of maize (corn) and wheat food products.
âItâs great that CIMMYT hosted this meeting,â said one participant, noting the complementary roles of the food industry and CIMMYT. âCompanies like ours are only beginning to realize that improving our bottom line and sustainability doesnât start with the flour we receive, but rather ten steps before that, with breeding, quality analyses, agronomy and even extension work in the field.â
In addition to packaged commercial breads, small individual loaves prepared daily in neighborhood bakeries are standard fare in Mexico. Photo: Mike Listman/ CIMMYT
The participants were impressed with Miller Jonesâ presentation and the potential for partnering with CIMMYT, which conducts grain quality and nutritional analyses, development, selection and characterization of wheat and maize varieties for industrial and nutritional quality, as well as fostering the responsible sourcing of grain and linking farmers with markets.
âThis is the first time weâve brought together numerous essential actors in Mexicoâs maize and wheat quality and nutrition value chains, and we expect that it will give dividends in better quality, more nutritious cereal grains and food for better diets,â said Natalia Palacios, CIMMYT maize nutrition and quality specialist.
In addition to using more than 35 million tons of maize each year as human food and animal feed, Mexicoâs food processors annually handle more than 8 million tons of wheat grain.
âCIMMYT can serve as a shared platform for joint research with the food industry, outside of the competitive arena, and for messaging on healthy nutrition and diets,â suggested Carlos GuzmĂĄn, head of CIMMYTâs wheat chemistry and quality lab.
Humans and food grain crops: Shared history and future
Miller Jones said that DNA of cooked grain has been found in the dental remains of Paleolithic humans, showing that people have been eating grain for more than 100,000 years. She also emphasized the need for balanced diets that feature all food groups in healthy amounts.
âWe need to change our diets to healthy patterns that we can maintain for our entire lifetime, not something that you go on to go off,â she said, speaking recently in an online interview hosted by CIMMYT. âJust as nutrition experts have always recommended, unless youâre allergic to a particular food, a healthy diet should include products from all food groups, in the right amounts.â
Hans-Joachim Braun (left, white shirt), director of the global wheat program at CIMMYT, Maqsood Qamar (center), wheat breeder at Pakistanâs National Agricultural Research Center, Islamabad, and Muhammad Imtiaz (right), CIMMYT wheat improvement specialist and Pakistan country representative, discussing seed production of Zincol. Photo: Kashif Syed/CIMMYT.
ISLAMABAD (CIMMYT) – Farmers in Pakistan are eagerly adopting a nutrient-enhanced wheat variety offering improved food security, higher incomes, health benefits and a delicious taste.
Known as Zincol and released to farmers in 2016, the variety provides harvests as abundant as those for other widely grown wheat varieties, but its grain contains 20 percent more zinc, a critical micronutrient missing in the diets of many poor people in South Asia.
Due to these benefits and its delicious taste, Zincol was one of the top choices among farmers testing 12 new wheat varieties in 2016.
âI would eat twice as many chappatis of Zincol as of other wheat varieties,â said Munib Khan, a farmer in Gujar Khan, Rawalpindi District, Punjab Province, Pakistan, referring to its delicious flavor.
Khan has been growing Zincol since its release. In 2017, he planted a large portion of his wheat fields with the seed, as did members of the Gujar Khan Seed Producer Group to which he belongs.
The group is one of 21 seed producer associations established to grow quality seed of new wheat varieties with assistance from the countryâs National Rural Support Program (NRSP) in remote areas of Pakistan. The support program is a key partner in the Pakistan Agricultural Innovation Program (AIP), led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
âOver the 2016 and 2017 cropping seasons, 400 tons of seed of Zincol has been shared with farmers, seed companies and promotional partners,â said Imtiaz Muhammad, CIMMYT country representative in Pakistan and a wheat improvement specialist.
Zincol resulted from the CIMMYTâs âbiofortificationâ breeding research, focused on enhancing nutrient levels in the grain of key food crops. Scientists develop biofortified crops using diverse genetic resources, including wheat landraces and wild relatives with the genetic potential to accumulate zinc in the grain.
Genes for enhanced grain zinc content from those sources are crossed into adapted, high-yielding varieties, over repeated cycles of selection involving many thousands of plants.
âOne year after the release of Zincol, wheat farmers on more than 320 hectares are sowing the variety,â Imtiaz said.
He also noted that 15 tons of Zincol seed was shared free of charge for testing with 600 farm families in Sukkar District, Sindh Province, through an initiative of World Vision-Canada and HarvestPlus, a CGIAR research program dedicated to the study and delivery of biofortified foods.
Zincol yields as much other widely grown wheat varieties, but its grain contains 20 percent more zinc, a critical micronutrient missing in the diets of many poor people in South Asia. Photo: Kashif Syed/CIMMYT
Wheat: Vehicle for enhanced nutrition
Pakistan produces more than 25 million tons of wheat a year. The country has an annual per capita consumption averaging around 124 kilograms â among the highest in the world and providing over 60 percent of inhabitantsâ daily caloric intake. The staple wheat-based foods are chappatis or a flat bread baked on the walls of large, cylindrical clay ovens.
Particularly in remote areas of Pakistan, human diets too often lack essential micronutrients such as zinc. According to a 2011 nutrition survey, 39 percent of children in Pakistan and 48 percent of pregnant women suffer from zinc deficiency, leading to child stunting rates of more than 40 percent and high infant mortality.
Zinc deficiency is also known to cause diarrheal disease, lower respiratory tract infections, malaria, hypogonadism, impaired immune function, skin disorders, cognitive dysfunction and anorexia, according to the World Health Organization.
âGiven its role as a key food staple, wheat with enhanced levels of zinc and other micronutrients can contribute to better nutrition,â said Velu Govindan, a CIMMYT wheat breeder who specializes in biofortification and helped develop Zincol.
âZincol also carries the genetic background of NARC 2011, a popular, high-yielding Pakistan wheat variety that resists wheat stem rust, a deadly disease that threatens wheat worldwide,â Govindan added.
As part of AIP and HarvestPlus, as well as with numerous public and private partners and farmer seed production groups in Pakistan, CIMMYT is leading the extensive evaluation, distribution and seed production of Zincol, said Krishna Dev Joshi, a former CIMMYT wheat improvement specialist who worked on the project.
âWith modest resources and limited amounts of seed, we tested and promoted Zincol over the last two years in Balochistan, Punjab, and Sindh, covering 15 districts and engaging nearly 700 farmers,â Joshi explained.
Joshi said farmer seed producers and private seed companies were able to provide another 100 tons of seed in 2016, enough to sow more than 2,500 hectares in 2017 and over half a million hectares in 2018.
âZincol reached farmers nine years after the initial breeding cross in 2007, several years more quickly than is the norm in Pakistan, partly because it was tested simultaneously in national and provincial trials,â Joshi added. âZincol is part of a suite of new, micronutrient-enhanced wheat varieties bred by CIMMYT and partners for use in South Asia, a region whose inhabitants consume 100 million tons of wheat each year.â
For India, Govindan and partners created a new biofortified wheat variety using synthetic parents crossed onto WH1105, a CIMMYT-derived high-yielding variety grown in Indiaâs Northwestern Plain Zone. The new variety out-yields other popular varieties by as much as 8 percent and has a 20 percent higher zinc content, as well as good resistance to yellow rust disease. Another new Indian variety, Zinc Shakti, has a 40 percent greater grain zinc content and is being marketed by the private sector and spread via farmer-to-farmer seed sharing.
Over the next 
