Xavier Mhike
Xavier Mhike is the Scientist – Product Development for Southern Africa at CIMMYT HQ in Mexico.
Tag: biotechnology
Ulises Daniel Alvarez Chavez
Ulises Daniel Alvarez Chavez is a Laboratory Research Technician with the Genetic Resources Program at CIMMYT HQ in Mexico. His work includes:
- DNA and RNA Insolation, culture of groundnut for development aflatoxins resistant varieties.
- Tissue culture and molecular biology to complement gene editing experiments.
- Development and standardization of protocols and PCR.
- Virus inoculation and plant phenotyping.
- Development of high performance allele selection methods and identification of the desired cross material.
Harish Gandhi
Harish Gandhi is a Breeding Lead for Dryland Legumes and Cereals in CIMMYT’s Genetic Resources program in Kenya. He is a transformative plant breeding and genetics professional, with more than 15 years experience of driving genetic gains, building effective teams, and pioneering innovative research and development.
David Omar Gonzalez Dieguez
David Omar Gonzalez Dieguez is a Post-Doctoral Fellow – Molecular Pre-Breeder in the Global Wheat Program at CIMMYT. He leads the application and integration of molecular tools in research and pre-breeding activities in wheat physiology.
In the research context, Dieguez focuses on the genetic basis of physiological traits related to yield components and climate resilience for yield potential, heat, and drought adaptation by performing GWAS analyses for gene/marker/QTL discovery and establishing marker validation for pre-breeding and breeding application to assist stacking of complementary physiological and agronomic traits.
In the pre-breeding context, Dieguez conducts the application and integration of genomic-assisted breeding tools (i.e. MAS/MABC and GS) at appropriate stages of the pre-breeding pipeline to support pre-breeder’s decisions for selecting lines for yield potential and tolerance to heat and drought stress and for trait introgression.
Kenya Lifts 10-year Ban On GM Foods, Allows Open Cultivation, Importation Of White GM Maize
Food crops and animal feeds produced through biotechnology innovations can now be imported into Kenya after the ban on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) was lifted.
Kenyan scientists and research institutions are now able to develop crop varieties that will benefit farmers and their communities.
In a landmark statement on October 3, the Cabinet said: “In accordance with the recommendation of the Task Force to review matters relating to GMOs and Food Safety, and in fidelity with the guidelines of the National Biosafety Authority (NBA) on all applicable international treaties including the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (CPB), Cabinet vacated its earlier decision of 8th November 2012 prohibiting the open cultivation of GMOs and the importation of food crops and animal feeds produced through biotechnology innovations; effectively lifting the ban on GMOs. By dint of the executive action open cultivation and importation of white (GMO) maize is now authorized.”
Read the original article: Kenya Lifts 10-year Ban On GM Foods, Allows Open Cultivation, Importation Of White GM Maize
Cover photo: A decade-long ban on genetically modified foods has been lifted in Kenya. (Photo: New Nigerian Newspaper)
Meet The Indian Researcher Helping To Solve The Deadly Aflatoxin Puzzle
Indian agricultural researcher Pooja Bhatnagar-Mathur, a Principal Scientist at CIMMYT, says aflatoxin, a toxin produced from soil fungus and found in groundnuts like peanuts, is a serious public health and food safety problem around the globe.
Narain Dhar
Narain Dhar is a research fellow working with CIMMYT’s Global Wheat program and CGIAR Research Program on Wheat (WHEAT). His recent work is on charaterization and evaluation of a unique set of germplasm lines for abiotic stress.
Akshaya Biswal
Akshaya Biswal is a scientist specialized in plant transformation and tissue culture, working with CIMMYT’s Genetic Resources Program. His current work focuses on application of gene editing to improve host-plant resistance.
CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats)/Cas9-mediated genome editing has revolutionized our ability to study gene function and alter it to improve biotic and abiotic stress tolerance, increase yield potential of crop plants or even to improve the quality of grains. Various plant diseases cause up to 30% yield loss in cereals. Polyploidy in maize and wheat poses additional difficulty to breeders for developing and deploying resistant lines to pathogens. Some these can be solved by biotechnological intervention with relative ease. Biswal’s team uses gene editing to: control Maize Lethal Necrosis (MLN) in Africa for improved grain harvests; improve stem rust and powdery mildew resistance in wheat; and discover and validate the function of candidate genes underpinning large effect QTLs.
Prior to joining CIMMYT, Biswal completed postdoctoral placements at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the University of North Carolina. He earned a PhD in Biotechnology at Jawaharlal Technological University, an MSc from Banaras Hindu University, and a BSc from Utkal University, India.
L.M. Suresh
L.M. Suresh leads CIMMYT’s maize pathology efforts in sub-Saharan Africa. He regularly contributes to Global Maize Program projects that have strategic significance in maize pathology, disease diagnosis, epidemiology and disease resistance.
Suresh also works on maize lethal necrosis (MLN) phenotyping with public and private partnership at CIMMYT and the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization’s (KALRO) joint research station in Naivasha, Kenya. His team has phenotyped around 200,000 maize germplasm from various partners and 19 MLN resistant/tolerant hybrids have been released in east Africa so far. He has supported the training of more than 5000 researchers, students, extension workers, private seed company executives and farmers in rapid disease diagnosis and his contributions have helped to prevent further MLN spread throughout eastern and southern Africa.
Manje Gowda
Manje Gowda is a maize molecular breeder based in Kenya with CIMMYT’s Global Maize Program. His current research focuses on the identification, validation and deployment of novel genetic variation into elite germplasm, integrating knowledge on plant breeding, quantitative genetics, and molecular breeding to improve maize breeding efficiency.
In close collaboration with CIMMYT maize breeders, he implements forward breeding and genomic selection in CIMMYT’s Eastern and Southern Africa maize breeding programs. He gives maize breeders access to the newest genotyping technologies and is involved in the development of high quality seeds through rigorous application of marker based QA&QC.
Sridhar Bhavani
Sridhar Bhavani is a Senior Scientist, Head of Rust Pathology and Molecular Genetics working at CIMMYT HQ.
He is a passionate researcher leader with over 15 years of experience working on wheat traits especially rust diseases. He has demonstrated leadership in executing multiple international projects and established strong networks and linkages in East Africa, Asia and various global wheat partners.
As the Head of Rust Pathology, he oversees pathology, molecular genetics, and breeding strategy components in major projects such as: Accelerating Genetic Gains in Maize and Wheat (AGGMW) funded by BMGF; DFID, FCDO, BMGF & DFID funded Zn mainstreaming project; GRDC and ACRCP funded projects on delivering genetic tools and knowledge required to breed wheat and barley with resistance to leaf rust, stripe rust and stem rust; USAID funded project on wheat rust breeding; NMBU-Norway funded project on sustainable management of rust diseases in wheat; and a project led by Kansas State on New Sources of Genetic Disease Resistance.
Xuecai Zhang
Xuecai Zhang is a Senior Scientist and Maize Molecular Breeder with CIMMYT’s Global Maize Program. In 2011, he joined CIMMYT as an assistant breeder at the lowland tropical maize breeding program in Mexico. In 2015, he started to lead the maize molecular breeding lab in Mexico to implement modern molecular breeding tools and technologies for accelerating the genetic gain of the Latin American maize breeding pipelines. From 2024, he coordinates the maize collaborations between CIMMYT and China.
Aparna Das
Aparna Das is a Technical Program Manager for the Global Maize Program, working with breeding teams to implement new strategies to improve the product delivery pipeline.
Claudio César Ayala Hernández
Claudio Ayala is an experienced Data Management Coordinator with a demonstrated history of working in the research industry. He has a Master’s degree focused on Information Systems and Applied Computing and is skilled in analytics, database management, and the development of tools for effectively capturing, curating, storing and integrating different datasets.
Genes from ancestral relatives of wheat could boost its disease resistance, scientists say
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
El Batán, Texcoco (Mexico), August 3, 2018
As societies consider the advantages and risks of modern biotechnology, including genetic modification and gene editing, a commentary by scientists from the John Innes Centre (JIC) and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), published in Science magazine today, highlights the potential for deploying genes from ancestral relatives of wheat to strengthen its disease resistance.
Spontaneous natural crosses between wild ancestors created bread wheat some 10,000 years ago. Subsequent domestication and breeding by humans has made it one of the world’s foremost food crops. This process has also lessened the crop’s genetic diversity for stress and disease resistances found in its wild relatives.
It is thus rare to find resistance to a new disease race among currently grown wheat varieties. Wild relatives of wheat provide a larger, naturally-occurring treasure trove of resistance.
Conventional cross-breeding is being used to transfer beneficial traits, including disease resistance, from wild relatives into today’s wheat varieties, but such transfers carry along many undesirable genes that must be removed through painstaking selection in repeated generations of breeding lines — a process that takes many years.
Meanwhile, rapidly emerging and evolving races of wheat stem rust and stripe rust diseases, the crop’s deadliest scourges worldwide, are quickly overcoming the genetic resistance of many widely grown wheat cultivars. Other wheat diseases are spreading beyond their place of origin. For example, wheat blast, which is native to South America, unexpectedly devastated parts of the wheat crop in Bangladesh in 2016. It could now spread to other areas at risk in South Asia, where wheat covers 15 million hectares and nearly a billion inhabitants eat wheat.
The Science article notes that research thus far has missed the opportunity of using some of the tools of modern biotechnology to more effectively access diversity from wild relatives of wheat and provide it with a “multilayered” disease resistance that pathogens could not easily overcome. The process is no different from what conventional crossing or natural out-crossing could do, except that it is faster, the chance of success is much higher and it may be the only affordable approach to provide durable resistance.
Fact-based decisions are needed by the international community and individual countries regarding the potential use of modern biotechnology to ensure food security. That use must reflect concerns of human and animal health and environmental safety, as well as respect to national sovereignty, regulations and procedures.
By the same token, decisions must take into account the interests of the people who are most affected when new diseases devastate livelihoods and drive up consumer prices: smallholder farmers and consumers in the developing world.
Click here to read CIMMYT’s position statement on genetic modification.
Click here to read the full article on Science magazine.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT THE MEDIA TEAM:
Rodrigo Ordóñez, Communications Manager, CIMMYT. r.ordonez@cgiar.org, +52 (55) 5804 2004 ext. 1167.
Ricardo Curiel, Communications Officer, CIMMYT. r.curiel@cgiar.org, +52 (55) 5804 2004 ext. 1144.