Tag: innovation

CIMMYT announces 2030 Strategy

Written by Julian Bañuelos-Uribe on August 8, 2023. Posted in Features.

The world’s food systems are under threat by escalating armed conflicts, economic stagnation, the effects of the climate crisis and natural resource degradation. Against this backdrop, the next seven years are crucial in meeting the challenges of keeping the world’s growing population fed and secure.

Recognizing that business as usual will not be sufficient, CIMMYT has embarked on a journey to proactively face the new challenges of the 21st century. This novel approach to agrifood systems is the core of CIMMYT’s 2030 Strategy, which has the potential to shape the future of agriculture.

Ethiopian Seed Enterprise maize crop for multiplying seedlings of DT maize. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)

“We understand that the challenges facing food security are complex, varied and rapidly changing. For instance, the effects of COVID-19 and Ukraine-Russia conflict on food systems are still being felt today. With that in mind, we set out to develop a strategy that is both robust and nimble. The best way to create a sustainable and inclusive strategy was to engage directly with CIMMYT scientists and staff, the people on the front lines of this effort to deliver food and nutrition security to the world,” said CIMMYT Director General Bram Govaerts.

Looking back to move forward

The first step in crafting the 2030 Strategy was looking at where does CIMMYT want the world to be in 2100. In answering this question, CIMMYT crafted a long-term vision of how it wants to engage in a changing world and achieve the transformation to a food and nutrition secure world within planetary boundaries. CIMMYT has integrated the use of foresight and specifically a set of 2030 Food and Agriculture scenarios to explore potential changes in intervention areas over the strategic period and help prepare engagements in different contexts across the globe. These scenarios are a decision-making tool that has underpinned the development of the strategy to ensure that it is context-driven and focused on the most pressing challenges facing the agrifood systems in which CIMMYT operates.

From the future CIMMYT looks back at its history and examines how its core business has evolved over the years to proactively meet ever-changing needs across the world.

At each stage of CIMMYT’s evolution, it has taken its strengths and the skills it has built and added to its experience, and expanded on what it delivers while maintaining the core strengths.

Norman Borlaug teaching trainees. (Photo: CIMMYT)

In CIMMYT’s earliest days, the mission was developing and improving germplasm and agronomic practices, then CIMMYT began working more closely with farmers (1980s), broadened emphasis in genetic improvements (2000), embarked on sustainable multidisciplinary projects (2010s), and most recently, advancing technologies in participatory innovation systems (2015-2022). All leading to the mission codified in the 2030 Strategy: accelerating food systems transformation by using the power of collective action.

Now, in 2023, CIMMYT’s progress is being shaped by the CGIAR mission statement: “To deliver science and innovation that advance the transformation of food, land, and water systems in a climate crisis.”

Building the Strategy

To define the 2030 Strategy, CIMMYT responded to the following core questions:

What does success look like?
Where can CIMMYT deliver the most value?
How can CIMMYT deliver value for communities?

“As an organization, we have concentrated on strategies that foster collaboration and adapt them for a non-profit international organization whose vision is not to grow as an institution but to deliver greater value for the communities they serve, to innovate for the end users of their products and to ensure a better future for our global community,” said Govaerts.

The tools used to develop the elements of this strategic plan leveraged the framework provided in the CGIAR Research and Innovation Strategy to guide the process. Staff from across the Center engaged in a consultative process to develop the objectives for following strategic components: Excellence in Science and Innovation, Excellence in Operations, Talent Management, Resource Mobilization, Partnership, and Influence.

Developing the Excellence in Science and Innovation component serves as an example of this collaborative, bottom-up approach. Planning was led by the Emerging Thought Leaders Group, made up of 24 early and mid-career scientists across the breadth of CIMMYT’s global and program portfolio. The group worked collaboratively with CIMMYT researchers and staff to first delineate the challenges facing agri-food systems and then workshopped solutions which now serve as the foundation of the 2030 Strategy.

Workshop participants study seed samples in CIMMYT’s Seed Health Laboratory. (Photo: Xochiquetzal Fonseca/CIMMYT)

“Each component complements the others,” said Govaerts. “This is our answer to the core questions. Only by working collectively can we initiate sustainable solutions that reach everyone.”

Together, the components create a network to support CIMMYT’s three pillars: Discovery (research and innovation), SystemDev (working collaboratively to innovate foundational systems), and Inc. (incubating startups and new ways of doing business in the agri-food system space).

CIMMYT is leading the way in shaping a sustainable and prosperous agricultural landscape

The goal to facilitate food security where sustainable agriculture is part of the solution to the climate crisis and agriculture provides an avenue to build household resilience and enables communities to pull themselves out of poverty requires the strategic use of resources. CIMMYT’s 2030 Strategy, built from the bottom up on a foundation over 50 years’ experience and the expertise of scientists, staff, and farmers maximizes resources, enhances dynamic partnerships, and both retains and recruits a world-class staff in a world of growing challenges to food security.

Read the 2030 Strategy: Science and Innovation for a Food and Nutrition Secure World: CIMMYT’s 2030 Strategy

Counties Urged To Scale Up And Adopt Pest Control Technologies

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on March 17, 2023. Posted in In the media.

Scientists from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) suggest counties in Kenya should scale up and accelerate the adoption of technologies that can control and prevent Maize Lethal Necrosis (MLN) and fall armyworm (FAW) to achieve higher maize yields.

Although the technologies exist, many farmers have little information on how to implement them.

Seed companies and senior officials from the Ministry of Agriculture could play a key role in disseminating information, as could mobile phone technology and emerging digital innovation platforms.

Read the original article: Counties Urged To Scale Up And Adopt Pest Control Technologies

From silver bullets to transition science in the CGIAR: reflections on the scalingXchange Call to Action

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on October 31, 2022. Posted in Features.

The origins of the CGIAR, the world’s largest publicly funded agricultural research consortium for the poor, are closely related to the Green Revolution; a revolution mostly told as the work of one Northern hero with a superior technology that saved the world from starvation. Only recently has the notion that the introduction of that superior technology was one of many investments and innovations that kicked off as the Revolution started to gain ground – and that these investments and innovations came from both the North and South. Scaling of innovation happens in a larger system, often one that feels resistant to whatever we try to scale or, like in the case of the Green Revolution, aligned with what was being scaled and thus led to a tipping point and a completely new way agriculture is produced. The Revolution changed our relation to food, from which there was no going back.

In my ten years at the CGIAR – from 2005 to 2010 at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and then from 2017 to now at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) – major shifts can be observed in how scaling is approached.

First, scaling equals large adoption during the project, stemming from strong confidence that “if we build it, they will come”, or we just show how good our innovation is and others will scale it. From my own experience developing scale-appropriate drip irrigation in the Sahel, North Africa, I can say that approach hardly worked. When I re-joined the CGIAR in 2017, there was much more attention to the context in which the intervention is being scaled – we need to “create an enabling environment” for the innovation, and multiple innovations need to scale alongside “our”, mostly technical, innovation. It was very interesting to see up close how more and more colleagues have started to question whether scaling is “good” in the first place and whether it should be about “our” innovations.

COVID-19 and the major energy transitions that are going on in Europe and some states in the United States of America (USA) seem to have awoken a much stronger systems view, the realization that change takes decades, and that there are winners and losers in that process. I think we did a great job in questioning the “silver bullet” and “transfer of technology” mindset and see the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a transition process that requires radically different approaches and addresses multiple leverage points.

Scaling at One CGIAR

The major reform from 15 CGIAR centers to One CGIAR was the perfect opportunity to take scaling seriously as a science and an art. A range of methodologies have been developed, and informal networks of like-minded people have worked together a lot to push for a new paradigm on scaling. It is great that scaling is now well embedded in the One CGIAR strategy for the future. The big One CGIAR Initiatives have all reserved about 5 percent of their budgets to integrate scaling expertise. Also, scaling is very much recognized as a topic that requires a culture and mindset change within the organization to be much more effective.

Not surprisingly, the Call to Action from the Global South and its eight action points resonated a lot with me, especially since the following principles match really well:

It is not about reaching a target as fast as possible but about the whole environment for sustainability – more is not always better. Scaling can help us understand whether project outputs have contributed to something good (Action 1).
We need to reflect better on the viability of some innovations to go to scale – rather than promoting or selling our own solutions, supporting Southern solutions could increase viability (Action 7).
Problem owners should be in charge of scaling – scaling should be a locally owned process where those on the ground negotiate what is good and enough, and we, the research and development organizations, facilitate and support (Action 2).
The way projects are designed and implement set us up for failure. We create fake, highly controlled environments designed to prove that our innovation works – the gap with the reality on the ground could not be larger. The development community, with donors, need to rethink our approach (Action 5).
We need to invest in learning and the science of scaling. Organizations in the Global North need modesty in understanding that our role is not neutral and realize that there is so much we don’t know (Action 8).
Within organizations, scaling is a cultural issue tightly connected to change management. We need to shift mindsets and behaviors to allow better scaling to happen.

That this Call comes from researchers in the Global South is so powerful. It shows us that the current ways of working are not delivering and paints a picture of a better way of doing things, but at the moment, we are in uncertain limbo between the two. The guidance in the Call can help to incite momentum and change. I believe we are coming to a critical mass of people that can tip the scale and that the actions in the Call can become the new normal – so that the stories we tell in the future focus not just on external (Northern) innovations that lead to big change, but on the interplay between what is going in the South and how external “solutions” fit in.

Cover photo: Lead farmer Santa Bhandari harvests green maize for her buffaloes
Neulapur, Bardiya, Nepal. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)

Kenya Lifts 10-year Ban On GM Foods, Allows Open Cultivation, Importation Of White GM Maize

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on October 24, 2022. Posted in In the media.

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)

Expanding BISA expertise to new horizons in South Asia

Written by Richa Sharma Puri on October 5, 2022. Posted in Features.

Ten years ago, a foundation was laid on the principles of Norman Borlaug to translate agrarian challenges into opportunities through collaboration between the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). This major step toward sustainable food and nutrition security was taken through the establishment of the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA) as an independent, non-profit research organization.

Today, BISA is a global name in agriculture research with a vision to promote food security, nutrition, stable livelihoods, and eco-friendly practices in South Asia. Given the prominent challenges of climate change in these economically fragile agroecosystems, the partnership between BISA, ICAR, and CIMMYT plays a pivotal role in developing improved wheat and maize varieties with climate-smart and conservation agriculture-based practices.

A decade of impact

One of the most significant outcomes of BISA’s work has been its contribution to building a vast, solid network for evaluating and disseminating new high-yielding and climate-resilient wheat varieties for India and other South Asian countries in close partnership with ICAR and CIMMYT. BISA’s transformative solutions and science-led research are critical to targeting stressed resources and attaining global food security.

With support from ICAR and CIMMYT, BISA has developed state-of-the-art research facilities at its three strategically selected research stations, having 1,200 acres of land that the Government of India, jointly with the respective state governments, generously granted to the project. Located in three disparate agro-climatic and socioeconomic environments, these sites are model research farms supporting agriculture research in South Asia. The learning labs at BISA emphasize that scaling climate-smart villages also strengthen climate-resilient agriculture, primarily through addressing challenges such as residue burning. BISA’s collaborative and inclusive approach is more relevant today when the world is grappling with various food and nutrition insecurity challenges.

Time for expansion

BISA envisages attracting countries from south Asia, the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), as well as National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS), national research institutes, private sector companies, and civil society organizations as active partners for expanding reach in the region. To this end, BISA has completed extensive work in Nepal and Bangladesh and has extended its services to Bhutan and Sri Lanka.

Still, more needs to be done in South Asian countries. Therefore, there is an urgent need for a strong commitment to harnessing the best of international scientific discoveries with local efforts. Collective action is to be garnered to provide trusted and effective mechanisms for developing and sharing cutting-edge agricultural technologies in the South Asian region.

Himanshu Pathak, Director General of ICAR, with Bram Govaerts, Director General of CIMMYT, discuss how BISA’s work can create food security in South Asia. (Photo: BISA)

To this end, a BISA High-Level Meeting was organized on September 1 and 2 in Delhi, with senior government representatives from the NARS in Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and India. The meeting provided a forum to identify opportunities to co-create and deploy innovative, multidisciplinary solutions to effectively address the transboundary challenges related to food, nutrition, and environmental security faced by farming communities in South Asia. This platform strives to unite the scientific community and thought leaders to support research and development across the agriculture domain.

Delegates from these countries felt that there is a need for a robust program of germplasm exchange within the region, which is essential to strengthening agriculture’s resilience. All countries expressed a significant need to raise their capacity of young researchers in advanced research techniques related to genomics, phenotyping, climate-smart agriculture, precision agriculture, and digital technologies. Delegates also discussed BISA’s role as a research and innovation regional catalyst, innovation hub, and integrated research platform to build resilient agrifood systems and achieve long-term sustainability and resilience for food security in South Asia.

BISA’s farm-ready research, from setting up climate-resilient villages and developing viable alternatives to rice residue burning to facilitating an open exchange of elite germplasm and cutting-edge technologies, reflects not only the vision of CIMMYT but also the philosophy of our mutual inspiration, Borlaug, who believed strongly in sharing knowledge and “taking it to the farmer”.

Cover photo: Delegates from Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India meet to deliberate on the significant issues in South Asia’s agriculture sector. (Photo: BISA)

Connect rural areas with digital innovations to unlock climate resilience for hundreds of millions of farmers

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on September 27, 2022. Posted in News.

A female farmer using digital agricultural tools. (Credit: C. De Bode/CGIAR)

Research shows that digital innovations can increase small-scale farmers’ incomes, boost the adoption of better practices, and increase resilience to climate shocks while reducing the gender gap and managing food system risks. However, these benefits are not universal. More than 600 million people and 40 percent of small farms are still not covered by mobile internet, especially in those countries most dependent on agricultural production. Across low- and middle-income countries, women are 7 percent less likely than men to own a mobile phone and 15 percent less likely to use mobile internet.

A new CGIAR Research Initiative, Digital Innovation, has been launched to research pathways to bridge this digital divide, improve the quality of information systems, and strengthen local capacities to realize the potential of digital technologies.

Read the original article: Connect rural areas with digital innovations to unlock climate resilience for hundreds of millions of farmers

More than machines

Written by Sarah Fernandes on August 15, 2022. Posted in Blogs.

Cooperative farmers receive training on operation of a mobile seed cleaner in Oromia, Ethiopia. (Credit: Dessalegn Molla/GIZ)

It’s a familiar problem in international agricultural development – a project with external funding and support has achieved impressive early results, but the money is running out, the time is growing short, and there’s not a clear plan in place to continue and extend the program’s success.

Over the past seven years, the German development agency Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) established Green Innovation Centers in 13 countries in Africa and two in Asia, partnering with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) to support projects that introduce mechanization in a way that improves long-term food security and prompts economic growth. Now, as the project enters its final two years of funding, GIZ and CIMMYT are focused on ensuring the gains produced by the Green Innovation Centers are not lost.

Like any complex challenge, there’s not just one solution to the sustainability problem – but CIMMYT is working to address a massive question around why pilots fail in agricultural development by implementing a systematic approach to scalability that recognizes the critical importance of context and puts projects on a sustainable path before the money is gone.

Training the trainers

As the Green Innovation Centers enter a crucial, final stage, a CIMMYT-led team recently completed training for seven GIZ staff from Ivory Coast, Togo, Ethiopia, and Zambia, who are now certified to facilitate CIMMYT’s Scaling Scan tool and train others to put agricultural innovations in their home countries on a solid path for growth. The training team included CIMMYT scaling advisor Lennart Woltering, CIMMYT mechanization support specialist Leon Jamann, and students from Germany’s University of Hohenheim and Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University.

The Scaling Scan is a practical tool that helps users set a defined growth ambition, analyze their readiness to scale using ten core ingredients, and identify specific areas that need attention in order to reach the scaling ambition.

The GIZ staff learned to use the Scaling Scan by applying it to early stage innovations in their home countries, ranging from commercial fodder production in the Southern Province of Zambia to seed value chains in the Oromia and Amhara regions of Ethiopia.

Mohammed, a farmer in Amhara, Ethiopia, with a fistful of wheat on his farm. (Credit: Mulugeta Gebrekidan/GIZ)

What will scale up in Ethiopia?

In Ethiopia, smallholding farmers producing legumes, wheat and maize struggle to increase their yield to a level that can improve food security, generate higher incomes for producers and their families, and promote economic growth and jobs in agricultural communities. To help smallholders develop sustainable solutions, GIZ senior advisor Molla Dessalegn worked with his Green Innovation Center team to brainstorm and launch a range of 20 proposed innovations – from risk mitigation and new contract structures to introduction of new technology – all with the aim of improving agricultural yields.

To date, these innovations have introduced over 200,000 Ethiopian smallholders to new knowledge and practices to improve their output. But with the project exit bearing down, Molla and his team were eager to identify which innovations held the most promise for survival and growth beyond the endpoint. So they put their pilot projects to the test using the Scaling Scan.

The scan involves an intensive, day-long seminar originally designed for in-person delivery, but remote versions have also proved successful as COVID limited global travel. The scan focuses on thorough analysis and scoring of the current state of a pilot project and its potential for growth given the realities of conditions on the ground.

Facilitators lead project managers through evaluation of the ten ingredients required for successful scaling, from finance and collaboration to technology, know-how, and public sector governance. The outcome is a clear data set assessing the scalability of the pilot and directing attention to specific areas where improvement is needed before a project can expect serious growth.

An unexpected outcome

What emerged from the scan surprised Molla. Some of the strategies he saw as most successful in the early stages, such as a contract farming program, scored poorly, whereas the scan identified deployment of mobile seed cleaners as a solution that held particular promise for scalability. These outcomes prompted the team to refocus efforts on this strategy.

About 95 percent of Ethiopian smallholders rely on informal seed systems, either saving and reusing seed or exchanging low quality seed with other farmers. Seed cleaning plays a critical role in helping farmers build a high quality, high yield seed development system. Molla and his team had already worked with smallholder cooperatives in Oromia to distribute three mobile seed cleaners, and they knew these machines were being heavily relied upon by farmers in this region.

The Scaling Scan showed them, among other things, that the successful adoption of the seed cleaners had even more potential – it was an innovation that could be sustained and even expanded by local stakeholders, including the Ministry of Agriculture.

This result prompted Molla to recommend investment in additional mobile seed cleaners – four to serve cooperatives in the Amhara region and a fifth for the West Arsi district in Oromia. These machines are now in operation and helping additional smallholders improve the quality of their seed stock. This initial expansion confirms the Scaling Scan results – and CIMMYT plans to continue supporting this growth with the purchase of another round of seed cleaners.

The Scaling Scan also identified problems with the business model for sustaining the mobile seed cleaners through cooperatives in Ethiopia, and this outcome directed the Green Innovation Centers to partner with a consultant to develop improvements in this area. In this way, one of the most important values of the scan is its ability to guide decision-making.

Scaling up the future

Seed cleaners alone won’t solve every yield problem for Ethiopian farmers, but the scan has now guided the initial implementation – and contextual adaptation – of a new form of agricultural mechanization across two regions of the country, with the promise of more to come.

And there’s more to come from the Scaling Scan as well.

Now that he’s received certification as a trainer, Molla plans to help farmers, officials, and other development workers adopt this rigorous approach to evaluating innovations that show potential. When funding for his project ends in 2024, he will be leaving 300,000 smallholders in Ethiopia with more than machines – he will be leaving them with the knowledge, experience, and practices to make the most of the technological solutions that are improving their yields today and building a more secure future for their communities.

CIMMYT enumerators hold booklets with vignettes before their interaction with family farmers Kiran Devi (second from left) and Rishikesh Ram (third from left). (Photo: Nima Chodon /CIMMYT)

Researchers use storytelling to evaluate women’s agency in agricultural production

Written by Nima Chodon on July 12, 2022. Posted in News.

Researchers from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) are conducting a study in the state of Bihar, India, to improve our understanding of women’s and men’s contributions to decision-making around wheat crop management. The results will help reach women with new varieties that meet their needs and priorities.

The study seeks to overcome a big challenge for research organizations and national policymakers: to design a better framework for faster turnover of improved varieties and increased access to women and marginalized farmers.

Wheat is the second-largest crop grown in Bihar after rice, with a production of 5-6 million tonnes of it every year. Despite women’s contributions to farming activities, from sowing to harvesting, traditional gender norms can undermine their access to productive resources and influence household decisions. Additionally, women’s workload in wheat agriculture is increasing, due to men’s departure to non-agricultural jobs, but women are still not necessarily recognized as capable farmers.

Gender exclusion in agriculture

Given social norms and household-and-farm labor division based on gender, women are often confined to specific roles in the agricultural production system. In smallholder farming communities of South Asia like Bangladesh, India, and Nepal, men’s increasing involvement in non-agricultural activities has increased women’s workloads in every sphere of agricultural production. However, these long-held assumptions of their role can lead to exclusion from decision-making, limiting their control over what, how, and how much a crop is produced, their economic wellbeing, including household food security.

The CIMMYT study on “Intra-household gender dynamics in decision-making for wheat crop management in India (Bihar)” investigates women’s and men’s roles in production decisions. Led by Hom Gartaula, Gender, and Social Inclusion Specialist at CIMMYT, it covers eight villages — four in Darbhanga and four in Madhepura district — with 25 houses considered in each village.

As part of the Accelerating Genetic Gains in Maize and Wheat for improved livelihoods in Asia and Africa (AGG) project, the research study will help gain deeper insights into the intra-household gender dynamics. It will also help in untangling who does what, how wheat cultivation and management decisions are organized within the households and the perceptions of the male and female farmers around why decisions are made in such a way.

Farmer Devi points at the vignette that aligns with her household decision-making process. (Photo: Nima Chodon /CIMMYT)

Storytelling through household decision-making scenarios

In traditional rural societies, survey-based data collection might not be the best way to evaluate women’s agency, as the deeply rooted cultural restrictions might not allow them to talk openly about sensitive issues, like their relationship with a spouse. This study uses an innovative storytelling approach to data collection: using vignettes, farmers are given short stories to relate to their household circumstances. Stories are also easier to remember and help build a connection with the characters quickly.

The vignettes approach was first applied in the context of smallholder maize production in Kenya under the AGG project. According to Rachel Voss, the leader of the Kenyan study, “Using vignettes to explore decision-making in both East Africa and South Asia allows us to learn and compare across these regions and across crops. Gender relations in Indian wheat and Kenyan maize production might look similar in some ways, but very different in other ways, and our research and programming will need to respond to those differences.”

In this study, five vignettes with fictitious husband and wife characters are presented to participants to represent the different ways production and consumption decisions are made in the household. These vignettes describe how they engage in key decisions like seed procurement, labor hired, and harvest used for consumption or sale. With guidance from evaluators, respondents identify which scenario best aligns with the decision-making process in their household.

Researchers feel this qualitative data, gathered through a storytelling approach, could guide the reach of gender interventions in a more effective way. Gartaula and the team explained that the participants can build connections to a character in the story without biases, expressing their experiences in household decision-making through vignettes. They also observed that sometimes what the participant shared is the opposite of their assumption of women being excluded from decisions.

Rethinking gender roles

Traditional gender roles are deeply entrenched in the region. In the farming communities of rural Bihar, one might assume that who does what in wheat-rice cultivation is obvious, and it has been well studied in the past. However, investigating the stereotypes around gender to understand practices within households is an innovative aspect of this study.

For example, landless couple Pappu Paswan and Kamini Devi of village Kamtaul in Darbhanga district have been cultivating wheat on leased farm plots for many years. Devi is engaged in every aspect of decision-making. “We cultivate in leased plots of different sizes, spread across, requiring more effort and time in attending to them. We discuss additional labor during harvest and if there is money enough to pay them,” said Devi pointing her finger at the vignette illustrating ‘cooperation’ in household decision-making. They produce enough for their consumption, but when possible, “I advise my husband to sell some for income,” she added.

Despite contributing to decisions jointly with Pappu when it comes to farm labor and household finances, Devi has little or no knowledge of seed varieties and access. Her husband informs that it was UP262 (wheat seed variety) they have been cultivating for the last two years.

In Rishikesh Ram’s household, land ownership and livelihood specialization were factors in decision-making. He owns the land and makes all farming decisions, including how much will be saved for consumption at home. His wife, Kiran Devi, a nurse at the village primary health center, is hardly involved in any farming work. “As the income from her job contributes to expenses at home, decisions about loans or payment for labors on the farm are joint decisions,” Ram said.

“In these two households of the diverse decision-making process, different approaches to messaging and relevant extension services must be explored to address the issues of exclusion, access, and knowledge gaps in these households,” Gartaula observed.

Bridging the gender gap in agri-food systems

With the feminization of agriculture in the region, women’s contribution to agricultural production is likely to increase. Policy and research interventions must recognize this growing population and support their full economic and social contributions as cultivators, entrepreneurs, and laborers. However, whether women’s growing role in wheat production leads to increased decision-making authority and empowerment is still unknown. But hope is that AGG-supported gender research in South Asia and East Africa will help guide actions on gender and social inclusion in agri-food systems and support cross-learning between the regions.

A view from above

Written by Alison Doody on May 25, 2021. Posted in Features.

Scientists at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) have been harnessing the power of drones and other remote sensing tools to accelerate crop improvement, monitor harmful crop pests and diseases, and automate the detection of land boundaries for farmers.

A crucial step in crop improvement is phenotyping, which traditionally involves breeders walking through plots and visually assessing each plant for desired traits. However, ground-based measurements can be time-consuming and labor-intensive.

This is where remote sensing comes in. By analyzing imagery taken using tools like drones, scientists can quickly and accurately assess small crop plots from large trials, making crop improvement more scalable and cost-effective. These plant traits assessed at plot trials can also be scaled out to farmers’ fields using satellite imagery data and integrated into decision support systems for scientists, farmers and decision-makers.

Here are some of the latest developments from our team of remote sensing experts.

An aerial view of the Global Wheat Program experimental station in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, Mexico (Photo: Francisco Pinto/CIMMYT)

Measuring plant height with high-powered drones

A recent study, published in Frontiers in Plant Science validated the use of drones to estimate the plant height of wheat crops at different growth stages.

The research team, which included scientists from CIMMYT, the Federal University of Viçosa and KWS Momont Recherche, measured and compared wheat crops at four growth stages using ground-based measurements and drone-based estimates.

The team found that plant height estimates from drones were similar in accuracy to measurements made from the ground. They also found that by using drones with real-time kinematic (RTK) systems onboard, users could eliminate the need for ground control points, increasing the drones’ mapping capability.

Recent work on maize has shown that drone-based plant height assessment is also accurate enough to be used in maize improvement and results are expected to be published next year.

A map shows drone-based plant height estimates from a maize line trial in Muzarabani, Zimbabwe. (Graphic: CIMMYT)

Advancing assessment of pests and diseases

CIMMYT scientists and their research partners have advanced the assessment of Tar Spot Complex — a major maize disease found in Central and South America — and Maize Streak Virus (MSV) disease, found in sub-Saharan Africa, using drone-based imaging approach. By analyzing drone imagery, scientists can make more objective disease severity assessments and accelerate the development of improved, disease-resistant maize varieties. Digital imaging has also shown great potential for evaluating damage to maize cobs by fall armyworm.

Scientists have had similar success with other common foliar wheat diseases, Septoria and Spot Blotch with remote sensing experiments undertaken at experimental stations across Mexico. The results of these experiments will be published later this year. Meanwhile, in collaboration with the Federal University of Technology, based in Parana, Brazil, CIMMYT scientists have been testing deep learning algorithms — computer algorithms that adjust to, or “learn” from new data and perform better over time — to automate the assessment of leaf disease severity. While still in the experimental stages, the technology is showing promising results so far.

CIMMYT researcher Gerald Blasch and EIAR research partners Tamrat Negash, Girma Mamo and Tadesse Anberbir (right to left) conduct field work in Ethiopia. (Photo: Tadesse Anberbir)

Improving forecasts for crop disease early warning systems

CIMMYT scientists, in collaboration with Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), Cambridge University and the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR), are currently exploring remote sensing solutions to improve forecast models used in early warning systems for wheat rusts. Wheat rusts are fungal diseases that can destroy healthy wheat plants in just a few weeks, causing devastating losses to farmers.

Early detection is crucial to combatting disease epidemics and CIMMYT researchers and partners have been working to develop a world-leading wheat rust forecasting service for a national early warning system in Ethiopia. The forecasting service predicts the potential occurrence of the airborne disease and the environmental suitability for the disease, however the susceptibility of the host plant to the disease is currently not provided.

CIMMYT remote sensing experts are now testing the use of drones and high-resolution satellite imagery to detect wheat rusts and monitor the progression of the disease in both controlled field trial experiments and in farmers’ fields. The researchers have collaborated with the expert remote sensing lab at UCLouvain, Belgium, to explore the capability of using European Space Agency satellite data for mapping crop type distributions in Ethiopia. The results will be also published later this year.

CIMMYT and EIAR scientists collect field data in Asella, Ethiopia, using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) data acquisition. (Photo: Matt Heaton)

Delivering expert irrigation and sowing advice to farmers phones

Through an initiative funded by the UK Space Agency, CIMMYT scientists and partners have integrated crop models with satellite and in-situ field data to deliver valuable irrigation scheduling information and optimum sowing dates direct to farmers in northern Mexico through a smartphone app called COMPASS — already available to iOS and Android systems. The app also allows farmers to record their own crop management activities and check their fields with weekly NDVI images.

The project has now ended, with the team delivering a webinar to farmers last October to demonstrate the app and its features. Another webinar is planned for October 2021, aiming to engage wheat and maize farmers based in the Yaqui Valley in Mexico.

CIMMYT researcher Francelino Rodrigues collects field data in Malawi using a UAV. (Photo: Francelino Rodrigues/CIMMYT)

Detecting field boundaries using high-resolution satellite imagery

In Bangladesh, CIMMYT scientists have collaborated with the University of Buffalo, USA, to explore how high-resolution satellite imagery can be used to automatically create field boundaries.

Many low and middle-income countries around the world don’t have an official land administration or cadastre system. This makes it difficult for farmers to obtain affordable credit to buy farm supplies because they have no land titles to use as collateral. Another issue is that without knowing the exact size of their fields, farmers may not be applying to the right amount of fertilizer to their land.

Using state of the art machine learning algorithms, researchers from CIMMYT and the University of Buffalo were able to detect the boundaries of agricultural fields based on high-resolution satellite images. The study, published last year, was conducted in the delta region of Bangladesh where the average field size is only about 0.1 hectare.

A CIMMYT scientist conducts an aerial phenotyping exercise in the Global Wheat Program experimental station in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, Mexico. (Photo: Francisco Pinto/CIMMYT)

Developing climate-resilient wheat

CIMMYT’s wheat physiology team has been evaluating, validating and implementing remote sensing platforms for high-throughput phenotyping of physiological traits ranging from canopy temperature to chlorophyll content (a plant’s greenness) for over a decade. Put simply, high-throughput phenotyping involves phenotyping a large number of genotypes or plots quickly and accurately.

Recently, the team has engaged in the Heat and Drought Wheat Improvement Consortium (HeDWIC) to implement new high-throughput phenotyping approaches that can assist in the identification and evaluation of new adaptive traits in wheat for heat and drought.

The team has also been collaborating with the Accelerating Genetic Gains in Maize and Wheat (AGG) project, providing remote sensing data to improve genomic selection models.

Cover photo: An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV drone) in flight over CIMMYT’s experimental research station in Ciudad Obregon, Mexico. (Photo: Alfredo Saenz/CIMMYT)

Nancy Wawira stands among ripening maize cobs of high yielding, drought-tolerant maize varieties on a demonstration farm in Embu County, Kenya. Involving young people like Wawira helps to accelerate the adoption of improved stress-tolerant maize varieties. (Photo: Joshua Masinde/CIMMYT)

Drought-tolerant maize project pioneers a winning strategy for a world facing climate change

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on February 24, 2021. Posted in Press releases.

Since the 1980s, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) have spearheaded the development and deployment of climate-smart maize in Africa.

This game-changing work has generated massive impacts for smallholder farmers, maize consumers, and seed markets in the region. It also offers a blueprint for CGIAR’s new 2030 Research and Innovation Strategy, which proposes a systems transformation approach for food, land and water systems that puts climate change at the center of its mission.

Over the course of the 10-year run of the first iteration of this collaborative work on climate-adaptive maize, the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa (DTMA) project, CIMMYT and IITA partnered with dozens of national, regional, and private sector partners throughout sub-Saharan Africa to release around 160 affordable maize varieties. This month, CGIAR recognizes climate-smart maize as one of the standout 50 innovations to have emerged from the institution’s first half-century of work.

Game changer

Maize’s importance as a food crop in sub-Saharan Africa is hard to overstate. So are the climate change-driven challenges it faces.

It accounts for almost one third of the region’s caloric intake. It is grown on over 38 million hectares, primarily under rainfed conditions. Around 40% of this area faces occasional drought stress. Another 25% suffers frequent drought and crop losses reaching 50%.

Drought-tolerant maize stabilized production under drought-stress conditions. Recent studies show that farmers growing drought-tolerant maize varieties in dry years produced over a half ton more maize per hectare than those growing conventional varieties — enough maize to support a family of six for nine months.

Such drastic results fed increased demand for improved, climate-adaptive maize seed in sub-Saharan Africa, thus strengthening local commercial seed markets and helping drought-tolerant maize varieties reach an increasing share of climate-vulnerable farmers.

Today, approximately 8.6 million farmers have benefitted from CIMMYT- and IITA-derived climate-adaptive maize varieties in sub-Saharan Africa. Millions have risen above the poverty line.

In addition to drought-tolerance, CIMMYT- and IITA-derived climate-adaptive maize varieties have been developed to tolerate multiple climate-driven stresses and to provide improved nutritional outcomes through biofortification with essential nutrients such as provitamin A and zinc.

The task ahead

In his recently published book, How to Avoid a Climate Catastrophe, Bill Gates says “no other organization has done more than CGIAR to ensure that families — especially the poorest — have nutritious food to eat. And no other organization is in a better position to create the innovations that will help poor farmers adapt to climate change in the years ahead.”

CGIAR’s new strategic orientation is an important step towards making good on that potential. CIMMYT and IITA’s longstanding work on climate-smart maize offers an important blueprint for the kinds of bold, comprehensive, and collaborative research for development initiatives such a strategy could empower.

As CIMMYT and IITA directors general Martin Kropff and Nteranya Sanginga note in a recent op-ed, “The global battle against climate change and all its interconnected impacts requires a multisectoral approach to formulate comprehensive responses.”

Philip Pardey stands in a wheat field. (Photo: David Hansen/University of Minnesota)

Q&A: CGIAR investment has generated returns of 10 times the amount invested

Written by Alison Doody on November 26, 2020. Posted in Features.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of Philip Pardey and do not necessarily reflect the official views or position of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

Working with national agricultural research centers (NARS), CGIAR centers, including the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), have played a pivotal role in staving off the last global food crisis, mainly through enhancing the yields of staple food crops like cereals.

A new report, commissioned by the Supporters of Agricultural Research (SoAR) Foundation and authored by experts from the University of California, Davis, the University of Minnesota and North Dakota State University shows that over the past five decades, CGIAR investment has generated returns of 10 times the amount invested.

We caught up with co-author Philip Pardey, a professor at the University of Minnesota and Director of the university’s GEMS Informatics Center, to discuss the report’s implications, the importance of collaboration between NARS and CGIAR, and why investment in agricultural research and development (R&D) is needed now more than ever.

According to the report, CGIAR investment has returned a benefit-cost ratio of 10:1. How does this compare to other government investments?

A benefit-cost ratio of 10:1 means that on average, a dollar invested today brings a future return equivalent to $10 in present-day value. This is high: any ratio over the threshold of 1:1 justifies investment.

This indicates that governments — and others who invest in CGIAR and related public food and agricultural R&D — would have profited society by doing more agricultural R&D compared with the investment opportunities normally available to them. Opportunities for investment in other national and global public goods, like education and infrastructure, might also have yielded very high returns, but there is no comparable evidence that those other opportunities yielded similar return on investments.

Drawing on the findings of this report, and other related work, we conclude that the economic evidence justifies at least a doubling of overall investments in public food and agricultural R&D.

The report shows evidence of massive underinvestment in agricultural research and development (R&D) in past years. Why is that?

As we show in the report, inflation adjusted CGIAR funding has declined sharply by around 25% in the past few years. There is nothing in the economic evidence that justifies this scaling back.

Some commentators have suggested that the easy gains from agricultural R&D have already been made and that the historical returns-to-research evidence is no longer representative of the returns to more recent R&D. However, the empirical evidence refutes that notion. For example, a 2019 study from Rao et al. showed that the contemporary returns of agricultural R&D are as high as ever.

What are the risks of continuing on this path of underinvestment in agricultural R&D?

In the second half of the 20th century, global food supply grew faster than demand and real food prices fell significantly, alleviating hunger and poverty for hundreds of millions around the world. Whether or not that pattern can be repeated in the first half of the 21st century will depend crucially on investments in agricultural R&D, including investments made through CGIAR.

Global demand for food is projected to grow by 70% from 2010 to 2050. Simply meeting that increased demand will call for transformative innovations in agriculture to adapt to a changing climate, combat co-evolving pests and diseases, and increase productivity of a fairly fixed land base and a shrinking supply of agricultural water. To make food abundant and affordable for the increasingly urban, poorest of the poor demands doing much more — and much better — than simply keeping up. If adequate investments in agricultural R&D are absent, even the odds of keeping up look increasingly questionable.

Your report shows that returns are a joint effort between NARS and CGIAR. Can you elaborate on that?

The impact evidence we reviewed for our study made clear that the success of CGIAR research is inextricably intertwined with research undertaken by national programs. In fact, this national-international R&D connectedness makes it difficult to figure out what share of the overall benefits from research are attributable to CGIAR or national innovation systems.

CGIAR has appropriately shifted its attention to low-income countries that are still heavily dependent on agriculture for livelihoods and food security. These also tend to have lower national R&D capacities and more fragile innovation systems, as well as limited, albeit emerging, private sector capabilities to support their food and agricultural sectors.

Supporting the evolution of agricultural innovation systems within CGIAR’s target economies requires doubling down on technology discovery, adaptation and delivery activities.

Philip Pardey at the University of Minnesota, USA. (Photo: InSTePP/University of Minnesota)

How can CGIAR better meet current global food challenges?

CGIAR has been demonstrably successful as an international instrument of technology discovery and in enhancing the international transfer, or spillover, of these new technologies. Tackling longer term agricultural technology challenges has been a key part of past successes.

However, a significant share of the funding for the CGIAR appears to have shifted away from the more strategic development of international public innovation goods to more localized economic development activities with a technology component. For example, the share of unencumbered CGIAR funding shrank from around 80% in 1971 to 50% in 2000, and since 2010 has plummeted to very low levels. The impact evidence provides little support for the notion that this shift in funding, which often implies a greater emphasis on more localized and shorter-term activities, is a high payoff strategy that best leverages CGIAR’s comparative advantages.

As it continually repositions its role as a source of international public innovation goods targeted to agriculturally dependent low-income countries, CGIAR will need to rethink how it partners with the public agencies, universities and private research entities that are the major source of innovations in food and agriculture.

When CGIAR was founded, a large share of the world’s agricultural R&D was done by public agencies in rich countries. Now the agriculturally large, middle-income countries spend on par with the rich countries, and the innovation landscape in rich and many middle-income countries is increasingly dominated by private firms. This comes with new partnership opportunities for CGIAR, but also new challenges, not least given the increasingly proprietary nature of the innovations and data that are driving developments in the food and agricultural sectors.

In your report you have documented clear evidence to support investment in agricultural R&D. What are the next steps in engaging national governments and decision makers to get agricultural R&D back on their agendas?

Today, as in the past, funding streams for CGIAR research are in decline and under threat. This mirrors a pattern of declining public support over recent decades for agricultural R&D conducted by national programs in many of the world’s richer countries.

However, public expectations about the roles of government to address glaring market failures may be realigning. For instance, the COVID-19 crisis exposed weakness in many public health systems, with calls for renewed and hopefully sustained, long-term investments in these public programs. COVID has also revealed the fragility of food supply systems, even in rich countries. The tide of public opinion also seems to be turning regarding the growing risks associated with climate change.

Evidence-based efforts to communicate the inter-relatedness between climate, public health and agriculture risks, and the role of innovation in reducing these growing risks over the decades ahead is critical to right-sizing and realigning the public roles in agricultural R&D.

Just as strong public investments play a crucial and complimentary role regarding significant private investments in health research, so too does the basic and pre-competitive research, undertaken with public funding, prime the pump for the growing private roles in agricultural innovation.

And even as the worldwide demand for more diversified diets continues to increase, demand for staple crops such as wheat and maize will also continue to grow and will remain crucial to securing favourable nutrition and food security outcomes in the decades ahead. Innovations in agriculture are hard won, and there are long lags (often a decade or more) between spending on agricultural R&D and getting new crop technologies in the hands of farmers. Thus there is a real sense of urgency to revitalize the investments in agricultural R&D required to produce the innovations that are needed now more than ever to sustainably feed the world.

Philip Pardey is a Professor of Applied Economics and Director of the GEMS Informatics Center, a joint venture of the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS) and the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI), both at the University of Minnesota.

A farmer in Hetosa district, Ethiopia, harvests his wheat crop manually, a time- and labor-intensive approach. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)

Reaping the benefits of innovation

Written by Emma Orchardson on June 17, 2020. Posted in Features.

Post-harvest losses — which can range between 10-20% in major cereals — cause not only the loss of economic value of the food produced, but also the waste of scarce resources such as labor, land, and water, as well as non-renewable resources such as fertilizer and energy.

“High postharvest losses imply reduced grain yield, but with the same total greenhouse gas emission,” says Rabé Yahaya, a CIM/GIZ Integrated Expert working at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). “Reducing these losses reduces the yield-scaled global warming potential — total greenhouse gas emission per kilogram of grain — and contributes to climate change mitigation, as well as food security.”

A significant proportion of these losses are caused by late harvest due to labor shortages, with crops languishing in the field before farmers can retrieve them. Small and medium-sized machinery may seem like the answer, but many one or two-axe machines are often unable to reach the inner sections of rice and wheat fields because of limited road access, or the fact that they are simply too heavy to carry.

“As mechanized land preparation works outwards, inner fields get ready for harvest first, but without any applicated technical solution,” he explains.

Could motorized scythes be the answer? Yahaya thinks so.

The other scythe

Motorized scythes are hand-operated tools used for mowing grass or reaping crops. Though largely replaced by horse-drawn and tractor-mounted implements, they are still commonly used in some areas of Asia and Europe.

Models specifically adapted for harvesting rice and wheat have been commercially available in Africa for over two decades and currently sell for $150-350, presenting the lowest initial investment cost of all engine-driven solutions on the market. The motor scythe also boasts the lowest harvest cost per hectare and is portable enough to reach inner fields.

Despite its relative affordability, uptake in much of West Africa has been slow, as many farmers have found the 10kg machinery too heavy for sustained use.

“Studies carried out in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire and Mali show that this rapid fatigue is caused by incorrect handling of the machinery, including flawed posture,” Yahaya explains. “This is simply because most operators have never undertaken official training for operating the tool.”

In a bid to address this challenge, Yahaya has been collaborating with Elliott Dossou, Sali Atanga Ndindeng and Ernst Zippel — all scientists at AfricaRice — to design and test potential solutions. Their proposal for the development of a Service Provider Harvest (SPH) model has been shortlisted for the GIZ Innovation Fund 2020 award, from a GIZ/BMZ-supported Innovation Fund.

Ernst Zippel, CIM/GIZ Integrated Expert at AfricaRice, presents on the reduction of postharvest losses through correct usage of motor scythes. (Video: AfricaRice)

Cut for service

The approach focuses heavily on capacity development, with an initial nucleus group of trainers taking the lead on activities such as recruiting and contracting service providers, providing training on harvesting and threshing, supporting aftersales services such as machine maintenance and repair, and helping to determine the optimum harvest time.

Under the proposed model, each trainer will be responsible for a group of around 50 service providers, who will receive guidance on understanding their role, finance, creating a network of client farmers, machine maintenance and use.

In addition to the financial rewards and aftersales services, the training opportunities will make this technology accessible to young entrepreneurs in rural areas. Earning up to $18 a day for harvesting and weeding services, those using the tool can expect to see a return on their initial investment in one to two months.

“Young people are the main prospective clients for this initiative,” says Yahaya. “With the motor scythe and related training, they can start earning serious money.” He stresses, however, that all farmers – regardless of age or gender – will be able to benefit from the job creation opportunities this initiative provides.

The initiative has been shortlisted for the GIZ Innovation Fund 2020. If selected, funding from the accelerator program would support testing, the integration of GPS sensors into the tools, creation of a platform for bank security and Carbon Credit earning, other technical activities.

Scientists develop an early warning system that delivers wheat rust predictions directly to farmers’ phones

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on November 4, 2019. Posted in Press releases.

One of the researchers behind the study, Yoseph Alemayehu, carries out a field survey in Ethiopia by mobile phone. (Photo Dave Hodson/CIMMYT)

TEXCOCO, Mexico — Using field and mobile phone surveillance data together with forecasts for spore dispersal and environmental suitability for disease, an international team of scientists has developed an early warning system which can predict wheat rust diseases in Ethiopia. The cross-disciplinary project draws on expertise from biology, meteorology, agronomy, computer science and telecommunications.

Reported this week in Environmental Research Letters, the new early warning system, the first of its kind to be implemented in a developing country, will allow policy makers and farmers all over Ethiopia to gauge the current situation and forecast wheat rust up to a week in advance.

The system was developed by the University of Cambridge, the UK Met Office, the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR), the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). It works by taking near real-time information from wheat rust surveys carried out by EIAR, regional research centers and CIMMYT using a smartphone app called Open Data Kit (ODK).

This is complemented by crowd-sourced information from the ATA-managed Farmers’ Hotline. The University of Cambridge and the UK Met Office then provide automated 7-day advance forecast models for wheat rust spore dispersal and environmental suitability based on disease presence.

All of this information is fed into an early warning unit that receives updates automatically on a daily basis. An advisory report is sent out every week to development agents and national authorities. The information also gets passed on to researchers and farmers.

Example of weekly stripe rust spore deposition based on dispersal forecasts. Darker colors represent higher predicted number of spores deposited. (Graphic: University of Cambridge/UK Met Office)

Timely alerts

“If there’s a high risk of wheat rust developing, farmers will get a targeted SMS text alert from the Farmers’ Hotline. This gives the farmer about three weeks to take action,” explained Dave Hodson, principal scientist with CIMMYT and co-author of the research study. The Farmers’ Hotline now has over four million registered farmers and extension agents, enabling rapid information dissemination throughout Ethiopia.

Ethiopia is the largest wheat producer in sub-Saharan Africa but the country still spends in excess of $600 million annually on wheat imports. More can be grown at home and the Ethiopian government has targeted to achieve wheat self-sufficiency by 2023.

“Rust diseases are a grave threat to wheat production in Ethiopia. The timely information from this new system will help us protect farmers’ yields, and reach our goal of wheat self-sufficiency,” said EIAR Director Mandefro Nigussie.

Wheat rusts are fungal diseases that can be dispersed by wind over long distances, quickly causing devastating epidemics which can dramatically reduce wheat yields. Just one outbreak in 2010 affected 30% of Ethiopia’s wheat growing area and reduced production by 15-20%.

The pathogens that cause rust diseases are continually evolving and changing over time, making them difficult to control. “New strains of wheat rust are appearing all the time — a bit like the flu virus,” explained Hodson.

In the absence of resistant varieties, one solution to wheat rust is to apply fungicide, but the Ethiopian government has limited supplies. The early warning system will help to prioritize areas at highest risk of the disease, so that the allocation of fungicides can be optimized.

Example of weekly stripe rust environmental suitability forecast. Yellow to Brown show the areas predicted to be most suitable for stripe rust infection. (Graphic: University of Cambridge/UK Met Office)

The cream of the crop

The early warning system puts Ethiopia at the forefront of early warning systems for wheat rust. “Nowhere else in the world really has this type of system. It’s fantastic that Ethiopia is leading the way on this,” said Hodson. “It’s world-class science from the UK being applied to real-world problems.”

“This is an ideal example of how it is possible to integrate fundamental research in modelling from epidemiology and meteorology with field-based observation of disease to produce an early warning system for a major crop,” said Christopher Gilligan, head of the Epidemiology and Modelling Group at the University of Cambridge and a co-author of the paper, adding that the approach could be adopted in other countries and for other crops.

“The development of the early warning system was successful because of the great collaborative spirit between all the project partners,” said article co-author Clare Sader-Allen, currently a regional climate modeller at the British Antarctic Survey.

“Clear communication was vital for bringing together the expertise from a diversity of subjects to deliver a common goal: to produce a wheat rust forecast relevant for both policy makers and farmers alike.”

RELATED PUBLICATIONS:

An early warning system to predict and mitigate wheat rust diseases in Ethiopia
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab4034

INTERVIEW OPPORTUNITIES:

Dave Hodson, Senior Scientist, International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)

FOR MORE INFORMATION, OR TO ARRANGE INTERVIEWS, CONTACT:

Marcia MacNeil, Communications Officer, CIMMYT. m.macneil@cgiar.org, +52 (55) 5804 2004 ext. 2070.

Rodrigo Ordóñez, Communications Manager, CIMMYT. r.ordonez@cgiar.org, +52 (55) 5804 2004 ext. 1167.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

This study was made possible through the support provided by the BBSRC GCRF Foundation Awards for Global Agriculture and Food Systems Research, which brings top class UK science to developing countries, the Delivering Genetic Gains in Wheat (DGGW) Project managed by Cornell University and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK Department for International Development (DFID). The Government of Ethiopia also provided direct support into the early warning system. This research is supported by CGIAR Fund Donors.

ABOUT CIMMYT:

The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is the 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 support from national governments, foundations, development banks and other public and private agencies. For more information, visit staging.cimmyt.org.

ABOUT THE ETHIOPIAN INSTITUTE OF AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH (EIAR):

The Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR) is one of the oldest and largest agricultural research institutes in Africa, with roots in the Ethiopian Agricultural Research System (EARS), founded in the late 1940s. EIAR’s objectives are: (1) to generate, develop and adapt agricultural technologies that focus on the needs of the overall agricultural development and its beneficiaries; (2) to coordinate technically the research activities of Ethiopian Agricultural Research System; (3) build up a research capacity and establish a system that will make agricultural research efficient, effective and based on development needs; and (4) popularize agricultural research results. EIAR’s vision is to see improved livelihood of all Ethiopians engaged in agriculture, agro-pastoralism and pastoralism through market competitive agricultural technologies.

New publications: Shifting the mindset from “reaching many” to sustainable change

Written by Courtney Brantley on June 28, 2019. Posted in Publications.

Over the last few years, the research and development communities have deemed “scaling” a priority in order to help contribute to and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). On smaller scales, there has been great success in reducing hunger and poverty, but it has rarely expanded to regional or national levels.

The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) scaling head Lennart Woltering, in collaboration with colleagues Kate Fehlenberg and Bruno Gerard, as well as with international development experts Jan Ubels of SNV and Larry Cooley of Management Systems International, have been studying the process of scaling to understand why successful pilot projects are no guarantee for success at scale.

In a new paper published in Agricultural Systems, they argue that pilot projects are usually set up and managed in heavily controlled environments that do not reflect the reality at scale. Furthermore, confusion of what scaling is and how it can be executed often results in a narrow focus on solely reaching numbers.

“Counting household adoption of a practice at the end of a project is a poor metric of whether these people can and will sustain adoption after the project ends, let alone if adoption will reach others and actually contributes to improved livelihoods,” Woltering states.

According to Woltering, “This paper is a call for a new scaling narrative, from one that is short-term and piecemeal, to one that recognizes the systemic nature of problems and solutions to achieve sustainable change at scale.”

This requires a change in mindset, skills and ways of collaborating than what we currently consider normal. “Meaningful impact at scale hardly occurs within a project context, but when new ways of working are becoming ‘the new normal’ by a critical mass of actors ‘in the real world’,” Woltering explained.

The authors present a number of frameworks that help to assess the scalability of innovations and the design of scaling strategies from the onset of projects and how to systematically think through key elements needed for scaling success. This includes CIMMYT’s very own Scaling Scan. Reaching the SDGs requires scaling interventions to be seen as building blocks within a system of other initiatives with the same goals.

Read the full study:
Scaling – from “reaching many” to sustainable systems change at scale: A critical shift in mindset

Lennart Woltering discusses scaling strategies. (Photo: Maria Boa Alvarado /CIMMYT)

Read more recent publications by CIMMYT researchers:

A rapid monitoring of NDVI across the wheat growth cycle for grain yield prediction using a multi-spectral UAV platform. 2019. Hassan, M.A., Mengjiao Yang, Rasheed, A., Guijun Yang, Reynolds, M.P., Xianchun Xia, Yonggui Xiao, He Zhonghu. In: Plant Science v. 282, p. 95-103.
Characterization of TaCOMT genes associated with stem lignin content in common wheat and development of a gene-specific marker. 2019. Luping Fu, Yonggui Xiao, Yan Jun, Jindong Liu, Weie Wen, Yong Zhang, Xia Xian-Chun, He Zhonghu. In: Journal of Intregative Agriculture v. 18, no. 5, p. 939-947.
Dissecting conserved cis-regulatory modules of Glu-1 promoters which confer the highly active endosperm-specific expression via stable wheat transformation. 2019. Jihu Li, Ke Wang, Genying Li, Yulian Li, Yong Zhang, Zhiyong Liu, Xingguo Ye, Xianchun Xia, He Zhonghu, Shuanghe Cao. In: The Crop Journal v. 2, no.1, p. 8-18.
Effects of bran hydration and autoclaving on processing quality of Chinese steamed bread and noodles produced from whole grain wheat flour. 2019. Zhang Yan, Fengmei Gao, He Zhonghu. In: Cereal Chemistry v. 96, no. 1, p. 104-114.
Occurrence and seasonal variation of the root lesion nematode Pratylenchus neglectus on cereals in Bolu, Turkey. 2019. Dababat, A.A., Senol Yildiz, Duman, N., Ciftci, V., Imren, M. In: Turkish Journal of Agriculture and Forestry v. 43, p. 21-27.

MARPLE team members Dave Hodson and Diane Saunders (second and third from left) stand for a photograph after receiving the International Impact award. With them is Malcolm Skingle, director of Academic Liaison at GlaxoSmithKline (first from left) and Melanie Welham, executive chair of BBSRC. (Photo: BBSRC)

MARPLE team recognized for international impact

Written by Marcia MacNeil on May 17, 2019. Posted in News.

The research team behind the MARPLE (Mobile And Real-time PLant disEase) diagnostic kit won the International Impact category of the Innovator of the Year 2019 Awards, sponsored by the United Kingdom’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

The team — Diane Saunders of the John Innes Centre (JIC), Dave Hodson of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and Tadessa Daba of the Ethiopian Institute for Agricultural Research (EIAR) — was presented with the award at an event at the London Science Museum on May 15, 2019. In the audience were leading figures from the worlds of investment, industry, government, charity and academia, including the U.K.’s Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, Chris Skidmore.

The BBSRC Innovator of the Year awards, now in their 11^th year, recognize and support individuals or teams who have taken discoveries in bioscience and translated them to deliver impact. Reflecting the breadth of research that BBSRC supports, they are awarded in four categories of impact: commercial, societal, international and early career. Daba, Hodson and Saunders were among a select group of 12 finalists competing for the four prestigious awards. In addition to international recognition, they received £10,000 (about $13,000).

“I am delighted that this work has been recognized,” Hodson said. “Wheat rusts are a global threat to agriculture and to the livelihoods of farmers in developing countries such as Ethiopia. MARPLE diagnostics puts state-of-the-art, rapid diagnostic results in the hands of those best placed to respond: researchers on the ground, local government and farmers.”

On-the-ground diagnostics

The MARPLE diagnostic kit is the first operational system in the world using nanopore sequence technology for rapid diagnostics and surveillance of complex fungal pathogens in the field.

In its initial work in Ethiopia, the suitcase-sized field test kit has positioned the country — one of the region’s top wheat producers — as a world leader in pathogen diagnostics and forecasting. Generating results within 48 hours of field sampling, the kit represents a revolution in plant disease diagnostics. Its use will have far-reaching implications for how plant health threats are identified and tracked into the future.

MARPLE is designed to run at a field site without constant electricity and with the varying temperatures of the field.

“This means we can truly take the lab to the field,” explained Saunders. “Perhaps more importantly though, it means that smaller, less-resourced labs can drive their own research without having to rely on a handful of large, well-resourced labs and sophisticated expertise in different countries.”

In a recent interview with JIC, EIAR Director Tadessa Daba said, “we want to see this project being used on the ground, to show farmers and the nation this technology works.”

The MARPLE team uses the diagnostic kit in Ethiopia. (Photo: JIC)

Development of the MARPLE diagnostic kit was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture’s Inspire Challenge. Continued support is also provided by the BBSRC’s Excellence with Impact Award to the John Innes Centre and the Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat project, led by Cornell University and funded by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

More information on the award can be found on the JIC website, the BBSRC website and the website of the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat.