The experimental research station in Toluca, Mexico. (Photo: S. Herrera/CIMMYT)
In the ever-evolving field of agriculture, AGG-WHEAT is leading a transformative approach through rapid marker-selectable trait introgression in wheat breeding programs. This method aims to streamline the process of integrating desirable traits into various genetic backgrounds.
At the core of AGG-WHEAT’s strategy is the establishment of a centralized marker-selectable trait introgression pipeline. This initiative seeks to facilitate the transfer of specific genes from a centralized source into various genetic backgrounds within plant breeding programs. Molecular markers play a crucial role in efficiently identifying and selecting target traits.
The merits of a centralized trait introgression pipeline extend beyond convenience. This approach ensures a more uniform and controlled transfer of genetic material, enhancing the precision of trait introgressions across diverse breeding lines. Molecular markers streamline the selection process, improving the accuracy of desired trait incorporation into wheat varieties.
Speed breeding facilities in Toluca, Mexico
AGG-WHEAT’s marker-selectable trait introgression pipelines are implemented at the speed breeding facilities located at the CIMMYT research station in Toluca, Mexico. These facilities serve as the incubators for innovation, where new selection candidates are evaluated based on various criteria. The decision-making process involves an expert panel comprising geneticists, trait specialists, and breeders. This panel annually determines the selection candidates, considering factors such as trait demand, genetic diversity, evidence of Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) effects, selection efficiency, and available funding.
The decision-making process involves a multifaceted evaluation of potential selection candidates. Documented trait pipelines and product profiles guide decision-making to ensure alignment with the overarching goals of wheat breeding programs. Considerations include the need for phenotypic variation and the existence of limited genetic diversity for the trait under consideration.
The decision-making process also explores existing in-house or external evidence of QTL effects and the underlying gene mechanisms. Selection efficiency, contingent on the availability of accurate molecular markers and a known purified donor parent, further refines the pool of potential candidates. Established phenotypic protocols for product testing and the crucial element of available funding complete the decision-making criteria.
Achievements
In a significant step towards innovation, the products of the first marker-selectable trait introgression pipelines entered yield trials in 2023. This marks a transition from conceptualization to tangible impact, reflecting the efficacy of AGG-WHEAT’s approach. A total of 97 F5-lines, cultivated through the marker-assisted backcross (MABC) scheme, now grace the fields.
These lines carry novel genes associated with fusarium head blight and rust resistance, derived from wheat genetic resources and wild relatives. The choice of these traits underscores AGG-WHEAT’s commitment to addressing challenges faced by wheat crops, ensuring improved resilience and sustainability in the face of evolving environmental conditions.
The success of these initial trait introgression pipelines represents more than a scientific achievement; it marks a pivotal moment in the trajectory of wheat breeding. The 97 F5-lines, standing as testaments to enhanced resistance traits, are poised to make a transition into mainstream breeding pipelines. This marks the commencement of a broader dissemination strategy, where these lines will be distributed for testing at National Agricultural Research and Extension Services (NARES).
The journey from the experimental fields to mainstream adoption involves a meticulous process. These lines, having undergone rigorous evaluation and selection, now hold the potential to catalyze changes in commercial wheat varieties. The lessons learned from their cultivation will shape future breeding strategies and contribute to the resilience of wheat crops in diverse agricultural landscapes.
Rapid marker table. (Photo: CIMMYT)
AGG-WHEAT’s lasting impact
AGG-WHEAT’s marker-selectable trait introgression stands as an innovative approach in wheat breeding. The centralized approach, the strategic use of molecular markers, and the meticulous decision-making process exemplify the commitment to excellence and precision. The journey from concept to reality—marked by the entry of 97 F5-lines into yield trials—signals a new era in wheat breeding.
As these lines traverse from experimental fields to mainstream adoption, they carry the promise of transforming the landscape of commercial wheat varieties. AGG-WHEAT’s lasting impact goes beyond the scientific realm; it extends to the fields where farmers strive for sustainable and resilient wheat crops. In the tapestry of agricultural progress, AGG-WHEAT has woven a thread of innovation that holds the potential to redefine the future of wheat cultivation.
Emerging in the last 120 years, science-based plant breeding begins by creating novel diversity from which useful new varieties can be identified or formed. The most common approach is making targeted crosses between parents with complementary, desirable traits. This is followed by selection among the resulting plants to obtain improved types that combine desired traits and performance. A less common approach is to expose plant tissues to chemicals or radiation that stimulate random mutations of the type that occur in nature, creating diversity and driving natural selection and evolution.
Determined by farmers and consumer markets, the target traits for plant breeding can include improved grain and fruit yield, resistance to major diseases and pests, better nutritional quality, ease of processing, and tolerance to environmental stresses such as drought, heat, acid soils, flooded fields and infertile soils. Most traits are genetically complex — that is, they are controlled by many genes and gene interactions — so breeders must intercross and select among hundreds of thousands of plants over generations to develop and choose the best.
Plant breeding over the last 100 years has fostered food and nutritional security for expanding populations, adapted crops to changing climates, and helped to alleviate poverty. Together with better farming practices, improved crop varieties can help to reduce environmental degradation and to mitigate climate change from agriculture.
Is plant breeding a modern technique?
Plant breeding began around 10,000 years ago, when humans undertook the domestication of ancestral food crop species. Over the ensuing millennia, farmers selected and re-sowed seed from the best grains, fruits or plants they harvested, genetically modifying the species for human use.
Modern, science-based plant breeding is a focused, systematic and swifter version of that process. It has been applied to all crops, among them maize, wheat, rice, potatoes, beans, cassava and horticulture crops, as well as to fruit trees, sugarcane, oil palm, cotton, farm animals and other species.
With modern breeding, specialists began collecting and preserving crop diversity, including farmer-selected heirloom varieties, improved varieties and the crops’ undomesticated relatives. Today hundreds of thousands of unique samples of diverse crop types, in the form of seeds and cuttings, are meticulously preserved as living catalogs in dozens of publicly-administered “banks.”
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) manages a germplasm bank containing more than 180,000 unique maize- and wheat-related seed samples, and the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen preserves back-up copies of nearly a million collections from CIMMYT and other banks.
Through genetic analyses or growing seed samples, scientists comb such collections to find useful traits. Data and seed samples from publicly-funded initiatives of this type are shared among breeders and other researchers worldwide. The complete DNA sequences of several food crops, including rice, maize, and wheat, are now available and greatly assist scientists to identify novel, useful diversity.
Much crop breeding is international. From its own breeding programs, CIMMYT sends half a million seed packages each year to some 800 partners, including public research institutions and private companies in 100 countries, for breeding, genetic analyses and other research.
A field worker removes the male flower of a wheat spike, as part of controlled pollination in breeding. (Photo: Alfonso Cortés/CIMMYT)
A century of breeding innovations
Early in the 20th century, plant breeders began to apply the discoveries of Gregor Mendel, a 19th-century mathematician and biologist, regarding genetic variation and heredity. They also began to take advantage of heterosis, commonly known as hybrid vigor, whereby progeny of crosses between genetically different lines will turn out stronger or more productive than their parents.
Modern statistical methods to analyze experimental data have helped breeders to understand differences in the performance of breeding offspring; particularly, how to distinguish genetic variation, which is heritable, from environmental influences on how parental traits are expressed in successive generations of plants.
Since the 1990s, geneticists and breeders have used molecular (DNA-based) markers. These are specific regions of the plant’s genome that are linked to a gene influencing a desired trait. Markers can also be used to obtain a DNA “fingerprint” of a variety, to develop detailed genetic maps and to sequence crop plant genomes. Many applications of molecular markers are used in plant breeding to select progenies of breeding crosses featuring the greatest number of desired traits from their parents.
Plant breeders normally prefer to work with “elite” populations that have already undergone breeding and thus feature high concentrations of useful genes and fewer undesirable ones, but scientists also introduce non-elite diversity into breeding populations to boost their resilience and address threats such as new fungi or viruses that attack crops.
Transgenics are products of one genetic engineering technology, in which a gene from one species is inserted in another. A great advantage of the technology for crop breeding is that it introduces the desired gene alone, in contrast to conventional breeding crosses, where many undesired genes accompany the target gene and can reduce yield or other valuable traits. Transgenics have been used since the 1990s to implant traits such as pest resistance, herbicide tolerance, or improved nutritional value. Transgenic crop varieties are grown on more than 190 million hectares worldwide and have increased harvests, raised farmers’ income and reduced the use of pesticides. Complex regulatory requirements to manage their potential health or environmental risks, as well as consumer concerns about such risks and the fair sharing of benefits, make transgenic crop varieties difficult and expensive to deploy.
Genome editing or gene editing techniques allow precise modification of specific DNA sequences, making it possible to enhance, diminish or turn off the expression of genes and to convert them to more favorable versions. Gene editing is used primarily to produce non-transgenic plants like those that arise through natural mutations. The approach can be used to improve plant traits that are controlled by single or small numbers of genes, such as resistance to diseases and better grain quality or nutrition. Whether and how to regulate gene edited crops is still being defined in many countries.
The mobile seed shop of Victoria Seeds Company provides access to improved maize varieties for farmers in remote villages of Uganda. (Photo: Kipenz Films for CIMMYT)
Selected impacts of maize and wheat breeding
In the early 1990s, a CIMMYT methodology led to improved maize varieties that tolerate moderate drought conditions around flowering time in tropical, rainfed environments, besides featuring other valuable agronomic and resilience traits. By 2015, almost half the maize-producing area in 18 countries of sub-Saharan Africa — a region where the crop provides almost a third of human calories but where 65% of maize lands face at least occasional drought — was sown to varieties from this breeding research, in partnership with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). The estimated yearly benefits are as high as $1 billion.
Intensive breeding for resistance to Maize Lethal Necrosis (MLN), a viral disease that appeared in eastern Africa in 2011 and quickly spread to attack maize crops across the continent, allowed the release by 2017 of 18 MLN-resistant maize hybrids.
Improved wheat varieties developed using breeding lines from CIMMYT or the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) cover more than 100 million hectares, nearly two-thirds of the area sown to improved wheat worldwide, with benefits in added grain that range from $2.8 to 3.8 billion each year.
Breeding for resistance to devastating crop diseases and pests has saved billions of dollars in crop losses and reduced the use of costly and potentially harmful pesticides. A 2004 study showed that investments since the early 1970s in breeding for resistance in wheat to the fungal disease leaf rust had provided benefits in added grain worth 5.36 billion 1990 US dollars. Global research to control wheat stem rust disease saves wheat farmers the equivalent of at least $1.12 billion each year.
Crosses of wheat with related crops (rye) or even wild grasses — the latter known as wide crosses — have greatly improved the hardiness and productivity of wheat. For example, an estimated one-fifth of the elite wheat breeding lines in CIMMYT international yield trials features genes from Aegilops tauschii, commonly known as “goat grass,” that boost their resilience and provide other valuable traits to protect yield.
Biofortification — breeding to develop nutritionally enriched crops — has resulted in more than 60 maize and wheat varieties whose grain offers improved protein quality or enhanced levels of micro-nutrients such as zinc and provitamin A. Biofortified maize and wheat varieties have benefited smallholder farm families and consumers in more than 20 countries across sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Consumption of provitamin-A-enhanced maize or sweet potato has been shown to reduce chronic vitamin A deficiencies in children in eastern and southern Africa. In India, farmers have grown a high-yielding sorghum variety with enhanced grain levels of iron and zinc since 2018 and use of iron-biofortified pearl millet has improved nutrition among vulnerable communities.
Innovations in measuring plant responses include remote sensing systems, such as multispectral and thermal cameras flown over breeding fields. In this image of the CIMMYT experimental station in Obregón, Mexico, water-stressed plots are shown in green and red. (Photo: CIMMYT and the Instituto de Agricultura Sostenible)
Thefuture
Crop breeders have been laying the groundwork to pursue genomic selection. This approach takes advantage of low-cost, genome-wide molecular markers to analyze large populations and allow scientists to predict the value of particular breeding lines and crosses to speed gains, especially for improving genetically complex traits.
Speed breeding uses artificially-extended daylength, controlled temperatures, genomic selection, data science, artificial intelligence tools and advanced technology for recording plant information — also called phenotyping — to make breeding faster and more efficient. A CIMMYT speed breeding facility for wheat features a screenhouse with specialized lighting, controlled temperatures and other special fixings that will allow four crop cycles — or generations — to be grown per year, in place of only two cycles with normal field trials. Speed breeding facilities will accelerate the development of productive and robust varieties by crop research programs worldwide.
Data analysis and management. Growing and evaluating hundreds of thousands of plants in diverse trials across multiple sites each season generates enormous volumes of data that breeders must examine, integrate, and co-analyze to inform decisions, especially about which lines to cross and which populations to discard or move forward. New informatics tools such as the Enterprise Breeding System will help scientists to manage, analyze and apply big data from genomics, field and lab studies.
Following the leaders. Driven by competition and the quest for profits, private companies that market seed and other farm products are generally on the cutting edge of breeding innovations. The CGIAR’s Excellence in Breeding (EiB) initiative is helping crop breeding programs that serve farmers in low- and middle-income countries to adopt appropriate best practices from private companies, including molecular marker-based approaches, strategic mechanization, digitization and use of big data to drive decision making. Modern plant breeding begins by ensuring that the new varieties produced are in line with what farmers and consumers want and need.
Cover photo: CIMMYT experimental station in Toluca, Mexico. Located in a valley at 2,630 meters above sea level with a cool and humid climate, it is the ideal location for selecting wheat materials resistant to foliar diseases, such as wheat rust. Conventional plant breeding involves selection among hundreds of thousands of plants from crosses over many generations, and requires extensive and costly field, screenhouse and lab facilities. (Photo: Alfonso Cortés/CIMMYT)
Usman Kadir and his family de-husk maize on their farm in Ethiopia. (Photo: Apollo Habtamu/ILRI)
The current COVID-19 pandemic — and associated measures to reduce its spread — is projected to increase extreme poverty by 20%, with the largest increase in sub-Saharan Africa, where 80 million more people would join the ranks of the extreme poor. Accelerating the process of delivering high-quality, climate resilient and nutritionally enriched maize seed is now more critical than ever.However, developing these varieties is not a rapid or cheap process. Over the course of five years, researchers on the Stress Tolerant Maize for Africa (STMA) project developed a range of tools and technologies to reduce the overall cost of producing a new high yielding, stress tolerant hybrids for smallholder farmers in the region.
Maize breeding starts with crossing two parents and essentially ends after testing their great-great-great-great grandchildren in as many locations as possible. This allows plant breeders to identify the new varieties which will perform well in the conditions faced by their target beneficiaries — in the case of STMA, smallholder farmers in Africa. In other parts of the world, new tools and technologies are routinely added to breeding programs to help reduce the cost and time it takes to produce new varieties.
Scientists on the STMA project focused on testing and scaling new tools specifically for maize breeding programs in sub-Saharan Africa and began by taking a closer look at the most expensive part of the breeding process: phenotyping or collecting precise information on plant traits.
“Within a breeding program, phenotyping is the single most costly step,” explains CIMMYT molecular breeder Manje Gowda. “Molecular technologies provide opportunities to reduce this cost.” The research team tested two methods to speed up this step and make it more cost efficient: forward breeding and genomic selection.
Speeding up a long and costly process
Two important traits maize breeders look for in their plant progeny are susceptibility for two key maize diseases: maize streak virus (MSV) and maize lethal necrosis (MLN). In traditional breeding, breeders must extensively test lines in the field for their susceptibility to these diseases, and then remove them before the next round of crossing. This carries a significant cost.
Using a process called forward breeding, scientists can screen for DNA markers known to be associated with susceptibility to these diseases. This allows breeders to identify lines vulnerable to these diseases and remove them before field testing.
Scientists on the STMA project applied this approach in CIMMYT breeding programs in eastern and southern Africa over the past four years, saving an estimated $300,000 in field costs. Under the AGG project, research will now focus on applying forward breeding to identify susceptibility for another fast-spreading maize pest, fall armyworm, as well as extending use of this method in partners’ breeding programs.
A CIMMYT research associate inspects maize damaged by fall army worm at KALRO Kiboko Research Station in Kenya. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)
Forward breeding is ideal for “simple” traits which are controlled by a few genes. However, other desired traits, such as tolerance to drought and low nitrogen stress, are genetically complex. Many genes control these traits, with each gene only contributing a little towards overall stress tolerance.
In this case, a technology called genomic selection can be of service. Genomic selection estimates the performance, or breeding value, of a line based largely on genetic information. Genomic selection uses more than 5,000 DNA markers, without the need for precise information about what traits these markers control. The method is ideal for complicated traits such as drought and low nitrogen stress tolerance, where hundreds of small effect genes together largely control how a plant grows under these stresses.
CIMMYT scientists used this technology to select and advance lines for drought tolerance. They then tested these lines and compared their performance in the field to lines selected conventionally. They found that the two sets of resulting hybrid varieties — those advanced using genomic selection and those advanced in the field — showed the same grain yield under drought stress. However, genomic selection only required phenotyping half the lines, achieving the same outcome with half the budget.
Innovations in the field
While DNA technology is reducing the need for extensive field phenotyping, research is also underway to reduce the cost of the remaining necessary phenotyping in the field.
Typically, many traits — such as plant height or leaf drying under drought stress — are measured by hand, using the labor of large teams of people. For example, plant and ear height is traditionally measured by a team of two using a meter stick.
Mainasarra Zaman-Allah, a CIMMYT abiotic stress phenotyping specialist based in Zimbabwe, has been developing faster, more accurate ways to measure these traits. He implemented the use of a small laser sensor to measure plant and ear height which only requires one person. This simple yet cost effective tool has reduced the cost of measuring these traits by almost 60%. Similarly, using a UAV-based platform has reduced the cost of measuring a trait known as canopy senescence — leaf drying associated with drought susceptibility —by over 65%.
The identification of plants which are tolerant to key diseases has traditionally involved scoring the severity of disease in each plot visually, but walking through hundreds of plots daily can lead to errors in human judgement. To combat this, CIMMYT biotic stress phenotyping specialist LM Suresh collaborated with Jose Luis Araus and Shawn Kefauver, scientists at the University of Barcelona, Spain, to develop image analysis software that can quantify disease severity, thereby avoiding problems associated with unintentional human bias.
Plant breeders need uniform, or homozygous, lines for selection. With conventional plant breeding this is difficult: no matter how many times you cross a line, a small amount of DNA will remain heterozygous — having two different alleles of a particular gene — and reduce accuracy in line selection.
A technology called doubled haploid allows breeders to develop homozygous lines within two seasons. While this technology has been used in temperate maize breeding programs since the 1990s, it was not available for tropical environments until 10 years ago. In 2013, thanks to joint work with Kenyan partners at the CIMMYT Doubled Haploid facility in Kiboko, this technology was made available to African breeding programs. Now Vijay Chaikam, a CIMMYT doubled haploid specialist based in Kenya, is working towards reducing the cost of this technology as well.
The efforts begun by the STMA research team is now continuing under the Accelerating Genetic Gains in Maize and Wheat for Improved Livelihoods (AGG) project. As this work is carried forward, the next crucial step is ensuring that the next generation of African maize breeders have access to these technologies and tools.
“Improving national breeding programs will really drive success in raising maize yields in the stress prone environments faced by many farmers in our target countries,” says Mike Olsen, CIMMYT’s upstream trait pipeline coordinator. Under AGG, in collaboration with the CGIAR Excellence in Breeding Program, these tools will be scaled out.
Representatives from ministries of agriculture and national agricultural research systems (NARS) in Ethiopia and Kenya recently joined funder representatives and technical experts from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) to renew a long-standing collaboration under the auspices of an ambitious new project, Accelerating Genetic Gains in Maize and Wheat for Improved Livelihoods (AGG).
AGG is a 5-year project that brings together partners in the global science community and in national agricultural research and extension systems to accelerate the development of higher-yielding varieties of maize and wheat — two of the world’s most important staple crops. Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), AGG fuses innovative methods that improve breeding efficiency and precision to produce varieties that are climate-resilient, pest- and disease-resistant, highly nutritious, and targeted to farmers’ specific needs.
Ethiopia and Kenya: CIMMYT’s longstanding partners
The inception meeting for the wheat component of AGG in East Africa drew more than 70 stakeholders from Ethiopia and Kenya: the region’s primary target countries for wheat breeding. These two countries have long-standing relationships with CIMMYT that continue to deliver important impacts. Ninety percent of all wheat in Ethiopia is derived from CIMMYT varieties, and CIMMYT is a key supporter of the Ethiopian government’s goal for wheat self-sufficiency. Kenya has worked with CIMMYT for more than 40 years, and hosts the world’s biggest screening facilities for wheat rust diseases, with up to 40,000 accessions tested each year.
AGG builds on these successes and on the foundations built by previous projects, notably Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat, led by Cornell University. The wheat component of AGG works in parallel with a USAID-funded “zinc mainstreaming” project, meeting the demand for increased nutritional quality as well as yield and resilience.
CIMMYT Director General Martin Kropff gave key remarks at the stakeholder gathering, which took place Thursday, August 20.
“Cooperation between CIMMYT and Ethiopia and Kenya – as in all the countries where CIMMYT works – has had tremendous impact,” he said. “We are proud, not for ourselves, but for the people we work for: the hundreds of millions of poor people and smallholders who rely on wheat and maize for their daily food and incomes.”
“AGG will raise this spirit of global cooperation to a new level.”
AGG Project Leader and CIMMYT Interim Deputy Director General for Research Kevin Pixley introduced the new project as a “unique and important” project that challenges every stakeholder to grow.
“What we would like to achieve is a step change for all of us, he told the stakeholders. “Each of us has the opportunity and the challenge to make a difference and that’s what we’re striving to do.”
Representatives from the agricultural research communities of both target countries emphasized the significance of their long collaboration with CIMMYT and their support for the project.
The Honorable Mandefro Nigussie, Ethiopia’s State Minister of Agriculture, confirmed the ongoing achievements of CIMMYT collaboration in his country.
“Our partnership with CIMMYT […] has yielded several improved varieties that increased productivity twofold over the last 20 years. He referred to Ethiopia’s campaign to achieve self-sufficiency in wheat. “AGG will make an immense contribution to this. The immediate and intermediate results can help achieve the country’s ambitious targets.”
A holistic and gender-informed approach
Deputy Director of Crops at the Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Organization (KALRO) Felister Makini, representing the KALRO Director General Eliud Kireger, noted the project’s strong emphasis on gender-intentional variety development and gender-informed analysis to ensure female farmers have access to varieties that meet their needs and the information to successfully adopt them.
“The goal of this new project will indeed address KALRO’s objective of enhancing food security and nutrition in Kenya,” she said. “This is because AGG not only brings together wheat breeding and optimization tools and technologies, but also considers gender and socioeconomic insights, which will be pivotal to our envisaged strategy to achieve socioeconomic change.”
Funding partners keen for AGG to address future threats
Before CIMMYT wheat experts took the virtual floor to describe specific workplans and opportunities for partner involvement, a number of funder representatives shared candid and inspiring thoughts.
“We are interested in delivery,” said Alan Tollervey of FCDO, formerly the UK Department for International Development. “That is why we support AGG, because it is about streamlining and modernizing the delivery of products […] directly relevant to both the immediate demands of poor farmers in developing countries and the global demand for food – but also addressing the future threats that we see coming.”
Hailu Wordofa, Agricultural Technology Specialist at the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security at USAID highlighted the importance of global partnerships for past success and reiterated the ambitious targets of the current project.
“We expect to see genetic gains increase and varieties […] replaced by farmer-preferred varieties,” he reminded stakeholders. “To make this happen, we expect CIMMYT’s global breeding program to use optimal breeding approaches and develop strong and truly collaborative relationships with NARS partners throughout the entire process.”
“Wheat continues to be a critical staple crop for global food security and supporting CIMMYT’s wheat breeding program remains a high priority for USAID,” he assured the attendees.
FFAR Scientific Program Director Jeff Rosichan called AGG a “really ambitious project that takes a comprehensive look at the research gaps and challenges and how to translate that research into farmers’ fields.”
Agriculture prevails even under COVID-19
The global COVID-19 pandemic was not ignored as one of several challenges during this time of change and transition.
“As we speak today, despite the challenge that we have with the COVID-19, I am proud to say that work on the nurseries is on-going. We are able to apply [our] skills and deliver world-class science,” said Godwin Macharia, center director at KALRO-Njoro.
“This COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that there is a great need globally to focus on food equity. I think this project allows that to happen,” said Jeff Rosichan from FFAR.
Transformations are also happening at the research organization and funding level. CIMMYT Director General Martin Kropff noted that “demand-driven solutions” for “affordable, efficient and healthy diets produced within planetary boundaries” are an important part of the strategy for One CGIAR, the ongoing transformation of CGIAR, the world’s largest public research network on food systems, of which CIMMYT is a member.
Hans Braun, director of CIMMYT’s Global Wheat Program reminded attendees that, despite these changes, one important fact remains. “The demand for wheat will continue to grow for many years to come, and we must meet it.”
Cover photo: Harvesting golden spikes of wheat in Ethiopia. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)
Stakeholders in the Accelerating Genetic Gains in Maize and Wheat for Improved Livelihoods (AGG) project have pledged to strengthen efforts to deliver desirable stress tolerant, nutritious and high-yielding maize and wheat varieties to smallholder farmers in a much shorter time. The alliance, comprising funders, national agricultural research systems (NARS), private seed companies, non-governmental organizations, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and, for the maize component the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), made these assurances during virtual events held in July and August 2020, marking the inception of the 5-year AGG project.
The initiative seeks to fast-track the development of higher-yielding, climate resilient, demand-driven, gender-responsive and nutritious seed varieties for maize and wheat, two of the world’s most important staple crops. The project is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR).
Tackling current and emerging threats
Jeff Rosichan, scientific program director of the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research (FFAR), acknowledged the significant and ambitious aim of the project in tackling the challenges facing maize and wheat currently and in the future. “We are seeing the emergence of new pests and pathogens and viral diseases like never before. A lot of the work of this project is going to help us to tackle such challenges and to be better prepared to tackle emerging threats,” he said.
AGG builds on gains made in previous initiatives including Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa (DTMA), Improved Maize for African Soils (IMAS), Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA), Stress Tolerant Maize for Africa (STMA) and Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat (DGGW), with support from partners in 17 target countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and South Asia.
Hailu Wordofa, agricultural technology specialist at the USAID Bureau for Resilience and Food Security, underscored his expectation for CIMMYT’s global breeding program to use optimal breeding approaches and develop strong collaborative relationships with NARS partners, “from the development of product profiles to breeding, field trials and line advancement.”
Similarly, Gary Atlin, senior program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation lauded the move toward stronger partnerships and greater emphasis on the CIMMYT and IITA breeding programs. “The technical capacity of partners has increased through the years. It is prudent to ensure that national partnerships continue. It is always a challenging environment, this time multiplied by the COVID-19 crisis, but through this collaboration, there is a greater scope to strengthen such partnerships even more,” he said.
Anne Wangui, Maize Seed Health Technician, demonstrates how to test maize plants for maize dwarf mosaic virus (MDMV). (Photo: Joshua Masinde/CIMMYT)
Symbiotic partnerships with great impact
“From the NARS perspective, we are committed to doing our part as primary partners to deliver the right seed to the farmers,” said Godfrey Asea, director of the National Crops Resources Research Institute at the National Agriculture Research Organization (NARO), Uganda. “We see an opportunity to review and to use a lot of previous historical data, both in-country and regionally and to continue making improved decisions. We also reiterate our commitment and support to continuously make improvement plans in our breeding programs.”
Martin Kropff, director general of CIMMYT, recognized the tremendous impact arising from the longstanding cooperation between CIMMYT’s maize and wheat programs and national programs in countries where CIMMYT works. “A wheat study in Ethiopia showed that 90% of all the wheat grown in the country is CIMMYT-related, while an impact study for the maize program shows that 50% of the maize varieties in Africa are CIMMYT-derived. We are very proud of that – not for ourselves but for the people that we work for, the hundreds of millions of poor people and smallholder farmers who really rely on wheat and maize for their living and for their incomes,” he said.
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of East Africa-based Western Seed Company Saleem Esmail expressed optimism at the opportunities the project offers to improve livelihoods of beneficiaries. “I believe we can do this by sharing experiences and by leveraging on the impacts that this project is going to bring, from new technologies to new science approaches, particularly those that help save costs of seed production.”
He, however, observed that while the target of fast-tracking varietal turnover was great, it was a tough call, too, “because farmers are very risk averse and to change their habits requires a great deal of effort.”
On his part, director of Crop Research at the Oromia Agricultural Research Institute (OARI) in Ethiopia Tesfaye Letta revealed that from collaborative research work undertaken with CIMMYT, the institute has had access to better-quality varieties especially for wheat (bread and durum). These have helped millions of farmers to improve their productivity even as Ethiopia aims for wheat self-sufficiency by expanding wheat production under irrigation.
“We expect more support, from identifying wheat germplasm suitable for irrigation, developing disease resistant varieties and multiplying a sufficient quantity of early generation seed, to applying appropriate agronomic practices for yield improvement and organizing exposure field visits for farmers and experts,” he said.
Challenges and opportunities in a time of crisis
Alan Tollervey, head of agriculture research at Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and the UK representative to the CGIAR System Council, emphasized the need for continued investment in agricultural research to build a resilient food system that can cope with the demands and pressures of the coming decades. This way, organizations such as CIMMYT and its partners can adequately deliver products that are relevant not only to the immediate demands of poor farmers in developing countries – and the global demand for food generally – but also to address foreseen threats.
“We are at a time of intense pressure on budgets, and that is when projects are most successful, most relevant to the objectives of any organization, and most able to demonstrate a track record of delivery. CIMMYT has a long track history of being able to respond to rapidly emerging threats,” he said.
Felister Makini, the deputy director general for crops at the Kenya Agricultural Research Organization (KALRO) lauded the fact that AGG not only brings together maize and wheat breeding and optimization tools and technologies, but also considers gender and socioeconomic insights, “which will be crucial to our envisioned strategy to achieve socioeconomic change.”
Zambia Agriculture Research Organization (ZARI) maize breeder Mwansa Kabamba noted that the inclusion of extension workers will help to get buy-in from farmers especially as far as helping with adoption of the improved varieties is concerned.
In its lifecycle, the AGG project aims to reduce the breeding cycles for both maize and wheat from 5-7 years currently to 3-4 years. By 2024, at least 150,000 metric tons of certified maize seed is expected to be produced, adopted by 10 million households, planted on 6 million hectares and benefit 64 million people. It also seeks to serve over 30 million households engaged in wheat farming the target countries.
Cover photo: CIMMYT researcher Demewoz Negera at the Ambo Research Center in Ethiopia. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)
It was the site where International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) scientist Norman Borlaug famously received news of his 1970 Nobel Peace Prize win. Now, Toluca station will become CIMMYT’s new testing site for rapid generation advancement and speed breeding in wheat – a method that accelerates generation advancement of crops and shortens the breeding cycle using tools like continuous lighting and temperature control.
Recent progress of the 2-hectare rapid generation advancement screenhouse under construction at Toluca station. (Photo: Suchismita Modal/CIMMYT)
The Toluca wheat experimental station is one of CIMMYT’s five experimental stations in Mexico, located in a picturesque town on the outskirts of Mexico’s fifth largest city, Toluca, about 60 kilometers southwest of Mexico City. The station was strategically chosen for its cool, humid conditions in summer. These conditions have made it an ideal location for studying wheat resistance to deadly diseases including yellow rust and Septoria tritici blotch.
Since its formal establishment in 1970, Toluca has played a key role in CIMMYT’s wheat breeding program. The site is also of significant historical importance due to its origins as a testing ground for Borlaug’s shuttle breeding concept in the 1940s, along with Ciudad Obregón in the Sonora state of northern Mexico. The breeding method allowed breeders to plant at two locations to advance generations and half the breeding cycle of crops.
Applying this unorthodox breeding method, Borlaug was able to advance wheat generations twice as fast as standard breeding programs. Planting in contrasting environments and day lengths — from the cool temperatures and high rainfall of Toluca to the desert heat of Ciudad Obregón — also allowed Borlaug and his colleagues to develop varieties that were more broadly adaptable to a variety of conditions. His shuttle breeding program was so successful that it provided the foundations of the Green Revolution.
Toluca was also the site where the first sexual propagation of the destructive plant pathogen Phytophtora infestans was reported. The deadly pathogen is best known for causing the potato late blight disease that triggered the Irish potato famine.
Early photo of Toluca station. (Photo: Fernando Delgado/CIMMYT)
New life for the historic station
More than 50 years since its establishment, the station will once again host cutting-edge innovation in wheat research, as the testing ground for a new speed breeding program led by wheat scientists and breeders from Accelerating Genetic Gains in Maize and Wheat (AGG).
Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), AGG aims to accelerate the development and delivery of more productive, climate-resilient, gender-responsive, market-demanded, and nutritious maize and wheat varieties.
While most breeding programs typically take between 7-8 years before plants are ready for yield testing, shuttle breeding has allowed CIMMYT to cut the length of its breeding programs in half, to just 4 years to yield testing. Now, AGG wheat breeders are looking to shorten the breeding cycle further, through rapid generation advancement and speed breeding.
Speed breeding room at Toluca station. The Heliospectra lights support the faster growth of plants. (Photo: Suchismita Mondal/CIMMYT)
“The AGG team will use a low-cost operation, in-field screenhouse, spanning 2 hectares, to grow up to 4 generations of wheat per year and develop new germplasm ready for yield testing within just 2 years,” said Ravi Singh, CIMMYT distinguished scientist and head of wheat improvement. “This should not only save on cost but also help accelerate the genetic gain due to a significant reduction in time required to recycle best parents.”
Construction of the new rapid generation advancement and speed breeding facilities is made possible by support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and DFID through Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat (DGGW), a 4-year project led by Cornell University, which ends this year. It is expected to be complete by September.
Rapid generation advancement screenhouse under construction at Toluca station in October 2019. (Photo: Alison Doody/CIMMYT)
Wheat fields at Toluca station. (Photo: Fernando Delgado/CIMMYT)
Early photo of Toluca station. (Photo: Fernando Delgado/CIMMYT)
Wheat fields at Toluca station. Nevado de Toluca features in the background. (Photo: Fernando Delgado/CIMMYT)
Early landscape of wheat fields at Toluca station (Photo: Fernando Delgado/CIMMYT)
Rapid generation advancement screenhouse under construction at Toluca station in October 2019. (Photo: Alison Doody/CIMMYT)
Recent progress of the rapid generation advancement screenhouse under construction at Toluca station. (Photo: Suchismita Modal/CIMMYT)
Speed breeding room at Toluca station. The Heliospectra lights support the faster growth of plants. (Photo: Suchismita Mondal/CIMMYT)
CIMMYT Global Wheat Program Director Hans Braun highlighted the importance of testing the new breeding scheme. “Before completely adopting the new breeding scheme, we need to learn, optimize and analyze the performance results to make necessary changes,” he said.
If all goes well, Toluca could once again be on the vanguard of wheat research in the near future.
“We plan to use the speed breeding facility for rapid integration of traits, such as multiple genes for resistance, to newly-released or soon to be released varieties and elite breeding lines,” said CIMMYT Wheat Breeder Suchismita Mondal, who will lead the work in these facilities. We are excited to initiate using the new facilities.”
Wheat fields at the Campo Experimental Norman E. Borlaug (CENEB) near Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, Mexico. (Photo: M. Ellis/CIMMYT)
More than 100 scientists, crop breeders, researchers, and representatives from funding and national government agencies gathered virtually to initiate the wheat component of a groundbreaking and ambitious collaborative new crop breeding project led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).
The new project, Accelerating Genetic Gains in Maize and Wheat for Improved Livelihoods, or AGG, brings together partners in the global science community and in national agricultural research and extension systems to accelerate the development of higher-yielding varieties of maize and wheat — two of the world’s most important staple crops.
Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), the project specifically focuses on supporting smallholder farmers in low- and middle-income countries. The international team uses innovative methods — such as rapid cycling and molecular breeding approaches — that improve breeding efficiency and precision to produce varieties that are climate-resilient, pest and disease resistant and highly nutritious, targeted to farmers’ specific needs.
The wheat component of AGG builds on breeding and variety adoption work that has its roots with Norman Borlaug’s Nobel Prize winning work developing high yielding and disease resistance dwarf wheat more than 50 years ago. Most recently, AGG builds on Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat (DGGW), a 4-year project led by Cornell University, which ends this year.
“AGG challenges us to build on this foundation and make it better, faster, equitable and sustainable,” said CIMMYT Interim Deputy Director for Research Kevin Pixley.
At the virtual gathering on July 17, donors and partner representatives from target countries in South Asia joined CIMMYT scientists to describe both the technical objectives of the project and its overall significance.
“This program is probably the world’s single most impactful plant breeding program. Its products are used throughout the world on many millions of hectares,” said Gary Atlin from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “The AGG project moves this work even farther, with an emphasis on constant technological improvement and an explicit focus on improved capacity and poverty alleviation.”
Alan Tollervey from DFID spoke about the significance of the project in demonstrating the relevance and impact of wheat research.
“The AGG project helps build a case for funding wheat research based on wheat’s future,” he said.
Nora Lapitan from the USAID Bureau for Resilience and Food Security listed the high expectations AGG brings: increased genetic gains, variety replacement, optimal breeding approaches, and strong collaboration with national agricultural research systems in partner countries.
India’s farmers feed millions of people. (Photo: Dakshinamurthy Vedachalam)
Reconnecting with trusted partners
The virtual meeting allowed agricultural scientists and wheat breeding experts from AGG target countries in South Asia, many of whom have been working collaboratively with CIMMYT for years, to reconnect and learn how the AGG project both challenges them to a new level of collaboration and supports their national wheat production ambitions.
“With wheat blast and wheat rust problems evolving in Bangladesh, we welcome the partnership with international partners, especially CIMMYT and the funders to help us overcome these challenges,” said Director General of the Bangladesh Wheat and Maize Research Institute Md. Israil Hossain.
Director of the Indian Institute for Wheat and Barley Research Gyanendra P. Singh praised CIMMYT’s role in developing better wheat varieties for farmers in India.
“Most of the recent varieties which have been developed and released by India are recommended for cultivation on over 20 million hectares. They are not only stress tolerant and high yielding but also fortified with nutritional qualities. I appreciate CIMMYT’s support on this,” he said.
Executive Director of the National Agricultural Research Council of Nepal Deepak K. Bhandari said he was impressed with the variety of activities of the project, which would be integral to the development of Nepal’s wheat program.
“Nepal envisions increased wheat productivity from 2.84 to 3.5 tons per hectare within five years. I hope this project will help us to achieve this goal. Fast tracking the replacement of seed to more recent varieties will certainly improve productivity and resilience of the wheat sector,” he said.
The National Wheat Coordinator at the National Agricultural Research Center of Pakistan, Atiq Ur-Rehman, told attendees that his government had recently launched a “mega project” to reduce poverty and hunger and to respond to climate change through sustainable intensification. He noted that the support of AGG would help the country increase its capacity in “vertical production” of wheat through speed breeding. “AGG will help us save 3 to 4 years” in breeding time,” he said.
For CIMMYT Global Wheat Program Director Hans Braun, the gathering was personal as well as professional.
“I have met many of you over the last decades,” he told attendees, mentioning his first CIMMYT trip to see wheat programs in India in 1985. “Together we have achieved a lot — wheat self-sufficiency for South Asia has been secured now for 50 years. This would not be possible without your close collaboration, your trust and your willingness to share germplasm and information, and I hope this will stay. “
Braun pointed out that in this project, many national partners will gain the tools and capacity to implement their own state of the art breeding strategies such as genomic selection.
“We are at the beginning of a new era in breeding,” Braun noted. “We are also initiating a new era of collaboration.”
The wheat component of AGG serves more than 30 million wheat farming households in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Nepal and Pakistan. A separate inception meeting for stakeholders in sub-Saharan Africa is planned for next month.
