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Theme: Capacity development

CIMMYT training courses play a critical role in helping international researchers meet national food security and resource conservation goals. By sharing knowledge to build communities of agricultural knowledge in less developed countries, CIMMYT empowers researchers to aid farmers. In turn, these farmers help ensure sustainable food security. In contrast to formal academic training in plant breeding and agronomy, CIMMYT training activities are hands-on and highly specialized. Trainees from Africa, Asia and Latin America benefit from the data assembled and handled in a global research program. Alumni of CIMMYT courses often become a significant force for agricultural change in their countries.

Mexican farmers waking up to new beds

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As part of a Fundación Sonora project and nationwide efforts to test and promote resourceconserving practices, during 10-12 October Fernando Delgado, Rodrigo Rascón, Iván Ortíz-Monasterio, and Bram Govaerts and his agronomy team held a three-day, hands-on training course for farmers and technicians, particularly on sowing on permanent raised beds, in the Yaqui Valley of Sonora State, northern Mexico.

Attended by 25 farmers and technicians, the course focused on the operation of a multi-use, multi-crop prototype machine to fertilize, reshape permanent beds, and sow winter maize into different types of straw from various preceding crops. Training was based on the results of long-term experiments on conservation agriculture that CIMMYT is conducting in Mexico, including one at El Batán begun in 1991. The group plans to establish six on-farm research and training modules at key farming system sites across the country.

“The results of summer sorghum already sown in two modules had great impact,” says Govaerts. “An economic analysis with farmers showed per-hectare profits on permanent beds of more than twice those of the conventional system. The owners of the land are ready to go for the next zero-tillage crop.”

Meanwhile, the next training course, scheduled for November, will involve farmers sowing wheat on permanent beds in different types of straw with the same planter.

CIMMYT meets farmers at the ICAMEX fair

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On October 4, Javier Peña, head of CIMMYT’s cereal quality laboratory, and Fernando Delgado, superintendent of the Toluca research station, talked to farmers in Jilotepec, near Toluca, at an agricultural fair hosted by ICAMEX, the agricultural research institute for the state of Mexico. “Farmers were very receptive to information on conservation agriculture and eager to learn about fertilizers and weed control to improve their crops,” says Peña. Many asked about buying seed and the characteristics of the improved wheat varieties of ICAMEX, such as yield, sowing time, and end-use quality.

Over 1,000 farmers and small business owners attended the annual fair, which showcased ICAMEX products and services, such as varieties of several crops, types of fertilizers and pesticides, and technical assistance for machinery. Pedro Mijares, the director general of ICAMEX, was also at the fair, as this year marks 20 years since the creation of the Institute. CIMMYT has provided improved, experimental wheat germplasm to ICAMEX for close to 15 years. “Accepting the invitation of ICAMEX to have a display at the fair enables us to show our commitment to local Mexican initiatives,” adds Peña. As part of a federal wheat partnership, CIMMYT is also working with INIFAP and the Colegio de Postgraduados to develop new and improved wheat varieties in Mexico. Delgado and Peña give special thanks to the CIMMYT design team for the eye-catching, informative posters they prepared.

CIMMYT Open Day

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Yesterday, CIMMYT El Batán opened its doors to 200 students from eight universities in Mexico. Students from as far away as 870 km arrived at approximately nine a.m., and were welcomed by Masa Iwanaga. It was the first university open house for El Batán, with the goal of raising student interest in agricultural research and consolidating many visits into one morning.

“Because we only have one cropping cycle, now is the best time for students to see the fields,” says Petr Kosina. He hopes the open house might encourage Mexican students to conduct research in collaboration with the Center. Students are welcome to use our library and web resources, he adds.

Students visited biotechnology laboratories, maize and wheat fields and the germplasm bank, where they huddled together for warmth. They learned about the Center’s history and the work of impacts targeting. Many of them took notes and pictures with their cell phones. Questions ranged from the issues facing potatoes, rice and beans to the pros and cons of genetically modified crops.

José Luis Torres, Senior Scientific, Maize for Highlands, at CIMMYT, spoke passionately about the role of CIMMYT in Africa, pointing out which maize in the field is vital for pregnant women there. Saúl García Vásquez, a student from Universidad Antonio Narro, said he could see the importance of such maize because nutrition is a huge problem. Lizbeth Guzmán, who studies nutrition, found the gene bank particularly interesting. Guzmán said she and her classmates had learned a lot in one morning.

International Symposium on the Green Revolution in Africa

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The African Network for Soil Biology and Fertility (AfNet) in collaboration with the Soil Fertility Consortium for Southern Africa (SOFECSA) held an International Symposium entitled “Innovations as Key to the Green Revolution in Africa: Exploring the Scientific Facts” in Arusha, Tanzania, under the auspices of the Tanzanian Ministry of Agriculture.

The symposium, held from 17 to 21 September, brought together scientists, agricultural extension staff, NGOs and policy makers from all over Africa to explore the scientific facts and share knowledge and experiences on the role of innovation in soil fertility replenishment as a key to a green revolution in Africa. More than 200 participants from the Soil fertility/agronomy fraternity attended. Financial support came from the Rockefeller Foundation, International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), and the International Foundation for Science.

In his opening address, Dr. Akin Adesina, Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) Vice President for Policy and Partnerships acknowledged CIMMYT’s contribution in developing some of the drivers of the African Green revolution–drought tolerant and imidazoline-resistant maize. Moreover CIMMYT’s role in establishing Soil Fert Net for Maize based farming systems and now in hosting SOFECSA was appreciated.

SOFECSA members, Paul Mapfumo, Mulugetta Mekuria, and Florence Mtambanengwe presented papers. SOFECSA country teams had three poster presentations and also served as symposium rapporteurs and chair persons for the different sessions. SOFECSA and AfNet serve as hubs for coordinating integrated soil fertility management and policy related research and development activities in Southern, East, West, and Central Africa.

Getting our message to journalists

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Maize breeder, Dan Makumbi and writer-editor, Anne Wangalachi of CIMMYT in Nairobi, attended a workshop organized by the Reuters Foundation and CGIAR Media Unit on “Reporting Climate Change in Africa” this past Thursday. Thirteen journalists working in both print and electronic media participated in the training workshop. They came from Kenya, Malawi, Ethiopia and Uganda. The purpose was to sensitize and educate them about current issues surrounding climate change and particularly its implications for livelihoods and food security in sub-Saharan Africa.

Dan Makumbi gave a well-received presentation on Drought Tolerant Maize (DTM) which drew a lot of interest, particularly with respect to potential yield improvement and fertilizer x DTM interactions. Also the issue of who had responsibility for creating awareness of new DTM varieties with farmers was raised. It was agreed that the journalists can greatly help with this. Many of the journalists are expected to write stories based on what they learned at the workshop.

Mexican farmers see conservation agriculture in the highland tropics

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Faced with rapidly degrading soils and dwindling water supplies, Mexican farmers and researchers have sought with renewed vigor in recent years to apply conservation agriculture principles—reduced tillage, retention of crop residues, and relevant rotations. CIMMYT has long supported Mexico’s efforts in conservation agriculture, both in basic research and in its applications.

As part of a traveling seminar organized by the “Asociación para la Agricultura Sostenible en base a Siembra Directa” (the Association for Sustainable Agriculture based on Direct Seeding, ASOSID), headquartered in Mexico’s El Bajío region, 32 farmer members and 7 researcher/extensionists visited CIMMYT’s Toluca and El Batán research stations during 6- 7 September 2007 to learn how conservation agriculture can be pursued in rainfed, highland environments.

At Toluca the group saw first-hand the work of superintendent Fernando Delgado, who is applying zero-tillage with residue retention on the station and assisting maize farmers of the Toluca Valley in adopting the practices. Early the following morning the group visited the long-term conservation agriculture trial begun at El Batán in 1991, for a presentation and discussion with Nele Verhulst, PhD student from the KULeuven, Belgium, and Chilean student Andrea Chocobar Guerra, working at CIMMYT on her MSc thesis.

The Association was launched in 2002, with support from CIMMYT and several Mexican organizations working in conservation agriculture at the time. According to ASOSID Technical Coordinator, Óscar Contreras Mejía (photo inset above), early efforts to disseminate conservation agriculture in El Bajío went fast, trying to reach as many farmers as possible.

“Things are going a bit slower now—we’re consolidating the technical side,” he says. Now roughly 80% of the area of participating farmers is under zero-tillage.”

Contreras cites as two major technical challenges the introduction of crop rotations in El Bajío, a central Mexico breadbasket where irrigated monoculture has dominated, and managing the large amounts of crop residues that are produced.

“Those could easily be sold for forage, but because we have problems of diminishing soil organic matter, we want to keep residues on the field,” Contreras explains.

Reflecting emerging circumstances in many intensive, irrigated cropping regions of the developing world, Mexico’s El Bajío is facing mounting problems relating, among other things, to improper use of agrochemicals and water. A recent report in the Mexican daily “El Sol de México” said the water table in the state of Guanajuato, in El Bajío, is falling at a rate of 1-3 meters per year. Conservation agriculture provides one avenue for addressing these problems.

Fieldbook and MaizeFinder training

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Twenty-five maize scientists and information management specialists gathered in Nairobi this week for a special workshop on the CIMMYT Fieldbook and MaizeFinder software. In addition to CIMMYT global maize program staff, colleagues from IITA and some national programs participated. The training workshop, designed to illustrate the use of the two programs in managing field trials and pedigrees, also aimed to find ways to improve the software itself. There was special emphasis on how to link this software with the International Crop Information System (ICIS) that CIMMYT and IRRI are jointly developing.

The workshop was led by CIMMYT-Zimbabwe breeder Bindiganavile Vivek, with help from Eduardo Hernández of the Crop Research Informatics Laboratory (CRIL). Fieldbook is an application for Microsoft Excel originally written by Marianne Bänziger and enhanced by Vivek. The MaizeFinder program was developed by CRIL staff, integrates evaluation data from different breeding programs, and allows structured queries across multiple studies. Both applications are freely available to any maize breeder in the world.

A pioneer passes: Bernice “Bernie” Hanson

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We have received word that Mrs. Bernie Hanson, wife of Haldore Hanson, CIMMYT’s second director general, died on April 4, 2007 at the age of 91. She would have been 92 on Sunday, August 19th.

Hal and Bernie were important “pioneers” in CIMMYT’s history. Shortly after arriving in Mexico in 1971, and with no desire to undergo a daily commute to Mexico City, Bernie set out to find property near Texcoco to build a home. She found a series of eight terraces that had probably been farmed since before the arrival of the Spaniards in San Nicolás Tlaminca. They sat at the base of Tezcotzingo, on top of which the Texcoco king, Nezahualcóyotl, had built a summer place. It was love at first sight. With her powers of persuasion, Bernie then convinced Arq. Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, one of Mexico’s most accomplished architects, to design and build their dream home. The house completed in 1972, became Hal and Bernie’s home for the next two decades.

Even with the CIMMYT director general living in the Texcoco area, the lack of a bilingual school discouraged many international staff from relocating closer to El Batán. So Bernie founded the Columbia School and recruited a number of expatriate women whose spouses were associated with CIMMYT and Chapingo, to teach there.

Bernie also played an important economic development role in San Nicolás. She was instrumental in encouraging greenhouse flower cultivation and helped to create a microfinance organization to support the smallholder growers. She is remembered with great fondness by many.

After Haldore’s death in 1992 Bernie returned to their farm near Leesburg, Virginia. Before leaving Mexico, she gifted the San Nicolás property to CIMMYT (two houses and 4 ha). Her condition was that all revenue derived from the property be deposited in a special fund, called the Hanson Fund, to provide educational scholarships for national CIMMYT staff.

CIMMYT extends its condolences to the two Hanson children, Signe and Eric, and thanks them for the many contributions that their parents made to international agriculture and development, to CIMMYT and to the larger Texcoco community.

Wheat agronomy student in the Bell Medal finals

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CIMMYT wheat agronomist Bram Govaerts has informed the editors that Sarah Chambers, a student with CIMMYT’s wheat agronomy team in summer 2005, was one of the finalists of the 2006 Bell Medal of the University of Queensland, Australia. During her internship, Sarah collected data from the long-term sustainability trial at El Batán and interviewed farmers. Her honors project, “An economic comparison of conservation agriculture technologies with traditional farm practices in rain-fed cropping systems of central Mexico,” received special mention from the Bell Medal judges.

Says wheat agronomist Ken Sayre: “Sarah was an undergraduate exchange student at the Technológico de Monterrey and contacted me about doing a project with us. We’d always wanted to put an economic foundation on our research with the long-term trial, so we sent her out with Dagoberto Flores to interview rainfed maize farmers. The data they obtained on production costs and returns went into a spreadsheet model created by Bram, and showed that Mexican maize farmers lose money using conventional practices but can improve earnings significantly by using zero-tillage and leaving residues on the soil.”

Sayre cautions that the study was based on market costs for labor and residues, and should be fine-tuned by taking into account the use of family for fieldwork or the returns to feeding residues to farm animals, rather than selling the residues. The Bell Medal was created in 1985 in honor of Arthur F. Bell, who was a pathologist, Director of the Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations, and the first scientist to hold the position of Under- Secretary of the then State Department of Agriculture and Stock in Queensland.

Global public goods workshops at CIMMYT

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During August 15-23 CIMMYT El Batán is hosting two workshops attended by scientists from CGIAR centers and other organizations involved in genetic resource management —including CIMMYT Mexico and Kenya, CIAT, CIP, ICARDA, IITA, IRRI, ICRISAT, Bioversity, the Danish Seed Health Centre for Developing Countries, the International Seed Federation and the Mexican National Commission for Biodiversity (CONABIO).

The first workshop developed draft guidelines for germplasm banks’ management of the inadvertent presence of transgenes and the maintenance of transgene-free germplasm. The second, which begins on Monday, will deal with best practices in safe germplasm movement. The meetings have been organized by Tom Payne, Monica Mezzalama, and Etienne Duveiller. They are part of phase two of the World Bank’s project on Collective Action for the Rehabilitation of Global Public Goods in the CGIAR Genetic Resources System, involving all 11 CGIAR germplasm banks.

Visitors at Agua Fría

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On Friday July 27, our colleagues at Agua Fría were visited by two students from Instituto Tecnológico de Huejutla, Hidalgo, and two farmers from the same location. The visitors were given an introduction to CIMMYT, and gained a greater understanding of the center’s work in the areas of physiology, entomology, genetic resources, and tropical maize research. They learned how and when the agronomic data from trials—for example on flowering, plant height, ear size, lodging, etc—are collected during the breeding cycle. They toured the work areas, and at the end of the tour their hosts presented them with free training material on the collection of data in the field, and field identification of maize plagues, diseases and other problems.

Out of the seminar room

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The Genetic Resources and Enhancement Unit (GREU) broke with tradition this week when instead of the usual seminar with a PowerPoint presentation it moved the talk to the screen houses at El Batán. Maria Zaharieva discussed a project dealing with phenotypic and taxonomic (physical characteristics and classification) characterization of wheat species and in particular wild relatives of wheat from the Wellhausen-Anderson Plant Genetic Resources Center. Her work also involves a Generation Challenge Program Project aimed at evaluating genetic diversity within these species. She showed participants the different species of wheat, how to identify them in the field, and indicated their value for bread and durum wheat breeding.

Generation Challenge Programme meets CIMMYT

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This week, during August 6-8, the Generation Challenge Programme (GCP) held the kick-off meeting for its current round of six two-year projects at CIMMYT’s El Batán headquarters, bringing together 31 scientists from around the world.

Each project focuses on aspects of using genomic science to explore and harness crop genetic diversity, and employing useful genes to generate improved varieties. CIMMYT’s Matthew Reynolds is leading a project looking for genetic markers for drought tolerance in wheat that can be used in breeding programs.

The teams worked on detailed delivery plans, focusing on end users, their needs, and how to ensure project products reach them. “It’s a new way of thinking, taking our philosophy into concrete targets,” says Carmen de Vicente, GCP Sub-programme Leader in capacity building. “It’s a big motivator, and I think everyone’s worked very hard and learned a lot.”

It was also “a great opportunity to get to know our collaborators,” says Reynolds. The teams included scientists from CGIAR and other advanced research institutes, and also from national programs. “It’s important that everyone is engaged,” says de Vicente. “By integrating delivery into the planning, our national partners share in the feeling of ownership of the project and its outcomes.”

Developing CG guidelines for safe germplasm exchange

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Meetings under phase two of the World Bank’s project on Collective Action for the Rehabilitation of Global Public Goods in the CGIAR Genetic Resources System continued at El Batán this week, as participants learned from each other concerning the ways in which individual centers deal with specific pathogens for mandate crops.

“A key part of this involves prioritizing pathogens of quarantine relevance for the transfer of germplasm and protection of genetic resources,” says Etienne Duveiller, CIMMYT wheat pathologist. “We need to make sure that we are harmonizing our approaches in addressing the safe exchange of germplasm; for example, procedures for checking new introductions and sending materials to our clients.”

Among other outcomes, it is expected the workshop, which ended 23 August 2007, will provide a platform for collaborative efforts in support of genebanks, with extension to partners’ systems in the development of a crop-based global system. In addition to Duveiller, participants in this week’s workshop were Thomas Payne, Head of the Wheat Genetic Resources, CIMMYT; Monica Mezzalama, Head of the CIMMYT Seed Inspection and Distribution Unit; Suketoshi Taba, Head of Maize Genetic Resources, CIMMYT; Ehsan Dulloo, of Bioversity’s Understanding and Managing Biodiversity Programme; Maritza Cuervo, Coordinator of CIAT’s Germplasm Health Laboratory; Cecilia Ynouye, of CIP’s Genetic Resource Conservation and Characterization Division; Siham Asaad, Head of ICARDA’s Seed Health Laboratory; Maria Ayodele, Head of IITA’s Germplasm Health Unit; and Patria G. Gonzales, Manager of IRRI’s Seed Health Unit.

Students from Tabasco

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Eight biology students from Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco visited CIMMYT El Batán on Wednesday. They had a special interest in the management and conservation of seeds. The students were accompanied by their professor, M.C. Georgina Vargas Simón. They toured the Wellhausen- Anderson Genetic Resources Center and the Seed Health laboratory and had a chance to visit the library and publications distribution unit.