Climate change threatens to reduce global crop production, and poor people in tropical environments will be hit the hardest. More than 90% of CIMMYT’s work relates to climate change, helping farmers adapt to shocks while producing more food, and reduce emissions where possible. Innovations include new maize and wheat varieties that withstand drought, heat and pests; conservation agriculture; farming methods that save water and reduce the need for fertilizer; climate information services; and index-based insurance for farmers whose crops are damaged by bad weather. CIMMYT is an important contributor to the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security.
While COVID-19 is exacerbating an existing hunger crisis, authors highlight three of the most impactful research and development successes from the past few years that help smallholder farmers cope with climate change and bolster food security.
The first is CIMMYT’s program to develop drought-tolerant maize varieties with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, successfully developing hundreds of new varieties that boost farmers’ yields and incomes, directly improving millions of lives.
By 2050, global demand for wheat is predicted to increase by 50 percent from today’s levels and demand for maize is expected to double. Meanwhile, these profoundly important and loved crops bear incredible risks from emerging pests and diseases, diminishing water resources, limited available land and unstable weather conditions – with climate change as a constant pressure exacerbating all these stresses.
Accelerating Genetic Gains in Maize and Wheat for Improved Livelihoods (AGG) is a new 5-year project led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) 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.
Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), AGG fuses innovative methods to sustainably and inclusively improve breeding efficiency and precision to produce seed varieties that are climate-resilient, pest- and disease-resistant, highly nutritious, and targeted to farmers’ specific needs.
AGG seeks to respond to the intersection of the climate emergency and gender through gender-intentional product profiles for its improved seed varieties and gender-intentional seed delivery pathways.
AGG will take into account the needs and preferences of female farmers when developing the product profiles for improved varieties of wheat and maize. This will be informed by gender-disaggregated data collection on current varieties and preferred characteristics and traits, systematic on-farm testing in target regions, and training of scientists and technicians.
Farmer Agnes Sendeza harvests maize cobs in Malawi. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)
To encourage female farmers to take up climate-resilient improved seeds, AGG will seek to understand the pathways by which women receive information and improved seed and the external dynamics that affect this access and will use this information to create gender-intentional solutions for increasing varietal adoption and turnover.
“Until recently, investments in seed improvement work have not actively looked in this area,” said Olaf Erenstein, Director of CIMMYT’s Socioeconomics Program at a virtual inception meeting for the project in late August 2020. Now, “it has been built in as a primary objective of AGG to focus on […] strengthening gender-intentional seed delivery systems so that we ensure a faster varietal turnover and higher adoption levels in the respective target areas.”
In the first year of the initiative, the researchers will take a deep dive into the national- and state-level frameworks and policies that might enable or influence the delivery of these new varieties to both female and male farmers. They will analyze this delivery system by mapping the seed delivery paths and studying the diverse factors that impact seed demand. By understanding their respective roles, practices, and of course, the strengths and weaknesses of the system, the researchers can diagnose issues in the delivery chain and respond accordingly.
Once this important scoping step is complete, the team will design a research plan for the following years to understand and influence the seed information networks and seed acquisition. It will be critical in this step to identify some of the challenges and opportunities on a broad scale, while also accounting for the related intra-household decision-making dynamics that could affect access to and uptake of these improved seed varieties.
“It is a primary objective of AGG to ensure gender intentionality,” said Kevin Pixley, Director of CIMMYT’s Genetic Resources Program and AGG project leader. “Often women do not have access to not only inputs but also information, and in the AGG project we are seeking to help close those gaps.”
Cover photo: Farmers evaluate traits of wheat varieties, Ethiopia. (Photo: Jeske van de Gevel/Bioversity International)
Nine CGIAR centers, supported by the Big Data Platform, will launch the Excellence in Agronomy 2030 initiative on September 7, 2020, during this year’s African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) online summit.
The Excellence in Agronomy 2030 (EiA 2030) initiative will assist millions of smallholder farmers to intensify their production systems while preserving key ecosystem services under the threat of climate change. This initiative, co-created with various scaling partners, represents the collective resolve of CGIAR’s agronomy programs to transform the world’s food systems through demand- and data-driven agronomy research for development.
EiA 2030 will combine big data analytics, new sensing technologies, geospatial decision tools and farming systems research to improve spatially explicit agronomic recommendations in response to demand from scaling partners. Our science will integrate the principles of Sustainable Intensification and be informed by climate change considerations, behavioral economics, and scaling pathways at the national and regional levels.
A two-year Incubation Phase of EiA 2030 is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The project will demonstrate the added value of demand-driven R&D, supported by novel data and analytics and increased cooperation among centers, in support of a One CGIAR agronomy initiative aiming at the sustainable intensification of farming systems.
Speaking on the upcoming launch, the IITA R4D Director for Natural Resource Management, Bernard Vanlauwe, who facilitates the implementation of the Incubation Phase, said that “EiA 2030 is premised on demand-driven agronomic solutions to develop recommendations that match the needs and objectives of the end users.”
Christian Witt, Senior Program Officer from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, lauded the initiative as a cornerstone for One CGIAR. “It is ingenious to have a platform like EiA 2030 that looks at solutions that have worked in different settings on other crops and whether they can be applied in a different setting and on different crops,” Witt said.
Martin Kropff, Director General of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), spoke about the initiative’s goals of becoming the leading platform for next-generation agronomy in the Global South, not only responding to the demand of the public and private sectors, but also increasing efficiencies in the development and delivery of solutions through increased collaboration, cooperation and cross-learning between CGIAR centers and within the broader agronomy R&D ecosystem, including agroecological approaches.
At the EiA 2030 launch, representatives from partner organizations and CGIAR centers will give presentations on different aspects of the project.
CGIAR centers that are involved in EiA include AfricaRice, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the International Potato Center (CIP), the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF), the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).
Wheat crop losses due to heat and drought affect food availability and increase the costs for billions of consumers around the world. The Alliance for Wheat Adaptation to Heat and Drought (AHEAD) is an international network that hosts initiatives and projects dedicated to addressing scientific gaps and builds synergies to support the development of new wheat varieties that are resilient to heat and drought.
This article by Sakshi Saini was originally published on the CCAFS website.
A high throughput crop phenotyping platform, the ‘Leasyscan’ located at ICRISAT’s HQ Patancheru, India. Photo: A. Whitbread (ICRISAT)
Ever-increasing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) is a global concern due to the association of high atmospheric GHG concentrations with global warming and climate change. A large and growing body of evidence predicts that this would further have a multifaceted impact on the human population, especially the poor and vulnerable groups, further exacerbating their vulnerabilities.
But what about crops? Plants use carbon dioxide (CO2)—one of the most abundant GHGs, for photosynthesis. So shouldn’t an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide aid crops to flourish? A counter-argument to this would be that at the same time there would be changes in other factors such as a change in precipitation rate, frequency and intensity of rains, among others, which might negatively impact crop production. So, how exactly would climatic variations impact the yield and productivity of crops? These are some of the questions that have been a global concern. Many studies have researched this, employing varied approaches such as systems biology, physiology and crop modelling. However, unprecedented changes in climatic conditions still pose uncertainties on the impacts on crops.
Recent research by an interdisciplinary team of scientists from the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Chanage, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS)-Africa and CCAFS-Asia aspires to answer some of these questions. As part of this research, they have compiled recent progress made in the physiological and molecular attributes in plants, with special emphasis on legumes under elevated CO2 conditions in a climate change scenario. The study proposes a strategic research framework for crop improvement that integrates genomics, systems biology, physiology and crop modelling approaches to cope with the changing climate. Some of the prime results of the study are as follows:
1. Major physiological and biochemical alterations in legumes triggered by elevated CO2
A range of physiological and biochemical alterations take place in plants exposed to elevated CO2. In the case of legumes, elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations also affect the nutritional quality and nodulation, causes changes in rhizosphere and Biological Nitrogen Fixation (BNF), among others. Studies have shown that elevated CO2 would stimulate plant growth under nitrogen-sufficient conditions, but under nitrogen-limited conditions, it may have the detrimental effect of reducing plant growth by altering its primary metabolism. The anatomical differences between C3 and C4 plants (plants with C3 and C4 photosynthetic pathways) and their different ways of sequestering carbon (removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere), have been an area of interest for climate scientists. Elevated CO2 combined with limited nitrogen may also promote biological ageing (senescence) rates as observed in flag leaves of rice and wheat. Studies also show that a higher level of carbon dioxide increases senescence rate in legumes.
2. Impact of elevated carbon-dioxide interaction with other abiotic stresses
As mentioned earlier, CO2 is not the only factor that is impacting plant growth, it is dependent on other environmental factors such as water deficit stress and temperature, among others. Thus, these factors also need to be considered in combination with the atmospheric concentration. Studies have reported that elevated CO2 induced a decrease (of 10%) in evaporation rates in both C3 and C4 plants. This caused an increase in canopy temperature (0.7 °C) coupled with a 19% yield increase in C3 crops. There is evidence that an increase in CO2 has also phased down the effect of oxidative stress. Though, there is limited literature available about the impact of elevated carbon dioxide keeping into consideration the drought and heat responses of various crops.
3. Elevated carbon dioxide and its interaction with biotic stress-altered pathogen aggravation and virulence
The changing climate has affected pest-crop dynamics with more frequent outbreaks and changed the geographical distribution of pests, posing an economic threat to crops. Sometimes, other abiotic stresses like drought could increase fungal virulence as reported in drought-tolerant peanut and Aspergillus interaction. However, a combined interaction is not always additive as both unique and common responses have been observed. Increased CO2 causes greater photosynthate availability, but reduced foliage quality along with an increased concentration of plant defensive compounds after a pest infestation. This, in turn, affects insect feeding and increases disease incidence and predator parasitism interactions.
4. Molecular interventions for crop improvement under elevated carbon-dioxide
While elevated CO2 may cause greater photosynthate availability, the interaction of elevated CO2 with mentioned biotic and abiotic stresses calls for the development of climate change ready crop varieties. Thus, genomics assisted breeding along with other modern approaches can be very powerful tools to develop superior varieties, to de-risk the existing food system. This transformative approach towards the production of plants and crops would be instrumental in sustainably ensuring food security.
An integrated research framework for the future
The discussion and evidence presented illustrate that the effect of elevated CO2 under a changing climate scenario is multifaceted and aggravated by the overlapping interaction of stressors. The notion that CO2 has beneficial effects in terms of increased productivity is now being questioned since the photosynthetic fertilization effect is short term and often not time-tested for major crop species. The IPCC 2018 special report highlights several policy-level approaches that are aimed at limiting greenhouse gas emission. The scientific community needs to be prepared with suitable research outcomes to cope with the effects of elevated atmospheric CO2 levels. In this regard, an integrated framework combining different biological disciplines has been proposed by the team (Fig. 1).
Figure 1: A representation of a multifaceted strategy that could be employed to harness cutting edge technologies and greater precision to cope with elevated CO2, and generally with a changing climate.
While significant advances have been made in crop genomics, systems biology and genomics-assisted breeding, the success of trait dissection and trait deployment is very much dependent on the quality and precision of phenotyping. Recent advances in plant phenotyping using high throughput phenotyping tools have revolutionized the uptake of phenotype and allelic information in a more precise and robust way and complemented high throughput genomic resources
In the opinion of the authors of the publication, an integrated research framework that includes genomics/ systems biology and phenomics together with crop modelling would result in faster data-driven advances for understanding the optimal GxExM (genotype x environment x management) scenarios for current and projected climates. Interdisciplinary approaches as has been done through the Climate-Smart Village approach, are key to graduating from a descriptive level to an improved quantitative and process-level understanding of sustainable crop productivity.
A farmer in Banke district during monsoon season drought in 2017. (Photo: Anton Urfels/CIMMYT)
Researchers from the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) project have been exploring the drivers of smallholder farmers’ underuse of groundwater wells to combat in-season drought during the monsoon rice season in Nepal’s breadbasket — the Terai region.
Their study, published in Water International, finds that several barriers inhibit full use of groundwater irrigation infrastructure.
Inconsistent rainfall has repeatedly damaged paddy crops in Nepal over the last years, even though most agricultural lands are equipped with groundwater wells. This has contributed to missed national policy targets of food self-sufficiency and slow growth in cereal productivity.
A key issue is farmers’ tendency to schedule irrigation very late in an effort to save their crops when in-season drought occurs. By this time, rice crops have already been damaged by lack of water and yields will be decreased. High irrigation costs, especially due to pumping equipment rental rates, are a major factor of this aversion to investment. Private irrigation is also a relatively new technology for many farmers making water use decisions.
After farmers decide to irrigate, queuing for pumpsets, tubewells, and repairs and maintenance further increases irrigation delays. Some villages have only a handful of pumpsets or tubewells shared between all households, so it can take up to two weeks for everybody to irrigate.
To address these issues, CSISA provides suggestions for three support pathways to support farmers in combatting monsoon season drought:
1. Raise awareness of the importance of timely irrigation
To avoid yield penalties and improve operational efficiency through better-matched pumpsets, CSISA has raised awareness through agricultural FM radio broadcasts on the strong relationship between water stress and yield penalties. Messages highlight the role of the plough pan in keeping infiltration rates low and encouraging farmers to improve irrigation scheduling. Anecdotal evidence suggests that improved pump selection may decrease irrigation costs by up to 50%, and CSISA has initiated follow-up studies to develop recommendations for farmers.
Social interaction is necessary for purchasing fuel, transporting and installing pumps, or sharing irrigation equipment. These activities pose risks of COVID-19 exposure and transmission and therefore require farmers to follow increased safety and hygiene practices, which may cause further delays to irrigation. Raising awareness about the importance of timely irrigation therefore needs to go hand in hand with the promotion of safe and hygienic irrigation practices. This information has been streamlined into CSISA’s ongoing partnerships and FM broadcasts.
2. Improve community-level water markets through increased focus on drought preparedness and overcoming financial constraints
Farmers can save time by taking an anticipatory approach to the terms and conditions of rentals, instead of negotiating them when cracks in the soil are already large. Many farmers reported that pump owners are reluctant to rent out pumpsets if renters cannot pay up front. Given the seasonality of cash flows in agriculture, pro-poor and low interest credit provisions are likely to further smoothen community-level water markets.
Quantified ethnographic-decision tree based on households’ surveys of smallholder decision to use groundwater irrigation in Nepal’s Terai. (Graphic: Urfels et al., 2020)
3. Prioritize regional investment
The study shows that delay factors differ across districts and that selectively targeted interventions will be most useful to provide high returns to investments. For example, farmers in Kailali reported that land access issues — due to use of large bullock carts to transport pumpsets — and fuel shortages constitute a barrier for 10% and 39% of the farmers, while in Rupandehi, maintenance and tubewell availability were reported to be of greater importance.
As drought is increasingly threatening paddy production in Nepal’s Terai region, CSISA’s research shows that several support pathways exist to support farmers in combatting droughts. Sustainable water use can only be brought up to a scale where it benefits most farmers if all available tools including electrification, solar pumps and improved water level monitoring are deployed to provide benefits to a wide range of farmers.
Kiyasi Gwalale walking through her baby trial in Chebvute, Masvingo. Photo: C. Thierfelder/CIMMYT
It was an early morning on March 12, 2020, when we entered Kiyasi Gwalale’s field in the Chebvute area of Masvingo, southern Zimbabwe. Gwalale participates in the Zambuko Livelihoods Initiative, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
The Zambuko initiative aims to increase rural resilience against the negative effects of climate change. More than 70% of smallholders in Zimbabwe farm on sandy soils that are low in soil fertility and are increasingly affected by the vagaries of climate. The Gwalale family is an example of one of the millions affected.
In Chebvute, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) has established trials to test the effectiveness and productivity of conservation agriculture and climate resilient crop species since 2018. This has been in the form of “mother and baby” trials.
A traditional tool of breeders, “mother trials” show different technologies to farmers to allow them to select the best option. In Chebvute, these trials were amplified to demonstrate farmers’ crop management practices such as conservation agriculture, crop rotation with legumes and different drought-resilient crop varieties.
A baby trial with DT maize, cowpea and white sorghum in Chebvute. Photo: C. Thierfelder/CIMMYT
Baby trial farmers taking after their ‘mothers’
Since 2019, the best options have been taken on by follower farmers in so called “baby trials”, where they use a subset from the mother trials to gain first-hand experience with the technology. Learning by doing is a central concept of this approach.
Gwalale as a “baby trial farmer” learned from the mother trials that drought-tolerant maize varieties out-yield traditional varieties under conservation agriculture, but need to be rotated with legumes to also improve the soil and the nutrition of the farm household. In addition, she realized that planting white sorghum is a drought-resilient strategy in this area as small grains are less affected by in-season dry-spells.
Gwalale and her family have been resident in Chebvute for 15 years but farm only on 0.4 ha of land. With her husband and three children, she grows maize, sorghum, groundnuts and Bambara nuts. What she gets from these fields is barely enough to survive.
In the 2019/20 cropping season, a devastating drought lasting from mid-December to mid-January destroyed all her hopes that this year would be a better season. Instead, she went on an educational journey to find out how improved farming practices can make a difference in her own life.
“We planted this baby trial for the first time in December 2019, as we had seen from the nearby mother trials that these varieties planted under no-tillage seem to grow better than our own. We planted the baby at the same times as our own crops, but instead of tilling the soil and clearing the land, which we are used to, we just planted in riplines without tillage and covered the soil with mulch,” explains Gwalale.
“When the drought came, all my other crops in the tilled fields started to wilt and die — some did not even germinate. We could not believe what was happening in this baby trial”.
CIMMYT scientist Christian Thierfielder pleased with the results in another baby trial plot in Chebvute. Photo: C. Thierfelder/CIMMYT
Resounding results in the baby trial
All crops in the baby trial survived the dry-spell and when the rains started to fall again in January, they continued to grow very well. Gwalale replanted the crops in the affected fields but they never caught up with the baby trial. Even after using the ripper to make more riplines, it was too late to experience the same wonder seen in the baby trial. “For now, we are yet to see how much we will get from this small field, but we learned a big lesson and want to expand our land area with this way of planting next year,” she says.
More than 200 baby trial farmers in Chebvute, the majority of which are women, have experienced the same in their own baby trials and realized that it does not take much effort to achieve food security.
Timely planting, conserving the soil and the moisture with conservation agriculture, effective weeding and application of adequate plant nutrients are the key ingredients of success. This can be learned effectively in a small plot such as a baby trial. Farmers have realized that it is possible to make a difference when they apply the principles of sustainable agriculture in their farming systems. The interventions introduced will help them to become more climate-resilient and ultimately more food secure.
June marks the start of the rice growing season in India’s breadbasket but on the quiet fields of Haryana and Punjab you wouldn’t know it.
Usually the northwestern Indian states are teeming with migrant laborers working to transplant rice paddies. However, the government’s swift COVID-19 lockdown measures in late March triggered reverse migration, with an estimated 1 million laborers returning to their home states.
The lack of migrant workers has raised alarms for the labor-dependent rice-wheat farms that feed the nation. Healthy harvests are driven by timely transplanting of rice and, consequently, by the timely sowing of the succeeding wheat crop in rotation.
Without political support for alternative farming practices, crop losses from COVID-19 labor disruptions could reach $1.5 billion and significantly diminish the country’s grain reserves, researchers from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) warned.
Researchers also fear delayed rice transplanting could encourage unsustainable residue burning as farmers rush to clear land in the short window between rice harvest and wheat sowing. Increased burning in the fall will exacerbate the COVID-19 health risk by contributing to the blanket of thick air pollution that covers much of northwest India, including the densely populated capital region of New Delhi.
The burning of crop residue, or stubble, across millions of hectares of cropland between planting seasons is a visible contributor to air pollution in both rural and urban areas. (Photo: Dakshinamurthy Vedachalam/CIMMYT)
Both farmers and politicians are showing increased interest in farm mechanization and crop diversification as they respond to COVID-19 disruptions, said M.L. Jat, a CIMMYT scientist who coordinates sustainable intensification programs in northwestern India.
“Farmers know the time of planting wheat is extremely important for productivity. To avoid production losses and smog-inducing residue burning, alternative farm practices and technologies must be scaled up now,” Jat said.
The time it takes to manually transplant rice paddies is a particular worry. Manual transplanting accounts for 95% of rice grown in the northwestern regions. Rice seedlings grown in a nursery are pulled and transplanted into puddled and leveled fields — a process that takes up to 30 person-days per hectare, making it highly dependent on the availability of migrant laborers.
Even before COVID-19, a lack of labor was costing rice-wheat productivity and encouraging burning practices that contribute to India’s air pollution crisis, said CIMMYT scientist Balwinder Singh.
“Mechanized sowing and harvesting has been growing in recent years. The COVID-19 labor shortage presents a unique opportunity for policymakers to prioritize productive and environmentally-friendly farming practices as long term solutions,” Singh said.
Sustainable practices to cope with labor bottlenecks
CIMMYT researchers are working with national and state governments to get information and technologies to farmers, however, there are significant challenges to bringing solutions to scale in the very near term, Singh explained.
There is no silver bullet in the short term. However, researchers have outlined immediate and mid-term strategies to ensure crop productivity while avoiding residue burning:
Delayed or staggered nursery sowing of rice: By delaying nursery sowing to match delays in transplanting, yield potential can be conserved for rice. Any delay in transplanting rice due to labor shortage can reduce the productivity of seedlings. Seedling age at transplanting is an important factor for optimum growth and yield.
“Matching nursery sowing to meet delayed transplanting dates is an immediate action that farmers can take to ensure crop productivity in the short term. However, it’s important policymakers prioritize technologies, such as direct seeders, that contribute to long term solutions,” Singh said.
Direct drilling of wheat using the Happy Seeder: Direct seeding of wheat into rice residues using the Happy Seeder, a mechanized harvesting combine, can reduce the turnaround time between rice harvest and wheat sowing, potentially eliminating the temptation to burn residues.
“Identifying the areas with delayed transplanting well in advance should be a priority for effectively targeting the direct drilling of wheat using Happy Seeders,” said Jat. The average farmer who uses the Happy Seeder can generate up to 20% more profits than those who burn their fields, he explained. “Incentivizing farmers through a direct benefit transfer payment to adopt ‘no burn’ practices may help accelerate transitions.”
Directly sown rice: Timely planting of rice can also be achieved by adopting dry direct seeding of rice using mechanized seed-cum-fertilizer planters. In addition to reducing the labor requirement for crop establishment, dry direct seeding allows earlier rice planting due to its lower water requirement for establishment. Direct-seeded rice also matures earlier than puddled transplanted rice. Thus, earlier harvesting improves the chance to sow wheat on time.
“CIMMYT researchers are working with the local mechanical engineers on rolling out simple tweaks to enable the Happy Seeder to be used for direct rice seeding. The existing availability of Happy Seeders in the region will improve the speed direct rice sowing can be adopted,” Jat said.
Crop diversification with maize: Replacing rice with maize in the monsoon season is another option to alleviate the potential shortage of agricultural labor due to COVID-19, as the practice of establishing maize by machine is already common.
“Research evidence generated over the past decade demonstrates that maize along with modern agronomic management practices can provide a profitable and sustainable alternative to rice,” Jat explained. “The diversification of rice with maize can potentially contribute to sustainability that includes conserving groundwater, improving soil health and reducing air pollution through eliminating residue burning.”
A combine harvester equipped with the Super SMS (left) harvests rice while a tractor equipped with the Happy Seeder is used for direct seeding of wheat. (Photo: Sonalika Tractors)
Getting innovations into farmers’ fields
Rapid policy decisions by national and state governments on facilitating more mechanized operations in labor-intensive rice-wheat production regions will address labor availability issues while contributing to productivity enhancement of succeeding wheat crop in rotation, as well as overall system sustainability, said ICAR’s deputy director general for agricultural extension, AK Singh.
The government is providing advisories to farmers through multiple levels of communications, including extension services, messaging services and farmer collectives to raise awareness and encourage adoption.
Moving toward mechanization and crop diversity should not be viewed as a quick fix to COVID-19 related labor shortages, but as the foundation for long-term policies that help India in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals, said ICAR’s deputy director general for Natural Research Management, SK Chaudhari.
“Policies encouraging farming practices that save resources and protect the environment will improve long term productivity of the nation,” he said.
Northwestern India is home to millions of smallholder farmers making it a breadbasket for grain staples. Since giving birth to the Green Revolution, the region has continued to increase its food production through rice and wheat farming providing bulk of food to the country.
This high production has not come without shortfalls, different problems like a lowering water table, scarcity of labor during peak periods, deteriorating soil health, and air pollution from crop residue burning demands some alternative methods to sustain productivity as well as natural resources.
Cover photo: A farmer uses a tractor fitted with a Happy Seeder. (Photo: Dakshinamurthy Vedachalam/CIMMYT)
Wheat, in its own right, is one of the most important foods in the world. It is a staple food for more than 2.5 billion people, it provides 20% of the protein consumed worldwide and, according to the FAO, supplies more calories than any other grain. Its long-term productivity, however, is threatened by rising temperatures, among other factors. Stress from heat, an increasing trend due to climate change, affects its performance, a fact that requires urgent solutions bearing in mind that, according to some estimates, the world’s population will reach 9 billion by the year 2050.
Developing climate-resistant crops is attracting increasing attention as climate change-related events worsen.
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is a non-profit research organization that develops improved varieties of wheat and corn able to withstand drought, heat and pests in order to increase food security. It says that over 90% of its work relates to climate change.
The critical global challenge of significantly increasing food production by 2050 is exacerbated by water limitations. Droughts and water scarcity affect crop production across the world and global climate warming is aggravating this effect. A central challenge for researchers and policymakers is to devise technologies that lend greater resilience to agricultural production in drier environments.
The Interdrought 2020 congress presents the latest developments to address this global challenge.
Interdrought 2020 was scheduled to be held in Mexico City in March 2020. As it was not possible to proceed with the congress as a face-to-face meeting due to the travel restrictions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, the organizing committee has delivered the scientific program of the congress online. Congress proceedings are available at interdrought2020.cimmyt.org.
Today the organizing committee extended the reach of the congress proceedings to the global community by providing free online access to 43 presentations, 75 abstracts and 35 posters. The complete book of abstracts can also be downloaded. To date over 10,000 members of the scientific community have been invited to watch presentations and read the proceedings online.
Internationally recognized keynote speakers participated in the seven main sessions, supported by nine symposia convened by global experts, on topics ranging from breeding and management approaches to the basic science of plant–water relations.
State-of-the-art research and technology
Interdrought 2020 is an opportunity for scientific leaders from across the world to share the latest research and technology developments to advance plant production in water-limited situations. Interdrought 2020 embraces the philosophy of presenting and integrating results of both applied and basic research towards the development of solutions for improving crop production under drought-prone conditions.
Interdrought 2020, also known as Interdrought VI (IDVI) is the sixth congress in the series. It builds on the success of previous congresses held in Montpellier in 1995, Rome in 2005, Shanghai in 2009, Perth in 2013, and Hyderabad in 2017.
The congress was organized by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the University of Queensland. The organizers share a strong history of collaboration in crop research and agronomy that seeks to increase wheat’s tolerance to drought and its yield potential in hot conditions, such as those seen in Queensland, Australia, and Sonora, Mexico.
The organizers and the congress committee would like to thank major sponsors Corteva, the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC), the University of Queensland, and supporting sponsors in silico Plants, the Journal of Experimental Botany, Illumina, Analitek, and LI-COR. Our sponsors’ belief in the value of the scientific content enabled us to deliver congress proceedings to not only delegates but the broader scientific community.
For more information, please contact
Professor Graeme Hammer
Chair of the Interdrought 2020 congress committee g.hammer@uq.edu.au
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.
QAAFI at the University of Queensland
The Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI) is a research institute of the University of Queensland supported by the Queensland Government via the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries. QAAFI is comprised of four inter-related research centres working across crops, horticulture, animals, and nutrition and food sciences, with a focus on addressing challenges in the tropical and subtropical systems. For more information visit www.qaafi.uq.edu.au/about.
MasAgro develops capacities in Mexican producers through the socialization of scientific knowledge and the use of rural knowledge to increase their yields and conserve natural resources.
On June 5, 2020, the world celebrates World Environment Day as COVID-19 continues to cause challenges and restrictions. Existing threats of climate change with the new challenges of a global pandemic adversely affect the agricultural sector, a mainstay of most sub-Saharan African economies. This situation calls for increased attention to how agriculture is practiced and natural resources — such as soil and water — are cared for.
Smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe are custodians of these natural resources, yet climate variability of shifting rainfall seasons, El Niño and droughts threaten successful rain-fed farming. Coupled with conventional farming practices such as tillage and deforestation, the soil structure and chemical quality are gradually degrading. Each passing year has resulted in declining yields, food insecurity and increased household vulnerabilities, particularly in drought-prone, low rainfall areas of southern Zimbabwe.
With support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the R4 Rural Resilience Initiative, led by the World Food Programme (WFP), aims to enable vulnerable, smallholder farmers to increase their food security, income and resilience by managing climate-related risks. Building on R4, WFP has just launched the Zambuko Livelihoods Initiative, focusing on social cohesion of communities, improved crop and livestock production and improved access to finance, with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is a partner to implement the project component on appropriate seeds and agricultural practices.
We discuss the R4 Rural Resilience Initiative with Christian Thierfelder, the Principal Cropping Systems Agronomist and a Strategic Leader for Africa at CIMMYT, and Munaye Makonnen, the Project Lead from WFP in Zimbabwe.
Promising high yields of white sorghum on a field in the mother trials in Mwenezi, Zimbabwe.
How is the R4 Rural Resilience Initiative responding to climate change challenges in the sites of intervention – Chebvute and Mwenezi?
Thierfelder: The R4 and Zambuko initiatives pursue an integrated approach to increase resilience of smallholder farming communities. Different partner organizations have come together in these projects to pursue different interventions such as building dams and vegetable gardens as community assets, financial education, promotion of improved climate-smart technologies such as drought-tolerant seed in combination with conservation agriculture, insurance, and linking farmers to markets. The combined actions address all needs and shortfalls in the target communities. We see a transformational change from mere subsistence farming to a more commercially oriented farming by targeted smallholders.
Makonnen: Recognizing the need to address livelihoods holistically, R4 offers farmers a set of integrated tools so that communities can better manage climate risks. Farmers participate in activities that enhance the natural resource base at watershed level, helping them adapt to climate change. They also benefit from a weather index insurance cover that protects them against drought and incentivizes them to engage in high-risk high-return investments. In the case of minor shocks, farmers have their savings groups to draw up on and can access small credit for income generating activities. With the aim of increasing productivity and income, conservation agriculture practices are promoted. For their surplus production, participants are also supported in accessing markets. The project also plans to include a component on climate services that will allow communities to mitigate the impacts of disaster risk, increase production and enhance adaptation to climate change.
Since inception, how have the farming communities responded to the technologies and practices introduced in their respective sites?
Thierfelder: Farming communities were very skeptical initially about this new approach. However, the varieties and cropping systems displayed in our 10 mother trials showed dramatically higher yields than farmers observed in their own fields, so it was not difficult to get 200 baby trial farmers to experiment with the technology. During the 2019/2020 cropping season, farmers got even more excited to see maize and legume yields thrive in their baby trials while crops planted under conventional agriculture failed. In the next cropping season, we hope to reach the tipping point of farmers trying and experimenting with these climate-smart agriculture technologies to achieve a transformational change towards more resilience.
Makonnen: Looking at the performance of the trials, farmers can see for themselves that the agricultural practices promoted by the project result in higher yields. They also get practical experience by trying these out on their own fields. Such an approach has worked well in terms of getting farmers to become interested in and eventually adopt conservation agriculture principles because it is not just based on theory — farmers can actually see and experience the change for themselves.
Even in times of COVID-19, the work must continue, observing social distancing and using facemasks. Christian Thierfelder outlines trials with farmers in Mwenezi, Zimbabwe.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and disturbance to agri-food systems, how is the R4 Rural Resilience Initiative addressing the emerging challenges?
Thierfelder: We have created the base of more resilient farming systems that should positively respond to all external shocks – droughts, floods and maybe a virus as well. In our technology package we do promote self-pollinating legumes such as cowpea and groundnuts which can be grown even when farmers are cut off from supply chains for seed and fertilizer. We therefore hope that this can be a contribution to reducing the negative impact of the COVID-19 crisis.
Makonnen: As COVID-19 is compromising food security, it is now more important than ever to ensure that agricultural production continues to function smoothly. R4 continues to provide all the services in its integrated risk management package despite the pandemic. As farmers face challenges in production, including limited access to labor, we hope that high yielding and less labor-intensive conservation agriculture practices promoted by R4 really come into their own. Ensuring the safety of our beneficiaries, staff and partners is a priority for WFP so we have developed guidelines for R4 implementation in the context of COVID-19. For instance, trainings are taking place in smaller groups, social distancing is observed in all activities, messages on COVID-19 prevention are shared with beneficiaries and we are also looking into digital solutions to continue implementation during these unprecedented times.
Looking ahead, how will the adoption of appropriate agricultural practices and seed varieties strengthen the resilience of the farming communities?
Thierfelder: Our approach has been multi-faceted addressing different areas of concern to the farmers: income generation, credit, improved productivity, insurance and marketing. We believe that with this mix of interventions farming can more effectively withstand external stresses. However, we also realize that adoption does not happen overnight and requires a significant experimentation and learning process with farmers. WFP has seen the need for longer term investments, and this is now beginning to pay off.
Makonnen: Adoption of appropriate agricultural practices and seeds is just one of the components of R4. We know resilience requires a holistic approach which is why we have a set of interventions within R4 involving multiple partners. R4 will continue to work across the entire value chain bringing together natural resource management, access to financial services, access to inputs and markets and promotion of appropriate agricultural practices so that the farmers we work with are well equipped to manage risks and become resilient to the changing climate and risks to their food security.
Sign Phiri from CIMMYT inspects maize crops.
Cover photo: Kiyasi Gwalale stands on her baby trial plot.
Seed security is the first step towards food security. The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) preserves 28,000 unique seed samples of maize and 150,000 of wheat at its genebank in Mexico.
The Global Seed Vault in Svalbard opened in 2008. Since then, CIMMYT has duplicated and deposited 50 million seeds — 170,000 samples of maize and wheat — at Svalbard.
This year, CIMMYT sent 24 boxes of seed, with 332 samples of maize and 15,231 samples of wheat.
Join these seeds on a journey, as they travel more than 8,000 km from CIMMYT’s genebank in Mexico to the Global Seed Vault in the Arctic.
A supermarket, rather than a museum
This treasure, kept in the global network of genebanks, is key to ensuring sustainable, nutritious agricultural systems for future generations.
The purpose of genebanks is not just to preserve seed, but to use its biodiversity to address the needs of the future — and the needs of today.
Climate change is already impacting resource-poor farmers and consumers in low- and middle-income countries. Researchers and breeders at CIMMYT are rolling out solutions to these challenges, based on the diverse genetic resources kept in the genebank. As a result, farmers can use new varieties that yield more, need less inputs, and are more tolerant to drought or heat.
Our internal estimates show that about 30% of maize and more than 50% of wheat grown worldwide can be traced to CIMMYT germplasm.
Humanity’s legacy
Maize and wheat originated about 10,000 years ago. Since then, it’s survived war, drought, diseases, migration, birds, low yields — and the hard choice between feeding children or planting again.
Keepers of genebanks around the world are only the depositors of this legacy, which belongs to all humanity. CIMMYT will continue to preserve these seeds and to make their biodiversity available to researchers and famers, to solve today’s and tomorrow’s most pressing issues.
Cover photo: A NordGen staff member brings a box of seed into the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway. (Photo: Thomas Sonne/Common Ground Media for NordGen)
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