Theme: Climate adaptation and mitigation

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.

Global wheat-rust research aids Ethiopian farmers

Written by on November 13, 2014. Posted in Features.

EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — Until a few years ago, farmers Abdela and Bayisu Kadir grew “Kubsa,” a semi-dwarf bread wheat variety on their small landholding in the Ethiopian highlands known as the Roof of Africa.

The couple manage a 3-hectare farm, which is situated at an elevation of 2,400 meters (7,874 feet) in the Arsi region about 175 kilometers (110 miles) southeast of the capital Addis Ababa.

Kubsa, just one of 480 wheat varieties bred by 2014 World Food Prize laureate scientist Sanjaya Rajaram during his 40-year career, has had a long and successful run since it was first released in 1995.

The variety, developed by Rajaram at research stations operated by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), came from the high-yielding Atilla wheat breeding line he created in 1990.

By 2010, Kubsa was grown on 250,000 hectares (620,000 acres) of cropland in Ethiopia. Over time, as wheat rust disease fungi have mutated in the region, Kubsa has become vulnerable to yellow rust and stem rust, which can devastate crops leading to shriveled grain, yield losses and financial troubles for farmers.

“After yellow rust disease began to appear in our crop a few years ago, we switched to the Kakaba wheat variety,” said Bayisu Kadir, who has six children.

“Last year Kakaba gave us more than 5 (metric) tons of wheat per hectare (75 bushels per acre),” she added, explaining that her husband had sprayed their crop with fungicide to protect it from potential damage.

By 2012, the CIMMYT-derived variety Kakaba covered more than 200,000 hectares in Ethiopia, according to the online Wheat Atlas, and so far remains resistant to yellow rust.

CIMMYT is a member of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative, an international consortium of more than 1,000 scientists from hundreds of institutions that works to reduce vulnerability to mutating rust diseases. CIMMYT continuously produces high-yielding disease-resistant wheat varieties.

BACKBONE GENES

Atilla, called Kubsa in Ethiopia, is a family of wheat varieties released by governments under different names in various countries. Its two main sister lines were widely adopted around the world.

One sister line, which became the leading variety for over a decade in the bread basket region of northwestern India, contains a combination of resistance genes including Sr31, Yr9 and Yr27, recognized by Rajaram as genes that provided resistance to both stem and yellow rusts.

The other sister variety carried the Yr27 gene and was widely cultivated in many wheat-growing countries. At one time, these two sister varieties were grown on about 8 million hectares throughout Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.

Overall, Rajaram’s adaptable, high-yielding wheat varieties are grown on more than 58 million hectares worldwide. He is credited with producing 480 wheat varieties, which have boosted worldwide yields by more than 180 million tons. These increased yields provide food to more than 1 billion people each year.

He also developed aluminum-tolerant varieties together with Brazilian researchers that were planted in acid soils, areas previously unable to grow wheat.

“Rajaram’s varieties led to more yield and better income for farmers, less yellow rust disease and less chemical application,” said Zuo Yuchun, a professor at the Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Science in China who collaborated with Rajaram for more than 20 years.

Rajaram is the 2014 World Food Prize Laureate for “advancing human development by improving the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world.” He received the award at the World Food Prize ceremony on October 16 in Des Moines, Iowa.

VITAL STAPLE CROP

Globally, wheat provides 20 percent of the world’s daily protein and calories. Production must grow 60 percent over the next 35 years to keep pace with demand, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

“The prodigious increase in wheat production through Dr. Rajaram’s work is a furtherance of the success of the ‘Green Revolution’,” said molecular scientist Kameswara Rao, formerly with India’s University of Agricultural Sciences in Dharwad and currently chair of the Foundation of Biotechnology Awareness and Education.

“The wheat varieties developed by Dr. Rajaram have been grown by both small- and large-scale farmers across a diverse range of agricultural environments in 51 countries, contributing to an enhancement of food security.”

The late CIMMYT scientist Norman Borlaug, who mentored Rajaram, led efforts to develop semi-dwarf wheat varieties in the mid-20th century that helped save more than 1 billion people in the developing world in what became widely known as the Green Revolution. Borlaug was awarded the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his work and subsequently initiated the World Food Prize.

INNOVATIVE BREEDING

Rajaram joined CIMMYT, which aims to sustainably increase maize and wheat productivity to ensure global food security and reduce poverty, in 1969. As head of CIMMYT wheat breeding, Rajaram increased yield potential 20 to 25 percent.
During his career, Rajaram visited farmers groups and cooperatives to teach them about new technologies, said Arun Joshi, CIMMYT senior wheat breeder for South Asia. He taught them tillage and seeding techniques.

“Rajaram’s participatory approach brought confidence among the farmers and they took more interest in their agriculture and new technologies,” Joshi said.

“Training was mostly delivered as roving seminars organized in farmers’ fields before the start of sowing, during sowing, about a month after sowing and at crop maturity. Such initiatives generated new leadership among farmers and helped faster dissemination of technology among less privileged farmers.”

Although Rajaram retired from CIMMYT in 2003, he continues to help train new wheat breeders.

“We’re grateful for the hundreds of new varieties of wheat that Dr. Rajaram has developed,” said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

“These will deliver more than 200 million more tons of grain to global markets each year and Dr. Rajaram has helped to feed millions of people across the world through his lifetime of research and innovation.”

Food security successes earn ‘sultan of wheat’ World Food Prize

Written by on November 13, 2014. Posted in Features.

EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — Scientist Sanjaya Rajaram, originally from a small farm in India’s state of Uttar Pradesh, is now widely recognized by the international agriculture sector for his prolific contributions to food security and poverty alleviation.

He is credited with producing a remarkable 480 wheat varieties, which have boosted worldwide yields by more than 180 million metric tons (200 million tons). These increased yields provide food to more than 1 billion people each year.

The varieties Rajaram developed during his 40-year career have been released in 51 countries on six continents.

They are used by farmers with both large and small land holdings who rely on disease-resistant wheat adaptable to a range of climate conditions.

For those feats and more Rajaram is the 2014 World Food Prize laureate, an honor awarded each year to the person who does the most to advance human development by improving the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world. Rajaram received the award at the World Food Prize ceremony on October 16 in Des Moines, Iowa.

“Rajaram has made a massive contribution to food security – I doubt that one person will ever again be involved in the development of as many widely grown wheat varieties,” said Hans Braun, director of the Global Wheat Program at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), where Rajaram worked for 33 years.

“As a former colleague once said: ‘It’s amazing what happens, when the ‘Sultan of Wheat’ puts his magic hands on a wheat line’,” he added.

INTERESTS FLOURISH

Rajaram was born in 1943 on the 5-hectare (12 acre) farm in Raipur where his family eked out a living by producing wheat, rice, maize, sugarcane and millet.

His parents recognized Rajaram’s intellectual potential and sent him to school 5 kilometers (3 miles) from home, which at the time was unusual in an area where 96 percent of people had no formal education.

Rajaram excelled scholastically and became the top-ranked student in his district. A state scholarship gave him the opportunity to attend high school, which led to his acceptance at the College of Jaunpur in the University of Gorakhpur, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in agriculture in 1962.

Afterwards Rajaram attended the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi, graduating with a Master of Science in 1964.

Subsequently, he earned a doctorate in plant breeding at Australia’s University of Sydney where he first made contact with the superstars of what became known as the “Green Revolution” – Norman Borlaug and Glenn Anderson, who were leading scientists at CIMMYT.

CIMMYT VARIETIES

Borlaug, who was from the United States, died in 2009 at age 95. He is known as the “Father of the Green Revolution” and he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. Borlaug is credited with saving 1 billion lives in the developing world — particularly in South Asia — as a result of the disease-resistant, high-yield semi-dwarf wheat varieties he developed.

Borlaug had also introduced similar innovations throughout Mexico – where CIMMYT is headquartered – leading to the country’s self-sufficiency in wheat.

Anderson, a Canadian who died in 1981 at 57, was recruited by Borlaug to lead the major “Green Revolution” wheat improvement project in India. In 1971, Anderson became deputy director of the CIMMYT Wheat Program and then its director after Borlaug retired in 1979.

The two recruited Rajaram, who joined CIMMYT in 1969. He was appointed head of the wheat breeding team by Borlaug three years later. He set to work cross breeding select plant varieties, and the yield potential of his cultivars increased 20 to 25 percent.

“His technique was to cross winter and spring wheat varieties, which were distinct gene pools, leading to the development of higher yield plants that can be grown in a wide range of environments around the world,” Braun said, adding that Rajaram’s varieties were disease- and stress-resistant.

“The varieties he developed were eventually grown on a larger area than those developed by Borlaug.”

His varieties could be planted in areas previously uninhabitable for wheat in China, India and in Brazil’s acidic soils, for which he developed aluminum-tolerant wheat. Rajaram also developed wheat cultivars now grown on millions of hectares worldwide with durable resistance to rust diseases, which can devastate crops.

Rajaram spent eight years working for the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA). At ICARDA, first as director of the Integrated Gene Management Program, then as special scientific advisor, he oversaw the promotion of new technologies to help farmers in the Central and West Asia and North Africa (CWANA) region.

He developed wheat improvement strategies to tackle some of the challenges facing wheat in dry areas, including stripe rust disease, which can spread quickly and have a devastating effect on wheat.

MENTOR TO MANY

“Rajaram’s research not only led to enhanced productivity, but farmers also saw big increases in profits due to higher yields and disease resistance – they no longer had to buy expensive fungicides to protect their plots,” said Ravi Singh, current head of wheat breeding at CIMMYT, one among many breeders Rajaram mentored.

Now a Mexican citizen and still a firm believer in the value of education, Rajaram continues his affiliation with CIMMYT, recently attending a “trainee wheat boot camp” for students from major wheat-growing nations.

“We know we need to double food production to feed the more than 9 billion people we’re expecting by 2050,” Rajaram said.

“Global objectives for food security can most definitely be met. However, we must be able to rely on guaranteed research funding from both the public and private sectors to address the many challenges we face, including decreasing land availability and erratic environmental changes related to climate change.”

Wheat currently provides 20 percent of overall daily protein and calories consumed throughout the world. Production must grow 70 percent over the current amount by 2050, according to the international Wheat Initiative – an achievable goal if annual wheat yields are increased from a current level of below 1 percent to at least 1.7 percent.

Researchers at CIMMYT are aiming to develop resilient wheat varieties tolerant to the drought, heat, extreme wet and cold conditions anticipated by scientists to grow more extreme as mean annual temperatures continue to increase and weather patterns become more volatile.

Rajaram’s great legacy was to give opportunities to newly graduated doctoral students, Singh said.

“He put us in charge of different parts of the breeding program each season, so we had to learn all aspects of the process for ourselves – we worked many long hours with him in the field developing confidence, which was very important for our professional careers.”

Rajaram intends to put a portion of his World Food Prize winnings, valued at $250,000, into training and education programs.

Scientists ship 2 tons of wheat seed samples around the world

Written by on November 12, 2014. Posted in Features.

EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — Wheat farmers can boost yields and protect crops from pests and disease by using improved seed varieties, but in the developing world more than 80 percent of farmers use poor quality varieties, losing potential earnings and putting food security at risk, according to research.

Farmers often sell and trade wheat seed among themselves without having much knowledge about the size of the yield they can expect and how a particular variety fares with regard to climate, soil type or disease resistance.

Scientists at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) are continuously developing improved varieties and each year seed samples — known as International Wheat Nurseries — are sent out to government and university research institutions and national agricultural research systems around the world.

“Wheat plays a vital role in food security,” said Tom Payne, head of CIMMYT’s Wheat Germplasm Bank, which stores almost 145,000 wheat varieties collected over the past 60 years. “We’ve been sending out wheat samples each year since 1974, so if you do the math that’s 367 tons over the years.”

In October, 1,720 kilograms (3,790 pounds) of experimental seeds were shipped to India, one of 75 current recipient countries.

Overall, the 2014 international shipment of seeds delivered in 351,990 sample envelopes weighed 9,230 kilograms. Recent recipient countries included Algeria, Pakistan, Turkey, Ukraine and Sudan.

SORTING SEEDS

Over the past 24 years, Efren Rodriguez, head of CIMMYT’s Seed Distribution Unit has overseen the five-month process of preparing, packaging and shipping of wheat seed samples.

“This year the seed requests we received filled 94 boxes,” Rodriguez said. “Seeds are requested at the end of summer prior to planting season. Each box is filled with envelopes of wheat seed and weighs up to 10 kilograms (22 pounds).”

Seeds arrive at CIMMYT’s headquarters near Mexico City in June in bags weighing from 10 to 35 kilograms from CIMMYT’s research station in Mexicali in northeastern Mexico accompanied with paperwork naming the varieties for inclusion in the shipment.

The seed is sorted according to instructions from the wheat breeders, cleaned with chlorine, rinsed in an industrial restaurant-style dishwasher, doused in protective fungicide, dried, placed in small envelopes by machine, then boxed.

“Research institutions plant the seeds, which have different characteristics designed to solve particular problems – for example, they may be heat, drought- or disease-resistant – and then recommend varieties for general release and sale to farmers,” Rodriguez said, explaining that the seeds tested and selected by the international research programs are incorporated into national wheat breeding or growing programs.

CIMMYT also distributes wheat nurseries as part of a partnership with Turkey and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA).

Globally, wheat provides 20 percent of the world’s daily protein and calories.

Research on climate-resilient wheat keeps Green Revolution on track

Written by on November 12, 2014. Posted in Features.

EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — Hans Braun, director of the Global Wheat Program at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), gestures toward an expansive field of green wheat shimmering in the hot sunlight outside his office.

“If we don’t prepare crops resilient to heat and drought, the effects of climate change will increase the risk of worldwide famine and conflict,” he explained. “That’s why CIMMYT is part of an international research program to develop new climate change-resistant varieties.”

As the global population grows from a current 7 billion to a projected 9.6 billion by 2050, wheat breeders involved in the battle to ensure food security face many challenges.
Already, U.N. food agencies estimate that at least 805 million people do not get enough food and that more than 2 billion suffer from micronutrient deficiency, or “hidden hunger.”

Globally, wheat provides 20 percent of the world’s daily protein and calories, according to the Wheat Initiative. Wheat production must grow 60 percent over the next 35 years to keep pace with demand, statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations show – an achievable goal only if wheat yields increase from the current level of below 1 percent annually to at least 1.7 percent per year.

The scientists that Braun leads are on the front lines – tackling the climate change threat in laboratories and at wheat research stations throughout Mexico and in 13 other countries.

LIFE-SAVING GRAIN

Wheat is vital to global food security. In particular, since CIMMYT scientist Norman Borlaug, who died in 2009 at age 95, led efforts to develop semi-dwarf wheat varieties in the mid-20th century that helped save more than 1 billion lives in Pakistan, India and other areas of the developing world.

Borlaug started work on wheat improvement in the mid-1940s in Mexico – where CIMMYT is headquartered near Mexico City. The country became self-sufficient in wheat production in the early 1960s.

Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work, and in his acceptance speech paid tribute to the “army of hunger fighters” with whom he had worked.
However, in contemporary times, some critics have cast a shadow over his work, questioning the altruistic aims of the project that became widely known as the Green Revolution.

They argue that the modern high-yielding crop varieties did not help poor farmers, but caused environmental damage through overuse of fertilizers, water resources and the degradation of soils.

Other condemnations include claims that food scarcity is a mere political construct, that food provision has helped governments suppress disgruntled masses and that vast wheat mono-croplands compromise agricultural and wild biodiversity.
However, a 2003 report in “Science” magazine analyzed the overall impact of the Green Revolution in the 20th Century. The authors, economists from Yale University and Williams College, found that without the long-term increase in food crop productivity and lower food prices resulting from the Green Revolution, the world would have experienced “a human welfare crisis.”

“Caloric intake per capita in the developing world would have been 13.3 to 14.4 percent lower and the proportion of children malnourished would have been from 6.1 to 7.9 percent higher,” authors Robert Evanson and Douglas Gollen wrote.

“Put in perspective, this suggests that the Green Revolution succeeded in raising the health status of 32 to 42 million preschool children. Infant and child mortality would have been considerably higher in developing countries as well.”

Braun acknowledges certain points made by critics of the Green Revolution, but asks how else developing countries would have met the food demands of their rapidly-expanding populations with less environmental impact.

“It’s very easy to look back 50 years and criticize,” Braun said. “People forget that at the time, new farm technologies were an incredible success. We have to put it into context – saving hundreds of millions of lives from starvation was the priority and the Green Revolution did just that.”

CLIMATE-RESILIENT WHEAT

Fast-forward and today much of CIMMYT’s current work remains steadily focused on improving wheat yields, but now with an emphasis on ensuring sustainable productivity and reducing agriculture’s environmental footprint.

Scientists are engaged in an international five-year project to develop climate-resilient wheat. They estimate that in tropical and sub-tropical regions, wheat yields will decrease by 10 percent for each 1-degree rise in minimum night-time temperature, which means that production levels could decline by 30 percent in South Asia. About 20 percent of the world’s wheat is produced in the region.

CIMMYT is collaborating with Kansas State University, Cornell University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture on the project, which is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as part of Feed the Future, the U.S. government’s global hunger and food security initiative.

Field evaluations are conducted in Mexico, Pakistan and at the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA) in India.

BOOSTING INFRASTRUCTURE

According to Braun, one of the biggest challenges over the next 30 years is to develop better production systems in addition to resource-efficient crops.

For example, a great deal of water is used in food production and demand can and should be cut in half, he said. “We need to focus on sustainable intensification in ways that won’t overuse natural resources.”

To aid in these efforts, CIMMYT has developed international research programs on conservation and precision agriculture.

In conservation agriculture, farmers reduce or stop tilling the soil, leaving crop residues on the surface of the field and rotate crops to sustainably increase productivity. Precision agriculture involves such technologies as light sensors to determine crop vigor and gauge nitrogen fertilizer dosages to determine exactly what plants need.

“This reduces nitrate runoff into waterways and greenhouse gas emissions,” Braun explained. CIMMYT and its partners are also breeding wheat lines that are better at taking up and using fertilizer.

“Wheat in developing countries currently uses only 30 percent of the fertilizer applied,” he said. “There are promising options to double that rate, but developing and deploying them require significant investments.”

“I’m very optimistic that we can produce 60 to 70 percent more wheat to meet demand – society is beginning to recognize that food production is one of humanity’s biggest challenges – today and in the future,” Braun summarized.

“We have or can develop the technologies needed, but politicians must recognize that investment in agriculture is not a problem, it’s a solution – the longer we wait the bigger the potential problems and challenges we face.”

Braun continued, “We also need policymakers to reach agreement that global climate change is a big problem that absolutely must be addressed so that we can gain access to sufficient resources and more fully develop appropriate technologies.”

Raising wheat productivity across North Africa and West Asia

Written by on October 28, 2014. Posted in Blogs.

Dr. Mahmoud Solh is Director General of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA)

Wheat is a staple and strategic crop across most of North Africa and West Asia, accounting for almost 40 percent of the region’s total food supply, including 40 percent of its calorific, and 20 percent of its protein intake. ¹

However, due to a combination of environmental, policy and human constraints the region is unable to produce enough high quality wheat for its growing population – currently 417 million and expected to reach almost 500 million by 2020.²

Agricultural productivity is hampered by water scarcity: rainfall is generally very low; groundwater extraction rates are mostly unsustainable; and, growing domestic and industrial demand is putting pressure on the amount of water available for agriculture, leading to shortages in irrigated production systems. The region’s wheat production potential is also restricted by a lack of arable land.

These problems will be exacerbated by climate change, since projections show that North Africa and West Asia will be hardest hit by shifting climate patterns. Precipitation is expected to decrease while temperatures will rise, driving ever-increasing pressure on already-limited resources.³

Climate change is worrying in another respect, as it creates optimal conditions for aggressive wheat diseases and pests. A particularly destructive threat to wheat production in the region is stripe rust, a fungal disease that attacks wheat early in the growing season, weakening crops and causing significant grain losses.

Aggressive new strains of the disease are adapting to more variable rainfall and increased temperatures, and are expected to become more widespread and strike more frequently. Farmers have already endured significant losses due to stripe rust when a major epidemic struck the region four years ago.

These constraints are driving an economically unsustainable dependence on wheat imports. North Africa and West Asia are the most food-import dependent areas in the world. In 2010 alone the region imported 65.8 million tons of cereal – an amount expected to grow to more than 73 million tons by 2020.⁴

Potential crop shortages and related food-price hikes expose consumers to the vagaries of global commodity markets. The poorest members of society who spend a disproportionate amount of their income on food will be particularly hard hit.

¹FAO/CIMMYT figures in a presentation delivered by Hans-Joachim Braun at International Wheat Stripe Rust Symposium, 2011.
²Compiled by ICARDA using FAO Statistics (2012)
³FAO AQUASTAT database (http://www.fao.org/nr/aquastat; accessed in 2011)
⁴FAO Statistics Division, Rome, 2013.

China’s wheat production critical to global food security

Written by on October 28, 2014. Posted in Features.

Zhonghu He is country representative in China for the International Maize and Wheat Improvement
Center (CIMMYT), and Qiaosheng Zhuang is a professor at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science (CAAS).

China’s domestic agricultural activities are vital to ensuring food security for its 1.4 billion people and – as the world’s largest wheat producer – the country plays a major role in shaping international markets.

China produces about 120 million metric tons (265 million pounds) of wheat each year – on approximately 24 million hectares (59 million acres) of land, an area similar to the size of Algeria, according to statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

Wheat makes up 40 percent of grain consumption in China and about 60 percent of the country’s population eats the grain daily.

Cultivated wheat, which was likely introduced to China in the late 6th to early 5th millennium B.C., is the second most important food crop in China after rice. It is the dominant staple food in the northern part of the country where it is used mainly to produce noodles and steamed bread.

In present-day China, more than 95 percent of wheat is sown in the autumn. A double cropping system is used in the Yellow River and Huai River valleys in which wheat is rotated with maize. In the Yangtze Valley it is rotated with rice.

Chinese wheat matures early, so two crops can be harvested each year.

Wheat in China is also exceptionally resistant to high temperatures during the grain filling stage, during which kernel size is determined, as well as such diseases as head scab, septoria and karnal bunt. The wheat cultivar Sumai 3, a plant selected by breeders for its desirable characteristics, is used globally as a source for improving scab resistance.

Current Challenges

Demand for wheat in China is growing due to population increase and rising living standards, but production is challenged by water scarcity, environmental contamination, rising temperatures, droughts, labor shortages and land-use shifts from grain production to cash crops.

Researchers anticipate that in the near future the consumption of homemade steamed bread and raw noodles will decrease in favor of western-style breads and pastries.

Breeding for high-yield potential remains the first priority, as the available planting area for wheat is unlikely to increase.

Overall breeding goals include increasing grain yield, while maintaining genetic gains already made by scientists in grain yield and improving the processing quality without increasing needed inputs to grow healthy crops.

Conventional breeding – in which wheat plants with desirable, or “elite” traits are selected and used as “parents” for subsequent generations – has been in use for more than a hundred years. The technique, combined with an increased application of biotechnology, will continue to play a leading role in wheat variety development.

In addition to powdery mildew and yellow rust, Fusarium head blight has migrated to the main wheat regions in northern China due to climate change and the continuous practice of wheat and maize rotation, posing a major threat to wheat production. Other diseases, such as sharp eyespot and take-all, are also becoming increasingly troublesome as scientists try to increase grain yields. Wheat in the area has a very low resistance to scab, which is creating another challenge.

Scientific Innovation

It is important that foreign germplasm – the genetic resources of an organism – from international research centers and alien genes from wild relative species be explored as potential sources of multiple-disease resistance.

In order to reduce inputs for wheat production, it is essential to breed varieties with higher water, nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (N) fertilizer use efficiencies, but this must be combined with high-yielding potential.

Drought tolerance for wheat grown in rain-fed areas must be strengthened, because varieties with drought tolerance and better water-use efficiency are already urgently needed.

Interested in this subject? Find out more information here:Zhonghu He and Alain P.A. Bonjean, 2010. Cereals in China, Mexico, D.F.: CIMMYT.

Zhonghu He, Xianchun Xia a, Shaobing Peng, Thomas Adam Lumpkin, 2014. Meeting demands for increased cereal production in China, Journal of Cereal Science, 59: 235-244.

Fahong Wang，Zhonghu He, Ken Sayre, Shengdong Li, Jisheng Si, Bo Feng, Lingan Kong,2009. Wheat cropping systems and technologies in China, Field Crop Research, 111: 181-188.

Under altered conditions driven by climate change, planting dates have been delayed by 10 days over the last 20 years, but maturity has remained basically unchanged. Climate-resilient varieties are needed.

New genes and genetic resources must be explored with novel tools to realize higher genetic gains. Gene-specific markers will play an important role in facilitating the genes for disease resistance and quality. Genetically modified wheat could offer potential tools in reducing damage from head scab and aphids.

Crop management must play an important role in increasing wheat production. Low-cost farming practices are needed so that wheat can be more competitive in the financial markets and new cropping systems must be suited to machinery operation. International collaboration has contributed significantly to improving Chinese wheat research and development capacity.

The government of China considers the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) an important strategic partner in wheat research and continues to work closely with CIMMYT and other international partners to meet future wheat demands.

Young researchers trained to develop resilient farming systems

Written by on October 26, 2014. Posted in News.

From 27 September to 4 October, scientists from India’s national agricultural research systems attended the “Conservation Agriculture: Developing Resilient Systems” training program at the Central Soil Salinity Research Institute (CSSRI) in Karnal, India. Participants learned about crop management technologies based on conservation agriculture (CA) and acquired skills to plan strategic CA research trials.

The training program was organized by CIMMYT’s Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) project in collaboration with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and CSSRI. Eighteen researchers from the Division of Natural Resource Management, International Rice Research Institute and CIMMYT attended the course.

Opening the course, ICAR Assistant Director General (Seeds) Dr. J.S. Chauhan, highlighted the importanc eof CA training for improving the productivity of crops and cropping systems in different agro-ecological regions of India. Conservation agriculture can sustain the livelihood of smallholders while maintaining and improving the quality of the environment and natural resources. CSSRI Director Dr. D.K. Sharma explained that CA has the ability to slow the depletion of underground water, declining soil fertility associated with multiple nutrient deficiencies, pest outbreaks and increased concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. He also focused on how to design diversified and resilient cropping systems that use resources more efficiently, as an alternative to intensive rice-wheat systems.

Globally, the positive impact of CA-based techniques on natural resources, adaptation and mitigation of climate change effects has been widely acknowledged. In India, strategic research on CA such as precise nutrient application, water, cultivars and weed management has been initiated. However, CA still remains a relatively new concept in the country. Andrew McDonald, CSISA project leader, talked about how continuous cultivation of rice-wheat cropping systems for almost five decades in the Indo-Gangetic Plains has caused the degradation of natural resources such as water and soil, thus affecting climate and biodiversity. He said, “This training program offers a unique opportunity for members of the country’s scientific community who are working in the area of natural resource management to help address the issues of water, labor and energy through the use of advanced crop production technologies.”

The training covered basic principles of CA, included field exercises and modern CA techniques for efficient climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies, impact assessment of CA technologies and sustainable management of natural resources to ensure food security, profitability and productivity. Participants were given hands-on training on the use of different technologies including the laser land leveler, turbo seeder, multi-crop planter, limit plot planter, bed planter and mechanical transplanter. They also learned how to measure greenhouse gas emissions.

Attendees also participated in strategic research trials at Kulvehri and Taraori in Karnal. H.S. Sidhu, farm development engineer of the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA) and M.L. Jat, CIMMYT Senior cropping system agronomist, talked about the longterm strategic research trial on CA for intensive cereal systems, shared their experiences and outcomes related to BISA research and commented on the development work at Ladhowal, Ludhiana. Jat also spoke about using conservation agriculture and climate-smart agriculture, to achieve food sufficiency by 2050 through input-based management systems in diverse production systems and environments.

Wheat area expansion faces a headwind requiring increased spending on R&D to raise yields

Written by on October 9, 2014. Posted in Blogs.

Photo credit: Madan Raj Bhatta

#WheatMatters

Derek Byerlee is a visiting scholar at Stanford University.
Any views expressed are his own.

Over the last 50 years or so, the big increases in agricultural production have come through improved yields largely as a result of the Green Revolution.

From 1961 to 2011, per capita cereal production increased by 40 percent, while the amount of cropland per capita fell by half. In most regions, the total area of cropland has either reached a peak or declined. However, in three tropical regions, land expansion has been and still is a significant source of agricultural growth: Southeast Asia, tropical South America and sub-Saharan Africa.

Since 1990, wheat is the only major crop to experience an overall decline in area.

Looking to the future, how much land can be expected to come into production for cropping?

Currently, about 1,500 million hectares (Mha) of land is used for crops.

I project that additional demand for land will be 6 to 12 Mha each year for a total of 120 to 240 Mha increase from 2010 to 2030.

The higher projection allows a greater role for trade and thereby production by the lowest-cost producers who are often located in land-abundant countries.

These estimates are broadly in line with a synthesis by Erik Lambin & Patrick Meyfroidt who also include projections of the loss of land due to expansion of urban settlements and infrastructure as well as losses due to land degradation. Taking these losses into account, Tony Fischer provides an estimate of total additional gross cropland demand from 2010 to 2030 of 160 Mha to 340 Mha. Global models also suggest expansion of cropland to 2050 of about 300 Mha, given projected yield growth.

Is there enough land to satisfy demand? The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’s World Agriculture Towards 2030/2050 report estimates that some 1.4 billion hectares of currently uncultivated land that is not forested or in protected areas is suited to crop agriculture although they note that this is an optimistic estimate. A more conservative estimate of available land with at least moderate suitability for rainfed cultivation in low population-density areas – that is, non-forested, non-protected and with a population density of less than 25 people per square kilometer – is approximately 450 Mha.

At first glance, it would thus seem that projected demand for land (even under the scenarios of the higher demand estimates) over the next two decades can be accommodated by available uncultivated land.

However, most of this uncultivated land is concentrated in a few countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Central Asia and is often far from ports and roads.

A global analysis may also miss key constraints at the local level such as human diseases and unrecorded current land use that reduce effective land supply.

In addition, an expansion of land area of the order of 160 Mha (the lower-bound estimate of the estimated future land needs) could have significant biodiversity costs from conversion of natural ecosystems, even in the non-forested areas considered above.

Indeed, one of the sustainable development goals currently under discussion in international fora is to reduce deforestation to zero by 2030 – implying a closing of the land frontier. Finally with the exception of some areas in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, most of the available land is in the tropics and is unsuitable for wheat production.

Overall then, projections of future land availability for agriculture suggest a growing land scarcity, particularly for wheat, especially when taking into account that demand for food and feed will continue to rise with growing affluence in rapidly industrializing countries, as well as the use of land for biofuel feedstocks.

Growing scarcity together with high commodity prices have combined to stimulate global investor interest in farmland that underlies much of the recent discussion on intensification as a strategy to save land and concerns about a global ‘land grab’ by investors from land-scarce countries.

Wheat area is also being pushed out by other crops in many countries. Over the period 1993 to 2013, wheat area has fallen by 4.5 Mha, exceeded only by other winter cereals (barley, rye, and oats) that have collectively lost over 40 Mha.

During the same period, the area of oil crops (mostly soybeans, rapeseed and oil palm) has increased by an astonishing 100 Mha, maize by a hefty 53 Mha and rice by 20 Mha.

This year for example, North Dakota, a quintessential wheat-producing state in the United States, for the first time planted more soybeans than wheat.

In Argentina, soybeans rotated with maize have also displaced a significant wheat area, while in northern China, increasing maize area appears to be at the expense of spring wheat. Wheat area in the United States and China has fallen by 7 Mha and 6 Mha respectively since 1993. The major exceptions to these trends are India and Australia, where wheat area is up sharply.

All of this, of course, implies that increasing wheat yields will be especially critical to maintain its competitiveness and to save further land expansion into forests.

Norman Borlaug, the pioneer of the Green Revolution, long recognized that increased yields were not only essential to increasing global food security but also to saving forests.

This has now been enshrined in the environmental literature as the Borlaug Hypothesis. The real world is not so simple since there are situations where increasing yields may enhance crop profitability and encourage its expansion at the expense of forests. However, we found that just the CGIAR investment in germplasm is likely to have saved from 18-27 Mha of land from 1965-2000.

The bottom line is that increased spending on research and development (R&D) by national programs and CGIAR is a priority to achieving not only food security but confronting land scarcity.

None of the above considers the negative impacts of climate change, but a recent thoughtful analysis by David Lobell of Stanford University has shown that investing in R&D to adapt to climate change and maintain yields in the face of rising temperatures and increased drought is one of the most cost-effective ways to save forests and therefore mitigate climate change.

Surprisingly, wheat is the crop that faces the strongest headwind from both land scarcity and climate change. Wheat also appears to be grossly underfunded at the international level as measured by the budget provided to the WHEAT CRP – one of the lowest among the 15 CRPs. Tony Fischer, Honorary Research Fellow, at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), in a companion piece has shown that there are many promising avenues to higher R&D spending, both to raise yield potential and close large yield gaps.

Interested in this subject? Find out more information here:

Alexandratos, N., & Bruinsma, J. (2012). World agriculture towards 2030/2050: the 2012 revision (No. 12-03, p. 4). Rome, FAO: ESA Working paper.

Borlaug, N. 2007. “Feeding a Hungry World.” Science 318(5849):359–359.

Deininger, K.W., and D. Byerlee. 2011. Rising Global Interest in Farmland: Can it Yield Sustainable and Equitable Benefits? Washington D.C.: World Bank Publications.

Fischer RA, Byerlee D, Edmeades GL. 2014. Crop Yields and Food Security: Will Yield Increase Continue to Feed the World? Canberra: Aust. Cent. Int. Agric. Res.

Lambin, E. F. 2012. Global land availability: Malthus versus Ricardo. Global Food Security. 1; 83-87.

Lobell, D.B., U.L.C. Baldos, and T.W. Hertel. 2013. “Climate Adaptation as Mitigation: the Case of Agricultural Investments.” Environmental Research Letters 8(1):015012.

Stevenson, J.R., N. Villoria, D. Byerlee, T. Kelley, and M. Maredia. 2013. “Green Revolution Research Saved an Estimated 18 to 27 Million Hectares from Being Brought into Agricultural Production.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Available at: 10.1073/pnas.1208065110 [Accessed May 13, 2013].

Go back to: Wheat Matters

The global warming challenge for wheat

Written by on September 28, 2014. Posted in Blogs.

David Lobell is an associate professor in environmental earth system science and deputy director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford University.

Scott Chapman is a principal research scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

Wheat likes it cool. More than any other major food staple, wheat yields suffer when weather gets warm. Although wheat has been adapted to grow in almost every country of the world through 10,000 years of farmer selection and a century of breeding, it is still most productive in the cooler places and seasons. Given this reality, it is not surprising that most projections of climate change impacts indicate decreases in wheat production, with an average of roughly 5 percent yield loss expected for each 1°C of warming.

Indeed, many studies indicate that in recent decades global yield productivity has already been hit by warmer average temperatures.

But how important will global warming really be in shaping future wheat supply? The answer is hard to pin down, partly because it will depend on where and how quickly the world heats up.

The expected average rate of warming over current wheat areas for the next few decades is a little less than 0.5 °C per decade, which implies a negative yield impact of about 2 percent per decade.

Compared to the anticipated yield growth needed to keep pace with demand for wheat – about 15 percent per decade – this is a significant but modest addition to an already hard task.

But there is no guarantee that the expected rate of warming will happen, and models suggest that warming of as much as 1.0 °C per decade is plausible over the next couple of decades. Therefore, it is reasonable to view global warming as a major risk to future wheat supply.

What can the wheat community do to reduce these risks to the wheat supply, or more specifically, what might be done differently than business-as-usual wheat breeding? We have three suggestions.

First, in a shifting environment, it is expected that crops will face different conditions in farmers’ fields than they did in breeding trials. Physiological models that can skillfully predict crop growth then become an indispensable tool, because they can help breeders better anticipate what traits will prove useful even if those traits don’t confer yield advantages in their trials. This is an extension of a long-standing challenge of understanding gene-by-environment interactions, but requires new skill in modeling mechanisms behind crop responses to heat.

Second, these desired traits should be more reliably and quickly incorporated into elite wheat germplasm. This work will require a combination of methods to rapidly identify desirable traits among a large population (for example, rapid phenotyping) and methods (such as marker and genomic selection) to introduce and recombine new genetic variability when needed (for example, by using wild relatives).

A challenge here is that potentially adaptive traits, such as changes in flowering time, increased water-use efficiency or expression of “sunscreens” (surface waxes), might exist in current germplasm, but be genetically linked to less desirable traits. An ability to generate and test many combinations of different traits is more important, and harder, than simply having access to extreme values of a particular trait.

Interested in this subject? Find out more information here:Getting caught with our plants down: the risks of a global crop yield slowdown from climate trends in the next two decades (2014)
David B Lobell and Claudia TebaldiPhysiological Traits for Improving Heat Tolerance in Wheat (2012)
C. Mariano Cossani and Matthew P. ReynoldsPlant adaptation to climate change – opportunities and priorities in breeding (2012)
Scott C. Chapman, Sukumar Chakrabort, M. Fernanda Dreccer, and S. Mark Howden

Third, agronomy will play a key role in helping the world adapt to climate change. For example, new planting methods that allow earlier sowing can help to escape the end-of-season heat and targeted use of mulches and irrigation can help to lower canopy temperatures. Widespread testing of these techniques, ideally in combination with the testing of various genotypes, would help to ensure that promising approaches are more quickly identified and scaled up.

In a world without climate change, these issues are still relevant. But they become crucial in a world where the risks of large heat waves rise each year.

We see global warming as an important strategic issue for international groups like CIMMYT, because: (i) warming is expected to be fast enough to significantly slow global yield growth; (ii) it is difficult to predict exactly which countries will see the most severe heat waves in the next couple of decades; and (iii) it is likely that some (if not all) countries will need germplasm that is currently grown elsewhere to adapt. Thus, the global threat is serious, but individual countries have limited incentives to devote significant effort to adaptation (because they may be spared the worst of it) and limited capacity to achieve success on their own (because of the need for imported germplasm).

It will take global institutions to successfully adapt to global warming.

CCAFS climate smart village program progress makes news in India

Written by on September 25, 2014. Posted in Features.

The CCAFS Climate Smart Village (CSV) program recently earned significant media attention for its successes in the Indian states of Bihar, Haryana and Punjab where the program is being implemented. The CSVs were featured in BBC News as well as several newspapers in the region. The CSV program is helping farmers in developing countries adapt their agricultural practices to secure dependable food supplies and livelihoods, while also decreasing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing carbon sequestration, thereby decreasing future climate change. The project began in 2011 and works with villages in East and West Africa and South Asia. “The Climate Smart Villages program is a community-based approach to sustainable agricultural development,” said M.L. Jat, CIMMYT senior cropping system agronomist and South Asia coordinator of the CCAFS- CIMMYT project.

Australian wheat breeders’ relationship with Mexico spans more than 40 years

Written by on September 24, 2014. Posted in News.

In Australia, over 90 percent of local wheat varieties can be traced back to CIMMYT varieties, reports Kim Honan in a 17 September article on ABC’s Rural website.

For 40 years, Australian wheat breeders, as a part of the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC)-funded CIMMYT/Australia/ICARDA Germplasm Evaluation (CAIGE) project, have traveled to Mexico annually to visit CIMMYT wheat fields.

“CIMMYT is a global program, it’s breeding for the world, so the nurseries they put together to distribute globally don’t necessarily have the traits that we’re looking for in Australia,” said Richard Trethowan, professor of Plant Breeding at the University of Sydney and former CIMMYT wheat breeder.

The trip allows the team to review materials and hand-select breeds with traits that might not have otherwise been available to Australian breeders. Each year, the scientists look for traits that show signs of potential yield increases, drought tolerance and heat tolerance. In particular, the breeders look for more diversity in each of those characteristics. During this trip, the team chose a set of about 350 varieties.

“This is a smorgasbord of diversity and here we can find that new resistance and bring that back to

Australia,” said Trethowan. “The breeder needs to take all this diversity for yield, resistance and adaptation to drought and heat, and improve that for grain quality to meet the Australian markets.”

Read Honan’s full report detailing the breeders’ trip to Mexico here.

The role of crop diversity in climate adaptation

Written by on September 22, 2014. Posted in News.

The impending threat of global climate change makes the storage and maintenance of crop diversity, held in the form of seeds in gene banks around the world, more important than ever before. “Crop diversity is agriculture’s greatest resource for adaptation, the foundation for future efforts to feed the world,” argues Rachel Kyte, World Bank Group vice president and special envoy for climate change, in an article she recently wrote for Scientific American. “The key to facing issues of climate changes, pests and diseases is maintaining this diversity.”

China’s wheat production critical to global food security

Written by on September 18, 2014. Posted in Features.

China’s Wheat Production Critical to Global Food Security

Wheat makes up 40 percent of grain consumption in China and about 60 percent of the country’s population eats the grain daily.

Chinese wheat matures early, so two crops can be harvested each year.

Current Challenges

Researchers anticipate that in the near future the consumption of homemade steamed bread and raw noodles will decrease in favor of western-style breads and pastries.

Breeding for high-yield potential remains the first priority, as the available planting area for wheat is unlikely to increase.

Scientific Innovation

Interested in this subject? Find out more information here:

Zhonghu He and Alain P.A. Bonjean, 2010. Cereals in China, Mexico, D.F.: CIMMYT.

Zhonghu He, Xianchun Xia a, Shaobing Peng, Thomas Adam Lumpkin, 2014. Meeting demands for increased cereal production in China, Journal of Cereal Science, 59: 235-244.

Fahong Wang，Zhonghu He, Ken Sayre, Shengdong Li, Jisheng Si, Bo Feng, Lingan Kong,2009. Wheat cropping systems and technologies in China, Field Crop Research, 111: 181-188.

Drought tolerance for wheat grown in rain-fed areas must be strengthened, because varieties with drought tolerance and better water-use efficiency are already urgently needed.

6th CSISA wheat breeding meeting reviews gains in South Asia

Written by on September 17, 2014. Posted in News.

On 11-12 September, 61 scientists from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal convened in Kathmandu, Nepal, for the 6th Wheat Breeding Review Meeting of the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) objective 4 program.

Participants pose for a photo at the 6th CSISA Wheat Breeding review meeting, Kathmandu, Nepal, held 11-12 September.
Photo: Prakash Shrestha.

The meeting was organized by CIMMYT’s Kathmandu office and led by Dr. Arun Joshi. Other CIMMYT participants were Andrew McDonald and Cynthia Mathys. Participants included representatives of the Wheat Research Centre of Bangladesh (Dinajpur); Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute (BARI), Ghazipur; India’s Directorate of Wheat Research (DWR), Karnal and Shimla; the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), Delhi and Indore; Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Karnal; Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana and Gurdaspur; Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi; the University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad; Uttarbanga Krishi Vishwa Vidyalaya, Coochbehar, West Bengal; Jawaharlal Nehru Krishi Vishwavidyalaya, Jabalpur and Powarkheda; Agharkar Research Institute, Pune; Govind Vallabh Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar; Chandra Shekhar Azad University of Agriculture and Technology, Kanpur; Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Kolkata, Mohanpur, Distt. Nadia, W. Bengal; Nepal’s National Wheat Research Program (NWRP), Bhairahwa; Nepal Agricultural Research Institute (NARI); Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC); Renewable Natural Resources (RNR); Research and Development Centre (RDC), Bajo; the Bhutanese Ministry of Agriculture and Forest; and SAARC Agriculture Centre (SAC), Dhaka, Bangladesh.

The CSISA meeting began with remarks by the chief guest, Dr. Dil Bahadur Gurung, executive director of NARC, along with Dr. Md. Rafiqul Islam Mondal, Director General of BARI and McDonald and Joshi of CIMMYT. Within a wider framework of discussions concerning wheat improvement issues, the CSISA meeting reviewed the progress of the 2013-14 cycle and established work plans for the 2014-15 crop cycle. McDonald presented a summary of all CSISA objectives and highlighted the substantial results obtained in wheat breeding. Mondal expressed his satisfaction that CSISA wheat breeding has regional recognition in South Asia and is trying its best to create linkages among regionally important research issues. Gurung highlighted the significance of collaborative research with a regional perspective and reported the successes being achieved by CSISA in wheat research and cropping systems in Nepal. He expressed his appreciation for new research efforts under CSISA and said that, “the South Asia-CIMMYT collaboration is paramount to the food security in the region.”

Four review sessions were conducted, chaired by Mondal, Dr. Ravi Pratap Singh, Dr. Girish Chandra Mishra and Joshi. Three sessions were platforms to present review reports and work plans from the 10 research centers; two other sessions discussed physiology, spot blotch, extension of wheat breeding activities and how to link wheat breeding with seed dissemination and capacity building in South Asia. Another session discussed conducting trials, weather data, advanced and segregating material in Kenya and submission of data booklets and reports. A major discussion was held to encourage the strengthening of existing links with CSISA objective 4 (wheat breeding) and other objectives of CSISA, which include linkages with hubs and other stakeholders, and explored the possibilities of providing quality seeds from newly released improved varieties to farmers as quickly as possible. The inclusion of conservation agriculture and participatory variety selection were also encouraged.

Joshi also highlighted major achievements by the CGIAR Centers during the last six years of CSISA: breeding for biotic and abiotic stress tolerance gained momentum with around a dozen new varieties released and popularized in South Asia; germplasm exchange with CIMMYT increased significantly; the majority of advanced lines in CIMMYT trials carried resistance to Ug99 and other rusts; shuttling of segregating generations between South Asia and Kenya increased; use of physiological tools for heat and drought tolerance increased in the region; stronger links were formed among breeders, seed producers and farmers; and capacity building was promoted in the region. Many new topics were discussed, including the current status of wheat rusts in SAARC countries by Dr. Subhash Bhardwaj, DWR Shimla; the current status and future options for wheat breeding for salt-affected soils by Neeraj Kulshrestha, CSSRI, Karnal; capacity building options for crop protection at DWR for SAARC scientists by M.S. Saharan, DWR, Karnal; and how DWR can fast-track CSISA wheat varieties to farmers in the eastern Gangetic plains by Dr. Randhir Singh Poswal, DWR, Karnal. Dr. Shree Prakash Pandey of IISER Kolkata presented the outcome of new research on a WHEAT CRP project, “Deciphering phytohormone signaling in modulation of resistance to spot blotch disease for identification of novel resistance components for wheat improvement.” “SAARC Agriculture Centre – Its Introduction and Programs,” was presented by Dr. Tayan Raj Gurung, senior program specialist from SAARC Agriculture Centre (SAC), Dhaka. He stressed that regional collaboration on wheat breeding for salt-affected soils is urgently required in South Asia and recommended that CIMMYT play a leading role.

The review meeting enabled CSISA wheat researchers to highlight research achievements and increase their understanding of the newer challenges and provided opportunities for further improvements in the coming years.

Overview of CGIAR Development Dialogues

Written by on September 9, 2014. Posted in News.

Overview of CGIAR Development Dialogues

The inaugural CGIAR Development Dialogues will focus attention on the vital role of agriculture, forestry, fisheries, landscapes and food systems in achieving sustainable development. The one-day event will be held at the Faculty House of Columbia University in New York City on 25 September. A by-invitation-only audience of some 300 will attend. Thousands more will be included online through live webcasting and social media channels.

Background

2014 marks an historic opportunity to communicate the importance of research on sustainable agriculture to stakeholders involved in the climate change and development policy processes. In Paris in December 2015, the 21^st Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP 21) will seek to agree on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. In September of the same year, the UN hopes to forge a consensus and agreement on the creation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and accompanying targets, in what UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has termed the post-2015 development framework and agenda. These two processes will help define the global development path of donors, civil society and policymakers in coming decades. Shaping, delivering and monitoring the targets set by these agreements will require not only new funding commitments but also the latest knowledge and innovations from the global research and academic community, in partnership with governments, civil society and the private sector.

Why CGIAR Development Dialogues?

The Dialogues present an opportunity to shape research and development for tomorrow’s food systems, landscapes and rural economy. The Dialogues are designed to influence policy and leverage the attention of world leaders, scientists, donors, media, civil society, the private sector, community groups and SDG negotiators on the vital role that agriculture, forestry, fisheries, landscapes and food systems play in sustainable development. The event offers an opportunity to forge a link between the experience of CGIAR, the Centers and CRPs and the implementation and achievement of the emerging SDGs. The event will take place in conjunction with the most important conversations on global development in recent years and will leverage the presence of key players at concurrent events.

Dialogue objectives:

Demonstrate the fundamental role of agriculture, forestry, fisheries, landscapes and food systems for achieving each of the emerging SDGs.
Highlight key areas of opportunities, including: improving livelihood opportunities for poor rural people; reducing risks in long-term food supply; improving nutrition; enhancing efficiency in food systems and renewable products’ value chains; investing in sustainable landscapes; conserving and wisely using biodiversity; and meeting the challenges of climate change.
Point to important gaps in knowledge and the need for public and private investments in research, outreach and capacity development.

Intended outcomes

Improved clarity for key decision makers on the importance of agriculture, forestry and fisheries landscapes and food systems in achieving the SDGs and climate agenda.
Raised profile for food systems and landscapes as cross-cutting issues.
Identification of research gaps to achieve the SDGs and targets under the climate agreement.
Commitments to investments in research and capacity development.
Strengthened partnerships with CGIAR.
Identification of key recommendations for further discussion and debate, to be delivered to the UNGA.

Panel

CIMMYT and the WHEAT and MAIZE CRPs were asked to develop one of the eight panels that will take place at the Development Dialogues. Other Centers and CRPs (IRRI, ILRI, ICRISAT, the Roots, Tubers and Bananas CRP) were also invited to help develop the panel. The topic that we are developing for the event is “Global food security for 9.6 billion people in 2050: What does agricultural research (including breeding for major crops) have to do with it?”

Panel summary

After identifying key by-2050 food security and rural development challenges related to major crop farming systems, the panelists will discuss how crop production and agricultural productivity can address those challenges and translate them into agricultural research priorities. Panelists will outline the role of publicly funded international agricultural research and that of the private sector research and development in addressing those priorities. Finally, the panelists will discuss where the funding should, or could come from.

Among the key points that will be made during the panel discussion:

Crop productivity increases (breeding and agronomy) currently do not keep pace with demand. This will lead to further food price increases.
Food price increases will delay efforts to reduce poverty, perpetuate malnutrition and be an incentive for further deforestation.
Demand for food will increase fastest in low- and middle-income countries.
Most production increases will need to come from the developing world where climate change impacts will also be the greatest.
Today’s investment in international agricultural research will determine technologies and know-how available to farmers in coming decades.

Panelists/Key Areas of Discussion

Raj Kumar, the president and editor-in-chief of Devex, will serve as the panel’s moderator. Dave Watson, manager of the MAIZE CRP, will lead the panel. Other panelists include: Timothy D. Searchinger, research scholar at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and senior fellow at the World Resources Institute; Rhoda Peace Tumusiime, African Union commissioner of Agriculture & Rural Development; and Natalie Rosenbloom, vice president of Sustainability & Signature Partnerships at Monsanto Corporation. Ashok Gulati, chair/professor of agriculture at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations was also scheduled to be a panelist, but was just asked to serve on an Indian national commission that will be meeting at the same time. A substitute panelist may be added in the near-term.