The world needs better management of water, soil, nutrients, and biodiversity in crop, livestock, and fisheries systems, coupled with higher-order landscape considerations as well as circular economy and agroecological approaches.
CIMMYT and CGIAR use modern digital tools to bring together state-of-the-art Earth system observation and big data analysis to inform co-design of global solutions and national policies.
Our maize and wheat genebanks preserve the legacy of biodiversity, while breeders and researchers look at ways to reduce the environmental footprint of agriculture.
Ultimately, our work helps stay within planetary boundaries and limit water use, nutrient use, pollution, undesirable land use change, and biodiversity loss.
A climate change hotspot region that features both small-scale and intensive farming, South Asia epitomizes the crushing pressure on land and water resources from global agriculture to feed a populous, warming world. Continuous irrigated rice and wheat cropping across northern India, for example, is depleting and degrading soils, draining a major aquifer, and producing a steady draft of greenhouse gases.
Through decades-long Asian and global partnerships, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) has helped to study and promote resource-conserving, climate-smart solutions for South Asian agriculture. Innovations include more precise and efficient use of water and fertilizer, as well as conservation agriculture, which blends reduced or zero-tillage, use of crop residues or mulches as soil covers, and more diverse intercrops and rotations. Partners are recently exploring regenerative agriculture approaches â a suite of integrated farming and grazing practices to rebuild the organic matter and biodiversity of soils.
Along with their environmental benefits, these practices can significantly reduce farm expenses and maintain or boost crop yields. Their widespread adoption depends in part on enlightened policies and dedicated promotion and testing that directly involves farmers. We highlight below promising findings and policy directions from a collection of recent scientific studies by CIMMYT and partners.
Getting down in the dirt
A recent scientific review examines the potential of a suite of improved practices â reduced or zero-tillage with residue management, use of organic manure, the balanced and integrated application of plant nutrients, land levelling, and precise water and pest control â to capture and hold carbon in soils on smallholder farms in South Asia. Results show a potential 36% increase in organic carbon in upper soil layers, amounting to some 18 tons of carbon per hectare of land and, across crops and environments, potentially cutting methane emissions by 12%. Policies and programs are needed to encourage farmers to adopt such practices.
Another study on soil quality in Indiaâs extensive breadbasket region found that conservation agriculture practices raised per-hectare wheat yields by nearly half a ton and soil quality indexes nearly a third, over those for conventional practices, as well as reducing greenhouse gas emissions by more than 60%.
Ten years of research in the Indo-Gangetic Plains involving rice-wheat-mungbean or maize-wheat-mungbean rotations with flooded versus subsoil drip irrigation showed an absence of earthworms â major contributors to soil health â in soils under farmersâ typical practices. However, large earthworm populations were present and active under climate-smart practices, leading to improved soil carbon sequestration, soil quality, and the availability of nutrients for plants.
The field of farmer Ram Shubagh Chaudhary, Pokhar Binda village, Maharajganj district, Uttar Pradesh, India, who has been testing zero tillage to sow wheat directly into the unplowed paddies and leaving crop residues, after rice harvest. Chaudhary is one of many farmer-partners in the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA), led by CIMMYT. (Photo: P. Kosina/CIMMYT)
Rebooting marginal farms by design
Using the FarmDESIGN model to assess the realities of small-scale, marginal farmers in northwestern India (about 67% of the population) and redesign their current practices to boost farm profits, soil organic matter, and nutritional yields while reducing pesticide use, an international team of agricultural scientists demonstrated that integrating innovative cropping systems could help to improve farm performance and household livelihoods.
More than 19 gigatons of groundwater is extracted each year in northern India, much of this to flood the regionâs puddled, transplanted rice crops. A recent experiment calibrated and validated the HYDRUS-2D model to simulate water dynamics for puddled rice and for rice sown in non-flooded soil using zero-tillage and watered with sub-surface drip irrigation. It was found that the yield of rice grown using the conservation agriculture practices and sub-surface drip irrigation was comparable to that of puddled, transplanted rice but required only half the irrigation water. Sub-surface drip irrigation also curtailed water losses from evapotranspiration and deep drainage, meaning this innovation coupled with conservation agriculture offers an ecologically viable alternative for sustainable rice production.
Given that yield gains through use of conservation agriculture in northern India are widespread but generally low, a nine-year study of rice-wheat cropping in the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains applying the Environmental Policy Climate (EPIC) model, in this case combining data from long-term experiments with regionally gridded crop modeling, documented the need to tailor conservation agriculture flexibly to local circumstances, while building farmersâ capacity to test and adapt suitable conservation agriculture practices. The study found that rice-wheat productivity could increase as much as 38% under conservation agriculture, with optimal management.
Key partner organizations in this research include the following: Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR); Central Soil Salinity Research Institute (CSSRI), Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), Indian Institute of Farming Systems Research (IIFSR), Agriculture University, Kota; CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar; Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana; Sri Karan Narendra Agriculture University, Jobner, Rajasthan; the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA); the Trust for Advancement of Agricultural Sciences, Cornell University; Damanhour University, Damanhour, Egypt; UM6P, Ben Guerir, Morocco; the University of Aberdeen; the University of California, Davis; Wageningen University & Research; and IFDC.
Generous funding for the work cited comes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The CGIAR Research Programs on Wheat Agri-Food Systems (WHEAT) and Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), supported by CGIAR Fund Donors and through bilateral funding agreements), The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), and USAID.
Cover photo: A shortage of farm workers is driving the serious consideration by farmers and policymakers to replace traditional, labor-intensive puddled rice cropping (shown here), which leads to sizable methane emissions and profligate use of irrigation water, with the practice of growing rice in non-flooded soils, using conservation agriculture and drip irrigation practices. (Photo: P. Wall/CIMMYT)
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The Nitrogen-Efficient Wheat Production Systems in the Indo-Gangetic Plains through Biological Nitrification Inhibition (BNI) Technology project aims to raise awareness of the benefits of new nitrogen-efficient wheat production systems among stakeholders in India.
By introducing technologies that maintain crop yield and quality, even with a reduced amount of nitrogen fertilizer, this project will also lessen the footprint of food production systems and combat environmental degradation.
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MARPLE (Mobile And Real-time PLant disEase) diagnostics is a new innovative approach for fungal crop pathogen diagnostics developed by Diane Saundersâs team at the John Innes Centre.
MARPLE is the first operational system in the world using nanopore sequencing for rapid diagnostics and surveillance of complex fungal pathogens in situ. Generating results in 48 hours of field sampling, this new digital diagnostic strategy is leading revolutionary changes in plant disease diagnostics. Rapid strain level diagnostics are essential to quickly find new emergent strains and guide appropriate control measures.
Through this project, CIMMYT will:
Deploy and scale MARPLE to priority geographies and diseases as part of the Current and Emerging Threats to Crops Innovation Lab led by Penn State University / PlantVillage and funded by USAID’s Feed the Future.
Build national partner capacity for advanced disease diagnostics. We will focus geographically on Ethiopia, Kenya and Nepal for deployment of wheat stripe and stem rust diagnostics, with possible expansion to Bangladesh and Zambia (wheat blast).
Integrate this new in-country diagnostic capacity with recently developed disease forecasting models and early warning systems. Already functional for wheat stripe rust, the project plans to expand MARPLE to incorporate wheat stem rust and wheat blast.
Written by Bea Ciordia on . Posted in Uncategorized.
The Bangladesh Integrated Pest Management Activity (IPMA) project aims to strengthen the capacity of agricultural stakeholders in Bangladesh by controlling and preventing the spread of current and emerging threats to ensure more efficient, profitable, and environmentally safe agricultural production and productivity.
Objectives
Increase the availability and affordability of integrated pest management measures for the prevention and spread of current and emerging threats
Strengthen the capacity of Bangladesh agricultural stakeholders, such as academia, financial institutions, government, judiciary, media, civil society, the private sector, and value chain actors, to implement integrated pest management measures
Enhance the adoption of integrated pest management by smallholder farmers to increase agricultural production and productivity, while reducing environmental hazards caused by indiscriminate use of pesticides
Written by Bea Ciordia on . Posted in Uncategorized.
The Managing Wheat Blast in Bangladesh: Identification and Introgression of Wheat Blast Resistance for Rapid Varietal Development and Dissemination project aims to characterize novel sources of wheat blast resistance, identification, and molecular mapping of resistance loci/gene(s) and their introgression into varietal development pipelines for rapid dissemination of resistant varieties in Bangladesh.
Objectives
Validate the effects of genes Rmg1, Rmg8 and RmgGR119 in field experiments
Identify novel wheat blast resistant sources and generating the corresponding genetic materials for investigating the resistance Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL)/genes
Monitor the adoption of resistant varieties BARI Gom 33 and WMRI Gom 3 by women and men farmers to learn the drivers and obstacles that are involved in the process, to inform the design of a farmer-preferred product profile, and factors in impact pathway
Build the capacity of the Bangladesh Wheat and Maize Research Institute (BWMRI) to operate major infrastructure in Jashore and Dinajpur at the individual and institutional levels
Enhance collaboration between Bangladesh and other countries showing interest on wheat blast
Train young wheat researchers and breeders in Jashore Precision Phenotyping Platform (PPP)
Spot blotch, a major biotic stress challenging bread wheat production is caused by the fungus Bipolaris sorokiniana. In a new study, scientists from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) evaluate genomic and index-based selection to select for spot blotch resistance quickly and accurately in wheat lines. The former approach facilitates selecting for spot blotch resistance, and the latter for spot blotch resistance, heading and plant height.
Genomic selection
The authors leveraged genotyping data and extensive spot blotch phenotyping data from Mexico and collaborating partners in Bangladesh and India to evaluate genomic selection, which is a promising genomic breeding strategy for spot blotch resistance. Using genomic selection for selecting lines that have not been phenotyped can reduce the breeding cycle time and cost, increase the selection intensity, and subsequently increase the rate of genetic gain.
Two scenarios were tested for predicting spot blotch: fixed effects model (less than 100 molecular markers associated with spot blotch) and genomic prediction (over 7,000 markers across the wheat genome). The clear winner was genomic prediction which was on average 177.6% more accurate than the fixed effects model, as spot blotch resistance in advanced CIMMYT wheat breeding lines is controlled by many genes of small effects.
âThis finding applies to other spot blotch resistant loci too, as very few of them have shown big effects, and the advantage of genomic prediction over the fixed effects model is tremendousâ, confirmed Xinyao He, Wheat Pathologist and Geneticist at CIMMYT.
The authors have also evaluated genomic prediction in different populations, including breeding lines and sister lines that share one or two parents.
Spot blotch susceptible wheat lines (left) and resistant lines. (Photo: Xinyao He and Pawan Singh/CIMMYT)
Index selection
One of the key problems faced by wheat breeders in selecting for spot blotch resistance is identifying lines that are genetically resistant to spot blotch versus those that escape and exhibit less disease by being late and tall. âThe latter, unfortunately, is often the case in South Asiaâ, explained Pawan Singh, Head of Wheat Pathology at CIMMYT.
A potential solution to this problem is the use of selection indices that can make it easier for breeders to select individuals based on their ranking or predicted net genetic merit for multiple traits. Hence, this study reports the first successful evaluation of the linear phenotypic selection index and Eigen selection index method to simultaneously select for spot blotch resistance using the phenotype and genomic-estimated breeding values, heading and height.
This study demonstrates the prospects of integrating genomic selection and index-based selection with field based phenotypic selection for resistance in spot blotch in breeding programs.
Spot blotch, caused by the fungus Biopolaris sorokiniana poses a serious threat to bread wheat production in warm and humid wheat-growing regions globally, affecting more than 25 million hectares and resulting in huge yield losses.
Chemical control approaches, including seed treatment and fungicides, have provided acceptable spot blotch control. However, their use is unaffordable to resource-poor farmers and poses a hazard to health and the environment. In addition, âabiotic stresses like heat and drought that are widely prevalent in South Asia compound the problem, making varietal genetic resistance the last resort of farmers to combat this disease,â according to Pawan Singh, Head of Wheat Pathology at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). Therefore, one of CIMMYTâs wheat research focus areas is developing wheat varieties that carry genetic resistance to the disease.
Signs of spot blotch on wheat. (Photo: Philomin Juliana/CIMMYT)
The studyâs results are positive and confirmed that:
Many advanced CIMMYT breeding lines have moderate to high resistance to spot blotch.
Resistance to the disease is conferred quantitatively by several minor genomic regions that act together in an additive manner to confer resistance.
There is an association of the 2NS translocation from the wild species Aegilops ventricosa with spot blotch resistance.
There is also an association of the spot blotch favorable alleles at the 2NS translocation, and two markers on the telomeric end of chromosome 3BS with grain yield evaluated in multiple environments, implying that selection for favorable alleles at these markers could help obtain higher grain yield and spot blotch resistance.
âConsidering the persistent threat of spot blotch to resource-poor farmers in South Asia, further research and breeding efforts to improve genetic resistance to the disease, identify novel sources of resistance by screening different germplasm, and selecting for genomic regions with minor effects using selection tools like genomic selection is essential,â explained Philomin Juliana, Molecular Breeder and Quantitative Geneticist at CIMMYT.
Cover photo: Researchers evaluate wheat for spot blotch at CIMMYTâs experimental station in Agua FrĂa, Jiutepec, Morelos state, Mexico. (Photo: Xinyao He and Pawan Singh/CIMMYT)
Stripe rust, also known as yellow rust, on wheat with droplets of rain. (Photo: A. Yaqup/CIMMYT)
Robust and resilient agrifood systems begin with healthy crops. Without healthy crops the food security and livelihoods of millions of resource-constrained smallholder famers in low- and middle-income countries would be in jeopardy. Yet, climate change and globalization are exacerbating the occurrence and spread of devastating insect-pests and pathogens.
Each year, plant diseases cost the global economy an estimated $220 billion â and invasive insect-pests at least $70 billion more. In addition, mycotoxins such as aflatoxins pose serious threats to the health and wellbeing of consumers. Consumption of mycotoxin-contaminated food can cause acute illness, and has been associated with increased risk of certain cancers and immune deficiency syndromes.
Effective plant health management requires holistic approaches that strengthen global and local surveillance and monitoring capacities, and mitigate negative impacts through rapid, robust responses to outbreaks with ecologically friendly, socially-inclusive and sustainable management approaches.
Over the decades, CGIAR has built a strong foundation for fostering holistic plant health protection efforts through its global network of Germplasm Health Units, as well as pathbreaking rapid-response efforts to novel transboundary threats to several important crops, including maize, wheat, rice, bananas, cassava, potatoes and grain legumes.
On May 12, 2022, CGIAR is launching the Plant Health and Rapid Response to Protect Food Security and Livelihoods Initiative (Plant Health Initiative). It presents a unified and transdisciplinary strategy to protect key crops â including cereals, legumes, roots, tubers, bananas and vegetables â from devastating pests and diseases, as well as mycotoxin contamination. CGIAR Centers will pursue this critical work together with national, regional and international partner institutions engaged in plant health management.
A comprehensive strategy
Prevention. When and where possible, prevention is always preferable to racing to find a cure. Reactive approaches, followed by most institutions and countries, generally focus on containment and management actions after a pest outbreak, especially pesticide use. These approaches may have paid off in the short- and medium-term, but they are not sustainable long-term. It has become imperative to take proactive actions on transboundary pest management through globally coordinated surveillance, diagnostics and deployment of plant health solutions, as well as dynamic communications and data sharing.
To this end, under this Initiative CGIAR will produce a diagnostics and surveillance toolbox. It will include low-cost and robust assays, genomics- and bioinformatics-based tools for pathogen diagnosis and diversity assessment, as well as information and communications technologies for real-time data collection and crowdsourcing. This will be complemented by the development of interoperable databases, epidemiological and risk assessment models, and evidence-based guidance frameworks for prioritizing biosecurity measures and rapid response efforts to high-risk insect-pests and diseases.
Integrated pest management strategies have been key in dealing with fall armyworm in Africa and Asia. (Photo: B.M. Prasanna/CIMMYT)
Adoption of integrated approaches. The goal of integrated pest and disease management is to economically suppress pest populations using techniques that support healthy crops. An effective management strategy will judiciously use an array of appropriate approaches, including clean seed systems, host-plant resistance, biological control, cultural control and the use of environmentally safer pesticides to protect crops from economic injury without adversely impacting the environment.
Through the Plant Health Initiative, CGIAR will promote system-based solutions using ecofriendly integrated pest and disease management innovation packages to effectively mitigate the impact of major insect-pests and diseases affecting crop plants. It will also implement innovative pre- and post-harvest mycotoxin management tools and processes.
Integrating peopleâs mindsets. The lack of gender and social perspectives in plant health surveillance, technology development, access to extension services and impact evaluation is a major challenge in plant health management. To address this, CGIAR will prioritize interdisciplinary data collection and impact evaluation methods to identify context-specific social and gender related constraints, opportunities and needs, as well as generate evidence-based recommendations for policy makers and stakeholders.
Interface with global and regional Initiatives. The Plant Health Initiative will build on the critical, often pioneering work of CGIAR. It will also work closely with other CGIAR global initiatives â including Accelerated Breeding, Seed Equal, Excellence in Agronomy and Harnessing Equality for Resilience in Agrifood Systems â and Regional Integrated Initiatives. Together, this network will help support CGIARâs work towards developing and deploying improved varieties with insect-pest and disease resistance, coupled with context-sensitive, sustainable agronomic practices, in a gender- and socially-inclusive manner.
Targeting localized priorities with strategic partnerships
Effective plant health monitoring and rapid response efforts rely on the quality of cooperation and communication among relevant partner institutions. In this Initiative, CGIAR places special emphasis on developing and strengthening regional and international networks, and building the capacity of local institutions. It will enable globally and regionally coordinated responses by low- and middle-income countries to existing and emerging biotic threats.
To this end, CGIAR will work closely with an array of stakeholders, including national plant protection organizations, national agricultural research and extension systems, advanced research institutions, academia, private sector, and phytosanitary coordination networks.
The geographic focus of interventions under this Initiative will be primarily low- and middle-income countries in Latin America, South and Southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa.
Coupled with CGIARâs commitment to engaging, mobilizing and empowering stakeholders at various scales across the globe, the Plant Health Initiative represents an enormous step towards integrating peopleâs mindsets, capacities and needs towards holistic and sustainable plant health management. It will ultimately protect the food and nutritional security and livelihoods of millions of smallholders and their families.
South Asia was the epicenter of the Green Revolution, a historic era of agricultural innovation that fed billions of people on the brink of famine.
Yet despite the indisputably positive nutritional and developmental impacts of the Green Revolution of the 1960s, the era of innovation also led to the widespread use of farming practicesâlike intensive tilling, monoculture, removal and burning of crop residues, and over-use of synthetic fertilizerâthat have a deleterious effect on the soil and cause off-site ecological harm. Excess pumping of irrigation water over decades has dried out the regionâs chief aquifer.
South Asiaâs woes illustrate the environmental costs of intensive food production to feed our densely-populated planet. Currently, one billion hectares of land worldwide suffers from degraded soils.
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) works with two of the worldâs most widely cultivated and consumed cereal crops. To grow enough of these staple foods to feed the world, a second Green Revolution is needed: one that avoids the mistakes of the past, regenerates degraded land and reboots biodiversity in farm areas.
M.L. Jat, a CIMMYT Principal Scientist, has spent 20 years studying and promoting sustainable agricultural practices for maize- and wheat-based farming systems. In the following Q&A, Jat tells us about regenerative agriculture: integrated farming and grazing practices intended to rebuild soil organic matter and restore degraded soil biodiversity.
Q: What major components or practices are part of regenerative agriculture?
A: Regenerative agriculture is a comprehensive system of farming that harnesses the power of soil biology to rebuild soil organic matter, diversify crop systems, and improve water retention and nutrient uptake. The depletion of biodiversity, degradation of soil health, warming, and drier weather in farm areas have necessitated a reversal in agriculture from âdegeneration to regeneration.â
The practices address food and nutritional security challenges while protecting natural resources and lowering agricultureâs environmental footprint, in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. CIMMYT has worked for years to research and promote conservation agriculture, which contributes to the aims of regenerative agriculture, and is already practiced on more than 200 million hectares globally â 15% of all cropland â and is expanding at a rate of 10.5 million hectares per year.
Q: What are the potential roles of major food crops â maize, rice, and wheat â in regenerative agriculture systems?
A: Regenerative agriculture is âcrop neutral;â that is, it is applicable to almost all crops and farming systems. The worldâs rice, wheat, and maize crops have an enormous physical and ecological footprint on land and natural resources, but play a critical role in food and nutrition security. Considering that anthropogenic climate change has reduced the global agricultural total factor productivity by about 21% in the past six decades, applying regenerative agriculture approaches to these systems represents a momentous contribution toward sustainable farming under increasing climatic risks.
Q: What elements or approaches of regenerative agriculture are applicable in India and how can they be applied?
A: Regenerative practices for maize and wheat systems in India include no-tillage, crop residue recycling, legume inter-cropping and cover crops, crop diversification, integrated nutrient management, and precision water management.
The potential area of adoption for regenerative agriculture in India covers at least 50 million hectares across a diversity of cropping systems and agroecologies â including irrigated, rainfed, and arid farmlands â and can be approached through appropriate targeting, investments, knowledge and capacity enhancement, and enabling policies.
In the breadbasket region of the Indo-Gangetic Plains, regenerative agriculture can help address the aforementioned second-generation problems of the Green Revolution, as well as contributing to the Indian governmentâs Soil Health Mission and its COP26 commitments.
Q: In order to get regenerative agriculture off the ground in South Asia, who will be involved?
A: Adapting and applying regenerative agricultureâs portfolio of practices will require the participation of all stakeholders associated with farming. Application of these principles is location- and situation-specific, so researchers, extension functionaries, value chain actors, philanthropists, environmentalists, NGOs, farmers, and policy planners all have a role to play in the impact pathway.
CIMMYT, the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA), public and private programs and agencies, and farmers themselves have been developing, refining, and scaling out conservation agriculture-based regenerative agriculture practices for some three decades in South Asia. CIMMYT and BISA will continue to play a key role in mainstreaming regenerative agriculture in local, national, and regional development plans through science-based policy and capacity development.
Q: Farmers constitute a strong economic and political force in India. How can they be brought on board to practice regenerative agriculture, which could be more costly and knowledge-intensive than their current practices?
A: We need to pursue business âunusualâ and harness the potential opportunities of regenerative agriculture to sequester soil carbon and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Regenerative agriculture practices can offer farmers additional income and certainly create a âpull factorâ for their adoption, something that has already started and will constitute a strong business case. For example, innovative business models give farmers an opportunity to trade ecosystem services and carbon credits through repurposing subsidies and developing carbon markets for private sectors. CIMMYT, along with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research and private partners such as Grow Indigo, are already helping to put in place a framework to acquire carbon credits through regenerative agriculture in India.
A change in policy by the Nepalese government in February 2022 opens up space for private seed companies to be involved in seed variety development, evaluation and distribution to farmers.
âWeâll never get back all the diversity we had before, but the diversity we need is out there,â says Matthew Reynolds, head of wheat physiology at CIMMYT.
As climate breakdown and worldwide conflict continue to place the food system at risk, seed banks from the Arctic to Lebanon try to safeguard biodiversity.
For a decade, scientists at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) have been at the forefront of a multidisciplinary and multi-institutional effort to contain and effectively manage maize lethal necrosis (MLN) disease in Africa.
The manual is relevant to stakeholders in countries where MLN is already present, and also aims to offer technical tips to ââhigh-riskâ countries globally for proactive implementation of practices that can possibly prevent the incursion and spread of the disease,â writes B.M. Prasanna, director of CIMMYTâs Global Maize Program and MAIZE, in the foreword.
âWhile intensive multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional efforts over the past decade have helped in containing the spread and impact of MLN in sub-Saharan Africa, we cannot afford to be complacent. We need to continue our efforts to safeguard crops like maize from devastating diseases and insect-pests, and to protect the food security and livelihoods of millions of smallholders,â says Prasanna, who is presently leading the OneCGIAR Plant Health Initiative Design Team.
Ram Kanwar Malik (center) with his team in Bihar, India, during a field visit.
Today the Weed Science Society of America (WSSA) announced the Honorary Member award for Ram Kanwar Malik, senior scientist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). This award is given every year to a person who has made outstanding contributions to weed science âthrough their research, teaching, publishing and outreach.â
Malik’s early engagement in agricultural sustainability led to initiatives exploring herbicide resistance evolution and management, zero tillage, and other resource-conservation technologies. At the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) â a regional project led by CIMMYT â Malik and his colleagues helped promote the practice of early wheat sowing to beat terminal heat stress, resulting in increased wheat yield in Indiaâs eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains.
“WSSA’s Honorary Member award is one of the highest recognitions bestowed by the Weed Science Society of America,â said Krishna Reddy, Chair of the WSSA 2022 Award Committee. â[The] Honorary Member is selected for meritorious service to weed science, among non-members from North America or any weed scientist from other countries. Only one person per year is awarded this membership. Dr. Malik’s significant research in weed science and his collaborative effort to deliver solutions for farmers in developing countries like India is inspirational.”
Phalaris minor is a pernicious weed that affects crops like wheat and substantially reduces its yield potential.
Malik has worked extensively in the Indo-Gangetic Plains, leading many initiatives and innovations over the years, in collaboration with national and international partners. The WSSA award highlights Malik’s inspiring work in tackling herbicide resistance problems, first reported in India by his team in 1993. Malik was instrumental in developing a management solution for herbicide-resistant Phalaris minor, a pernicious weed in wheat crops. The integrated weed management system he helped develop raised wheat yield capacity significantly for farmers in the Indo-Gangetic Plains.
“The WSSA Honorary Member award reiterates the importance of agronomic management for sustained weed control strategies across cropping systems,” Malik said. “CIMMYT and partners, including the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), were the first to introduce zero tillage in wheat as part of a strategy to manage weed resistance problems in India. It is an honor that WSSA has recognized this collective work of ours,” he acknowledged.
Malik has devoted more than thirty years to transforming agricultural systems in the Indo-Gangetic Plains, working closely with farmers and partners, and building the capacity of national agricultural and research extension systems. he is a firm believer in farmers’ participation: “Large-scale adoption of sustainable agricultural practices is possible when we work together to leverage technologies which are mutually agreed by partners and meet farmers’ needs.”
Malik is a fellow of the Indian Society of Agronomy and the Indian Society of Weed Science (ISWS), which granted him the Lifetime Achievement Award. He has also received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the International Weed Science Society (IWSS) and the 2015 Derek Tribe Award from the Crawford Fund.
He remains passionate about and invested in changing the lives of farmers through better-bet agronomy and by leading innovative research at CIMMYT.
About the Weed Science Society of America (WSSA)
Founded in 1956, WSSA is a nonprofit scientific society that encourages and promotes the development of knowledge concerning weeds and their impact on the environment.
Emerging in the last 120 years, science-based plant breeding begins by creating novel diversity from which useful new varieties can be identified or formed. The most common approach is making targeted crosses between parents with complementary, desirable traits. This is followed by selection among the resulting plants to obtain improved types that combine desired traits and performance. A less common approach is to expose plant tissues to chemicals or radiation that stimulate random mutations of the type that occur in nature, creating diversity and driving natural selection and evolution.
Determined by farmers and consumer markets, the target traits for plant breeding can include improved grain and fruit yield, resistance to major diseases and pests, better nutritional quality, ease of processing, and tolerance to environmental stresses such as drought, heat, acid soils, flooded fields and infertile soils. Most traits are genetically complex â that is, they are controlled by many genes and gene interactions â so breeders must intercross and select among hundreds of thousands of plants over generations to develop and choose the best.
Plant breeding over the last 100 years has fostered food and nutritional security for expanding populations, adapted crops to changing climates, and helped to alleviate poverty. Together with better farming practices, improved crop varieties can help to reduce environmental degradation and to mitigate climate change from agriculture.
Is plant breeding a modern technique?
Plant breeding began around 10,000 years ago, when humans undertook the domestication of ancestral food crop species. Over the ensuing millennia, farmers selected and re-sowed seed from the best grains, fruits or plants they harvested, genetically modifying the species for human use.
Modern, science-based plant breeding is a focused, systematic and swifter version of that process. It has been applied to all crops, among them maize, wheat, rice, potatoes, beans, cassava and horticulture crops, as well as to fruit trees, sugarcane, oil palm, cotton, farm animals and other species.
With modern breeding, specialists began collecting and preserving crop diversity, including farmer-selected heirloom varieties, improved varieties and the cropsâ undomesticated relatives. Today hundreds of thousands of unique samples of diverse crop types, in the form of seeds and cuttings, are meticulously preserved as living catalogs in dozens of publicly-administered âbanks.â
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) manages a germplasm bank containing more than 180,000 unique maize- and wheat-related seed samples, and the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen preserves back-up copies of nearly a million collections from CIMMYT and other banks.
Through genetic analyses or growing seed samples, scientists comb such collections to find useful traits. Data and seed samples from publicly-funded initiatives of this type are shared among breeders and other researchers worldwide. The complete DNA sequences of several food crops, including rice, maize, and wheat, are now available and greatly assist scientists to identify novel, useful diversity.
Much crop breeding is international. From its own breeding programs, CIMMYT sends half a million seed packages each year to some 800 partners, including public research institutions and private companies in 100 countries, for breeding, genetic analyses and other research.
Early in the 20th century, plant breeders began to apply the discoveries of Gregor Mendel, a 19th-century mathematician and biologist, regarding genetic variation and heredity. They also began to take advantage of heterosis, commonly known as hybrid vigor, whereby progeny of crosses between genetically different lines will turn out stronger or more productive than their parents.
Modern statistical methods to analyze experimental data have helped breeders to understand differences in the performance of breeding offspring; particularly, how to distinguish genetic variation, which is heritable, from environmental influences on how parental traits are expressed in successive generations of plants.
Since the 1990s, geneticists and breeders have used molecular (DNA-based) markers. These are specific regions of the plantâs genome that are linked to a gene influencing a desired trait. Markers can also be used to obtain a DNA âfingerprintâ of a variety, to develop detailed genetic maps and to sequence crop plant genomes. Many applications of molecular markers are used in plant breeding to select progenies of breeding crosses featuring the greatest number of desired traits from their parents.
Plant breeders normally prefer to work with âeliteâ populations that have already undergone breeding and thus feature high concentrations of useful genes and fewer undesirable ones, but scientists also introduce non-elite diversity into breeding populations to boost their resilience and address threats such as new fungi or viruses that attack crops.
Transgenics are products of one genetic engineering technology, in which a gene from one species is inserted in another. A great advantage of the technology for crop breeding is that it introduces the desired gene alone, in contrast to conventional breeding crosses, where many undesired genes accompany the target gene and can reduce yield or other valuable traits. Transgenics have been used since the 1990s to implant traits such as pest resistance, herbicide tolerance, or improved nutritional value. Transgenic crop varieties are grown on more than 190 million hectares worldwide and have increased harvests, raised farmersâ income and reduced the use of pesticides. Complex regulatory requirements to manage their potential health or environmental risks, as well as consumer concerns about such risks and the fair sharing of benefits, make transgenic crop varieties difficult and expensive to deploy.
Genome editing or gene editing techniques allow precise modification of specific DNA sequences, making it possible to enhance, diminish or turn off the expression of genes and to convert them to more favorable versions. Gene editing is used primarily to produce non-transgenic plants like those that arise through natural mutations. The approach can be used to improve plant traits that are controlled by single or small numbers of genes, such as resistance to diseases and better grain quality or nutrition. Whether and how to regulate gene edited crops is still being defined in many countries.
The mobile seed shop of Victoria Seeds Company provides access to improved maize varieties for farmers in remote villages of Uganda. (Photo: Kipenz Films for CIMMYT)
Selected impacts of maize and wheat breeding
In the early 1990s, a CIMMYT methodology led to improved maize varieties that tolerate moderate drought conditions around flowering time in tropical, rainfed environments, besides featuring other valuable agronomic and resilience traits. By 2015, almost half the maize-producing area in 18 countries of sub-Saharan Africa â a region where the crop provides almost a third of human calories but where 65% of maize lands face at least occasional drought â was sown to varieties from this breeding research, in partnership with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). The estimated yearly benefits are as high as $1 billion.
Intensive breeding for resistance to Maize Lethal Necrosis (MLN), a viral disease that appeared in eastern Africa in 2011 and quickly spread to attack maize crops across the continent, allowed the release by 2017 of 18 MLN-resistant maize hybrids.
Improved wheat varieties developed using breeding lines from CIMMYT or the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) cover more than 100 million hectares, nearly two-thirds of the area sown to improved wheat worldwide, with benefits in added grain that range from $2.8 to 3.8 billion each year.
Breeding for resistance to devastating crop diseases and pests has saved billions of dollars in crop losses and reduced the use of costly and potentially harmful pesticides. A 2004 study showed that investments since the early 1970s in breeding for resistance in wheat to the fungal disease leaf rust had provided benefits in added grain worth 5.36 billion 1990 US dollars. Global research to control wheat stem rust disease saves wheat farmers the equivalent of at least $1.12 billion each year.
Crosses of wheat with related crops (rye) or even wild grasses â the latter known as wide crosses â have greatly improved the hardiness and productivity of wheat. For example, an estimated one-fifth of the elite wheat breeding lines in CIMMYT international yield trials features genes from Aegilops tauschii, commonly known as âgoat grass,â that boost their resilience and provide other valuable traits to protect yield.
Biofortification â breeding to develop nutritionally enriched crops â has resulted in more than 60 maize and wheat varieties whose grain offers improved protein quality or enhanced levels of micro-nutrients such as zinc and provitamin A. Biofortified maize and wheat varieties have benefited smallholder farm families and consumers in more than 20 countries across sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Consumption of provitamin-A-enhanced maize or sweet potato has been shown to reduce chronic vitamin A deficiencies in children in eastern and southern Africa. In India, farmers have grown a high-yielding sorghum variety with enhanced grain levels of iron and zinc since 2018 and use of iron-biofortified pearl millet has improved nutrition among vulnerable communities.
Innovations in measuring plant responses include remote sensing systems, such as multispectral and thermal cameras flown over breeding fields. In this image of the CIMMYT experimental station in ObregĂłn, Mexico, water-stressed plots are shown in green and red. (Photo: CIMMYT and the Instituto de Agricultura Sostenible)
Thefuture
Crop breeders have been laying the groundwork to pursue genomic selection. This approach takes advantage of low-cost, genome-wide molecular markers to analyze large populations and allow scientists to predict the value of particular breeding lines and crosses to speed gains, especially for improving genetically complex traits.
Speed breeding uses artificially-extended daylength, controlled temperatures, genomic selection, data science, artificial intelligence tools and advanced technology for recording plant information â also called phenotyping â to make breeding faster and more efficient. A CIMMYT speed breeding facility for wheat features a screenhouse with specialized lighting, controlled temperatures and other special fixings that will allow four crop cycles â or generations â to be grown per year, in place of only two cycles with normal field trials. Speed breeding facilities will accelerate the development of productive and robust varieties by crop research programs worldwide.
Data analysis and management. Growing and evaluating hundreds of thousands of plants in diverse trials across multiple sites each season generates enormous volumes of data that breeders must examine, integrate, and co-analyze to inform decisions, especially about which lines to cross and which populations to discard or move forward. New informatics tools such as the Enterprise Breeding System will help scientists to manage, analyze and apply big data from genomics, field and lab studies.
Following the leaders. Driven by competition and the quest for profits, private companies that market seed and other farm products are generally on the cutting edge of breeding innovations. The CGIARâs Excellence in Breeding (EiB) initiative is helping crop breeding programs that serve farmers in low- and middle-income countries to adopt appropriate best practices from private companies, including molecular marker-based approaches, strategic mechanization, digitization and use of big data to drive decision making. Modern plant breeding begins by ensuring that the new varieties produced are in line with what farmers and consumers want and need.
