Working with smallholders to understand their needs and build on their knowledge, CIMMYT brings the right seeds and inputs to local markets, raises awareness of more productive cropping practices, and works to bring local mechanization and irrigation services based on conservation agriculture practices. CIMMYT helps scale up farmers’ own innovations, and embraces remote sensing, mobile phones and other information technology. These interventions are gender-inclusive, to ensure equitable impacts for all.
The 2021 Global Agricultural Productivity (GAP) Report warns that farmers and food workers globally face the intimidating challenge of producing food sustainably in a degrading environment. The global economic slowdown and climate change are making the situation even more difficult.
This year’s report, titled Strengthening the Climate for Sustainable Agricultural Growth, argues that “accelerating productivity growth at all scales of production is imperative to meet the needs of consumers and address current and future threats to human and environmental well-being.”
The report, produced by Virginia Tech, was presented at the 2021 Borlaug Dialogue, part of the World Food Prize events.
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center’s (CIMMYT) public–private partnership model for the Integrated Agri-food Systems Initiative (IASI) contributes to one of six key strategies that accelerate productivity growth, according to the 2021 GAP Report.
“Our integrated methodology engages farmers in participatory research and innovation efforts, effectively improving small-scale systems,” said Bram Govaerts, director general of CIMMYT. “This results-backed strategy bridges yield gaps and builds resilience to the effects of climate change, with the main objective of giving access to enhanced nutrition and new market opportunities.”
The skillset and cumulative knowledge of small farmers worldwide shapes CIMMYT’s integrated development projects.
“The Integrated Agri-food Systems Initiative (IASI) is designed to generate strategies, actions and quantitative, Sustainable-Development-Goals-aligned targets that have a significant livelihood of supportive public and private investment,” concludes the GAP Report.
The report argues that technology itself does not boost productivity and resilience. Instead, “partnerships play an important role in enhancing human capital: a set of skills and knowledge by producers and others in the agricultural value chain are essential in a time of pandemics.”
The findings, published in Nature Food, extend many potential benefits to national breeding programs, including improved wheat varieties better equipped to thrive in changing environmental conditions. This research was led by Sukhwinder Singh of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) as part of the Seeds of Discovery project.
Since the advent of modern crop improvement practices, there has been a bottleneck of genetic diversity, because many national wheat breeding programs use the same varieties in their crossing program as their “elite” source. This practice decreases genetic diversity, putting more areas of wheat at risk to pathogens and environmental stressors, now being exacerbated by a changing climate. As the global population grows, shocks to the world’s wheat supply result in more widespread dire consequences.
The research team hypothesized that many wheat accessions in genebanks — groups of related plant material from a single species collected at one time from a specific location — feature useful traits for national breeding programs to employ in their efforts to diversify their breeding programs.
“Genebanks hold many diverse accessions of wheat landraces and wild species with beneficial traits, but until recently the entire scope of diversity has never been explored and thousands of accessions have been sitting on the shelves. Our research targets beneficial traits in these varieties through genome mapping and then we can deliver them to breeding programs around the world,” Singh said.
Currently adopted approaches to introduce external beneficial genes into breeding programs’ elite cultivars take a substantial amount of time and money. “Breeding wheat from a national perspective is a race against pathogens and other abiotic threats,” said Deepmala Sehgal, co-author and wheat geneticist in the Global Wheat program at CIMMYT. “Any decrease in the time to test and release a variety has a huge positive impact on breeding programs.”
Deepmala Sehgal shows LTP lines currently being used in CIMMYT trait pipelines at the experimental station in Toluca, Mexico, for introgression of novel exotic-specific alleles into newly developed lines. (Photo: CIMMYT)
Taking into genetic biodiversity
The findings build from research undertaken through the Seeds of Discovery project, which genetically characterized nearly 80,000 samples of wheat from the seed banks of CIMMYT and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA).
First, the team undertook a large meta-survey of genetic resources from wild wheat varieties held in genebanks to create a catalog of improved traits.
“Our genetic mapping,” Singh said, “identifies beneficial traits so breeding programs don’t have to go looking through the proverbial needle in the haystack. Because of the collaborative effort of the research team, we could examine a far greater number of genomes than a single breeding program could.”
Next, the team developed a strategic three-way crossing method among 366 genebank accessions and the best historical elite varieties to reduce the time between the original introduction and deployment of an improved variety.
Sukhwinder Singh (second from left) selects best performing pre-breeding lines in India. (Photo: CIMMYT)
Worldwide impact
National breeding programs can use the diverse array of germplasm for making new crosses or can evaluate the germplasm in yield trials in their own environments.
The diverse new germplasm is being tested in major wheat producing areas, including India, Kenya, Mexico and Pakistan. In Mexico, many of the lines showed increased resistance to abiotic stresses; many lines tested in Pakistan exhibited increased disease resistance; and in India, many tested lines are now part of the national cultivar release system. Overall, national breeding programs have adopted 95 lines for their targeted breeding programs and seven lines are currently undergoing varietal trials.
“This is the first effort of its kind where large-scale pre-breeding efforts have not only enhanced the understanding of exotic genome footprints in bread wheat but also provided practical solutions to breeders,” Sehgal said. “This work has also delivered pre-breeding lines to trait pipelines within national breeding programs.”
Currently, many of these lines are being used in trait pipelines at CIMMYT to introduce these novel genomic regions into advanced elite lines. Researchers are collaborating with physiologists in CIMMYT’s global wheat program to dissect any underlying physiological mechanisms associated with the research team’s findings.
“Our investigation is a major leap forward in bringing genebank variation to the national breeding programs,” Singh explained. “Most significantly, this study sheds light on the importance of international collaborations to bring out successful products and new methods and knowledge to identify useful contributions of exotic in elite lines.”
Cover photo: A researcher holds a plant of Aegilops neglecta, a wild wheat relative. Approximately every 20 years, CIMMYT regenerates wheat wild relatives in greenhouses, to have enough healthy and viable seed for distribution when necessary. (Photo: Rocío Quiroz/CIMMYT)
Three scientists from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) have been included in the Highly Cited Researchers list for 2021, published by the Web of Science Group.
The list recognizes researchers who demonstrated significant influence in their field, or across fields, through the publication of multiple highly cited papers during the last decade. Their names are drawn from the publications that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and publication year in the Web of Science citation index.
Called a “who’s who” of influential researchers, the list draws on data and analysis performed by bibliometric experts and data scientists at the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate, the company which publishes the list.
This year, the three CIMMYT scientists listed are:
In India, nearly one-sixth of groundwater reserves has been overexploited and almost one-fifth of them is either in critical or semi-critical condition. For a country that relies heavily on groundwater for drinking and irrigation, these statistics are close to a death sentence.
India’s water crisis, however, is not unique in the region. Population growth, coupled with increasing urbanization and industrialization, has made South Asia, one of the most heavily irrigated areas on earth, highly vulnerable to water stress. Moreover, as the effects of climate change are increasingly felt in those countries, agricultural production, even at the current level, may not be sustainable.
Against this background, ensuring that water resources are used efficiently and sustainably is key to meet the world’s growing demand. Over the last decades, traditional systems of irrigation have given way to more efficient drip irrigation systems that deliver the right amount of water and nutrients to the plant’s root zone. But as farm labor shortages become more severe, investing in automated irrigation systems — which promise increased production rates and product quality — will be the only way to ensure the sustainability of agricultural production systems worldwide.
A new article co-authored by a team of researchers from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology synthesizes the available information related to the automation of drip irrigation systems and explores recent advances in the science of wireless sensor networks (WSN), the internet of things (IoT) and other communication technologies that increase production capacity while reducing costs.
“Bundling both elements — drip irrigation and automation — in water application can lead to large savings in irrigation and boost water efficiency, especially in high water-consuming, cereal-based systems like the Indo-Gangetic Plains,” explained M.L. Jat, a principal scientist at CIMMYT and one of the authors of the review.
Investing in data and youth
Smart irrigation technologies, including sensors and the IoT, allow farmers to take informed decisions to improve the quality and quantity of their crops, providing them with site-specific data on factors like soil moisture, nutrient status, weed pressure or soil acidity.
However, this information is still limited to certain soil types and crops. “To upgrade drip irrigation systems elsewhere, especially in ‘water-stressed’ regions, we need additional agricultural background data in those areas,” Jat pointed out. “That’s the only way we can effectively customize innovations to each scenario, as one size does not fit all.”
Making this data available to and readable by farmers is also essential. Here, young people can become very good allies, as they tend to be more technologically savvy and used to working with large volumes of information. “Not only are they more skilled to integrate agricultural data into decision-making, but they can also help older farmers adopt and trust intelligent irrigation systems,” Jat concluded.
Long-term research platform in Karnal, India, by H.S. Jat, Principal Scientist at ICAR-CSSRI. (Photo: ICAR-CSSRI and CIMMYT)
Incentives against subsidies
With increasing water shortages worldwide, making the most out of every drop becomes an urgent priority. But in countries where irrigation systems are highly subsidized, farmers may struggle to see this urgency. India, for instance, subsidizes the cost of energy to pump water for farming, thus encouraging smallholders to extract more than they need.
How do we incentivize farmers in these countries to embrace water-efficient technologies?
According to Jat, using the “scientific card” can work with smallholders who, after having farmed for decades, may not change their minds automatically. “These people may be reluctant to accept incentives for water-efficient mechanisms at first, but they will surely be interested in more scientific approaches,” Jat explained, stressing that “the emphasis must be on the science, not on the technology.”
Designing profitable business models can also incentivize producers to embrace more efficient mechanisms. Farmers who have enjoyed irrigation subsidies for decades may not see any profit in trying out new technologies — but what if they are given the chance to become champions or ambassadors of these agricultural innovations? “That brings in a whole new perspective,” Jat said.
Apart from incentivizing farmers, good business models can also draw the attention of large companies, which would bring investment to boost research and innovation in drip irrigation. “More and more businesses are getting interested in smart agriculture and low emission farming, and their inputs can help conceptualize the future of this field,” he observed.
Ravi Singh, head of global wheat improvement at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), received the 2021 Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI) Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to protecting wheat from new races of some of agriculture’s oldest and most devastating diseases.
Introducing mechanization services in any smallholder farming community has proven to yield multiple benefits largely aimed at increasing farming efficiency but importantly creating a solid economic base to boost farmer incomes. Anchored on the two-wheel tractor along with implements for land preparation, planting, harvesting, shelling, transporting, appropriate-scale mechanization has in the last seven years gained currency across African farming households.
Interventions such as the mechanization pilot implemented by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) provide a channel through which smallholder farmers with access to some financial resources can invest to become a viable enterprise. The aim of this intervention is not to make every farmer own its own machinery, which would be costly and inefficient, but to train farmers to become service providers to other community members. This model has been effectively tried before in other places under the Farm Mechanization and Conservation Agriculture for Sustainable Intensification (FACASI) project.
A recent visit to two service providers in southern Zimbabwe, demonstrates the high returns on investment achieved through enrolling in mechanization service provision.
Two service providers, one vision: Profit
Julius Shava (53) and Prince Chimema (22), shared their experience in offering diverse transporting and land preparation services using the two-wheel tractor, trailer, direct seeder, and sheller procured through the initiative. Narrating how he learnt about the mechanization pilot and his subsequent enrolment, Shava explains how potential service providers had to make a financial commitment to the business before accessing the equipment.
“Through this mechanization business model, we would receive a two-wheel tractor, trailer, sheller, and seeder worth USD5,000, at a subsidized price of $USD2,500. The main condition for accessing this package was to pay a commitment fee of USD500 – there was no way I could let that opportunity slip away,” explains Shava.
“My wife and I decided to sell two cows to raise the funds and made the payment. Some community members were initially skeptical of the approach when it seemed that the consignment was delayed yet when the two-wheel tractor arrived, they were among the first to inquire about the services I was offering,” Shava adds.
“I made sure they all understood what I could provide for them using the 2WT and trailer such as land preparation and transportation – of manure, gravel stones and pit sand among other things.”
The multipurpose trailer with a loading capacity of up to one and a half tonnes can be attached to the two-wheel tractor for the provision of transport services. (S.Chikulo/CIMMYT)
Shava and Chimema are among fifteen service providers leading in the mechanization pilot initiative launched in July 2020 in Masvingo district. The initiative is supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and managed by the World Food Program (WFP). The private sector machinery company Kurima Machinery facilitates provision of the two-wheel tractor, planter, trailer and sheller while the Zimbabwe Agriculture Trust (ZADT) manages the lease-to-own business model anchoring the mechanization pilot to the financial sector.
Counting the cost and returns
“How much turnover does a service provider realise on average?” is a question frequently asked by other farmers keen to take up the enterprise.
Shava explains the factors he considers, “When someone is hiring my services, I charge according to the distance and load to be transported.” For example, for a 200m delivery radius, I can charge USD5. However, for land preparation and ploughing, I charge USD100 per hectare.” He quickly adds that he also factors in his labor, fuel requirements and time into the final price of his service – a principle he learnt during a specialized technical and business training provided by Gwebi College of Agriculture for the mechanization pilot.
In addition, using the two-wheel tractor is efficient as a hectare is completed in about one hour where an animal drawn plough takes up to six hours or more, depending on the soil type. The reduced drudgery allows farmers to rest their livestock and adopt more efficient and sustainable land preparation technologies. Shava notes that these advantages are immediately apparent to farmers who seek the service.
Customers often pay in cash which is convenient for him as he saves the money or uses some of it to meet expenses related to the service provision. “So far I have reached up to 7 customers after two months from the Nemamwa area in Ward 12 of Masvingo and they were seeking different services. “For land preparation they were paying USD100 per hectare. In Ward 8, I managed to get about three customers.
“When it comes to pricing, I leave room for negotiation because it is inevitable that customers will always ask for a discount, but I ensure that I do not incur losses.” Since venturing into mechanization service provision, Shava has realized a gross income of USD$600 before deducting expenses such as fuel and regular maintenance. However, the two-wheel tractor is fuel efficient – utilizing at least seven liters of diesel per hectare. Diesel fuel is purchased in Masvingo town or from informal markets at the business center at a cost of USD1 per liter.
Young service providers making their mark
Service providers such as Prince Chimema, who are young, energetic and business minded are also among those quickly realizing the high returns on the small mechanization investment. Coming from a family of seven, Chimema – recently married and with a two-year old child – has found a secure income stream in service provision of different mechanization services.
“I am grateful for the financial support from my parents that enabled me to enroll into the mechanization pilot program,” says Chimeme. Like Shava, Chimema’s parents sold two cows to raise the USD500 commitment fee. Soon, Chimema was approaching his relatives and neighbors in the community demonstrating the transporting, planting and land preparation services that he could provide. “Some of my customers would have seen me delivering manure or quarry stones to another household before requesting for my services; that is how my customer base has increased steadily.”
When pricing, Chimema considers the distance, fuel and time it will take to deliver the load. “In this area, requests are for transporting manure, quarry stones, pit sand and river sand. The price ranges from USD4 – USD8 per load. While most villagers pay in cash, a few may request to pay in kind using chickens,”
Chimema’s marketing strategy has been to push volumes by advertising his transporting services to other farmers outside of Ward 18. To date, he has focused on clients requiring transportation services. In Wards 18 and 19, Chimema has served a total of 60 customers, generating USD400 within the first two months of commencing the business.
Challenges and early lessons
Venturing into small mechanized service provision has not been without its challenges as attested by Chimema and Shava, “A lesson I learnt from the onset is never to overload the trailer beyond the recommended capacity,” explains Chimema. “During the mechanization training, we were advised that the trailer’s maximum carrying capacity is between 750-1000kg but at times I could overlook this leading to faults developing on my tractor,” says Prince.
Fuel access also presents challenges at times. “We have to get fuel from Masvingo because the quality of fuel here in the ward may be compromised while the price is slightly inflated because of the middlemen selling the fuel.
The delay in delivery of tractor-drawn direct seeders reduced the potential number of customers for both Chimema and Shava for planting services, as most farmers had proceeded to plant given the early onset of the rainy season. However, both service providers are hopeful that in the next season, with all the equipment in place, they can provide the full range of services to fellow smallholders.
Continuous improvement of the technology by including a toolbar is currently underway, which eases the level of effort required to operate the two-wheel tractor, making it more flexible for the service providers.
Twenty-two-year-old Prince Chimema of Ward 18 Masvingo district demonstrating the two-row direct seeder attached to the two-wheel tractor. (S.Chikulo/CIMMYT)
A vision for expansion and rural transformation
Chimema and Shava are optimistic about the future growth and performance of their business. Both aspire to expand their service provision over the coming five years by purchasing a second two-wheel tractor and creating employment for other villagers. “The income for the second two-wheel tractor should be generated from the current business” explains Shava.
In addition to the land preparation and transporting services, the maize sheller is set to increase their income. With a shelling capacity of 3-4 tons per day, the maize sheller significantly reduces the amount of time and effort required to shell a ton of maize manually (12.5 days).
“The priority now is to make sure that the loan repayment happens smoothly because I am generating enough income to pay back up for my package,” explains Shava. Once the payment is done, Shava would like to set up a borehole and drip irrigation system for their family plot and complete construction of his house in Masvingo town.
Chimema, on the other hand, is keen to start a poultry project. He is currently assisting his parents to pay school fees for his younger sibling but believes the poultry project will increase his income stream. “As I broadcast and market my services by word of mouth and through mobile platform messages; there is room for me to expand beyond Ward 18 and 19,” says Chimema. “I hope to employ at least two more people in the coming two or three years, to help me deliver the services to other farmers,” he adds.
“With the business experience gained from the current season, small mechanization service providers such as Chimema and Shava can increase the portfolio of services to customers”, says Christian Thierfelder, Principal Scientist at CIMMYT, leading the effort. “For example, at planting stage, service providers could provide a complete package for farmers including seed and fertilizer as well as a supply of appropriate herbicides for weed control as part of the land preparation and direct seeding service. Such an offering increases the value of the service and affords farmers the opportunity to witness the full benefits of small mechanized agriculture”, Thierfelder says.
“We have to provide farmers with options to abandon the hoe. The drudgery of farming has made this profession so unattractive that a rural exodus is looming. Providing business, employment and entrepreneurship will bring back hope and will lead to a true rural and agriculture transformation in Zimbabwe.” The high return on investment of the mechanized package makes it a viable year-round business option for farmers and entrepreneurs in rural Masvingo. The pilot is providing a proof of concept that this model works, even under low-potential environments.
Cover photo: Julius Shava and his wife standing at their lease-to-own two-wheel tractor which is part of the starter package for small-mechanization service providers in Masvingo District. (S.Chikulo/CIMMYT)
CIMMYT senior scientist and cropping systems agronomist Nele Verhulst (left) shows the benefits of conservation agriculture to visitors at CIMMYT’s experimental station in Texcoco, Mexico. (Photo: Francisco Alarcón/CIMMYT)
High-level representatives of the Carlos Slim Foundation and Mexico’s National Agriculture Council (CNA) visited the global headquarters of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) outside Mexico City on October 18, 2021, to learn about innovative research to promote sustainable production systems in Mexico and the world.
Carlos Slim Foundation and CNA representatives agreed that public and private sectors, civil society and international research organizations like CIMMYT must collaborate to address the challenges related to climate change, forced migration and rural insecurity.
“It is necessary to give more visibility to and make use of CIMMYT’s world-class laboratories and research fields, to enhance their impact on sustainable development and the 2030 agenda,” said Juan Cortina Gallardo, president of the CNA.
The tour included a visit to CIMMYT’s germplasm bank, where the world’s largest collections of maize and wheat biodiversity are conserved. Visitors also toured the laboratories, greenhouses and experimental fields where cutting-edge science is applied to improve yield potential, adaptability to climate change, resistance to pests and diseases, and nutritional and processing quality of maize and wheat.
Representatives of the Carlos Slim Foundation and Mexico’s National Agriculture Council (CNA) stand for a group photo with CIMMYT representatives at the organization’s global headquarters in Texcoco, Mexico. (Photo: Francisco Alarcón/CIMMYT)
From Mexico to the world
“CIMMYT implements Crops for Mexico, a research and capacity building project building on the successes and lessons learned from MasAgro, where smallholder farmers increase their productivity to expand their market opportunities and can, for example, join the supply chain of large companies as providers and contribute to social development of Mexican farming,” Cortina Gallardo said.
CIMMYT carries out more than 150 integrated development projects related to maize and wheat systems in 50 countries. They are all supported by first-class research infrastructure in CIMMYT’s global headquarters, funded by the Carlos Slim Foundation.
“Our goal is to put CIMMYT’s laboratories, greenhouses and experimental fields at the service of farmers and both public and private sectors as needed,” said Bram Govaerts, director general of CIMMYT. “Accelerating the development of sustainable agricultural practices and more nutritious and resilient varieties contributes to transforming agricultural systems around the world, strengthening global food security and reducing the impact of agriculture on climate change.”
The IWGSC is an international, collaborative consortium of wheat growers, plant scientists, and public and private breeders dedicated to the development of genomic resources for wheat scientists and breeders to facilitate the production of wheat varieties better adapted to today’s challenges – climate change, food security and biodiversity preservation. In 2018, the IWGSC published the first genome reference sequence of the bread wheat, an essential tool to identify more rapidly genes and regulatory elements underlying complex agronomic traits such as yield, grain quality, resistance to diseases, and tolerance to stress such as drought or salinity.
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, known by its Spanish acronym, CIMMYT, is a non-profit international agricultural research and training organization focusing on two of the world’s most important cereal grains: maize and wheat, and related cropping systems and livelihoods. CIMMYT’s maize and wheat research addresses challenges encountered by low-income farmers in the developing world including food and nutritional insecurity, environmental degradation, economic development, population growth and climate change.
CIMMYT’s Global Wheat Program is one of the most important public sources of high yielding, nutritious, disease- and climate-resilient wheat varieties for Africa, Asia, and Latin America. CIMMYT breeding lines can be found in varieties sown on more than 60 million hectares worldwide.
“I am truly pleased that CIMMYT has re-joined the IWGSC. The current reference sequences have been absolutely essential, enabling us to design new trait-based markers for use in CIMMYT wheat breeding pipelines. There remains much to explore in characterizing wheat at the whole genome level,” said CIMMYT wheat molecular breeding laboratory lead, Susanne Dreisigacker.
Sponsors are an essential part of the IWGSC. They participate in IWGSC-led projects and, as members of the Coordinating Committee, they help shape the IWGSC priorities, strategic plans, and activities. Susanne Dreisigacker will represent CIMMYT in the IWGSC Coordinating Committee.
“CIMMYT is a leading force in developing wheat varieties for southern countries,” said Kellye Eversole, Executive Director of the IWGSC. “We are thrilled that they are joining forces with the IWGSC to build the genomic tools and resources that will ensure growers around the world have access to resilient and highly productive wheat varieties.”
After release of the wheat genome reference sequence in 2018, the IWGSC entered Phase II with activities focused on developing tools to accelerate the development of improved varieties and to empower all aspects of basic and applied wheat science. The organization recently released versions 2.1 of the reference sequence assembly and annotation, and is continuing to work with the wheat community to improve the reference sequence by gap filling and integration of manual and functional annotation. The IWGSC also is focused on securing funding for a project that will ensure that “platinum-quality” sequences, representing the worldwide wheat diversity of landraces and elite varieties, are available publicly for breeders.
About the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium
The IWGSC, with 3,300 members in 71 countries, is an international, collaborative consortium, established in 2005 by a group of wheat growers, plant scientists, and public and private breeders. The goal of the IWGSC is to make a high-quality genome sequence of bread wheat publicly available, in order to lay a foundation for basic research that will enable breeders to develop improved varieties. The IWGSC is a U.S. 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. To learn more, visit www.wheatgenome.org and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.
CIMMYT distinguished scientist Ravi Singh conducts research on a wheat field while. (Photo: BGRI)
World-renowned plant breeder Ravi Singh, whose elite wheat varieties reduced the risk of a global pandemic and now feed hundreds of millions of people around the world, has been announced as the 2021 Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI) Lifetime Achievement Award recipient.
Singh, distinguished scientist and head of Global Wheat Improvement at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), endowed hundreds of modern wheat varieties with durable resistance to fungal pathogens that cause leaf rust, stem rust, stripe rust and other diseases during his career. His scientific efforts protect wheat from new races of some of agriculture’s oldest and most devastating diseases, safeguard the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in the most vulnerable areas in the world, and enhance food security for the billions of people whose daily nutrition depends on wheat consumption.
“Ravi’s innovations as a scientific leader not only made the Cornell University-led Borlaug Global Rust Initiative possible, but his breeding innovations are chiefly responsible for the BGRI’s great success,” said Ronnie Coffman, vice chair of the BGRI and international professor of global development at Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “Perhaps more than any other individual, Ravi has furthered Norman Borlaug’s and the BGRI’s goal that we maintain the global wheat scientific community and continue the crucial task of working together across international borders for wheat security.”
In the early 2000s, when a highly virulent rust race discovered in East Africa threatened most of the world’s wheat, Singh took a key leadership role in the formation of a global scientific coalition to combat the threat. Along with Borlaug, Coffman and other scientists, he served as a panel member on the pivotal report alerting the international community to the Ug99 outbreak and its potential impacts to global food security. That sounding of the alarm spurred the creation of the BGRI and the collaborative international effort to stop Ug99 before it could take hold on a global scale.
As a scientific objective leader for the BGRI’s Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat and Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat projects, Singh led efforts to generate and share a series of elite wheat lines featuring durable resistance to all three rusts. The results since 2008 include resistance to the 12 races of the Ug99 lineage and new, high-temperature-tolerant races of stripe rust fungus that had been evolving and spreading worldwide since the beginning of the 21st century.
“Thanks to Ravi Singh’s vision and applied science, the dire global threat of Ug99 and other rusts has been averted, fulfilling Dr. Borlaug’s fervent wishes to sustain wheat productivity growth, and contributing to the economic and environmental benefits from reduced fungicide use,” Coffman said. “Ravi’s innovative research team at CIMMYT offered crucial global resources to stop the spread of Ug99 and the avert the human catastrophe that would have resulted.”
An innovative wheat breeder known for his inexhaustible knowledge and attention to genetic detail, Singh helped establish the practice of “pyramiding” multiple rust-resistance genes into a single variety to confer immunity. This practice of adding complex resistance in a way that makes it difficult for evolving pathogens to overcome new varieties of wheat now forms the backbone of rust resistance breeding at CIMMYT and other national programs.
Ravi Singh (center) with Norman Borlaug (left) and Hans Braun in the wheat fields at CIMMYT’s experimental station in Ciudad Obregón, in Mexico’s Sonora state. (Photo: CIMMYT)
The global champion for durable resistance
Ravi joined CIMMYT in 1983 and was tasked by his supervisor, mentor and friend, the late World Food Prize Winner Sanjaya Rajaram, to develop wheat lines with durable resistance, said Hans Braun, former director of CIMMYT’s Global Wheat Program.
“Ravi did this painstaking work — to combine recessive resistance genes — for two decades as a rust geneticist and, as leader of CIMMYT’s Global Spring Wheat Program, he transferred them at large scale into elite lines that are now grown worldwide,” Braun said. “Thanks to Ravi and his colleagues, there has been no major rust epidemic in the Global South for years, a cornerstone for global wheat security.”
Alison Bentley, Director of CIMMYT’s Global Wheat Program, said that “Building on Ravi’s exceptional work throughout his career, deployment of durable rust resistance in widely adapted wheat germplasm continues to be a foundation of CIMMYT’s wheat breeding strategy.”
Revered for his determination and work ethic throughout his career, Singh has contributed to the development of 649 wheat varieties released in 48 countries, working closely with scientists at national wheat programs in the Global South. Those varieties today are sown on approximately 30 million hectares annually in nearly all wheat growing countries of southern and West Asia, Africa and Latin America. Of these varieties, 224 were developed directly under his leadership and are grown on an estimated 10 million hectares each year.
In his career Singh has authored 328 refereed journal articles and reviews, 32 book chapters and extension publications, and more than 80 symposia presentations. He is regularly ranked in the top 1% of cited researchers. The CIMMYT team that Singh leads identified and designated 22 genes in wheat for resistance or tolerance to stem rust, leaf rust, stripe rust, powdery mildew, barley yellow dwarf virus, spot blotch, and wheat blast, as well as characterizing various other important wheat genome locations contributing to durable resistance in wheat.
Singh’s impact as a plant breeder and steward of genetic resources over the past four decades has been extraordinary, according to Braun: “Ravi Singh can definitely be called the global champion for durable resistance.”
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is offering a new set of elite, improved maize hybrids to partners for commercialization in southern Africa and similar agro-ecological zones. National agricultural research systems (NARS) and seed companies are invited to apply for licenses to register and commercialize these new hybrids, in order to bring the benefits of the improved seed to farming communities.
The deadline to submit applications to be considered during the first round of allocations is October, 24 2021. Applications received after that deadline will be considered during the following round of product allocations.
Information about the newly available CIMMYT maize hybrids from the Latin America breeding program, application instructions and other relevant material is available in the CIMMYT Maize Product Catalog and in the links provided below.
Specific questions or issues faced with regard to the application process may be addressed to GMP-CIMMYT@cgiar.org with attention to Nicholas Davis, Program Manager, Global Maize Program, CIMMYT.
With the past decade identified as the warmest on record and global temperatures predicted to rise by as much as 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels by 2050, the world’s staple food crops are increasingly under threat.
A new review published this month in the Journal of Experimental Botany describes how researchers from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and collaborators are boosting climate resilience in wheat using powerful remote sensing tools, genomics and big data analysis. Scientists are combining multiple approaches to explore untapped diversity among wheat genetic resources and help select better parents and progeny in breeding.
The review — authored by a team of 25 scientists from CIMMYT, Henan Agricultural University, the University of Adelaide and the Wheat Initiative — also outlines how this research can be harnessed on a global level to further accelerate climate resilience in staple crops.
“An advantage of understanding abiotic stress at the level of plant physiology is that many of the same tools and methods can be applied across a range of crops that face similar problems,” said first author and CIMMYT wheat physiologist Matthew Reynolds.
Abiotic stresses such as temperature extremes and drought can have devastating impacts on plant growth and yields, posing a massive risk to food security.
Harnessing research across a global wheat improvement network for climate resilience: research gaps, interactive goals, and outcomes.
Addressing research gaps
The authors identified nine key research gaps in efforts to boost climate resilience in wheat, including limited genetic diversity for climate resilience, a need for smarter strategies for stacking traits and addressing the bottleneck between basic plant research and its application in breeding.
Based on a combination of the latest research advances and tried-and-tested breeding methods, the scientists are developing strategies to address these gaps. These include:
Using big data analysis to better understand stress profiles in target environments and design wheat lines with appropriate heat and drought adaptive traits.
Exploring wheat genetic resources for discovery of novel traits and genes and their use in breeding.
Accelerating genetic gains through selection techniques that combine phenomics with genomics.
Crowd-sourcing new ideas and technologies from academia and testing them in real-life breeding situations.
These strategies will be thoroughly tested at the Heat and Drought Wheat Improvement Network (HeDWIC) Hub under realistic breeding conditions and then disseminated to other wheat breeding programs around the world facing similar challenges.
One factor that strongly influences the success and acceleration of climate resilience technologies, according to Reynolds, is the gap between theoretical discovery research and crop improvement in the field.
“Many great ideas on how to improve climate-resilience of crops pile up in the literature, but often remain ‘on the shelf’ because the research space between theory and practice falls between the radar of academia on the one hand, and that of plant breeders on the other,” Reynolds explained.
Translational research — efforts to convert basic research knowledge about plants into practical applications in crop improvement — represents a necessary link between the world of fundamental discovery and farmers’ fields and aims to bridge this gap.
Main research steps involved in translating promising technologies into genetic gains (graphical abstract, adapted from Reynolds and Langridge, 2016). Reprinted under licence CC BY-NC-ND.
The impacts of this research, conducted under HeDWIC — a project led by CIMMYT in partnership with experts around the world — will be validated on a global scale through the International Wheat Improvement Network (IWIN), with the potential to reach at least half of the world’s wheat-growing area.
The results will benefit breeders and researchers but, most importantly, farmers and consumers around the world who rely on wheat for their livelihoods and their diets. Wheat accounts for about 20% of all human calories and protein, making it a pillar of food security. For about 1.5 billion resource-poor people, wheat is their main daily staple food.
With the world population projected to rise to almost ten billion by 2050, demand for food is predicted to increase with it. This is especially so for wheat, being a versatile crop both in terms of where it can grow and its many culinary and industrial uses. However, current wheat yield gains will not meet 2050 demand unless serious action is taken. Translational research and strategic breeding are crucial elements in ensuring that research is translated into higher and stable yields to meet these challenges.
BISA and CIMMYT gather for a virtual 10 year celebration.
A decade ago, a foundation was laid with a vision to secure food, nutrition, livelihoods, and the environment in South Asia. The Borlaug Institute of South Asia (BISA) was formed and the principles were set following the path of Norman Borlaug to translate the agrarian challenges into opportunities by collaborating with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). BISA was established as an independent, non-profit research organization.
To commemorate the 10th anniversary of BISA, Bram Govaerts, Director General, CIMMYT-BISA, gathered BISA staff for a virtual celebration on 5 October 2021. He congratulated BISA colleagues and said “[…] BISA has continued to expand Norman Borlaug’s vision and legacy. It has […] been committed and achieved excellence in science, seeds and partnerships by touching lives of millions of farmers and consumers.”
“Perhaps one of the most impactful outcomes of BISA’s work has been its contribution to build a strong and wide network for evaluating and disseminating new high yielding and climate-resilient wheat varieties for southern Asia in close partnership with ICAR and national agricultural research systems. CIMMYT-BISA has not only contributed towards this but will also make sure that India’s farmers are the happiest. Efforts will and have been made towards their income generation, livelihood for families, a clean environment and building of future agricultural resilience,” he added.
Pramod Aggarwal, Regional Program Leader, BISA and CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), gave suggestions for the way forward and BISA’s future collaborations. He said, “It’s time to strengthen BISA and further expand it to other South Asian countries.”
Arun Joshi, Managing Director, BISA, spoke about the achievements of BISA throughout the last decade and about the establishment of the ‘Farms of the Future’. “BISA farms are equipped with state-of-the-art technology. BISA’s no residue burning, efficient resource management, precision phenotyping, climate resilient germplasm, quality seed and capacity development activities are just a few examples of BISA’s successful programs,” he said.
“BISA has been scaling climate smart agriculture technologies not only in Indian villages but to other countries of South Asia, as well, and has supported African colleagues in capacity development.” Joshi recalled the support provided by numerous funding partners, by ICAR (Government of India), state governments (Punjab, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra), other governmental institutions, CIMMYT’s Board of Trustees and Management Committee team members and different research programs to strengthen BISA.
BISA’s Ludhiana team gathers for a celebration
Celebrations galore
In addition to the virtual celebration with the leadership of BISA and CIMMYT, numerous teams scattered across India celebrated the success and fruitful journey of BISA. The teams at BISA farms in Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh), Pusa (Bihar), and Ludhiana (Punjab) marked the occasion by gathering at a COVID-19-appropriate distance and paid regards to Norman Borlaug and spoke about the objectives and vision of BISA.
BISA’s Jabalpur team gathers for a celebration
The New Delhi team celebrated by garlanding the statue of Borlaug, that stands in front of the office of BISA based at the National Agriculture Science Complex (NASC).
Capturing the decade-long journey
The ten-year journey of BISA is captured in “A Decade of Research in Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA) 2011-2021,” a research highlights report that was unveiled during the virtual celebration and that will soon be available online. Arun Joshi explained that the document encapsulates the spirit of BISA and its achievements throughout the last ten years. Its sixteen themes define the work of BISA and its reach across South Asia.
The report also informs of BISA’s outreach activities throughout the last decade and its impact on climate resilient agriculture. Themes such as ‘Managing Rice Residue Burning’, ‘Climate Smart Village Approach’, ‘Precision Phenotyping in Wheat Breeding’, ‘Developing Improved Crop Insurance Products’, ‘Mainstreaming Gender in Climate-Resilient Agriculture’ reveal how BISA scaled up these approaches with its advanced technology mechanisms. In addition, every theme captures information related to funding and research partners.
Overall, the ten-year report is a robust document which showcases how millions of farmers in South Asia have benefitted from the strong scientific partnership of BISA and national programs.
Jannatul Ferdous Asha is a Machinery Development Officer working with CIMMYT’s Sustainable Agrifood Systems (SAS) program in Bangladesh. She joined CIMMYT in 2019.
Asha completed an undergraduate degree in agricultural engineering and a masters degree in farm power and machinery at Bangladesh Agricultural University.
The 2021 Global Agricultural Productivity (GAP) Report warns that farmers and food workers globally face the intimidating challenge of producing food sustainably in a degrading environment. The global economic slowdown and climate change are making the situation even more difficult.
Three scientists from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) have been included in the 
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is offering a new set of elite, improved maize hybrids to partners for commercialization in southern Africa and similar agro-ecological zones. National agricultural research systems (NARS) and seed companies are invited to apply for licenses to register and commercialize these new hybrids, in order to bring the benefits of the improved seed to farming communities.
