Theme: Innovations

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.

Winners of 2019 MAIZE Youth Innovators Awards – Latin America announced

Written by Jennifer Johnson on October 7, 2019. Posted in Features.

The CGIAR Research Program on Maize (MAIZE) is pleased to announce the winners of the 2019 MAIZE Youth Innovators Awards – Latin America. These awards recognize the contributions of young women and men under 35 who are implementing innovations in Latin American maize-based agri-food systems, including research for development, seed systems, agribusiness, and sustainable intensification.

The winners will attend the 23^rd Latin American Maize Reunion (XXIII Reunión Latinoamericana del Maíz) in Monteria, Colombia, where they will receive their awards and present their work. Award recipients may also get the opportunity to collaborate with MAIZE and its partner scientists in Latin America on implementing or furthering their innovations.

This is the third instalment of the awards, following Asia in October 2018 and Africa in May 2019.

Congratulations to this year’s winners, seven exceptional young people working in Latin American maize-based systems:

Eduardo Cruz Rojo (Mexico) – Farmer category

Eduardo Cruz Rojo is a young agricultural entrepreneur, worried about rural out-migration in his region and about the poor agricultural practices that have led farming to cease to be profitable. He has a degree in logistics, and is originally from Alfajayucan, in Mexico’s state of Hidalgo. For the past four years he has been working on maize research and production, with a focus on improved agronomic practices that help farmers increase their yields. This includes soil improvement, organic fertilizers, earthworm compost and biological pest control. Through research and testing, he has shown smallholder farmers the cost-benefit of improved agricultural practices. This has been reflected in local farmers achieving improved soils and yields in an environmentally friendly manner.

Yésica Chazarreta (Argentina) – Researcher category

Yésica Chazarreta has a degree in genetics and is currently a doctoral fellow at the Scientific and Technologic Fund, working with the Crop Ecophysiology group at the National Agricultural Technology Institute (INTA) Pergamino in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her work centers on understanding the genetic and environmental control of the physiological determinants of filling, drying and quality of maize grains in genotypes destined for grain or silage. The objective is to generate knowledge to continue advancing in maize production improvement and to open the possibility of establishing improvement programs differentiated by planting times for her region, as well as to provide valuable information for the creation of mechanistic models to predict the evolution of humidity in maize grains. This information can help farmers make more informed decisions about the best time to harvest. In addition, Chazarreta hopes to deepen understanding of maize biomass quality for animal feed, a practice that has increased in her native country, Argentina, due to changes in crop management practices related to delays in planting dates.

Omar Garcilazo Rahme (Mexico) – Researcher category

Omar Garcilazo Rahme is a postgraduate student researching sustainable management of agro-ecosystems at the Meritorious Autonomous University of Puebla (BUAP).

A food engineer by training, he has a profound interest in Mexico’s bio-cultural heritage and maize as a staple food in his native country, as well as the various methods to produce and conserve the crop. His research project seeks to improve the economic, nutritious and sociocultural benefits associated with the production of maize.

He is currently collaborating in a technology transfer and innovation agency on the topics of nutritional labeling, big data and applied technology solutions for the agri-food industry.

Lucio Reinoso (Argentina) – Researcher category

Lucio Reinoso is an agronomist with a master’s degree in agricultural sciences from the National Southern University, Argentina. He has worked as a professor at the National University of Rio Negro since 2019. Reinoso was a fellow and researcher for 12 years at the National Institute for Agricultural Technology (INTA).

He works on sustainable models of maize production under irrigation in the irrigated valleys of Northern Patagonia, Argentina. Reinoso is specifically investigating the adaptation of maize to the soil and climatic conditions of the region, highlighting the water and nutritional needs to maximize production while also caring for the environment.

He works with local farmers to adapt no-till farming to scale and adjust irrigation management to improve water use efficiency while preserving the physical, chemical and biological characteristics of soil, increasing resilience.

Viviana López Ramírez (Colombia) – Researcher category

Viviana López Ramírez is a biological engineer with a master’s degree in environmental studies from the National University of Colombia in Medellin.

She is currently a doctoral student in biological sciences at the National University in Río Cuarto, Argentina, studying the application of bacteriocins for the biological control of phytopathogens.

This work on bacteriosis in maize is conducted by a multidisciplinary team and focuses on the identification of pathogenic bacteria isolated from a diverse maize population.

José Esteban Sotelo Mariche (Mexico) – Change Agent category

José Esteban Sotelo Mariche is an agronomist from the coastal region of Oaxaca, Mexico. He studied at Chapingo Autonomous University and is certified in rural development and food security.

Since 2012 he has offered capacity building to smallholder maize farmers in his region. In 2014 he formed Integradora Agroempresarial del Rio Verde to promote the production and commercialization of agricultural products. The group now has 80 members, including indigenous and Afro-Mexican farmers. In 2016 he began working with tortilla company Masienda to help local farmers export native maize to gourmet restaurants in the United States.

Most recently he has worked on the integration of the Center for Rural Technology Transfer and Validation (Centro de Validación y Transferencia de Tecnología Rural) to evaluate conservation agriculture systems, efficient water use and agroforestry. This space also serves to provide training activities and technical assistance to local farmers.

Carlos Barragan (Mexico) – Change Agent category

Carlos Barragan has a degree in agroecological engineering from Chapingo Autonomous University.

He collaborates with the MasAgro project in Mexico’s state of Oaxaca, helping to adapt small-scale production systems to climate change.

He also contributes to work on soil fertility as well as inclusive business models for smallholder farmers working in agri-food value chains.

A young man uses a precision spreader to distribute fertilizer in a field. (Photo: Mahesh Maske/CIMMYT)

Microsatellite data can help double impact of agricultural interventions

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on October 7, 2019. Posted in Press releases.

Data from microsatellites can be used to detect and double the impact of sustainable interventions in agriculture at large scales, according to a new study led by the University of Michigan (U-M).

By being able to detect the impact and target interventions to locations where they will lead to the greatest increase of yield gains, satellite data can help increase food production in a low-cost and sustainable way.

According to the team of researchers from U-M, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), and Stanford and Cornell universities, finding low-cost ways to increase food production is critical, given that feeding a growing population and increasing the yields of crops in a changing climate are some of the greatest challenges of the coming decades.

“Being able to use microsatellite data, to precisely target an intervention to the fields that would benefit the most at large scales will help us increase the efficacy of agricultural interventions,” said lead author Meha Jain, assistant professor at the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability.

Microsatellites are small, inexpensive, low-orbiting satellites that typically weigh 100 kilograms or less.

“About 60-70% of total world food production comes from smallholders, and they have the largest field-level yield gaps,” said Balwinder Singh, senior researcher at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

To show that the low-cost microsatellite imagery can quantify and enhance yield gains, the researchers conducted their study in smallholder wheat fields in the Eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains in India.

They ran an experiment on 127 farms using a split-plot design over multiple years. In one half of the field, the farmers applied nitrogen fertilizer using hand broadcasting, the typical fertilizer spreading method in this region. In the other half of the field, the farmers applied fertilizer using a new and low-cost fertilizer spreader.

To measure the impact of the intervention, the researchers then collected the crop-cut measures of yield, where the crop is harvested and weighed in field, often considered the gold standard for measuring crop yields. They also mapped field and regional yields using microsatellite and Landsat satellite data.

They found that without any increase in input, the spreader resulted in 4.5% yield gain across all fields, sites and years, closing about one-third of the existing yield gap. They also found that if they used microsatellite data to target the lowest yielding fields, they were able to double yield gains for the same intervention cost and effort.

“Being able to bring solutions to the farmers that will benefit most from them can greatly increase uptake and impact,” said David Lobell, professor of earth system science at Stanford University. “Too often, we’ve relied on blanket recommendations that only make sense for a small fraction of farmers. Hopefully, this study will generate more interest and investment in matching farmers to technologies that best suit their needs.”

The study also shows that the average profit from the gains was more than the amount of the spreader and 100% of the farmers were willing to pay for the technology again.

Jain said that many researchers are working on finding ways to close yield gaps and increase the production of low-yielding regions.

“A tool like satellite data that is scalable and low-cost and can be applied across regions to map and increase yields of crops at large scale,” she said.

Read the full study:
The impact of agricultural interventions can be doubled by using satellite data

The study is published in the October issue of Nature Sustainability. Other researchers include Amit Srivastava and Shishpal Poonia of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in New Delhi; Preeti Rao and Jennifer Blesh of the U-M School of Environment and Sustainability; Andrew McDonald of Cornell; and George Azzari and David Lobell of Stanford.

For more information, or to arrange interviews, please contact CIMMYT’s media team.

October is World Food Prize month at William Penn University

Written by Mary Donovan on September 30, 2019. Posted in In the media.

William Penn University’s Health & Life Sciences Division welcomed students, staff, faculty, and community members at the annual World Food Prize lecture on Wednesday, Oct. 16.

This year’s speaker was Bram Govaerts, the global Director Innovative Business Strategies with CIMMYT. Read more here.

A multi-crop, multi-use zero-tillage seeder at work on a conservation agriculture trial plot, left, at CIMMYT's headquarters in Texcoco, Mexico. The residues retained on the soil surface and the permanent raised beds are in clear contrast with the conventional plot on the right. (Photo: CIMMYT)

Scientists propose a low-cost, reliable system to measure soil organic carbon

Written by Alison Doody on September 26, 2019. Posted in News.

New research by an international team of scientists, including International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) Director for the Integrated Development Program, Bram Govaerts, outlines a proposed accounting system for organic carbon in soils that could encourage farmers to adopt better land management practices and increase levels of organic carbon in their soil.

Reported this month in the journal Carbon Management, the study highlights how increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) would build agricultural resilience and fertility and reduce greenhouse gas emissions — but we need to be able to measure it.

Soil is a huge carbon reservoir — in fact, soils contain one of the largest organic carbon stocks on the planet. With proper land management, soils have the potential to store even more. Improved SOC levels have also been connected with improved soil quality, reduced susceptibility to erosion and greater agricultural yields and yield stability, particularly under drought. This makes them a crucial player in climate change mitigation and agricultural resilience.

Policy makers and environmental groups are becoming increasingly interested in soil health and its effect on climate change. The 4 per 1000 initiative, launched at the COP 21 climate talks in Paris in 2015, argues that an annual growth rate of 0.4% in soil carbon stocks would significantly reduce human activity-related CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment highlights carbon sequestration as one of the options, alongside massive fossil fuel reduction, to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius, in accordance with the Paris Climate Agreement.

Increasing organic carbon content in soils also has another very important function: crop nutrition. Last year, researchers from CIMMYT and the Nature Conservancy found that wheat grown on soils rich in organic matter had more essential nutrients like zinc and protein.

However, increasing levels of organic carbon in the soil can be costly in the short term, so farmers need to see improvements in the performance of their soils as a result of their efforts.

Quantifying soil carbon

That’s where a global soil information system comes in. By integrating empirical models, expanded measurement and monitoring networks, remote sensing and crowdsourced management data, SOC stocks can be assessed efficiently and reliably. Farmers and policy makers would get a clear picture of how much soil organic carbon is increasing and at what rate.

The global soil information system would work by pulling different sources of existing information together to provide a comprehensive account of soil organic carbon stocks worldwide.

As SOC content can vary over time, an important component of the system would involve using monitoring networks at precise locations which can then be resampled regularly. Alongside this information, empirical models would be used to predict SOC changes based on already observed results from lab- and field-based experiments, and to predict the impacts of different soil and climate conditions. Remote sensing data can provide information on land cover, crop species and land management practices at a very low cost, to supplement and verify management activity data reported by land users.

The international team of scientists pointed out that greater coordination and transparency among scientists, remote sensing specialists and land managers is crucial to the success of a global soil information system.

Incentivizing carbon sequestration among land managers is no mean task. The authors argue that existing approaches like direct compensation to farmers for CO2 removal and storage, government subsidies such as the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the option of earning a premium price for producing sustainable agricultural products, need a reliable carbon accounting system to ensure their success. A global soil information system might just hold the key.

Read the full article:
“Quantifying carbon for agricultural soil management: from the current status toward a global soil information system” in Carbon Management, DOI: 10.1080/17583004.2019.1633231

This study was made possible through the support provided by the TomKat Foundation. Additional support was provided by the NASA Harvest Consortium (www.nasaharvest.org), a multi-disciplinary program that empowers informed agricultural decisions through the use of Earth observations.

Surveyors in Mexico collect data from farmers. (Photo: CIMMYT)

UN-sponsored report acknowledges CIMMYT’s use of data and technologies to promote sustainable farming in Latin America

Written by Ricardo Curiel on September 24, 2019. Posted in News.

CIMMYT’s projects in Latin America feature in a new report that aims to help countries use data to design public policies and projects that help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.

The Counting on The World to Act report was released on September 23, 2019, by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and the Thematic Research Network on Data and Statistics (TReNDS) during the 74^th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA 74) in New York City.

The report describes CIMMYT’s data management systems and tools as examples of “frontier technologies” for data gathering, management and analysis that effectively contribute to sustainable farming in Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico.

“As part of the data revolution, efficiencies are being derived from lower-tech approaches such as using citizen-generated data and smartphones to speed up existing survey-based approaches,” reads the introduction to CIMMYT’s sidebar story in Chapter 4, Incentives for Innovation.

The MasAgro Electronic Log that field technicians use to monitor crop cycles and management practices, and the AgroTutor application that offers farmers more specific and timely recommendations are some of the new affordable tools for data management that CIMMYT is successfully implementing in Latin America.

Read the full report on the TReNDS website.

Read more about MasAgro’s work for sustainable farming in Latin America here.

Researchers are hunting for the “climate gene” that can save food plants

Written by Mary Donovan on September 24, 2019. Posted in In the media.

If plants are to adapt to a harsher climate, they must have genes that tolerate stress. Read more here.

Toolkits to deal with Asian droughts

Written by Mary Donovan on September 23, 2019. Posted in In the media.

In July 2019 ICIMOD, along with its partners and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre in Mexico, launched a web-based Regional Drought Monitoring and Outlook System for South Asia – an integrated information platform linking weather and climate data with agriculture practices in South Asia. The system provides multiple indices for droughts and seasonal weather outlooks, besides maps and baseline. Read more here.

Bread wheat improvement using genomic tools will be critical to accelerate genetic gains in the crop's yield, disease resistance, and climate resilience. (Photo: Apollo Habtamu/CIMMYT)

Large-scale genomics will improve the yield, climate-resilience, and quality of bread wheat, new study shows

Written by Mike Listman on September 23, 2019. Posted in Press releases. 2 Comments on Large-scale genomics will improve the yield, climate-resilience, and quality of bread wheat, new study shows

Using the full wheat genome map published in 2018, combined with data from field testing of wheat breeding lines in multiple countries, an international team of scientists has identified significant new chromosomal regions for wheat yield and disease resistance and created a freely-available collection of genetic information and markers for more than 40,000 wheat lines.

Reported today in Nature Genetics, the results will speed up global efforts to breed more productive and climate-resilient varieties of bread wheat, a critical crop for world food security that is under threat from rising temperatures, rapidly-evolving fungal pathogens, and more frequent droughts, according to Philomin Juliana, wheat scientist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and first author of the new study.

“This work directly connects the wheat genome reference map with wheat lines and extensive field data from CIMMYT’s global wheat breeding network,” said Juliana. “That network in turn links to over 200 breeding programs and research centers worldwide and contributes to yield and other key traits in varieties sown on nearly half the world’s wheat lands.”

The staple food for more than 2.5 billion people, wheat provides 20% of human dietary calories and protein worldwide and is critical for the nutrition and food security of hundreds of millions of poor persons in regions such as North Africa and South Asia.

“Farmers and societies today face new challenges to feed rising and rapidly-urbanizing populations, and wheat epitomizes the issues,” said Ravi Singh, CIMMYT wheat breeder and corresponding author of the study. “Higher temperatures are holding back yields in major wheat-growing areas, extreme weather events are common, crop diseases are spreading and becoming more virulent, and soil and water are being depleted.”

Juliana said the study results help pave the way to apply genomic selection, an approach that has transformed dairy cow husbandry, for more efficient wheat breeding.

“Molecular markers are getting cheaper to use; meanwhile, it’s very costly to do field testing and selection involving many thousands of wheat plants over successive generations,” Juliana said. “Genome-wide marker-based selection can help breeders to precisely identify good lines in early breeding generations and to test plantlets in greenhouses, thereby complementing and streamlining field testing.”

The new study found that genomic selection could be particularly effective in breeding for wheat end-use quality and for resistance to stem rust disease, whose causal pathogen has been evolving and spreading in the form of highly-virulent new races.

The new study also documents the effectiveness of the global public breeding efforts by CIMMYT and partners, showing that improved wheat varieties from this work have accumulated multiple gene variants that favor higher yields, according to Hans-Joachim Braun, director of CIMMYT’s global wheat program.

“This international collaboration, which is the world’s largest publicly-funded wheat breeding program, benefits farmers worldwide and offers high-quality wheat lines that are released directly to farmers in countries, such as Afghanistan, that are unable to run a full-fledged wheat breeding program,” Braun explained.

The study results are expected to support future gene discovery, molecular breeding, and gene editing in wheat, Braun said.

Together with more resource-efficient cropping systems, high-yielding and climate-resilient wheat varieties will constitute a key component of the sustainable intensification of food production described in Strategy 3 of the recent EAT-Lancet Commission recommendations to transform the global food system. Large-scale genomics will play a key role in developing these varieties and staying ahead of climate- and disease-related threats to food security.

Funders of this work include USAID’s Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Applied Wheat Genomics. Contributing to the research described are research teams engaged in wheat improvement at CIMMYT, and the lab of Jesse Poland, Associate Professor at Kansas State University and Director of the USAID Applied Wheat Genomics Innovation Lab.

For more information, or to arrange interviews with the researchers, please contact:

Marcia MacNeil, Wheat Communications Officer, CIMMYT
M.MacNeil@cgiar.org, +52 (55) 5804 2004, ext. 2070

Ethiopian policymakers consider wider use of DNA fingerprinting

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on September 12, 2019. Posted in Features. 1 Comment on Ethiopian policymakers consider wider use of DNA fingerprinting

How to track adoption and assess the impact of maize and wheat varieties? Some of the methods used until now, like farmers’ recall surveys, have various limitations. In addition to relying exclusively on people’s memory and subjectivity, they are difficult to replicate and prone to errors.

DNA fingerprinting, on the other hand, allows objective evaluation and is considered the “gold standard” method for adoption and impact assessments.

It consists of a chemical test that shows the genetic makeup of living things, by separating strands of DNA and revealing the unique parts of their genome. The results show up as a pattern of stripes that can be matched against other samples.

This technique is extremely helpful in tracking crop varieties and monitoring their adoption. It can be used to assess the impact of research-for-development investments, guide breeding and seed system strategies, implement the intellectual property rights of breeders, assess the use of crop genetic resources, and informing policy.

On June 25, 2019, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) held a half-day workshop in Addis Ababa to discuss the use and application of DNA fingerprinting in Ethiopia for the tracking of crop varieties.

High-level government officials and major players in the agricultural sector were interested in learning more about the policy implications of this tool and how to mainstream its use.

CIMMYT’s Socioeconomics Program Director, Olaf Erenstein (left), talks to Eyasu Abraha, Minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources (center), and Mandefro Nigussie, Director General of the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research.

Introducing DNA fingerprinting in Ethiopia

The main DNA fingerprinting project in Ethiopia has been in operation since January 2016, focusing on the country’s two major staple crops: wheat and maize. The project covers the Amhara, Oromia, SNNPR, and Tigray regions, which together account for 92% and 79% of the national wheat and maize production.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has funded the project, which was jointly implemented by CIMMYT, the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR), Ethiopia’s Central Statistical Agency (CSA) and Diversity Arrays Technology (DArT).

The main objective of the project was to generate a knowledge base for the practical use of DNA fingerprinting, to mainstream the use of this technology, and to offer policy options and recommendations.

CIMMYT scientists Dave Hodson (left), Bekele Abeyo (center) and Sarah Hearne participated in the workshop.

Better monitoring for wheat self-sufficiency

At the workshop, researchers presented two policy briefs specific to Ethiopia: one focusing on policy implications of DNA fingerprinting for tracking bread wheat varieties and another one on how to revitalize the durum wheat sub-sector.

Speaking at the workshop, Eyasu Abraha, Minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources, noted that the government planned to achieve wheat grain self-sufficiency in the next few years by increasing wheat productivity in the highlands and expanding wheat production to the lowlands through irrigation. In this regard, improved crop variety development and dissemination is one of the key elements to increase agricultural productivity and improve the livelihood of millions of smallholder farmers.

According to Abraha, more than 130 wheat varieties have been released or registered in Ethiopia since the late 1960s, in collaboration with international research organizations. Public and private seed enterprises have multiplied and distributed these varieties to reach smallholder farmers.

Even though adoption studies have been conducted, there is still a strong need for more accurate and wider studies. In addition to tracking adoption and demand, using DNA fingerprinting could help understand the distribution of varieties across space and time.

Digitalizing African agriculture: paving the way to Africa’s progress through transforming the agriculture sector

Written by Sarah McLaughlin on September 6, 2019. Posted in Features.

This year’s African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF), which took place from September 3-6, 2019 in Accra, Ghana, focused on the potential of digital agriculture to transform African agriculture through innovations such as precision agriculture solutions for smallholder farmers, access to mobile financial services, data-driven agriculture, and ICT-enabled extension.

Committed to a digital transformation of African agricultural that benefits many, not a few.

The CGIAR has become a new partner of the AGRF and was presenting during the forum its five global challenges: planetary boundaries, sustaining food availability, promoting equality of opportunity, securing public health, and creating jobs and growth.

Despite its importance of the continental economy and untapped resources, African farming sector is still dominated by ageing smallholders cultivating few acres of cropland, using not much inputs and lagging far behind productivity world standards.

Many experts believe digital agriculture could help African agriculture leapfrog to overcome its geographical, social and economic bottlenecks, bringing successful technologies to scale faster, and market opportunities even for remote smallholders. Some countries like Ghana or Kenya are becoming digital hubs for agritech-savvy young entrepreneurs along the food value chains, from drone for Ag, linking farmers to the marketplace, or offering mobile mechanization or financial services.

Large initiatives were announced to foster this growth potential, in particular towards the youth in agriculture, like the Mastercard Foundation’s commitment to invest $500 million to support for young agripreneurs within its Young Africa Works initiative, and the World Bank’s One Million Farmer platform in Kenya.

In force at the AGRF 2019, agricultural research organizations such as the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) have a strong role to play in this digital transformation, both as innovator creating for instance new digital maize phenotyping tool for faster yield assessment, and user of tech innovations to improve research targeting and impact.

Improving smallholders’ resilience through digital innovations

The millions of African rainfed farmers are in a risky business, from rising climate shocks to emerging pests and diseases like the invasive fall armyworm or the maize lethal necrosis. CIMMYT Director General Martin Kropff highlighted the importance of digital tools to predict these risks through smart, scalable early warning systems like the award-winning diagnostic tool Marple that helps map wheat rust outbreaks. Researchers can also better predict the farms’ responses to these risks through accurate modelling. They can for instance better assess the potential yield benefits of drought and heat tolerance under different climate change scenarios.

CIMMYT crop breeders use tablet-based disease scoring applications and test new imagery and high-tech sensors for more accurate and cost-effective data collection. Kropff underlined the key role digital tools play to speed up science breakthroughs and impact delivery at the farm level.

Tailored advice for farmers and policy-makers to enable sustainable intensification

“The future is no longer where it used to be. Farmers’ reality has become even more unpredictable,” said Enock Chikava, deputy director, agricultural development at the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation during a vivid debate on how to reshape the future agronomic research so it delivers more site-specific and responsive advice.

Much of the agronomy work within the region remains fragmented across research institutes, commodities and projects, and struggles to go beyond blanket recommendations that are most of the time not adapted to local farming conditions.

However, there is a fast-growing wealth of georeferenced data that can describe the diverse farming landscapes and socio-economic context of each African smallholder farmer. The starting point to exploit these data and get the right solutions for each farmer is to ask the right questions.

Moderated by Samuel Gameda, CIMMYT soil scientist, who shared the lessons from the Taking Maize Agronomy to Scale (TAMASA) project, this session on Agronomy at Scale discussed what public information goods like crop yield prediction maps or extension apps, such as the maize variety selector, would be the most useful for farmers and large-scale agronomic initiatives to trigger this much needed sustainable intensification of millions of African smallholdings. What investments would make a difference to scale the use of these new decision-support tools?

“Agronomic research must be carried out from a broader perspective of large-scale relevance and application. It is also more and more a joint effort and responsibility between smallholder farmers, the research community and public and private sectors, with each component playing specific and interacting roles. The current era of powerful and accessible ICT tools and big data analytics make this much more feasible and should be incorporated to enable precision agronomy for all, this is my take home message,” said Gameda.

“This data revolution will only work if we invest in research data quality and data management,” stressed Bram Govaerts, CIMMYT’s Integrated Development Program director. “That will generate better evidence for decision-makers to guide impact investment plans, deciding on which technology e.g. a new drought-tolerant crop variety and put the money in the right leveraging point,” Govaerts concluded.

The largest forum on African agriculture, AGRF 2019 gathered more than 2,200 delegates and high-level dignitaries, from heads of State and government officials to leaders of global and regional development institutions; top agri-food businesses and local entrepreneurs; financial institutions; mobile network operators and tech leaders, as well as lead representatives of farmer organizations.

Cover photo: Delegation from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) at the African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) 2019.

Starting machinery to husk maize cobs at Green Farm near Kitale, Trans-Nzoia. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)

Study proposes alternative to conventional technology adoption research in smallholder agriculture

Written by Mary Donovan on September 4, 2019. Posted in News.

The development community is introducing increasingly complex and systemic technological designs for sustainable improvements to agriculture. Yet, a systemic perspective is hard to find in “adoption-outcome” focused analyses of technological change processes. In order to improve development interventions, it is necessary not only to analyze both successes and failures, but also the process and impacts of technological change.

Researchers at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) recently published a paper on rethinking technological change in smallholder agriculture, arguing against the conventional approach to studying technology adoption.

The problem with the concept of technology adoption

While the adoption rate of newly introduced technologies is still used in the evaluation of agricultural research and development, the theory of technology adoption is an insufficient framework for understanding technological change. It is too linear, too binary, too focused on individual decisions and gives an inaccurate and misleading picture to researchers.

The theory of adoption treats technology like a “black box” that is transferred smoothly from one setting to another, following a linear progression of old and inferior tools and methods to new improved ones. This theory is too simplistic to align with the complex realities of the capabilities and agency of multiple actors. In addition, in cases of participatory technology development, where intended users are involved in the creation of innovations, adoption rates are often limited due to the relatively small scale of the project.

Using adoption rate as the only indicator of success or failure can lead researchers to ignore wider impacts of the introduction of a new technology. Adoption rates could go up, but use of a new technology could cause harm to social relations, the local environment, or its resilience. Low adoption rates could classify a program as a failure, while farmers benefited substantially in undetected ways, for example forming networks or acquiring new skills and knowledge. A singular focus on adoption rates thus limits our understanding of what happens in processes of technological change.

Farmer Kausila Chanara direct dry seeding rice in Ramghat, Surkhet, Nepal. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT). — Farmer Kausila Chanara direct dry seeding rice in Ramghat, Surkhet, Nepal. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)

An alternative conceptual framework

In addition to the introduction of a new technology to small-scale farming systems, technological change involves the agency of many social actors. The agency of farmers, scientists, project managers and extension officers is key to understand whether a new technology is perceived to be useful, accessible or realistic, as well as how it is adjusted and changing social relations.

A new framework is needed to capture this reconfiguration of social and technological components that result from the introduction of a new technology to a community.

The authors of this paper propose an alternative conceptual framework with an agent-, practice- and process-oriented approach to better understand technological change. The framework is composed of four key components: propositions, encounters, dispositions and responses.

Propositions are composed of artefacts, methods, techniques and practices and a proposed mode of engagement in agricultural production. Encounters can be deliberately organized, for example a field day, or spontaneous, when a farmer sees a neighbor using a new tool. Intended users of technology may be disposed to respond in a variety of different ways, and dispositions may change over time. Finally, responses are a process or pathway that is likely to involve adjustment or recalibration to make the new technology work for the farmer.

Further work to operationalize this framework is needed. The authors suggest a next step of developing indicators to measure learning, experimentation and behavioral change as part of analyzing technological change processes.

Members of the International Wheat Yield Partnership (IWYP) which focuses on translational research to boost wheat yields.

Bottlenecks between basic and applied plant science jeopardize life-saving crop improvements

Written by Marcia MacNeil on September 3, 2019. Posted in News.

Visitors at CIMMYT’s experimental station in Obregon, Mexico, where elite wheat lines are tested for new traits.

For a number of reasons, including limited interdisciplinary collaboration and a dearth of funding, revolutionary new plant research findings are not being used to improve crops.

“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. This kind of research is often seen as more complicated and time consuming than basic research and less sexy than working at the “cutting edge” where research is typically divorced from agricultural realities in order to achieve faster and cleaner results; however, modern tools — such as genomics, marker-assisted breeding, high throughput phenotyping of crop traits using drones, and speed breeding techniques — are making it both faster and cost-effective.

In a new article in Crop Breeding, Genetics, and Genomics, wheat physiologist Matthew Reynolds of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and co-authors make the case for increasing not only funding for translational research, but the underlying prerequisites: international and interdisciplinary collaboration towards focused objectives and a visionary approach by funding organizations.

“It’s ironic,” said Reynolds. “Many breeding programs have invested in the exact technologies — such as phenomics, genomics and informatics — that can be powerful tools for translational research to make real improvements in yield and adaptation to climate, disease and pest stresses. But funding to integrate these tools in front-line breeding is quite scarce, so they aren’t reaching their potential value for crop improvement.”

Many research findings are tested for their implications for wheat improvement by the International Wheat Yield Partnership (IWYP) at the IWYP Hub, a centralized technical platform for evaluating innovations and building them into elite wheat varieties, co-managed by CIMMYT at its experimental station in Obregon, Mexico.

IWYP has its roots with the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat (WHEAT), which in 2010 formalized the need to boost both wheat yield potential as well as its adaptation to heat and drought stress. The network specializes in translational research, harnessing scientific findings from around the world to boost genetic gains in wheat, and capitalizing on the research and pre-breeding outputs of WHEAT and the testing networks of the International Wheat Improvement Network (IWIN). These efforts also led to the establishment of the Heat and Drought Wheat Improvement Consortium (HeDWIC).

“We’ve made extraordinary advances in understanding the genetic basis of important traits,“ said IWYP’s Richard Flavell, a co-author of the article. “But if they aren’t translated into crop production, their societal value is lost.”

The authors, all of whom have proven track records in both science and practical crop improvement, offer examples where exactly this combination of factors led to the impactful application of innovative research findings.

Improving the Vitamin A content of maize: A variety of maize with high Vitamin A content has the potential to reduce a deficiency that can cause blindness and a compromised immune system. This development happened as a result of many translational research efforts, including marker-assisted selection for a favorable allele, using DNA extracted from seed of numerous segregating breeding crosses prior to planting, and even findings from gerbil, piglet and chicken models — as well as long-term, community-based, placebo-controlled trials with children — that helped establish that Vitamin A maize is bioavailable and bioefficacious.
Flood-tolerant rice: Weather variability due to climate change effects is predicted to include both droughts and floods. Developing rice varieties that can withstand submergence in water due to flooding is an important outcome of translational research which has resulted in important gains for rice agriculture. In this case, the genetic trait for flood tolerance was recognized, but it took a long time to incorporate the trait into elite germplasm breeding programs. In fact, the development of flooding tolerant rice based on a specific SUB 1A allele took over 50 years at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines (1960–2010), together with expert molecular analyses by others. The translation program to achieve efficient incorporation into elite high yielding cultivars also required detailed research using molecular marker technologies that were not available at the time when trait introgression started.

Other successes include new approaches for improving the yield potential of spring wheat and the discovery of traits that increase the climate resilience of maize and sorghum.

One way researchers apply academic research to field impact is through phenotyping. Involving the use of cutting edge technologies and tools to measure detailed and hard to recognize plant traits, this area of research has undergone a revolution in the past decade, thanks to more affordable digital measuring tools such as cameras and sensors and more powerful and accessible computing power and accessibility.

Scientists are now able to identify at a detailed scale plant traits that show how efficiently a plant is using the sun’s radiation for growth, how deep its roots are growing to collect water, and more — helping breeders select the best lines to cross and develop.

An Australian pine at CIMMYT’s experimental station in Texoco, Mexico, commemorates the 4th symposium of the International Plant Phenotyping Network.

Phenotyping is key to understanding the physiological and genetic bases of plant growth and adaptation and has wide application in crop improvement programs. Recording trait data through sophisticated non-invasive imaging, spectroscopy, image analysis, robotics, high-performance computing facilities and phenomics databases allows scientists to collect information about traits such as plant development, architecture, plant photosynthesis, growth or biomass productivity from hundreds to thousands of plants in a single day. This revolution was the subject of discussion at a 2016 gathering of more than 200 participants at the International Plant Phenotyping Symposium hosted by CIMMYT in Mexico and documented in a special issue of Plant Science.

There is currently an explosion in plant science. Scientists have uncovered the genetic basis of many traits, identified genetic markers to track them and developed ways to measure them in breeding programs. But most of these new findings and ideas have yet to be tested and used in breeding programs, wasting their potentially enormous societal value.

Establishing systems for generating and testing new hypotheses in agriculturally relevant systems must become a priority, Reynolds states in the article. However, for success, this will require interdisciplinary, and often international, collaboration to enable established breeding programs to retool. Most importantly, scientists and funding organizations alike must factor in the long-term benefits as well as the risks of not taking timely action. Translating a research finding into an improved crop that can save lives takes time and commitment. With these two prerequisites, basic plant research can and should positively impact food security.

Authors would like to acknowledge the following funding organizations for their commitment to translational research.

The International Wheat Yield Partnership (IWYP) is supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) in the UK; the U. S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in the USA; and the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture (SFSA) in Switzerland.

The Heat and Drought Wheat Improvement Consortium (HeDWIC) is supported by the Sustainable Modernization of Traditional Agriculture (MasAgro) Project by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (SADER) of the Government of Mexico; previous projects that underpinned HeDWIC were supported by Australia’s Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC).

The Queensland Government’s Department of Agriculture and Fisheries in collaboration with The Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) have provided long-term investment for the public sector sorghum pre-breeding program in Australia, including research on the stay-green trait. More recently, this translational research has been led by the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI) within The University of Queensland.

ASI validation work and ASI translation and extension components with support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, respectively.

Financial support for the maize proVA work was partially provided by HarvestPlus (www.HarvestPlus.org), a global alliance of agriculture and nutrition research institutions working to increase the micronutrient density of staple food crops through biofortification. The CGIAR Research Program MAIZE (CRP-MAIZE) also supported this research.

The CGIAR Research Program on Wheat (WHEAT) is led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), with the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) as a primary research partner. Funding comes from CGIAR, national governments, foundations, development banks and other agencies, including the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Institutional forces (arrows) alter the balance of (a) research and development (R&D) investments by the public relative to the private sector, (b) R&D emphasis on crops with low-value relative to high-value seed markets, which are often the crops of resource-poor versus resource-wealthy farmers, and therefore (c) who will benefit from the technologies as consumers of the improved crops. Achieving equity in access to the potential benefits of genetically engineered crops (or any technology, e.g., internet, cell phones, or radio) may require policy changes and actions (forces) to counterbalance prevailing trends. (Figure: Nancy Valtierra/CIMMYT)

Genome editing, gene drives, and synthetic biology: Will they contribute to disease-resistant crops, and who will benefit?

Written by Mike Listman on September 3, 2019. Posted in News.

Ensuring the access of small-scale farmers to products and potential benefits from genetic engineering (GE) technologies for agriculture will require concerted investment and research by public institutions worldwide and particularly in low- and middle-income countries.

This was a key conclusion of a new review paper describing cutting-edge GE applications that offer exciting options to enhance the disease and pest resistance of important food crops and the ecological sustainability of cropping systems.

The technologies include gene editing (site-specific changes to DNA in a genome), gene drives (greatly enhancing or reducing frequency of genes that affect insect or pathogen reproduction), and synthetic biology (re-design or construction of biological devices, for example chromosomes or organelles).

Authored by international experts in policy, socioeconomics, and biological science, the new paper outlines potential uses of the technologies, particularly to address problems that affect resource-poor farmers or consumers, such as the viruses that attack cassava, the Striga weed that is a parasite of maize, or the fungal pathogen of groundnut that produces deadly toxins.

A weak capacity for research and development in many countries, combined with a small and declining public investment, raises questions about those nations’ ability to develop and deliver high-quality GE technologies or realize their benefits.

“The concern is that farmers not served by leading companies, who are developing the technologies, will be unable to obtain new, resistant crop varieties or other products of these technologies,” said Kevin Pixley, director of the genetic resources program of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and first author of the new paper.

The technologies have already proven effective for controlling bacterial, fungal, and viral plant pathogens, as well as insects that transmit them. For example, GE approaches to control cassava brown streak disease and cassava bacterial blight—for which there are few or no known sources of resistance in cassava itself—appear on track to produce resistant versions of cassava.

Future gene drive technologies that can be kept within specific areas and reversed if needed may offer ways to control insects that carry plant diseases or weeds that damage crops, and synthetic biology could someday create plants that are immune to invading viruses.

“The private sector is likely to invest mainly in major crops and major traits that will bring them profits, so work on minor, perennial, clonal, or staple food crops of lower-income countries may suffer,” said José Falck-Zepeda, senior research fellow and leader of the policy team in the program for biosafety systems of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and a co-author of the review paper.

Many countries are still deciding whether and how they will regulate new GE products. The new paper explains how key factors including the cost and complexity of complying with biosafety regulations will shape the potential distribution of the technologies and products, determining which institutions undertake the related research and, as a result, which traits and crops are studied.

Civil society concerns regarding GE technologies and how or by whom they are deployed add important considerations to the complex questions surrounding the use of GE products.

“Realizing the potential of GE crops will require investments and policies for research, intellectual property regimes, and regulatory frameworks,” say the authors, “and societies must also address legitimate concerns about their responsible stewardship, agroecological sustainability, and equitable access to associated benefits.”

An open-access version of the full paper is available online:
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-phyto-080417-045954
Pixley, K.V., J.B. Falck-Zepeda, K.E. Giller, L.L. Glenna, F. Gould, C.A. Mallory-Smith, D.M. Stelly, and C.N. Stewart. 2019. Genome editing, gene drives, and synthetic biology: Will they contribute to disease-resistant crops, and who will benefit? Annu. Rev. Phytopathol 57:8.1–8.24.

See also the related feature by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI):
Will genetic engineering contribute to disease-resistant crops, and who will benefit?

Elite wheat varieties at CIMMYT’s experimental station in Ciudad Obregon, in Mexico's Sonora state. (Photo: Marcia MacNeil/CIMMYT)

Extensive use of wild grass-derived “synthetic hexaploid wheat” adds diversity and resilience to modern bread wheat

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on September 3, 2019. Posted in Press releases.

In a new study, scientists have found that genome segments from a wild grass are present in more than one in five of elite bread wheat lines developed by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

Scientists at CIMMYT and other research institutes have been crossing wild goat grass with durum wheat — the wheat used for pasta — since the 1980s, with the help of complex laboratory manipulations. The new variety, known as synthetic hexaploid wheat, boosts the genetic diversity and resilience of wheat, notoriously vulnerable due to its low genetic diversity, adding novel genes for disease resistance, nutritional quality and heat and drought tolerance.

The study, which aimed to measure the effect of these long-term efforts using state-of-the-art molecular technology, also found that 20% of CIMMYT modern wheat lines contain an average of 15% of the genome segments from the wild goat grass.

“We’ve estimated that one-fifth of the elite wheat breeding lines entered in international yield trials has at least some contribution from goat grass,” said Umesh Rosyara, genomic breeder at CIMMYT and first author of the paper, which was published in Nature Scientific Reports. “This is much higher than expected.”

Although the synthetic wheat process can help bring much-needed diversity to modern wheat, crossing with synthetic wheat is a complicated process that also introduces undesirable traits, which must later be eliminated during the breeding process.

“Many breeding programs hesitate to use wild relatives because undesirable genomic segments are transferred in addition to desirable segments,” said Rosyara. “The study results can help us devise an approach to quickly eliminate undesirable segments while maintaining desirable diversity.”

CIMMYT breeding contributions are present in nearly half the wheat sown worldwide, many of such successful cultivars have synthetic wheat in the background, so the real world the impact is remarkable, according to Rosyara.

“With this retrospective look at the development and use of synthetic wheat, we can now say with certainty that the best wheat lines selected over the past 30 years are benefiting from the genes of wheat’s wild relatives,” he explained. “Even more, using cutting-edge molecular marker technology, we should be able to target and capture the most useful genes from wild sources and better harness this rich source of diversity.”

Modern breeders tread in nature’s footsteps

The common bread wheat we know today arose when an ancient grain called emmer wheat naturally cross-bred with goat grass around 10,000 years ago. During this natural crossing, very few goat grass genes crossed over, and as a result, current bread wheat is low in diversity for the genome contributed by goat grass. Inedible and considered a weed, goat grass still has desirable traits including disease resistance and tolerance to climate stresses.

Scientists sought to broaden wheat’s genetic diversity by re-enacting the ancient, natural cross that gave rise to bread wheat, crossing improved durum wheat or primitive emmer with different variants of goat grass. The resulting synthetic wheats were crossed again with improved wheats to help remove undesirable wild genome segments.

Once synthetic wheat is developed, it can be readily crossed with any elite wheat lines thus serving as a bridge to transfer diversity from durum wheat and wild goat grass to bread wheat. This helps breeders develop high yielding varieties with desirable traits for quality varieties and broad adaption.

CIMMYT is the first to use wheat’s wild relatives on such a large scale, and the synthetic derivative lines have been used by breeding programs worldwide to develop popular and productive bread wheat varieties. One example, Chuanmai 42, released in China in 2003, stood as the leading wheat variety in the Sichuan Basin for over a decade. Other synthetic derivative lines such as Sokoll and Vorobey appear in the lineage of many successful wheat lines, contributing crucial yield stability — the ability to maintain high yields over time under varying conditions.

The successful, large-scale use of genes from wheat’s wild relatives has helped broaden the genetic diversity of modern, improved bread wheat nearly to the level of the crop’s heirloom varieties. This diversity is needed to combat future environmental, pest, and disease challenges to the production of a grain that provides 20% of the calories consumed by humans worldwide.

This work was supported by the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat (WHEAT) and Seeds of Discovery (SeeD), a multi-project initiative comprising MasAgro Biodiversidad, a joint initiative of CIMMYT and the Ministry of agriculture and rural development (SADER) through the MasAgro (Sustainable Modernization of Traditional Agriculture) project; the CGIAR Research Programs on Maize (MAIZE) and Wheat (WHEAT); and a computation infrastructure and data analysis project supported by the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). CIMMYT’s worldwide partners participated in the evaluation of CIMMYT international wheat yield trials.

For more information, or to arrange interviews with the researchers, please contact:

Marcia MacNeil, Wheat Communications Officer, CIMMYT
M.MacNeil@cgiar.org, +52 (55) 5804 2004, ext. 2070

Rodrigo Ordóñez, Communications Manager, CIMMYT
r.ordonez@cgiar.org, +52 (55) 5804 2004, ext. 1167

About the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat
The CGIAR Research Program on Wheat (WHEAT) is led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), with the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) as a primary research partner. Funding comes from CGIAR, national governments, foundations, development banks and other agencies, including the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

About CIMMYT
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is the global leader in publicly funded maize and wheat research and related farming systems. Headquartered near Mexico City, CIMMYT works with hundreds of partners throughout the developing world to sustainably increase the productivity of maize and wheat cropping systems, thus improving global food security and reducing poverty. CIMMYT is a member of CGIAR and leads the CGIAR Research Programs on Maize and Wheat, and the Excellence in Breeding Platform. The center receives support from national governments, foundations, development banks and other public and private agencies.

A new publication highlights the diverse ways in which CIMMYT's research is propelling the digital transformation of agriculture in Africa.

CIMMYT research at the forefront of the digital revolution in African agriculture

Written by Sam Storr on September 2, 2019. Posted in News.

At the African Green Revolution Forum 2019, global and African leaders come together to develop actionable plans that will move African agriculture forward. This year, the forum is taking place in Ghana on the week of September 3, 2019, under the theme “Grow digital: Leveraging digital transformation to drive sustainable food systems in Africa.” Participants will explore the practical application of the emerging elements of the digital era such as big data, blockchain, digital IDs, drones, machine learning, robotics, and sensors.

CIMMYT’s work in this area is showcased in a new leaflet entitled “Data-driven solutions for Africa: Using smart tools to combat climate change.” The leaflet highlights innovations such as crowdsourced crop disease tracking and response systems in Ethiopia, low-cost imaging tools to speed up the development of hardier varieties, and combining geospatial data with crop models to predict climate change and deliver personalized recommendations to farmers.

Speaking at the conference attended by 2,000 delegates and high-level dignitaries, CIMMYT Director General Martin Kropff will give the keynote remarks during the session “Digital innovations to strengthen resilience for smallholders in African food systems” on September 3. This panel discussion will focus on how the data revolution can support African smallholder farmers to adapt quickly challenges like recurrent droughts or emerging pests, including the invasive fall armyworm. The Global Resilience Partnership (GRP), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), CABI, and the Minister of Agriculture of Burkina Faso will be among the other panelists in the session.

The same day, CIMMYT will also participate to an important “Agronomy at scale through data for good” panel discussion with speakers from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, research organizations and private companies. The session will highlight how digital agriculture could help deliver better targeted, site-specific agronomic advice to small farmers.

During the forum, the CIMMYT delegation will seek collaborations in other important drivers of change like gender transformation of food systems and smallholder mechanization.

They will join public sector leaders, researchers, agri-preneurs, business leaders and farmers in outlining how to leverage the growth in digital technologies to transform food systems and agricultural livelihoods in Africa.