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.

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.

The Prime Minister of Rwanda, Édouard Ngirente, and other leaders discussed regional and national priorities at the Africa Food Security Leadership Dialogue. (Photo: Martin Kropff/CIMMYT)

African leaders rely on science and technology to improve food security

Written by Jennifer Johnson on August 28, 2019. Posted in Features.

Rural areas in Africa are facing unprecedented challenges. From high levels of rural-urban migration to the need to maintain crop production and food security under the added stress of climate change, rural areas need investment and support. The recent Africa Food Security Leadership Dialogue brought together key regional actors to discuss the current situation as well as ways to catalyze actions and financing to help address Africa’s worsening food security crisis under climate change.

Heads of state, ministers of agriculture and finance, heads of international institutions and regional economic commissions, Nobel laureates, and eminent scientists took part in the dialogue in Kigali, Rwanda, on August 5 and 6, 2019.

This high-level meeting was convened by core partners including the African Union Commission (AUC), the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and the World Bank.

The Director General of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Martin Kropff, participated in a session entitled “Leveraging science to end hunger by 2025”, where he discussed the challenges to adapt Africa’s wheat sector to climate change, and what CIMMYT is doing to help. Demand for wheat is growing faster than any other commodity, and sub-Saharan Africa has tremendous potential to increase wheat production. People in Africa consume nearly 47 million tons of wheat a year. However, more than 80% of that — 39 million tons— is imported and used for human consumption, costing the countries billions of dollars. Kropff discussed the great strides CIMMYT has made in supporting wheat production on the continent despite biological challenges such as Ug99, a dangerous strain of wheat rust native to east Africa.

“The potential for wheat production in Africa is tremendous; existing varieties already realize very high yields but poor agronomic practices often result in low yields,” Kropff said. “The challenges we have to tackle together are as much in reshaping policies in favor of wheat and develop the wheat market and surrounding infrastructure. Africa’s environment is friendly for wheat production, but it needs the right supporting policies to develop a sustainable wheat market.”

Kropff highlighted Ethiopia’s case. “Ethiopia has decided to become self-sufficient in wheat by 2025. CIMMYT is already talking to the government and working with the national system to assure the best varieties and technologies will be used. We are ready to do this with every single African nation that is interested in producing quality wheat.”

Farmer Galana Mulatu harvests a wheat research plot in Ethiopia. (Photo: P.Lowe/CIMMYT)

Climate change is also posing dire threats to maize, a key staple crop in sub-Saharan Africa.

We talked to Cosmos Magorokosho, CIMMYT researcher and project leader of the Stress Tolerant Maize for Africa (STMA) project, who attended the dialogue, on what CIMMYT can do to better support farmers in Africa’s rural communities.

How can projects such as Stress Tolerant Maize for Africa contribute to protecting food security in Africa in the face of climate change?

Stress-tolerant maize varieties can contribute by cushioning farmers against total crop failures in case of drought and heat stress, among other stresses during the growing season. In addition, stress-tolerant varieties can also yield well under good growing conditions, therefore benefiting farmers both during difficult growing seasons as well as those seasons when conditions are favorable for maize growth.

What can be done to support rural areas and smallholder farmers in Africa to improve food security?

Rural areas and smallholder farmers need support with climate resilient crop varieties, supporting agronomic practices, environment conserving farming practices, labor and drudgery- reducing farm operations, access to affordable finance, and rewarding markets for their produce.

What role can international research organizations such as CIMMYT play in this?

International agricultural research can unlock the potential of small holder farmers through the generation of new appropriate technologies, testing and helping farmers adopt those technologies, refining and fine tuning of new technologies, as well as scaling up and out of farmer-demanded technologies. International agriculture research can influence policy across and within borders, political divide, religion, ecologies, and diversity of farmers.

What would it take for CIMMYT to effectively move science from the lab and package it into solutions that can be disseminated and adopted by majority of small family farms in Africa?

CIMMYT should keep and broaden its engagement with farmers, policy makers, and continue with capacity enhancement of partners to reach scale and bring new cutting-edge smallholder-farmer appropriate technologies to farmers’ fields in the shortest possible timeframe.

Scientists use DNA fingerprinting to gauge the spread of modern wheat in Afghanistan

Written by Mike Listman on August 22, 2019. Posted in Press releases.

Wheat is Afghanistan’s number-one staple crop, but the country doesn’t grow enough and must import millions of tons of grain each year to satisfy domestic demand. — Wheat is Afghanistan’s number-one staple crop, but the country does not grow enough and must import millions of tons of grain each year to satisfy domestic demand.

Despite the severe social and political unrest that constrain agriculture in Afghanistan, many farmers are growing high-yielding, disease resistant varieties developed through international, science-based breeding and made available to farmers as part of partnerships with national wheat experts and seed producers.

These and other findings have emerged from the first-ever large-scale use of DNA fingerprinting to assess Afghanistan farmers’ adoption of improved wheat varieties, which are replacing less productive local varieties and landraces, according to a paper published yesterday in the science journal BMC Genomics.

The study is part of an activity supported between 2003 and 2018 by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, through which the Agricultural Research Institute of Afghanistan and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) introduced, tested, and released improved wheat varieties.

“As part of our study, we established an extensive ‘reference library’ of released varieties, elite breeding lines, and Afghan wheat landraces,” said Susanne Dreisigacker, wheat molecular breeder at CIMMYT and lead author of the new paper.

“We then compared wheat collected on farmers’ fields with the reference library. Of the 560 wheat samples collected in 4 provinces during 2015-16, farmers misidentified more than 40%, saying they were of a different variety from that which our DNA analyses later identified.”

Wheat is the most important staple crop in Afghanistan — more than 20 million of the country’s rural inhabitants depend on it — but wheat production is unstable and Afghanistan has been importing between 2 and 3 million tons of grain each year to meet demand.

Over half of the population lives below the poverty line, with high rates of malnutrition. A key development aim in Afghanistan is to foster improved agronomic practices and the use of high quality seed of improved wheat varieties, which together can raise yields by over 50%.

“Fungal diseases, particularly yellow rust and stem rust, pose grave threats to wheat in the country,” said Eric Huttner, research program manager for crops at the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) and co-author of the present paper. “It’s crucial to know which wheat varieties are being grown where, in order to replace the susceptible ones with high-performing, disease resistant varieties.”

Varietal adoption studies typically rely on questionnaires completed by breeders, extension services, seed producers, seed suppliers, and farmers, but such surveys are complicated, expensive, and often inaccurate.

“DNA fingerprinting resolves uncertainties regarding adoption and improves related socioeconomic research and farm policies,” Huttner explained, adding that for plant breeding this technology has been used mostly to protect intellectual property, such as registered breeding lines and varieties in more developed economies.

This new study was commissioned by ACIAR as a response to a request from the Government of Afghanistan for assistance in characterizing the Afghan wheat gene bank, according to Huttner.

“This provided the reference library against which farmers’ samples could be compared,” he explained. “Accurately identifying the varieties that farmers grow is key evidence on the impact of introducing improved varieties and will shape our future research

Joint research and development efforts involving CIMMYT, ACIAR, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, the International Centre of Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA), French Cooperation, and Afghanistan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL) and Agricultural Research Institute (ARIA) have introduced more than 400 modern, disease-resistant wheat varieties over the last two decades. Nearly 75% of the wheat grown in the areas surveyed for this study comes from these improved varieties.

“New sequencing technologies are increasingly affordable and their cost will continue to fall,” said Dreisigacker. “Expanded use of DNA fingerprinting can easily and accurately identify the wheat cultivars in farmers’ fields, thus helping to target breeding, agronomy, and development efforts for better food security and farmer livelihoods.”

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 ACIAR
As Australia’s specialist international agricultural research for development agency, the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) brokers and funds research partnerships between Australian scientists and their counterparts in developing countries. Since 1982, ACIAR has supported research projects in eastern and southern Africa, East Asia, South and West Asia and the Pacific, focusing on crops, agribusiness, horticulture, forestry, livestock, fisheries, water and climate, social sciences, and soil and land management. ACIAR has commissioned and managed more than 1,500 research projects in 36 countries, partnering with 150 institutions along with more than 50 Australian research organizations.

About Afghanistan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock
The Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL) of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan works on the development and modernization of agriculture, livestock and horticulture. The ministry launches programs to support the farmers, manage natural resources, and strengthen agricultural economics. Its programs include the promotion and introduction of higher-value economic crops, strengthening traditional products, identifying and publishing farm-tailored land technologies, boosting cooperative programs, agricultural economics, and export with marketing.

Breaking Ground: Anani Bruce guards Africa’s maize harvest from insect pests

Written by Mike Listman on August 21, 2019. Posted in Features.

Anani Bruce, maize entomologist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) since 2013, is intensively engaged in an expert partnership supporting African maize farmers’ stand against deadly insect pests, especially fall armyworm and stem borers.

A moth species native to the Americas, fall armyworm was detected in Nigeria in 2016 and in less than three years has overrun sub-Saharan Africa’s maize growing regions. At its larval stage, it feeds on leaves and ears, causing annual harvest losses whose value can exceed $6 billion.

Bruce and his colleagues are rushing to develop maize varieties that feature native genetic resistance to fall armyworm and to arm farmers with locally suited control measures. Finding and strengthening native resistance in maize against the pest is a key pillar of integrated pest management.

“The fall armyworm is so challenging that there’s no single, easy fix,” said Bruce, who earned a PhD in Entomology at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) and Kenyatta University, Kenya, in 2008. “We are testing and promoting an integrated management approach which, along with host plant resistance, includes biological control, habitat management, good agronomic practices, safe chemicals, bio-pesticides, and botanical controls.”

“The costs and complexities of such practices are daunting, but farmers can learn if you help them and there is little alternative right now, given that maize is sub-Saharan Africa’s number-one staple food,” Bruce explained.

According to the scientist, breeding is also laborious, because potentially resistant maize plants must be tested under controlled, heavy infestations of insects and this is allowed only in net houses.

“Net houses don’t provide enough room to grow the large number of maize lines needed for rapid and effective breeding progress,” Bruce said. “Even so, we have promising leads on sources of moderate resistance from maize populations developed by CIMMYT in Mexico in the 1980s-90s.”

A case of switching environments and specialties

A native of Togo, a small West African country between Benin and Ghana, Bruce said he was first interested in studying mechanical engineering but did not get the opportunity at the University of Lomé, Togo, where he did his master’s studies in agronomy. A mentor instead suggested he pursue entomology, and he followed this up at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Cotonou, Benin, where he undertook research on stem borers as a part of his master’s thesis.

“Surprisingly, I found many parallels with mechanical engineering,” said Bruce, who is based at CIMMYT’s office in Kenya. “There is a vast number and diversity of insect species and their roles and interactions in natural systems are incredibly complex, just as occurs between components in mechanical systems.”

When Bruce moved to ICIPE under the African Regional Postgraduate Program in Insect Science (ARPPIS), he needed to add English to his native French and local languages, but said his first major cultural shock was actually dietary.

“In West Africa we usually eat our maize paste with a sauce,” he explained,” but when I sat down to eat in Kenya, I found that the maize paste called ugali was eaten only with milk or meat, a combination known as nyama choma.”

Despite that and other cultural differences, Bruce said he quickly acclimatized to his new work and study setting in eastern Africa.

Nursing maize’s enemies

At CIMMYT, Bruce provides technical backstopping for national research partners to rear maize stem borers and the fall armyworm, as part of breeding improved maize varieties with insect-pest resistance and other relevant traits.

“Special expertise and conditions are required to raise, transport, and apply the eggs or young larvae properly on experimental maize plants, so that infestation levels are as uniform as possible and breeders can identify genetically resistant plants,” Bruce said.

He has also worked with gene constructs from the bacteria known as Bacillus thurigiensis (Bt). When inserted into maize, the constructs bestow the crop with resistance against stem borer species.

“We have plans to deploy Bt maize in selected countries in eastern and southern Africa, but we are awaiting the resolution of regulatory hurdles,” he explained.

Bruce credits Fritz Schulthess, former IITA and ICIPE entomologist, with providing special inspiration and support for his studies and professional development.

“Fritz believes in sharing his scientific experience with upcoming scientists and in speaking his thoughts in black and white,” Bruce said. “He is a workaholic scientist who will review your paper even past midnight and expects your response before 6 am.”

From tinkering mechanic to manufacturing genius

Written by Mary Donovan on August 17, 2019. Posted in In the media.

By 2012, young Bangladeshi mechanic Md Ole Ullah was working with the USAID funded Agricultural Mechanization and Irrigation Project, implemented by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), and International Development Enterprises (iDE Bangladesh). The new collaboration helped Ole develop the market for his locally-manufactured machines. Read more here.

New platform rapidly diagnoses wheat rust

Written by Mary Donovan on August 13, 2019. Posted in In the media.

“Knowing which strain you have is critical information that can be incorporated into early warning systems and results in more effective control of disease outbreaks in farmer’s fields” said Dr. Dave Hodson, a rust pathologist at CIMMYT in Ethiopia and co-author of the paper “MARPLE, a point-of-care, strain-level disease diagnostics and surveillance tool for complex fungal pathogens.” Read more here.

A researcher holds an element of the MARPLE Diagnostics kit. (Video: John Innes Centre)

Using the MARPLE kit to diagnose wheat rust in Ethiopia

Written by Marcia MacNeil on August 12, 2019. Posted in Videos. 6 Comments on Using the MARPLE kit to diagnose wheat rust in Ethiopia

MARPLE (Mobile and Real-time PLant disEase) Diagnostics is a revolutionary mobile lab developed by a team from the John Innes Centre (JIC), the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR). It uses nanopore sequence technology to rapidly diagnose and monitor wheat rust in farmers’ fields.

Designed to be used without constant electricity and in varying temperatures, the suitcase-sized lab allows researchers to identify wheat rust to strain level in just 48 hours — something that used to take months using other tools.

The MARPLE team was recognized as Innovator of the Year for international impact in 2019 by the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

A new video from the John Innes Centre shows how the MARPLE Diagnostics kit will allow Ethiopia to quickly identify wheat rust strains, instead of sending samples to labs abroad.

Farmers harvest squash in Uttarakhand, India. (Photo: Jitendra Raj Bajracharya/ICIMOD)

New drought monitoring system will reduce climate risks for South Asian farmers

Written by Mike Listman on August 12, 2019. Posted in News. 1 Comment on New drought monitoring system will reduce climate risks for South Asian farmers

To mitigate the food security and economic risks of South Asia’s frequent and intense droughts, scientists and policymakers from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) recently joined forces to launch an innovative decision support and agricultural planning system that combines remote sensing and climate data analysis for drought monitoring and early warning.

The Regional Drought Monitoring and Outlook System application was unveiled during a workshop to train experts and policymakers in its use at relevant regional and national institutes in Islamabad, Pakistan, from July 29 to August 1, 2019. The Regional Drought Monitoring and Outlook System is the product of an ICIMOD-CIMMYT partnership through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) supported SERVIR Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) programme, in collaboration with Climate Service for Resilient Development (CSRD), led by ICIMOD and CIMMYT, respectively.

“Commonly associated with epic flooding, particularly in the enormous breadbasket region known as the Indo-Gangetic Plains that extends across Pakistan, India, southern Nepal, and Bangladesh, the region also faces droughts driven by rising temperatures and erratic rainfall and which threaten crops, food security, and livelihoods,” said Faisal Mueen Qamer, Remote Sensing Specialist of ICIMOD, which helped develop the system and organize the workshop.

“We expect the system to foster resilience in South Asian agriculture, while supporting future institutional frameworks and policies for farm compensation and adaptation, through decision makers’ access to timely and action-oriented information,” Qamar explained.

With a growing population of 1.6 billion people, South Asia hosts 40% of the world’s poor and malnourished on just 2.4% of its land. A 2010 study found a linear drop of 7.5% in rainfall in South Asia from 1900 to 2005.

“Shrinking glaciers, water scarcity, rising sea levels, shifting monsoon patterns, and heat waves place considerable stress on South Asian countries, whose primary employment sector remains agriculture,” said Mohammad Faisal, Director General for South Asia at Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, during the workshop opening.

Media reports in early 2019 documented displacement and hunger from Pakistan’s worst drought in years.

Participants at the regional workshop on earth observation and climate data analysis for agriculture drought monitoring in South Asia. (Photo: ICIMOD)

Raising awareness about drought and its mitigation

Twenty-three participants from six South Asia countries plus five expert instructors attended the workshop, which offered presentations and hands-on training on a suite of applications and associated data analysis tools, including the South Asian Land Data Assimilation System (SALDAS), the Regional Drought Explorer, and the National Drought Early Warning System.

Muhammad Azeem Khan, Member of the Food Security & Climate Change at the Planning Commission of Pakistan, said the scale of present and future climate challenges is clearly evident.

“In Pakistan, we regularly see parts of the country in the grip of severe drought, while others have flash floods,” Khan commented during the workshop closing, while commending its organizers. “Frequent drought diminishes agricultural production and food security, especially for people in rural areas. Effectively managing the impacts of climate change requires a response that builds and sustains South Asia’s social, economic, and environmental resilience, as well as our emergency response capacity.”

Through CSRD, a global partnership that connects climate and environmental science with data streams to generate decision support tools and training for decision-makers in developing countries, CIMMYT helped extend the Regional Drought Monitoring and Outlook System to Bangladesh, from its original coverage of Afghanistan, Nepal, and Pakistan.

“Translating complex climate information into easy-to-understand and actionable formats is core to CSRD’s mission and helps spread awareness about climate challenges,” said Tim Krupnik, CIMMYT cropping systems agronomist based in Bangladesh. “This consortium provides strength and technical expertise to develop relevant climate products, including decision-support information for farmers and other stakeholders, thus fostering resilience to climate-related risks.”

Direct sowing of wheat seed into a recently-harvested rice field using the “Happy Seeder” implement, a cost-effective and eco-friendly alternative to burning rice straw, in northern India. (Photo: BISA/Love Kumar Singh)

Happy Seeder can reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions while making profits for farmers

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on August 8, 2019. Posted in Press releases. 2 Comments on Happy Seeder can reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions while making profits for farmers

A research paper published in the world’s leading scientific journal, Science Magazine, indicates that using the Happy Seeder agriculture technology to manage rice residue has the potential of generating 6,000-11,500 Indian rupees (about US$85-160) more profits per hectare for the average farmer. The Happy Seeder is a tractor-mounted machine that cuts and lifts rice straw, sows wheat into the soil, and deposits the straw over the sown area as mulch.

The paper “Fields on fire: Alternatives to crop residue burning in India” evaluates the public and private costs and benefits of ten alternate farming practices to manage rice residue, including burn and non-burn options. Happy Seeder-based systems emerge as the most profitable and scalable residue management practice as they are, on average, 10%–20% more profitable than burning. This option also has the largest potential to reduce the environmental footprint of on-farm activities, as it would eliminate air pollution and would reduce greenhouse gas emissions per hectare by more than 78%, relative to all burning options.

This research aims to make the business case for why farmers should adopt no-burn alternative farming practices, discusses barriers to their uptake and solutions to increase their widespread adoption. This work was jointly undertaken by 29 Indian and international researchers from The Nature Conservancy, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT), the University of Minnesota, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA) and other organizations.

Every year, some 23 million tonnes of rice residue is burnt in the states of Haryana, Punjab and Western Uttar Pradesh, contributing significantly to air pollution and short-lived climate pollutants. In Delhi NCR, about half the air pollution on some winter days can be attributed to agricultural fires, when air quality level is 20 times higher than the safe threshold defined by WHO. Residue burning has enormous impacts on human health, soil health, the economy and climate change.

The burning of crop residue, or stubble, across millions of hectares of cropland between planting seasons is a visible contributor to air pollution in both rural and urban areas. (Photo: Dakshinamurthy Vedachalam/CIMMYT)

“Despite its drawbacks, a key reason why burning continues in northwest India is the perception that profitable alternatives do not exist. Our analysis demonstrates that the Happy Seeder is a profitable solution that could be scaled up for adoption among the 2.5 million farmers involved in the rice-wheat cropping cycle in northwest India, thereby completely eliminating the need to burn. It can also lower agriculture’s contribution to India’s greenhouse gas emissions, while adding to the goal of doubling farmers income,” says Priya Shyamsundar, Lead Economist at The Nature Conservancy and one of the lead authors of the paper.

“Better practices can help farmers adapt to warmer winters and extreme, erratic weather events such as droughts and floods, which are having a terrible impact on agriculture and livelihoods. In addition, India’s efforts to transition to more sustainable, less polluting farming practices can provide lessons for other countries facing similar risks and challenges,” explains M.L. Jat, CIMMYT cropping systems specialist and a co-author of the study.

CIMMYT principal scientist M. L. Jat shows a model of a no-till planter that facilitates no-burn farming. (Photo: Dakshinamurthy Vedachalam/CIMMYT)

“Within one year of our dedicated action using about US$75 million under the Central Sector Scheme on ‘Promotion of agriculture mechanization for in-situ management of crop residue in the states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and NCT of Delhi,’ we could reach 0.8 million hectares of adoption of Happy Seeder/zero tillage technology in the northwestern states of India,” said Trilochan Mohapatra, director general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). “Considering the findings of the Science article as well as reports from thousands of participatory validation trials, our efforts have resulted in an additional direct farmer benefit of US$131 million, compared to a burning option,” explained Mohapatra, who is also secretary of India’s Department of Agricultural Research and Education.

The Government of India subsidy in 2018 for onsite rice residue management has partly addressed a major financial barrier for farmers, which has resulted in an increase in Happy Seeder use. However, other barriers still exist, such as lack of knowledge of profitable no-burn solutions and impacts of burning, uncertainty about new technologies and burning ban implementation, and constraints in the supply-chain and rental markets. The paper states that NGOs, research organizations and universities can support the government in addressing these barriers through farmer communication campaigns, social nudging through trusted networks and demonstration and training. The private sector also has a critical role to play in increasing manufacturing and machinery rentals.

Read the full study

This research was supported by the Susan and Craig McCaw Foundation, the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat (WHEAT), and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). The Happy Seeder was originally developed through a project from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).

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

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

Sonali Nandrajog, Communications Consultant, The Nature Conservancy – India
sonalinandrajog@gmail.com, +98 9871948044

Spokespersons:

M.L. Jat, Cropping Systems Agronomist, CIMMYT, India
M.Jat@cgiar.org

Priya Shyamsundar, Lead Economist, The Nature Conservancy
priya.shyamsundar@tnc.org

Seema Paul, Managing Director, The Nature Conservancy – India
seema.paul@tnc.org

About CIMMYT

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

About The Nature Conservancy – India

We are a science-led global conservation organisation that works to protect ecologically important lands and water for nature and people. We have been working in India since 2015 to support India’s efforts to “develop without destruction”. We work closely with the Indian government, research institutions, NGOs, private sector organisations and local communities to develop science-based, on-the-ground, scalable solutions for some of the country’s most pressing environmental challenges. Our projects are aligned with India’s national priorities of conserving rivers and wetlands, address air pollution from crop residue burning, sustainable advancing renewable energy and reforestation goals, and building health, sustainable and smart cities.

View from the experimental station in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, northern Mexico. (Photo: M. Ellis/CIMMYT)

Warmer night temperatures reduce wheat yields in Mexico, scientists say

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on August 8, 2019. Posted in Features.

As many regions worldwide baked under some of the most persistent heatwaves on record, scientists at a major conference in Canada shared data on the impact of spiraling temperatures on wheat.

In the Sonora desert in northwestern Mexico, nighttime temperatures varied 4.4 degrees Celsius between 1981 and 2018, research from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) shows. Across the world in Siberia, nighttime temperatures rose 2 degrees Celsius between 1988 and 2015, according to Vladimir Shamanin, a professor at Russia’s Omsk State Agrarian University who conducts research with the Kazakhstan-Siberia Network on Spring Wheat Improvement.

“Although field trials across some of the hottest wheat growing environments worldwide have demonstrated that yield losses are in general associated with an increase in average temperatures, minimum temperatures at night — not maximum temperatures — are actually determining the yield loss,” said Gemma Molero, the wheat physiologist at CIMMYT who conducted the research in Sonora, in collaboration with colleague Ivan Ortiz-Monasterio.

“Of the water taken up by the roots, 95% is lost from leaves via transpiration and from this, an average of 12% of the water is lost during the night. One focus of genetic improvement for yield and water-use efficiency for the plant should be to identify traits for adaptation to higher night temperatures,” Molero said, adding that nocturnal transpiration may lead to reductions of up to 50% of available soil moisture in some regions.

Wheat fields at CIMMYT's experimental station near Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, Mexico. (Photo: M. Ellis/CIMMYT) — Wheat fields at CIMMYT’s experimental station near Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, Mexico. (Photo: M. Ellis/CIMMYT)

Climate challenge

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported in October that temperatures may become an average of 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer in the next 11 years. A new IPCC analysis on climate change and land use due for release this week, urges a shift toward reducing meat in diets to help reduce agriculture-related emissions from livestock. Diets could be built around coarse grains, pulses, nuts and seeds instead.

Scientists attending the International Wheat Congress in Saskatoon, the city at the heart of Canada’s western wheat growing province of Saskatchewan, agreed that a major challenge is to develop more nutritious wheat varieties that can produce bigger yields in hotter temperatures.

CIMMYT wheat physiologist Gemma Molero presents at the International Wheat Congress. (Photo: Marcia MacNeil/CIMMYT)

As a staple crop, wheat provides 20% of all human calories consumed worldwide. It is the main source of protein for 2.5 billion people in the Global South. Crop system modeler Senthold Asseng, a professor at the University of Florida and a member of the International Wheat Yield Partnership, was involved in an extensive study in China, India, France, Russia and the United States, which demonstrated that for each degree Celsius in temperature increase, yields decline by 6%, putting food security at risk.

Wheat yields in South Asia could be cut in half due to chronically high temperatures, Molero said. Research conducted by the University of New South Wales, published in Environmental Research Letters also demonstrates that changes in climate accounted for 20 to 49% of yield fluctuations in various crops, including spring wheat. Hot and cold temperature extremes, drought and heavy precipitation accounted for 18 to 4% of the variations.

At CIMMYT, wheat breeders advocate a comprehensive approach that combines conventional, physiological and molecular breeding techniques, as well as good crop management practices that can ameliorate heat shocks. New breeding technologies are making use of wheat landraces and wild grass relatives to add stress adaptive traits into modern wheat – innovative approaches that have led to new heat tolerant varieties being grown by farmers in warmer regions of Pakistan, for example.

More than 800 global experts gathered at the first International Wheat Congress in Saskatoon, Canada, to strategize on ways to meet projected nutritional needs of 60% more people by 2050. (Photo: Matthew Hayes/Cornell University)

Collaborative effort

Matthew Reynolds, a distinguished scientist at CIMMYT, is joint founder of the Heat and Drought Wheat Improvement Consortium (HeDWIC), a coalition of hundreds of scientists and stakeholders from over 30 countries.

“HeDWIC is a pre-breeding program that aims to deliver genetically diverse advanced lines through use of shared germplasm and other technologies,” Reynolds said in Saskatoon. “It’s a knowledge-sharing and training mechanism, and a platform to deliver proofs of concept related to new technologies for adapting wheat to a range of heat and drought stress profiles.”

Aims include reaching agreement across borders and institutions on the most promising research areas to achieve climate resilience, arranging trait research into a rational framework, facilitating translational research and developing a bioinformatics cyber-infrastructure, he said, adding that attracting multi-year funding for international collaborations remains a challenge.

Nitrogen traits

Another area of climate research at CIMMYT involves the development of an affordable alternative to the use of nitrogen fertilizers to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. In certain plants, a trait known as biological nitrification inhibition (BNI) allows them to suppress the loss of nitrogen from the soil, improving the efficiency of nitrogen uptake and use by themselves and other plants.

CIMMYT's director general Martin Kropff speaks at a session of the International Wheat Congress. (Photo: Matthew Hayes/Cornell University) — CIMMYT’s director general Martin Kropff speaks at a session of the International Wheat Congress. (Photo: Matthew Hayes/Cornell University)

Scientists with the BNI research consortium, which includes Japan’s International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS), propose transferring the BNI trait from those plants to critical food and feed crops, such as wheat, sorghum and Brachiaria range grasses.

“Every year, nearly a fifth of the world’s fertilizer is used to grow wheat, yet the crop only uses about 30% of the nitrogen applied, in terms of biomass and harvested grains,” said Victor Kommerell, program manager for the multi-partner CGIAR Research Programs (CRP) on Wheat and Maize led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.

“BNI has the potential to turn wheat into a highly nitrogen-efficient crop: farmers could save money on fertilizers, and nitrous oxide emissions from wheat farming could be reduced by 30%.”

Excluding changes in land use such as deforestation, annual greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture each year are equivalent to 11% of all emissions from human activities. About 70% of nitrogen applied to crops in fertilizers is either washed away or becomes nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide, according to Guntur Subbarao, a principal scientist with JIRCAS.

Hans-Joachim Braun,
Director of CIMMYT’s Global Wheat Program and the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat, speaks at the International Wheat Congress. (Photo: Marcia MacNeil/CIMMYT)

Although ruminant livestock are responsible for generating roughly half of all agricultural production emissions, BNI offers potential for reducing overall emissions, said Tim Searchinger, senior fellow at the World Resources Institute and technical director of a new report titled “Creating a Sustainable Food Future: A Menu of Solutions to Feed Nearly 10 Billion People by 2050.”

To exploit this roots-based characteristic, breeders would have to breed this trait into plants, said Searchinger, who presented key findings of the report in Saskatoon, adding that governments and research agencies should increase research funding.

Other climate change mitigation efforts must include revitalizing degraded soils, which affect about a quarter of the planet’s cropland, to help boost crop yields. Conservation agriculture techniques involve retaining crop residues on fields instead of burning and clearing. Direct seeding into soil-with-residue and agroforestry also can play a key role.

Local irrigation service providers in southern Bangladesh demonstrate the use of a two-wheeled tractor to power an axial flow pump to provide fuel-efficient surface water irrigation. (Photo: Tim Krupnik/CIMMYT)

New publications: A study of water markets in Bangladesh

Written by Emma Orchardson on July 30, 2019. Posted in Publications. 3 Comments on New publications: A study of water markets in Bangladesh

Domestic rice and wheat production in Bangladesh has more than doubled in the last 30 years, despite declining per capita arable land. The fact that the country is now almost self-sufficient in staple food production is due in large part to successful and rapid adoption of modern, high-yielding crop varieties. This has been widely documented, but less attention has been paid to the contribution of small-scale irrigation systems, whose proliferation has enabled double rice cropping and a competitive market system in which farmers can purchase irrigation services from private pump owners at affordable rates.

However, excess groundwater abstraction in areas of high shallow tube-well density and increased fuel costs for pumping have called into question the sustainability of Bangladesh’s groundwater irrigation economy. Cost-saving agronomic methods are called for, alongside aligned policies, markets, and farmers’ incentives.

A recent study by researchers at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) examines the different institutions and water-pricing methods for irrigation services that have emerged in Bangladesh, each of which varies in their incentive structure for water conservation, and the level of economic risk involved for farmers and service providers.

Using primary data collected from 139 irrigation service providers and 556 client-farmers, the authors assessed the structure of irrigation service types as well as the associated market and institutional dimensions. They found that competition between pump owners, social capital, and social relationship between of pump owners and client farmers, significantly influence the structure of irrigation services and irrigation water pricing methods. Greater competition between pump owners, for instance, increases the likelihood of pay-per-hour services while reducing that of crop sharing arrangements.

Based on these and other findings, authors made policy recommendations for enhancing irrigation services and sustainability in Bangladesh. As Bangladesh is already highly successful in terms of the conventional irrigation system, the authors urge taking it to the next level for sustainability and efficiency.

Currently Bangladesh’s irrigation system is based on centrifugal pumps and diesel engines. The authors suggest scaling out the energy efficient axial flow pump, and the alternate wetting and drying system for water conservation and irrigation efficiency. They also recommend further investment in rural electrification to facilitate the use of electric motors, which can reduce air pollution by curbing dependency on diesel engines.

Read the full article:
“Understanding clients, providers and the institutional dimensions of irrigation services in developing countries: A study of water markets in Bangladesh” in Agricultural Water Management, Volume 222, 1 August 2019, pages 242-253.

This study was made possible through the support provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA). Additional support was provided by the CGIAR Research Programs on Maize (MAIZE) and Wheat (WHEAT).

Read more recent publications by CIMMYT researchers:

A spatial framework for ex-ante impact assessment of agricultural technologies. 2019. Andrade, J.F., Rattalino Edreira, J.I., Farrow, A., Loon, M.P. van., Craufurd, P., Rurinda, J., Shamie Zingore, Chamberlin, J., Claessens, L., Adewopo, J., Ittersum, M.K. van, Cassman, K.G., Grassini, P. In: Global Food Security v. 20, p. 72-81.
Assessing genetic diversity to breed competitive biofortified wheat with enhanced grain ZN and FE concentrations. 2019. Velu, G., Crespo-Herrera, L.A., Guzman, C., Huerta-Espino, J., Payne, T.S., Singh, R.P. In: Frontiers in Plant Science v. 9, art. 1971.
Genome-wide association mapping and genomic prediction analyses reveal the genetic architecture of grain yield and flowering time under drought and heat stress conditions in maize. 2019. Yibing Yuan, Cairns, J.E., Babu, R., Gowda, M., Makumbi, D., Magorokosho, C., Ao Zhang, Yubo Liu, Nan Wang, Zhuanfang Hao, San Vicente, F.M., Olsen, M., Prasanna, B.M., Yanli Lu, Zhang, X. In: Plant Breeding v. 9, art. 1919.
Diversifying conservation agriculture and conventional tillage cropping systems to improve the wellbeing of smallholder farmers in Malawi. 2019. TerAvest, D., Wandschneider, P.R., Thierfelder, C., Reganold, J.P. In: Agricultural Systems v. 171, p. 23-35.
Biofortified maize can improve quality protein intakes among young children in southern Ethiopia. 2019. Gunaratna, N.S., Moges, D., De Groote, H. Nutrients v. 11, no. 1, art. 192.