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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.

Award from AgroBIO-México to Silverio García

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In a gala ceremony on 18 October at the National Anthropology and History Museum of Mexico, AgroBio-México recognized Silverio García’s PhD thesis as one of the best in the country. AgroBio-México is a non-profit association that brings together various organizations interested in agricultural biotechnology education, promotion, research, production and commercialization in Mexico.

García, a postdoctoral associate, is presently employed at a state-level plant biotechnology research centre (CIATEJ-CONACYT), and worked for approximately nine years at CIMMYT as an entomologist and plant breeder, focusing specifically on the application of molecular markers.

García’s thesis deals with the biochemical, biophysical and genetic bases of insect resistance in maize, and focuses on developing varieties that are resistant to storage pests, particularly maize weevil. His results are already being used to develop and distribute improved varieties. With this new maize, producers could reduce losses in storage by as much at 30 percent.

García’s research is built upon work by David Bergvinson, former CIMMYT entomologist, and was made possible through scientific collaboration with CIMMYT, the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, and the University of Ottawa in Canada, along with funding from CIDA, and support from CONACYT in Mexico.

“In light of the serious threats to natural resources and food security, agricultural biotechnology is emerging as a new tool that will help fight the problems of food production,” says García.

CIMMYT’s presence was highly visible at the presentation ceremony, as Natalia Palacios, maize nutrition and quality specialist, received an honorable mention for her efforts to disseminate science to the general public and to children in particular.

The first place winner in this category (Rafael Guadarrama, of the highly regarded TV news organization, Canal 11), said his reports on CIMMYT research were a decisive factor that led to his win.

Lastly, Pedro Brajcich, Director General of INIFAP and CIMMYT Board member, was among the experts and VIPs invited to sit at the head table for the event.

They did it … Permanent beds take off in northern Mexico

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After years of research, things are starting to happen in the Yaqui Valley. Ken D Sayre and his agronomy team have been doing research on permanent bed planting with crop residue retention at the research station near Obregón. Results are very clear: use of permanent beds with adequate crop residue retention reduces irrigation water use, maintains stable yields, reduces production costs, avoids burning of crop residue, reduces CO2 emissions, and improves soil health. Based on results in northern Mexico and thanks to international training courses, this technology has spread to Turkey, China, India, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and other countries.

Ironically, the irrigated, high/yielding areas of Mexico, where conventionally/tilled raised bed planting was developed and is a common practice, have been slow to adopt this next step towards conservation agriculture. But this may be changing. Recently farmer groups and government organizations (federal and regional) have shown interest in the technology. And now the first hectares with permanent beds were planted in farmers’ fields in Obregón, this summer cycle.

Rodrigo Rascón, Obregón Station Manager, Manuel Ruiz Cano, and Jesús Gutiérrez, collaborators in the agronomy team, worked out an agreement with two farmers to plant up to 5 ha each of sorghum on reshaped beds with full straw retention after wheat/ triticale. Only the CIMMYT prototype multi-crop/ multi-use implement was provided to the farmers plus training on planting from Rodrigo and the wheat crop management team.

Pleased with the effort the farmers insisted that a larger area be planted and therefore a total of 55 ha of sorghum was grown this way on the two farms. These plantings are true hallmarks in the efforts to extend conservation agriculture, permanent bed technologies in the Yaqui Valley. Many farmers have already visited the fields and local farmer groups recently held a farmer field day. Examples from other areas in the world tell us that the first 5 ha are the most difficult. Thanks to Rodrigo, Manuel, and Jesús, this first step has been accomplished!

CIMMYT-Colombia maize enters the coffee zone

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The June 2007 edition of the Colombian publication “Agricultura & Ganadería” (www. agriculturayganaderia.com) carried a report on the recently-released maize hybrid FNC 3056, developed for cropping between coffee rows in fields where coffee plants have been pruned. The practice was adopted with government support several years ago by Colombian coffee growers, who would previously leave the unused rows to weeds, and has added to their profits and to the incomes and food security of the many thousand laborers they employ. Like several other maize varieties for this niche, the hybrid was developed by Colombia’s National Federation of Cereal and Legume Producers (FENALCE), as part of its long-time partnership with CIMMYT, and drew on CIMMYT germplasm.

“The varieties are high-yielding and resistant to two locally harmful maize diseases—tar spot and gray leaf spot,” says Luis Narro, CIMMYT maize specialist in South America.

According to the publication, the area sown to maize in coffee-growing zones of Colombia has increased from 30,000 hectares in 2003 to more than 60,000 in 2006. Eight-tenths of that area is sown to the variety ICA V305, released in 1993 and developed from CIMMYT sources.

Colombian President Álvaro Uribe has said he would like to see 120,000 hectares of improved maize grown in coffee zones by 2008. If this occurs, it will be due partly to the productivity and quality of the maize varieties, which under the coffee farmers’ excellent management yield as much as 9 tons per hectare, and to excellent partnerships with FENALCE and the National Federation of Colombian Coffee Growers (FEDERECAFE).

Soil carbon experts gather at CIMMYT

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Ever heard of the terms “carbon trading” or “carbon inventories?” They are now routinely bandied about by governments seeking to balance economic development with reduced impacts on global climates. In the context of today’s report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which mentions agriculture as a key factor for mitigating climate change, this week CIMMYT hosted eight international experts as part of the workshop “New Technologies to Assess Soil Carbon Levels,” organized by wheat agronomist Ken Sayre and held at El Batán on Monday, 30 April 2007. After the workshop, participants spent the remainder of the week running tests on the station.

“CIMMYT’s long-term trials on conservation agriculture, which feature a range of practices and residue levels, provide a valuable platform for testing our instruments and methods for measuring soil carbon,” says Charles Rice, Professor of Soil Microbiology at Kansas State University, USA, and US National Director of the Consortium for Agricultural Soil Mitigation of Greenhouse Gases.

Also participating were César Izaurralde, leader of the USAID project on advanced soil carbon technologies, and Jorge Etchevers, Professor of Soil Fertility at the Colegio de Postgraduados, Mexico, who with former CIMMYT wheat director Tony Fischer helped launch the long-term conservation agriculture trial at El Batán.

Visiting FAO dignitary promotes collaboration in agricultural biotechnology

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Juan Izquierdo, Senior Crop Production Officer for Latin America and the Caribbean, FAO, visited CIMMYT’s El Batán research station on Thursday 19 April 2007. His discussions with center management and staff focused on the Drought Research Consortium of REDBIO, a technical cooperation network for agricultural biotechnology in Latin America and the Caribbean launched in 2005 with participation of CIMMYT. He expressed particular interest in the application of plant breeding and biotechnology tools within integrated plant breeding programs, work that CIMMYT is intensively pursuing at present. Among other things, Izquierdo extended a broad invitation for center staff to the upcoming REDBIO symposium, “VI Encuentro Latinoamericano de Biotecnologia Agropecuaria,” to be held in Viña del Mar, Chile, 22-26 October 2007.

Toluca field day

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CIMMYT’s Toluca field station has held another successful demonstration of reduced and zero till techniques to Mexican farmers. As superintendent of Toluca station, Fernando Delgado oversees the planting and evaluation of wheat. However, his knowledge of conservation agriculture and its potential for maize are also in demand. Wednesday 21 March saw more than 40 farmers come to Toluca from Calpulalpan, Tlaxcala, a journey of well over a hundred kilometers.

Fernando gave a presentation to farmers on the use techniques requiring little tillage in maize, which he turned into an in-depth discussion, answering searching questions on every aspect of production under the system.

There was also a field demonstration, where the farmers saw how the team has adapted conventional minimal tillage equipment to the soils of Toluca station, which lack organic matter and are hard and brittle when dry. They commented on the similarity with their own soils, and were surprised and excited to find the soil reduced tillage practices was soft and moist.

The farmers left Toluca with an understanding of the challenges of minimal tillage—and an enthusiasm to make it work for them.

Project 10 meetings in Zimbabwe showcase center work on sustainable systems

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During 30 January-03 February, members of CIMMYT Project 10, “Conservation agriculture for maize and wheat cropping systems,” held annual review and planning meetings in Harare, Zimbabwe.

“The work we reviewed furthers CIMMYT’s strong tradition of helping partners test and promote diverse resource-conserving practices with farmers, as well as backstopping those efforts with relevant research,” says John Dixon, Director of the Impacts Targeting and Assessment Unit, who presided over the meetings.

Scientists reporting on achievements, challenges, and plans included Pat Wall, who with the help of Christian Thierfelder is leading center projects on conservation agriculture in southern Africa; Paul Mapfumo and Mulugetta Mekuria, who work with partners through the Soil Fertility Consortium for Southern Africa (SOFECSA); Olaf Erenstein, who has coordinated surveys to assess the adoption and impacts of zero-tillage and other resource-conserving practices in South Asia; Mirjam Pulleman, who reported on her work and that of Bram Govaerts and Ken Sayre analyzing long-term conservation agriculture trials at El Batán and Ciudad Obregón; and Stephen Waddington, maize agronomist for many years in southern Africa and now leading CIMMYT efforts in Bangladesh.

Participants, in the company of extension and NGO partners, paid visits to farmers testing conservation agriculture practices in several villages of central and southern Zimbabwe. The region’s degraded and sandy soils and crop-and-animal farming systems are among the most challenging for efforts to keep protective, nourishing residues on the land, and work has been under way for only a few years—barely the blink of an eye for such initiatives. But farmer interest is evident and, particularly in Malawi, adoption of zero-tillage and residue retention for maize-based farming has begun.

Farewell to Raj Gupta

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On January 19, 2007, Raj Gupta stepped down as the CIMMYT Facilitator of the Rice-Wheat Consortium (RWC) based in New Delhi, India. When Raj assumed the leadership of the RWC, the technological foundation had been created for the new resourceconserving technologies (RCT) appropriate for the dominant ricewheat production system of the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP), such as zero-till seeding and bed planting of wheat and other crops. It was obvious that these new technologies offered a tremendous potential to benefit the livelihoods of farmers producing rice and wheat in the IGP and that they also offered pragmatic opportunities to enhance the long-term sustainability of this production system.

However, farmer adoption of these new technologies was still negligible. Teaming with former CIMMYT wheat agronomist Peter Hobbs, Raj brought together farmers, the private sector (especially machinery manufacturers), scientists, and extension agents in a partnership essential for the rapid adoption of the RCTs. When Raj began his efforts, the area in the IGP devoted to RCTs was not more than 10,000 ha. After less than seven years, it has reached nearly 3 million hectares. This tremendous achievement of the RWC partnership, led by Raj, was awarded the King Baudouin award in 2004 and represents the best example of the widespread adoption of RCT and conservation agriculture by small and mediumscale farmers in irrigated production systems anywhere in the world.

The CIMMYT community wishes to express a deep sense of gratitude for Raj’s remarkable efforts and wishes him all the best as takes on new challenges with ICAR in India.

Conservation agriculture: solution for Mexico’s maize farmers?

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Using the conventional practices for growing maize in the state of Mexico—heavy tillage combined with removing and marketing residues—farmers are actually losing money, said CIMMYT research affiliate Bram Govaerts, during his invited presentation at a forum on results of projects conducted with the state of Mexico’s Institute for Training, Research, and Development in Agriculture (ICAMEX), on 12 September 2006.

“Many people were shocked to hear that,” explains Govaerts, who since 2002 has worked with Ken Sayre investigating and analyzing the results of the conservation agriculture trial begun at El Batán in 1991. “But when you consider the reduced labor costs of, say, zerotillage and residue retention, plus the higher crop yields that result, and compare that to the expense of removing and selling residues and the soil degradation that appears after five years or so, then conservation agriculture clearly wins as the money-making option.”

Held at the ICAMEX facilities in Toluca, the capital of the state of Mexico, the presentations were attended by 50 or more researchers, farmers, and officials, including state Secretary of Agriculture Arturo Osornio Sánchez, and ICAMEX Director General Jaime Segura Lazcano. The ICAMEX project, which is a collaboration between Cinvestav, Mexico’s Research and Advanced Studies Center; UAEM, the Autonomous University of Mexico State; and CIMMYT, and began in 2005, involves both field research and extension with state farmers.

“We’ve drawn a lot on the expertise and interest of Fernando Delgado Ramos, Superintendent of CIMMYT’s Toluca research station, who has actively promoted zero-tillage and other resource-conserving practices for maize farming in Mexico,” says Govaerts, who is with CIMMYT as a PhD student from K.U. Leuven Belgium and funded by VLIRUDC, Flemish Interuniversity Council – University Development Cooperation.

Turning on radios, tuning in to resource-conserving farm practices

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A radio program in Nepal brings information to farmers in a language they understand.

It’s Monday, 6:30 pm on Radio Birgunj, the voice of the plains in Southeastern Nepal. Fans for kilometers in all directions huddle by their radios to listen—not to a soap opera or pop music, but to a show about bed planting, horticulture, and zero-tillage. The weekly radio show on farming, targeted specifically to rural inhabitants, is one component of a project funded by CABI to introduce and promote resource-conserving technologies to the region’s rice and wheat farmers.

Radio is often the best way to reach rural families in developing countries, and farm shows broadcast from small community stations are not unusual. But Radio Birgunj broadcasts to a population of five million Nepalese, nearly all from farm families, and the station’s only “competition” is the region’s government radio network.

Ganesh Sah, head of the Agricultural Implement Research Center in Birgunj and long-time CIMMYT partner, is responsible for 70 programs since the show’s launch in January, 2005. “It’s been difficult coming up with a different topic each week, but we’ve managed with just a couple repeats,” he says.

The program’s popularity has led the government of Nepal launch another radio farm show in the region. For the whole article, go to staging.cimmyt.org, under Enews/August 2006.

Visitors tour headquarters

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visitantesDr Qu Dongyu, Vice-President, CAAS China and Dr M.E. Tusneem, Chairman of the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council, learn about CIMMYT’s conservation agriculture research work from Bram Govaerts during a visit to El Batan this week (see photo below). In addition CIMMYT welcomed visitors from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and the principal and 16 teachers from the Liceo Mexicano Japonés.

Bihar to subsidize zero-tillage and maize

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On 09 August, the government of Bihar State, India, announced a 25% subsidy for the purchase of zero-tillage seeders, bed planters, and maize threshers. According to Raj Gupta, facilitator of the Rice-Wheat Consortium (RWC) for the Indo-Gangetic Plains, the decision emerged in part from a meeting in March 2005 that involved the Chief Minister of Bihar, the Minister of Agriculture, the DG of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, and other relevant actors.

“I also participated,” says Gupta. “Among other things, we discussed the promotion of quality protein maize and resource-conserving technologies as a strategy for transforming agriculture in Bihar. Now they have also decided to replace some of the winter wheat area with winter maize, whose productivity is nearly double that of wheat.”

With a population of 100 million, Bihar is one of India’s most densely populated and disadvantaged states and has been a particular target of RWC efforts to offer viable alternatives for resource-poor farmers in the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains. Land-use studies by Parvesh Chandna, CIMMYT affiliate scientist and expert in geographic information systems and remote sensing, have also contributed. This outcome shows the effectiveness of concerted, science-based efforts to influence policy.