Theme: Nutrition, health and food security

As staple foods, maize and wheat provide vital nutrients and health benefits, making up close to two-thirds of the world’s food energy intake, and contributing 55 to 70 percent of the total calories in the diets of people living in developing countries, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. CIMMYT scientists tackle food insecurity through improved nutrient-rich, high-yielding varieties and sustainable agronomic practices, ensuring that those who most depend on agriculture have enough to make a living and feed their families. The U.N. projects that the global population will increase to more than 9 billion people by 2050, which means that the successes and failures of wheat and maize farmers will continue to have a crucial impact on food security. Findings by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which show heat waves could occur more often and mean global surface temperatures could rise by up to 5 degrees Celsius throughout the century, indicate that increasing yield alone will be insufficient to meet future demand for food.

Achieving widespread food and nutritional security for the world’s poorest people is more complex than simply boosting production. Biofortification of maize and wheat helps increase the vitamins and minerals in these key crops. CIMMYT helps families grow and eat provitamin A enriched maize, zinc-enhanced maize and wheat varieties, and quality protein maize. CIMMYT also works on improving food health and safety, by reducing mycotoxin levels in the global food chain. Mycotoxins are produced by fungi that colonize in food crops, and cause health problems or even death in humans or animals. Worldwide, CIMMYT helps train food processors to reduce fungal contamination in maize, and promotes affordable technologies and training to detect mycotoxins and reduce exposure.

What can be done to prevent the outbreak of coronavirus from affecting agriculture?

Written by Mary Donovan on June 3, 2020. Posted in In the media.

Watch here (in Amharic): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVsVsxAKybI&feature=youtu.be

Establishment of demo trial in Nyanga, Zimbabwe. (Photo: CIMMYT)

Farm mechanization under COVID-19

Written by Emma Orchardson on June 2, 2020. Posted in Features.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to transform the way the world operates, and agricultural production systems are not exempt.

Even in countries that have identified the agricultural sector as an essential one, ongoing restrictions on transport and freedom of movement are causing disruptions across the value chain — with potentially devastating impact on already fragile food systems in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

With this in mind, systems agronomists and mechanization specialists at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), discuss the impact of restrictions on agricultural labor and production, and the role farm mechanization can play in addressing new challenges.

What are the implications of the agricultural labor shortages that are emerging in Africa and Latin America as a result of COVID-19 restrictions?

A woman demonstrates the use of a mini-tiller in Naivasha, Kenya. (Photo: Matt O’Leary/CIMMYT)

Frédéric Baudron: The pandemic has demonstrated that food production systems around the world — even in countries where agriculture is thought to be highly mechanized — are highly dependent on farm labor.

Africa is often presented as being dominated by farms which rely mainly on the labor of family members. Therefore, one could expect that Africa would be spared from the consequences of unavailability and/or unaffordability of hired labor. However, a recent CIMMYT study shows that farming systems in Africa are far more dependent on hired labor than commonly thought, and that the quasi total dependence of smallholder farming on family labor is a myth. Depending on the farming system, a complete loss of hired labor could lead to a productivity decrease of up to 20% in Eastern and Southern Africa. Hired labor is also likely to be replaced by child labor.

Because most production on the continent is rainfed during a single season, most farmers only plant and harvest once per year, making the timing of each task critical. A delay in planting because of labor shortages — as will soon occur Ethiopia — could lead to dramatically reduced yields. A delay in harvesting — as is currently experienced in Zimbabwe — means a large fraction of the crop is likely to be spoilt in the field.

Jelle Van Loon: The situation is similar for Mexico and the general Central American corridor, although the main production cycle is only just starting. Proper land preparation and timely sowing are critical, not only in terms of food production and achieving proper yields, but also to ensure that farmers have a stable income at the end of the year. This is especially important now, as financial and food reserves are shrinking at a faster pace due to COVID-19 restrictions that heavily affect demand on informal markets.

An operator demonstrates the use of a reaper in Bangladesh. (Photo: CIMMYT)

Are you seeing a similar situation in South Asia?

Timothy Krupnik: Depending on the country, we’ve seen either abrupt interruptions in the movement of agricultural laborers — for example in India where millions of migrant laborers have not been able to travel home during lockdown — or an influx of people from urban areas who fled to their villages when lockdown began.

In the latter case, one might expect this to increase labor availability for farming, but we tended to observe the reverse. People remain largely frightened of coming out of their homes, so even in rural areas which saw an influx of people, labor availability has not necessarily increased. Where laborers are willing to work, our initial scan of the evidence indicates that daily wage labor costs have also increased considerably due to risks of infection spreading. In either situation, smallholder farmers who need to hire labor to assure crucial crop management activities like planting or harvesting are suffering. There are reports emerging also of increased child labor in the region as schools are closed and resource-poor farmers are allocating family members and children to work where they can’t afford to hire labor.

M.L. Jat: I would like to cite the specific example of intensive rice-wheat rotation in India’s breadbasket and the Green Revolution corridors in the western Indo-Gangetic plains, which provide the bulk of cereals to the national food basket. An ex-ante analysis on the consequences of the reverse migration of the agricultural workforce and social distancing due to COVID-19 revealed that a delay in the transplanting of rice seedlings by two weeks is likely, which will delay rice harvesting and consequently delay the planting of wheat. This will potentially lead to rice and wheat production losses of 10-25%, worth up to $1.5 billion.

In addition, the shorter turn around between harvesting rice and planting wheat may further increase the incidence of rice residue burning. This is a major problem which creates significant health issues and may exacerbate the threat of COVID-19 by increasing both infection rates and disease severity.

Krupnik: The situation has increased interest and policy to support use of scale-appropriate machinery for operations like harvesting. In Bangladesh, for example, there was a recent and very serious risk of losing much of the rice harvest as the monsoon has started early and flash flooding has been a concern. Without manual laborers to harvest the crop, CIMMYT-led projects like the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia – Mechanization and Extension Activity (CSISA-MEA) have played a key role in assisting the movement of combine harvesters and crop reapers to areas at risk of crop losses and helping to assure the rice crop is harvested on time.

An operator demonstrates the use of a starwheel planter in Zimbabwe. (Photo: Frederic Baudron/CIMMYT)

It sounds like these machines were instrumental in avoiding crop losses. Does this mean that mechanization has a key role to play in lessening the impact of these labor shortages?

Krupnik: During the COVID-19 crisis, scale-appropriate machinery has become even more important for mitigating labor shortages. We work to facilitate the availability of scale-appropriate machinery not only so that farmers can buy and use equipment, but also by encouraging those who own machineries to become entrepreneurial service providers who offer efficient and mechanized land preparation, planting, irrigation, harvesting and post-harvesting to other farmers on an affordable fee-for-service basis.

This is a win-win situation for farmers who can’t access or afford the escalating costs of labor. In the COVID-19 crisis, these arrangements assist in responding to the labor crunch in locations where resource-poor farmers are most in need, and also allow farmers to get crucial work done while maintaining and encouraging social distancing.

Baudron: Over the past seven years, CIMMYT and its partners have fine-tuned technologies and developed delivery models — based on rural service providers supported by private sector companies — to scale the use of small machines in East and Southern Africa. These are profitable for both farmers and service providers and reduce labor requirements tremendously.

In Zimbabwe, we found that labor requirements were 15 times lower when establishing a maize field with a direct seeder pulled by a two-wheel tractor, and 23 times lower using a similar technology for establishing wheat in Rwanda, compared to the conventional method based on labor and draft power. A ton of maize that would take 12 people a full day to shell manually, can be shelled in one hour using a small double-cob sheller that costs about $300.

Jat: Rapid policy decisions by sub-national and national governments on facilitating more mechanized operations in labor intensive rice-wheat production regions will address labor availability issues while contributing to productivity enhancement of succeeding wheat crop in rotation, as well as overall system sustainability. Our ex-ante analysis on the implications of labor shortages in rice-wheat rotation in the western Indo-Gangetic plains due to COVID-19 indicates that adoption of scale-appropriate farm mechanization has the potential to stabilize the food production as well as reducing the income losses and air pollution surges in northwest India.

Harvesting maize in Mexico. (Photo: CIMMYT)

The situation in the regions each of you have mentioned is unique, but are there any global trends that you’ve noticed? And if so, can other regions learn from these localized experiences?

Krupnik: A huge part of what we do as a research and training institute is facilitate exchanges of information across continents and countries. Different types and designs of machinery that can be used in similar circumstances can be shared, as can business models supporting service providers.

Importantly, part of the concept of ‘scale-appropriate mechanization’ is also learning when and where machinery makes sense — where labor is not scarce and rural communities are highly dependent on income from labor to sustain their communities, some forms of mechanization may not be appropriate. We work to understand these dynamics and target the right machines in the right time and right places.

Van Loon: In addition to reducing pressure on available labor and alleviating drudgery, modern farm equipment tailored to the needs of smallholders can also increase competitiveness, as it allows for higher precision and efficiency.

In this sense, scale-appropriate mechanization can stimulate rural transformation incentivizing short and efficient value chains while ensuring stable food provision — aspects that have become essential to navigating the present crisis.

Has the current pandemic brought up any new perspectives in terms of how you consider labor and mechanization?

Baudron: We often look at yield and area planted in staple crops to assess the food security situation of a country during a particular year. This pandemic has shown us that we need to pay more attention to labor productivity. In many countries, policy-makers and development agents fear that mechanization will displace labor, but the dependency of staple crops on labor is a threat to food security, as we currently see in Africa and South Asia.

If the production of fruit, vegetables, cash crops, and so on will continue to depend on manual labor, it is essential in my view for critical tasks in the production of staples to be mechanized — particularly planting and harvesting. This will ensure the resilience of national food systems in the case of a future disruption similar to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cover photo: Establishment of demo trial in Nyanga, Zimbabwe. (Photo: CIMMYT/ZRBF)

Fight against viruses, also in defense of maize and our food

Written by Mary Donovan on May 31, 2020. Posted in In the media.

A first outbreak of maize lethal necrosis was found in Kenya in 2011 and researchers immediately became active because they knew that timely action was needed to prevent irreparable damage. This viral disease was decimating maize fields and spreading rapidly in east Africa through contaminated insects and seeds.

Breaking Ground: Yoseph Beyene breeds desirable maize varieties for smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on May 28, 2020. Posted in Features.

About 25 years ago, Yoseph Beyene first heard about the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) from one of his professors, back when he was pursuing his undergraduate degree in Plant Science at Haramaya University in Ethiopia. “The professor, whom I regard as a great mentor, (…) always told me that if I ever got an opportunity to work at CIMMYT, I should not hesitate to take it up, as it was a great place to conduct maize breeding,” recollects Beyene, now a maize breeder at CIMMYT. He grew up in Alem Ketema, a village located 190 km north of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital.

In retrospect, he did not know this would change his perspective on how he viewed crops, especially maize, on smallholder farms. Like many other families in Alem Ketema, his family attended to their small farm to meet their food and nutritional needs. Most people practiced subsistence farming, intertwined with livestock keeping, on small plots that were typically less than 2 hectares. At the backyard of his family’s farm, different crops such as maize, sorghum and teff were grown. As a child, he never quite registered in his mind that farmers grew mainly recycled seed. “In hindsight, I can say that the yield of a crop such as maize was just about 1.5 tons per hectare at the time,” he reckons.

Such low yield potential meant feeding relatively large family sizes of about seven people was a tall order. It did not help that crops such as maize and wheat were frequently affected by diseases and pests and erratic rains, which diminished yields. It was not until his high school days when he had firsthand experience with high-yielding improved crop varieties. As part of the farm management class, he actively participated in the school’s farm management unit. He got to appreciate the yield variation between improved and local varieties, grown on the school plots. These improved seed, he quickly realized, were the ideal antidote to the low yield farmers obtained.

Struck by an epiphany

“This was like a eureka moment for me. When I realized that it was possible to improve and deliver desirable seed varieties that could double farmers’ yields, I decided to study plant breeding at the university. If only the farmers back in my village knew about the improved seed and adopted them at the time, it could not only have helped solve the problems of food insecurity but also bettered their livelihoods,” he ponders.

When he enrolled for a PhD in Plant Breeding and Genetics at the University of Pretoria, he did his research in highland maize in collaboration with CIMMYT in Ethiopia. Upon completion, he was appointed as a senior cotton breeder at South Africa’s Agricultural Research Council (ARC), where he worked for one and a half years.

“One day, I saw an advertisement in which CIMMYT was looking for a maize breeder. I applied, went for the interview and was happy to get the position. That was in 2008,” he says.

The right tool for the right variety

Biotic and abiotic stresses are becoming more frequent and vicious because of climate change and there is growing urgency to tackle them to avert future potential food crises.

Beyene’s current research focuses on developing high-yielding and climate-resilient maize inbred lines and hybrids for sub-Saharan Africa. He uses conventional and molecular breeding, including integration of novel tools and techniques, such as doubled haploid, and marker-assisted recurrent section and genomic selection. Over the years, he has developed at least 25 new drought-tolerant maize hybrids recommended for commercialization in Kenya, Mozambique, Uganda, South Africa and Tanzania. Currently, 23 seed companies have been engaged to produce and market the released hybrids through sub-licensing.

Presently, as the Regional Breeding Coordinator for Africa, he is responsible for assessing the progress of implementing product profile-based breeding, appropriate germplasm exchange within and across regional breeding hubs, and ascertaining the progress on new initiatives by regional breeding teams.

A long-term endeavor

Breeding is a costly, time consuming and complex exercise. “It takes at least 10 years from crossing to release using pedigree breeding because the hybrids should be evaluated in multiple years and tested in multiple locations, which increases costs and time of the breeding cycle. You have to appreciate the fact that you are not breeding for now but for the future,” he says.

“As a breeder, you have to keep testing new tools and techniques to make breeding more efficient. Yet, resources are not always constant but inadequate. Stresses are becoming more urgent and vicious, despite increased urgency in tackling them to avert a potential food crises,” he says.

To reduce the time and accelerate genetic gains, Beyene and his colleagues at CIMMYT are currently applying the genomic selection technique for maize breeding, using it to predict the performance of un-phenotyped genotypes at early stage of testing. He and his colleagues recently published their research comparing genomic selection with phenotypic selection, as used by CIMMYT’s maize breeding program in sub-Saharan Africa. They found that the use of genomic selection for yield under optimum and drought conditions in tropical maize can produce selection candidates with similar performance as those generated from conventional phenotypic selection, but at a lower cost. They concluded that this strategy should be effectively incorporated into maize breeding pipelines to enhance breeding program efficiency.

Breeding challenges notwithstanding, Beyene feels fulfilled whenever he sees a farmer has planted a variety that he helped breed. “The epitome of my inspiration is when there is a smile on their face because of the variety’s good performance on their farm,” he says.

Interacting with the farmers and seed companies provides an opportunity for him to learn, understand their varietal preferences as well as appreciate the impact that his work has on their operations. He is also actively engaged in building the capcity of public and private partners, and supervising master’s and doctoral students from various countries. He has published more than 50 articles in journals.

The life of a breeder is not as lonely and boring as some would think. Beyene creates time to be with his three children, playing with them and helping with their homework, taking them out for social events. He also dedicates time to watch football, reality television, comedy and drama with his family.

A worker at the Naivasha MLN research station conducts a mock inoculation (Photo: Joshua Masinde/CIMMYT)

Battling devastating viral diseases, also in plants

Written by Jennifer Johnson on May 28, 2020. Posted in Features.

When a maize lethal necrosis (MLN) outbreak happened in Kenya in 2011, scientists knew they needed to act fast. This viral disease, new to Kenya, was decimating maize fields. Within a few years, the viral disease spread rapidly in eastern Africa, through both insect vectors and contaminated seeds. If the virus were to spread into southern or West Africa, it would spell disaster for the smallholder farmers across the continent who depended on maize as a staple crop and for their family’s income and livelihoods.

The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and its partners immediately took action to impose a strict seed quarantine and restrict the movement of seed between eastern Africa and other regions in Africa. In addition, they worked intensively on developing and disseminating improved maize cultivars with tolerance or resistance to MLN, undertook extensive surveillance efforts, and sensitized partners on the importance of producing and commercializing MLN-free seed.

Due to these efforts, in the last nine years MLN has not been reported in sub-Saharan Africa outside of eastern Africa.

On the occasion of a recent publication on Virus Research about how MLN was contained, we interviewed B.M. Prasanna, director of the Global Maize Program at CIMMYT and the CGIAR Research Program on Maize (MAIZE), to discuss the MLN success story, the global COVID-19 crisis, and the similarities in the challenge to tackle plant and human viral diseases.

B.M. Prasanna, Director of the Global Maize Program at CIMMYT and the CGIAR Research Program on Maize (MAIZE). (Photo: Alfonso Cortés/CIMMYT)

What were some of the extreme measures CIMMYT had to take to stop the spread of MLN?

The first step that we had to take in the fight against MLN was to rigorously analyze seed for any possible contamination with MLN-causing viruses and restrict movement of seed from eastern Africa to southern Africa.

The second most important step was to sensitize the national partners and the commercial seed sector about the danger of seed contamination with MLN-causing viruses, and how seed contamination can lead to the proliferation or spread of the disease.

The third important step was to build a new MLN quarantine facility in Zimbabwe, in partnership with the National Plant Quarantine Institute. Only when that quarantine facility was functional in 2017, we reinitiated transfer of research material from CIMMYT’s breeding hub in Kenya to CIMMYT in Zimbabwe. Only when the materials were certified to be MLN-free both in Kenya and Zimbabwe, through plant-by-plant analysis using immunodiagnostic kits, the seed was multiplied and further distributed to partners. So, the principle of containment and effective management is extremely important, whether it is a plant viral disease or a human viral disease.

We must note here that in terms of scale and intensity, as well as global effects and implications, any plant disease, including MLN, cannot be compared with a pandemic like COVID-19, which has affected every aspect of our lives.

Maize Lethal Necrosis (MLN) sensitive and resistant hybrid demo plots in Naivasha’s quarantine & screening facility (Photo: KIPENZ/CIMMYT)

How do you think the COVID-19 pandemic is going to impact our food systems?

We are indeed in a grim situation. The pandemic will undoubtedly have a serious effect on food security.

Many countries which do not have enough food reserves or those where the food systems are vulnerable to shocks like this are suffering. The people’s capacity to procure inputs for agriculture, including seed, is going to be affected too, as the markets are affected. This is really a serious situation that we all should be concerned about. The CGIAR has an important role to play, in terms of working closely with national partners and mitigating the impact of COVID-19 on agriculture.

We should be particularly worried about farmers, especially smallholder farmers, who are quite vulnerable to the ongoing challenge. Even without COVID-19, agriculture in many developing countries worldwide has been already under distress. Small and marginal farmers were often unable to find a market for their produce and earn sufficient income to support their families. Their livelihoods are fragile, and vulnerable to climate change and volatile market prices. The ongoing COVID-19 crisis is unfortunately compounding the crisis.

L.M. Suresh (center-right), Maize Pathologist at CIMMYT and Head of the MLN Screening Facility, facilitates a training on MLN with national partners. (Photo: CIMMYT)

What lessons can agricultural research learn from this pandemic?

What do these pandemics or epidemics teach us? They remind us that systems need to be in place to prevent the proliferation of such diseases, whether it is plant diseases or animal diseases or human diseases. No country can be considered completely safe, and such diseases do not discriminate between a developed and a developing country, or the rich and the poor.

The second most important lesson is emergency preparedness. Whenever such devastating transboundary viral diseases show up, how quickly the country can respond — containing that infected area and not allowing the disease to spread, and then mitigating the damage systematically and quickly — is key. This is not the first time that a disease like MLN has emerged. There could be more serious viral or fungal diseases that could emerge in the future due to various reasons, including changing climates, international trade, movement of human beings, air currents, etc. There are multiple ways that diseases can go across continents, across countries within a continent, and within countries. Therefore, the key is how well we can capacitate the national systems to be able to proactively prevent, detect, and intervene very fast.

Another big lesson here for agricultural systems is that a problem that happens in some other continent cannot be ignored because you work in a different continent. What COVID-19 shows is that the world is far more connected than we think.

CIMMYT team members check for traces of the maize chlorotic mottle virus (MCMV) in maize plants during a visit to the MLN screening facility in Naivasha, Kenya. (Photo: Joshua Masinde/CIMMYT)

For you, what is the biggest takeaway from the MLN success story?

I won’t say it is still a complete success. Through intensive partnerships and efforts, we were able to prevent the disease from devastating maize production in millions of smallholder farmers’ fields in sub-Saharan Africa. Since 2014, there has been no new country in Africa — outside eastern Africa — that has reported an outbreak of MLN. That, to me, is a tremendous success.

The work is still not over. The journey has to continue. And we still need to make sure that countries are continuously protected from devastating diseases like MLN. MLN is still not eradicated from eastern Africa. It may not be even possible to completely eradicate this disease, as the two viruses that together cause it can survive not just on maize but on multiple grasses. We can however contain the disease and limit its impact through continued efforts, like what we have done for the past 7 or 8 years. But if we lower our guard, there is a very high likelihood that the disease can still spread to other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, especially the major maize-growing countries in southern Africa or West Africa. Efforts need to continue. So, let us continue to maintain a high vigil to protect the smallholders in Africa from transboundary diseases like MLN.

Read the full article on Virus Research:
Maize lethal necrosis (MLN): Efforts toward containing the spread and impact of a devastating transboundary disease in sub-Saharan Africa

Stripe rust hits wheat crop in Nepal

Written by Mary Donovan on May 27, 2020. Posted in In the media.

Nepalese and CIMMYT wheat scientists, working at the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) suspect new races of stripe and leaf rust infected the wheat crop in the Nepal hills and terai in the recent 2020 wheat season. This was reported after detailed survey and surveillance activities of rust diseases in the terai and hill regions were carried out during March and April, before the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cessation of many field activities.

The Rodríguez family, milpa farmers, in Cristóbal Colón, Campeche. (Photo: CIMMYT/Peter Lowe)

CIMMYT for Mexico in times of a global pandemic

Written by Marta Millere on May 26, 2020. Posted in News.

Mexico has always been there for CIMMYT.

Not only is it the origin of maize – one of CIMMYT’s focus crops – it also inspired the birth of its headquarters, which has served as the institute’s mothership since its establishment in 1966.

CIMMYT’s crop-breeding research begins with its genebank, a remarkable living catalog of genetic diversity comprising over 28,000 unique seed collections of maize and over 150,000 of wheat. The genebank was established at CIMMYT’s headquarters in 1986 and to date is the world’s largest and most diverse collection of maize and wheat. Like clockwork, every year, more than 1,500 maize and wheat seed shipments leave Mexico to reach as many as 800 recipients in over 100 countries.

In one way or another, the world’s maize and wheat have a link back to Mexico: be it through pest-resistance trials in the Agua Fria or Tlaltizapan hub or heat-resilient wheat trials in the scorching fields of Obregon. The country’s diverse ecosystems which allowed for Norman Borlaug’s shuttle breeding in the 1940s remain instrumental for today’s researchers’ work to develop innovative crops and sustainable farming systems worldwide.

Field worker bagging maize ears at CIMMYT’s Agua Fría experimental station. (Photo: CIMMYT/Alfonso Cortés)

CIMMYT has been working hand in hand with Mexico’s Secretariat of Agriculture and Rural Development (SADER) on MasAgro, a project that promotes the sustainable production of maize and wheat in Mexico.

In the conversation below, Martin Kropff, Director General of CIMMYT, and Bram Govaerts, CIMMYT Representative for the Americas and Director of the Integrated Development Program, explore topics such as Mexico’s food security and agriculture while COVID-19 disrupts the nation’s status quo.

Has the COVID-19 pandemic exposed any vulnerabilities in Mexican food security?

Kropff: Albeit Mexico produces a lot of food – in fact, I believe that it currently ranks 11^th in food production globally – it still imports food from other countries, particularly staples such as maize, wheat and rice from the U.S. The current pandemic poses a threat to open trade, and Mexico could also be affected by trade restrictions that other countries impose to protect their people and internal markets from food shortages.

Govaerts: At the same time, the pandemic is reducing economic activities everywhere to minimum levels. This poses a threat to food production given that farmers and agricultural workers in Mexico, and most of the northern hemisphere, are just about to begin the growing spring/summer season. Mexico’s fields need to be prepared for sowing and farmers need certainty as they take risks by investing today for a harvest that will come within several months.

How is CIMMYT helping to reduce these vulnerabilities?

Govaerts: CIMMYT is working with Mexico’s Agriculture Department (SADER) and the private and social sector to address these threats.

Kropff: In fact, we see that Mexico is already answering to a CIMMYT-endorsed Call to Action For World Leaders, which was published on the Food and Land Use Coalition website. This call to action urges countries to implement three key measures to avert a global food crisis that could increase the number of people suffering from chronic hunger by millions: keep the supply of food flowing across the world; scale support to the most vulnerable; and invest in sustainable, resilient food systems.

Seed collection during the harvest at CIMMYT’s experimental station located in Cuidad Obregón, Sonora. (Photo: CIMMYT/Peter Lowe)

What is the role of CIMMYT’s collaboration with Mexican government bodies in this process?

Govaerts: In the fields there is potential to respond and avoid that today’s health crisis becomes tomorrow’s food crisis. CIMMYT is working with SADER and Mexico’s National Research System (INIFAP) to contribute to a stable supply of basic grains grown sustainably in Mexico by offering technical advice to the more than 300,000 farmers that participate in MasAgro, CIMMYT’s bilateral collaboration project with Mexico for sustainable maize and wheat production.

Currently, MasAgro technicians and extension agents are working with smallholder farmers in the center and south of the country to prepare soils for sowing, advising on optimal sowing densities and use of high-yielding improved varieties, agro-ecological pest management, fertilization, irrigation, among other activities that are essential to begin the crop production cycle in time.

Mexico and CIMMYT are also working with the agri-food sector to build farmers’ capacities to increase grain production sustainably and to sell the surplus to local and multi-national agri-food companies in Mexico. This is part of wider country plans which are called Maize for Mexico and Wheat for Mexico.

Kropff: These plans are very much in line with the call for governments to work with the philanthropic and private sectors to strengthen and scale out targeted food programs by linking them to foods that promote health and sustainable production. Currently we work with Nestlé, The Kellogg Company, Grupo Bimbo, and Walmart Foundation, among others, to create a pull from the market for sustainable agriculture for smallholder farmers. We call this sustainable sourcing.

How can we strengthen Mexico as a country of agricultural crops research and design activities?

Kropff: CIMMYT has been instrumental to public policy formulation in Mexico and has been positioned as one of Mexico’s most trusted partners over the past 10 years.

Govaerts: Exactly, and the numbers speak for themselves. As a result of the collaboration with more than 150 collaborators from the public, private and social sector, MasAgro has had a positive impact in the lives of more than 300 thousand farmers who have adopted conservation agriculture, improved seeds and sustainable farming technologies on more than 1 million hectares across Mexico.

Kropff: It would be great if Mexico continued investing in integrated development projects like MasAgro, and scaled out sustainable farming practices and technologies with innovative approaches like responsible local sourcing, which I mentioned just before while it promotes the replication of the MasAgro model in other countries.

How can we strengthen farmer’s access to better crops and better farming techniques?

Kropff: It is imperative to CIMMYT to improve farmers’ economic opportunity. This cannot be done without essential ingredients such as access to markets, capacity development, technology, and inputs like seeds and fertilizer. And most importantly, better crops and farming technologies are worthless without the national agricultural research systems’ buy in and trust.

Govaerts: This is very much at the heart of what we do together with maize farmers in Mexico in MasAgro. CIMMYT breeds maize hybrids with conventional technologies and improves native maize seed in collaborative projects with farmers. Then this improved maize seed is tested in collaboration with the local seed sector that, in turn, commercializes the best adapted materials in Mexico’s growing regions. These seed companies are small and medium enterprises that generate economic development in the center and south of the country.

Kropff: Similarly, in a project that started in 2019 in eastern and southern Africa, we reach farmers in Malawi, and soon in Rwanda and Tanzania, with our improved seeds through small seed companies which play the key role of ‘connector’ in intricate and complicated markets which often are ignored by large seed companies. Then, CIMMYT researchers undertake varietal trials and track genetic gains in farmers’ fields and share the findings with the broader agricultural community.

What changes can we expect in the nation’s food supply chain management after COVID-19?

Kropff: All crises bring challenges and opportunities. I believe that Mexico could take this opportunity to make its supply and value chains more integrated, resilient and flexible.

Govaerts: Mexico can become the leader of innovation that integrates traditional and scientific knowledge.

What role does CIMMYT want to play in the future?

Kropff: I see CIMMYT working even closer to the farming communities but especially along the whole value chain with science and data towards improved decision-making.

Govaerts: CIMMYT can be a catalyst of integrated programs. We want to keep discovering and helping to implement new solutions for the world’s poor and food insecure and work toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

Kropff: We have a lot of work to do.

Plant-based materials catch on with home-goods designers

Written by Mary Donovan on May 26, 2020. Posted in In the media.

“What my project tries to do is visualize the diversity of corn that we have in my home country,” said Mexican designer Fernando Laposse. He partnered with CIMMYT, working with a village of Mixtec farmers and herders to transform waste from these plants into furniture. The corn’s kernels and husks come in hues of cream, deep red, pink, black and purple.

Africa’s smallholders to bear the brunt of COVID-19

Written by Mary Donovan on May 25, 2020. Posted in In the media.

“COVID-19 will make African governments identify agriculture as an essential sector that deserves maximum support and protection,” explains Stephen Mugo, Africa regional representative at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, Kenya. “Urgent action is needed to ensure that adequate credit and other support are available when and where needed to strengthen farmers’ ability to deliver.”

Preserving the legacy of biodiversity

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on May 21, 2020. Posted in Videos. 3 Comments on Preserving the legacy of biodiversity

Seed security is the first step towards food security. The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) preserves 28,000 unique seed samples of maize and 150,000 of wheat at its genebank in Mexico.

The Global Seed Vault in Svalbard opened in 2008. Since then, CIMMYT has duplicated and deposited 50 million seeds — 170,000 samples of maize and wheat — at Svalbard.

This year, CIMMYT sent 24 boxes of seed, with 332 samples of maize and 15,231 samples of wheat.

Join these seeds on a journey, as they travel more than 8,000 km from CIMMYT’s genebank in Mexico to the Global Seed Vault in the Arctic.

A supermarket, rather than a museum

This treasure, kept in the global network of genebanks, is key to ensuring sustainable, nutritious agricultural systems for future generations.

The purpose of genebanks is not just to preserve seed, but to use its biodiversity to address the needs of the future — and the needs of today.

Climate change is already impacting resource-poor farmers and consumers in low- and middle-income countries. Researchers and breeders at CIMMYT are rolling out solutions to these challenges, based on the diverse genetic resources kept in the genebank. As a result, farmers can use new varieties that yield more, need less inputs, and are more tolerant to drought or heat.

Our internal estimates show that about 30% of maize and more than 50% of wheat grown worldwide can be traced to CIMMYT germplasm.

Humanity’s legacy

Maize and wheat originated about 10,000 years ago. Since then, it’s survived war, drought, diseases, migration, birds, low yields — and the hard choice between feeding children or planting again.

Keepers of genebanks around the world are only the depositors of this legacy, which belongs to all humanity. CIMMYT will continue to preserve these seeds and to make their biodiversity available to researchers and famers, to solve today’s and tomorrow’s most pressing issues.

Cover photo: A NordGen staff member brings a box of seed into the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway. (Photo: Thomas Sonne/Common Ground Media for NordGen)

Fawligen registered in Bangladesh

Written by Mary Donovan on May 18, 2020. Posted in In the media.

Ispahani and AgBiTech are pleased to announce the formal registration of a biological control for Fall Armyworm in Bangladesh.

This rapid assessment and registration despite the ongoing lockdown due to Covid-19 is the result of months of collaborative hard work and support from members representing multiple organizations including USAID, CIMMYT, the Ministry of Agriculture, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, Plant Protection Wing of Agricultural Extension, and the Fall Armyworm National Task Force.

Traditional mixed maize farming system in northern Laos. (Photo: H. Weyerhaeuser/CIMMYT)

Fall armyworm survey marks CIMMYT’s first research project in Laos

Written by Matthew O'Leary on May 13, 2020. Posted in Features.

A major farmer survey is gathering data to understand how smallholders in Laos are responding to fall armyworm invasion and develop agroecological management options to control its spread.

The study, led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in partnership with the Lao Farmer Network (LFN) and the National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute (NAFRI), is CIMMYT’s first official research initiative in the country.

Farmer surveys are being conducted in some of the country’s key maize farming areas, recording attempts to manage the pest and laying the groundwork to raise awareness on sustainable best-bet agroecological strategies that promote a healthy system approach to maize farming, says Horst Weyerhaeuser, a scientific program consultant working with CIMMYT.

“Currently, researchers, policy makers and extension officers possess little information on fall armyworm pest management and control in Laos,” he explains. “The survey is working to build a knowledge-base.”

In June 2019, CIMMYT and national research scientists confirmed that fall armyworm, a global pest that affects the food security of millions of maize farmers, was present in the country.

Working with CIMMYT, LFN trained lead farmers to conduct surveys and collect data from farmers in their local areas. The network has also been distributing a series of infographics and videos in local languages, developed by CIMMYT and translated with major support from HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation and the Lao Farmer Rural Advisory Project, to describe appropriate pesticide use and sustainable farming practices to limit impact on harvests.

“The survey data explores how farmers respond to the armyworm in their maize fields, so that integrated pest management strategies can be promoted for successful pest control and especially to limit excessive use of harmful pesticides,” says Phoutthasinh Phimmachanh, who leads the LFN secretariat. “The survey also asks about farmers’ plans for the upcoming rainy season and if they experienced a fall armyworm infestation in 2019 will it change their crop selection and planting schemes.”

The initiative is part of a larger strategy to work with government and farmers in southeast Asia to build a knowledge base on sustainable maize farming through the CGIAR program on MAIZE. Due to the impact of COVID-19, researchers are currently exploring options to continue these and additional surveys digitally and via telephone.

As maize farming increases, so does the risk fall armyworm poses to farmer livelihoods

A woman in Oudomxhai, Laos, stands in her maize field damaged by fall armyworm. (Photo: H. Weyerhaeuser/CIMMYT)

Maize is becoming an increasingly important cash crop in southeast Asia as diets change and consumer preferences for white meat and pork drive a transition from subsistence to commercial maize feed production. Farmer focus groups in northern Laos suggest that maize sales deliver more than 60% of smallholders’ annual cash income.

“Maize is the only cash crop for thousands of smallholder farmers in Laos. Fall armyworm poses a credible threat to their livelihoods and could push them to a vicious circle of poverty and damage to the environment,” explains CIMMYT economist Amjath Babu.

“We want to confirm anecdotal accounts suggesting uninformed farmers are buying whatever pesticides they can get their hands on in a bid to control the pest’s impact on harvests. This reaction mimics that of initial farmer responses in sub-Saharan Africa when the pest first broke out there in 2016.” In this sense, he adds, CIMMYT’s partnership with LFN helps to measure the implications of fall armyworm and the potential for this pest to reduce farmers’ profit margins while encouraging unsustainable pesticide use.

Pesticides must be used with extreme caution and only appropriately if they are to be a part of any fall armyworm management regime, warns CIMMYT Senior Scientist Tim Krupnik.

“The pest has particular habits — like living under leaves, hiding in hard to reach places of the plant, and feeding mainly at night,” he explains. “This makes indiscriminate application of insecticides relatively less useful.” It could also inadvertently contribute to the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services through overuse of pesticides that cause mortality for natural enemies and parasitoids.

Scientists want to explore whether the higher production costs farmers may incur through additional insecticide purchase is encouraging a shift from maize cash crop monocultures to a more diverse production including replacement or rotations with cassava, fodder crops, and rotational grazing, where feasible.

“By building an evidence base we can work with the National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute,the agricultural department and farmers to build sustainable, resilient maize farming systems that ensure farmers continue to cash in on maize while diversifying production into sensible alternative crops, with emphasis on protecting their health and the environment,” Babu adds.

Fall armyworm survey part of a larger increase in maize research in southeast Asia

The expansion of maize in Laos has been accompanied by a progressive decrease in landscape and agricultural biodiversity, as farmers respond to opportunities to export maize at relatively profitable prices, largely to neighboring Vietnam and China, by resorting to an expansion of slash-and-burn agriculture with shortened fallows. The rapidly growing demand for maize has resulted in unsustainable farming systems intensification, explains Krupnik, with many farmers clearing forests to plant, and using excessive amounts of herbicides to keep weeds at bay.

“Combined with the fall armyworm invasion, potentially dangerous pesticides have been added to this scenario, with quite concerning potential consequences for further biodiversity loss and contamination of mountain streams by agrochemicals,” he says.

“Projects run by Helvetas, which has helped support our research through coordination and convening efforts, have measured dangerous levels of pesticides in the blood of samples taken from farmers and their families and government officials.”

Maize is important for income generation, but more sustainable and diverse cropping systems are needed to reduce the impact on biodiversity, while avoiding the worst pesticides that comprise human health. The data generated from this research will help design strategies to respond to these problems with more appropriate agricultural practices.

The ministry of agriculture has welcomed support from CIMMYT’s maize systems experts to aid in building a base of knowledge to inform the development of agricultural policy, says Chay Bounphanousay, director general of the National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute. “With the rise of maize farming and the associated challenges and opportunities it brings, an increase in research will inform agricultural policy to improve farmer livelihoods while protecting the environment.”

Cover photo: Traditional mixed maize farming system in northern Laos. (Photo: H. Weyerhaeuser/CIMMYT)

Responding to fall armyworm in Lao PDR

Written by Emma Orchardson on May 13, 2020. Posted in Uncategorized.

Highland maize production systems in Southeast Asia are crucial in that they generate considerable income for otherwise impoverished farmers in remote upland areas. However, they are largely unsustainable, involving destructive slash and burn agriculture, with increasingly short fallow times between crops. Additionally, and in response to historically favorable maize markets, many farmers now plan to expand maize cultivation areas, which is anticipated to have serious consequences for biodiversity loss and ecosystem services.

The arrival of fall armyworm adds additional pressures that could lead to intensification of management practices and over-use of insecticides; a partial transition away from maize as farmers respond to the pest by growing other crops and initiating new land use practices; and increased use of sustainable intensification practices that employ agroecological options for fall armyworm management.

Responding to fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda J.E. Smith) with data, evidence and agroecological management options in Lao PDR is a research project funded through the CGIAR Research Program on Maize (MAIZE). It sees CIMMYT partner with the Laos Farmer Network (LFN) and the National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute (NAFRI) to understand how smallholders in the country are responding to fall armyworm invasion and develop agroecological management options to control its spread.

Working with CIMMYT, LFN will train lead farmers to conduct surveys and collect data from farmers in their local areas. The network will also distribute a series of infographics and videos in local languages, developed by CIMMYT and translated with major support from HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation and the Lao Farmer Rural Advisory Project, to outline appropriate pesticide use and sustainable farming practices to limit impact on harvests. An estimated 2,000 farmers will receive information on research results and fall armyworm management advice.

The results will offer evidence-based insights allowing LFN and the Lao Upland Rural Advisory Service (LURAS) project to plan future extension and development activities more effectively, while also identifying crucial additional research needs given these urgent issues and circumstances.

This research will yield actionable lessons and position LFN and the LURAS project to provide farmers with context-specific and agroecological fall armyworm management advice that responds to insights derived from farmer surveys that characterize pest incidence and severity, and relates them to farmers’ management practices, farm- and landscape-biodiversity, and location.

Breaking Ground: Maria Itria Ibba and the lab that bakes bread

Written by Mike Listman on May 6, 2020. Posted in Features.

The rising and shifting demand for wheat, with rapid urbanization and increasingly globalized food markets, is pushing farmers more than ever to produce high-quality grain, according to the scientist who leads wheat quality research in the world’s foremost publicly-funded wheat breeding program.

“Wheat quality is becoming more and more important, as the industrial production of bread and other wheat-based foods increases to meet the demands of city dwellers, working women, and wheat consumers in wheat-importing countries,” said Maria Itria Ibba, head of the Wheat Chemistry and Quality Laboratory at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

“Companies that produce and market food for such consumers demand high, consistent quality in grain they purchase and we have to help wheat farmers to meet stringent requirements.”

This is so important that CIMMYT’s Global Wheat Program — whose contributions figure in more than half of the wheat varieties released worldwide — directly uses lab data on milling, processing and end-use quality to decide which bread and durum wheat lines to move forward in its breeding programs, according to Ibba.

“Assessing quality is a huge task, because wheat is used to make hundreds of different foods, including all kinds of leavened bread, flat breads, pastas, noodles and steamed bread,” said Ibba. “Our lab is an integral part of breeding, analyzing thousands of grain samples from thousands of wheat lines each year for nearly a dozen quality parameters.”

Cut out for quality

A native of Viterbo, Italy, Ibba has led the Wheat Chemistry and Quality Laboratory since 2019 and is uniquely qualified for the job, with a bachelor’s degree in biotechnology, a master’s degree in biotechnology for the safety and quality of agricultural products — both from the University of Tuscia, Viterbo — and a doctorate in crop science from the Washington State University. Her Ph.D. dissertation addressed “low-molecular-weight glutenin subunit gene family members and their relationship with wheat end-use quality parameters.”

With a mother who studied medicine and a father who worked at the Italian Space Agency, Ibba said that in school she always enjoyed science subjects such as biology and chemistry. “They were easy for me to understand and I really liked how, after studying them, I was able to explain and understand many things around me.”

Ibba said the biggest challenges for her and her lab team are to understand wheat quality needs and conduct faster and better analyses.

“Several of the tests we do are expensive, time-consuming, and require skilled personnel and significant amounts of grain,” she explained, citing the use of exotically named devices such as the “Quadrumat Senior mill,” the “mixograph,” and the “alveograph,” to list a few. “We’re continuously looking for novel methods that are quicker, use smaller samples of grain, and with lower costs.”

Understanding the biochemical and genetic bases of wheat grain and flour quality traits is key to this, according to Ibba, but wheat quality traits are so complex genetically that DNA markers are of little help in breeding. “We’ve begun to explore whole genome selection for wheat quality traits, in collaboration with Kansas State University, but this will never completely replace the laboratory tests.”

Let’s talk health and nutrition

A staple of tours for the hundreds of visitors that come each year to CIMMYT in Mexico, the wheat quality laboratory combines the razzle-dazzle of high-tech devices with hands-on, sensory attractions such as inflating dough balls and freshly baked test loaves.

Ibba’s work includes talking to visitors about wheat, its important history and role in human nutrition and food, and concerns in the popular media regarding wheat and health.

“I think people know more now about what gluten is and its importance, but there is still the need to talk about gluten and wheat so that people can make informed decisions based on scientific facts,” she said. “I was happy to see the recent article from CIMMYT on a review study which, among many other things, showed there was no scientific evidence for the idea that eating refined flour is bad for your health.”

“Wheat provides about 20 percent of calories and protein for more than 4.5 billion people in developing countries,” Ibba pointed out. “There’s an increasing focus on understanding and improving the nutritional quality of wheat and its products because of the greater overall interest in diets and in the nutritional value of diverse foods.”

Opinion: COVID-19 highlights need to boost resilience of Africa’s rural poor

Written by Mary Donovan on May 4, 2020. Posted in In the media.

Aparna Das of CIMMYT, Arun Baral of Harvest Plus and Bill Rustrick of the Clinton Development Initiative discuss a project in Malawi strengthening the resilience of smallholder farming communities.