When a devastating stripe rust epidemic hit Ethiopia last year, newly-released wheat varieties derived from international partnerships proved resistant to the disease, and are now being multiplied for seed. Wheat farmers and breeders are embroiled in a constant arms race against the rust diseases, as new rust races evolve to conquer previously resistant varieties. Ethiopia’s wheat crop became the latest casualty when a severe stripe rust epidemic struck in 2010.
“The dominant wheat varieties were hit by this disease, and in some of the cases where fungicide application was not done there was extremely high yield loss,” says Firdissa Eticha, national wheat research program coordinator with the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR). “This is a threat for the future because there is climate change—which has already been experienced in Ethiopia—and the varieties which we have at hand were totally hit by this stripe rust.”
Ethiopia is not alone; stripe rust has become a serious problem across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, with epidemics in 2009 and 2010 which many countries have struggled to control. What’s new is the evolution of stripe rust races that are able to overcome Yr27, a major rust resistance gene that many important wheat varieties rely on. Although recent weather conditions have allowed the new rust races to thrive, they first began to emerge more than a decade ago, and CIMMYT’s wheat program, always looking forward to the next threat, began selection for resistance to Yr27-virulent races in 1998.
“CIMMYT has a number of wheat lines that have shown good-to-excellent resistance to stripe rust without relying on Yr27, in screening in Mexico, Ecuador, and Kenya,” says Ravi Singh, CIMMYT distinguished scientist and rust expert who leads the breeding effort in Mexico. Many of these are also resistant to the stem rust race Ug99 and have 10-15% higher yields than currently-grown varieties, according to Singh. The current step is to work with national programs to identify and promote the most useful of the resistant materials for their environments—a process that was underway in Ethiopia when the epidemic struck.
Eticha is leading his country’s fight against stripe rust. Reflecting on the disease, he says: “For me it is as important as stem rust. I find it like a wildfire when there is a susceptible variety. You see very beautiful fields actually, yellow like a canola field in flower. But for farmers it is a very sad sight. Stripe rust can cause up to 100% yield loss.” There is no official figure yet on the overall loss to Ethiopia’s wheat harvest for 2010, but it is expected to be more than 20%.
The other common name for stripe rust is yellow rust. Severely-infected plants look bright yellow, due to a photosynthesis-blocking coating of spores of the fungus Puccinia striiformis, which causes the disease. These spores are yellow to orange-yellow in color, and form pustules. These usually appear as narrow stripes along the leaves, and can cover the leaves in susceptible varieties, as well as affecting the leaf sheaths and the spikes. The disease lowers both yield and grain quality, causing stunted and weakened plants, fewer spikes, fewer grains per spike, and shriveled grains with reduced weight. Epidemic flourishes with damp weather Normally, Ethiopia has two distinct rainy seasons, one short and one main, allowing for two wheat cropping cycles per year. However, 2010 saw persistent gentle rains throughout the year, with prolonged dews and cool temperatures—perfect weather for stripe rust. Most wheat varieties planted in Ethiopia were susceptible, including the two most popular, Kubsa and Galema, so damage was severe. Under normal conditions, the disease only attacks high-altitude wheat in Ethiopia, but last year it was rampant even at low altitudes. This could reflect the appearance of a new race that is less temperature sensitive, or simply the unusual weather conditions; Ethiopian researchers are currently waiting for the results of a rust race analysis.
There was little Ethiopia could do to prevent the epidemic; imported fungicides controlled the disease where they were applied on time, but supplies were limited and expensive. Newly-released, resistant varieties provide a way out of danger. In particular, two CIMMYT lines released in Ethiopia in 2010 proved resistant to stripe rust in their target environments: Picaflor#1, which was released in Ethiopia as Kakaba, and Danphe#1, released as Danda’a. Picaflor#1 is targeted to environments where Kubsa is grown, and so has the potential to replace it, and Danphe#1 could similarly replace Galema. Both varieties are also high-yielding and resistant to Ug99.
Seed multiplication of resistant CIMMYT varieties As soon as the situation became clear, EIAR and the Ethiopian Seed Enterprise (the state-owned organization responsible for multiplication and distribution of improved seed of all major crops in Ethiopia) worked together to speed the multiplication of seed of these varieties, using irrigation during the dry seasons. This is happening now, with almost 500 hectares under multiplication over the winter—421 of Picaflor#1 and 70 of Danphe#1. Financial support from this project came from the USAID Famine Fund. Two resistant lines from the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) were released in Ethiopia in 2011, and will add to the diversity for resistance.
Eticha does not foresee any difficulty encouraging farmers to adopt the new varieties. In 2010 they were grown by 900 farmers on small on-farm demonstration plots, as part of EIAR’s routine annual program, so they have been seen—free of stripe rust—by thousands of farmers, and there will be more demonstration plots as more seed becomes available. However, “farmers are at risk still even if the varieties are there,” he says, “the problem is seed supply.” Some seed will reach farmers this year, but the priority will be ongoing multiplication to build up availability as fast as possible.
Hans-Joachim Braun, director of CIMMYT's Global Wheat Program, visited Ethiopia in 2010. “The epidemic was a real wake-up call,” he says. “Researchers have known for more than ten years that the varieties grown are susceptible. Farmers are not aware of the danger, so it is the responsibility of researchers and seed producers, if we know a variety is susceptible, to replace it with something better."
Exploring rust solutions in Syria
The ongoing fight against the wheat rust diseases is an international, collaborative effort involving many partners in national programs and international organizations. CIMMYT works closely with ICARDA, which leads efforts against the wheat rust diseases in Central and West Asia and North Africa. At the International Wheat Stripe Rust Symposium, organized by ICARDA in Aleppo, Syria, during 18-20 April 2011, global experts developed strategies to prevent future rust outbreaks and to ensure the control and reduction of rust diseases in the long term.
Other participating organizations included CIMMYT, the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI), the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the UN, the International Development Research Center (IDRC, Canada), and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). More than 100 scientists from 31 countries presented work and shared ideas on wheat rust surveillance and monitoring, development and promotion of rust-resistant wheat varieties, and crop diversity strategies to slow the progress of rust outbreaks.
CIMMYT was represented by Hans-Joachim Braun and Ravi Singh. “Wheat crops and stripe rust like exactly the same conditions,” says Braun, “and they both love nitrogen. This means that where a farmer has a high yield potential, stripe rust takes it away, if the wheat variety is susceptible. In addition to the really devastating epidemics, the disease is very important because even in bumper years, farmers who grow susceptible varieties still can’t get a good yield.”
One thing all the attendees agreed on was the immediacy of the rust threat. New variants of both stem rust (also known as black rust) and stripe rust (or yellow rust), able to overcome the resistance of popular wheat varieties, are thriving under the more variable conditions caused by climate change, increasing their chances of spreading rapidly. Breeders in turn are quickly developing the varieties farmers need, with durable resistance to stem and stripe rust, as well as improved yield performance, drought tolerance, and regional suitability.
Other major areas of focus are the development of systems for monitoring and surveillance of rust to enable rapid response to initial outbreaks, and overcoming bottlenecks in getting resistant seed quickly to farmers. There is much to be done, but Singh is confident: “If donors, including national programs and the private sector, are willing to invest in wheat research and seed production, we can achieve significant results in a short time.”
"Ethiopian scientists responded quickly to the epidemic", says Braun, "but there were heavy losses in 2010. What we need is better communications between scientists, seed producers, and decision makers to ensure the quick replacement of varieties.”
Building on a strong partnership The value of the collaboration between CIMMYT and Ethiopia is already immeasurable for both partners. CIMMYT materials are routinely screened for rust at Meraro station, an Ethiopian hotspot, in increasing numbers as rust diseases have returned to the spotlight in recent years. CIMMYT lines are also a crucial input for Ethiopia’s national program.
“The contribution of CIMMYT is immense for us,” says Eticha. “CIMMYT provides us with a wide range of germplasm that is almost finished technology—one can say ready materials, that can be evaluated and released as varieties that can be used by farming communities.” Ethiopia has favorable agro-environments for wheat production, and the bread wheat area is expanding because of its high yields compared to indigenous tetraploid wheats. “Wheat is the third most important cereal crop in Ethiopia,” explains Eticha, “and it is really very important in transforming Ethiopia’s economy."
Bekele Abeyo, CIMMYT senior scientist and wheat breeder based in Ethiopia, works closely with the national program. CIMMYT helps in many ways, he explains, for example with training and capacity building, as well as donation of materials, including computers, vehicles, and even chemicals for research.
“In addition, we assign scientists to work closely with the national program, and facilitate germplasm exchange, providing high-yielding, disease resistant, widely-adapted varieties.” Speaking of the stripe rust epidemic, Abeyo says, “last year, the Ethiopian government spent more than USD 3.2 million just to buy fungicides, so imagine, the use of resistant varieties can save a lot of money. Most farmers are not able to buy these expensive fungicides. During the epidemic, fungicides were selling for three to four times their normal price, so you can see the value of resistant varieties.”
“I think East Africa is colonized by rust. Unless national programs work hard to overcome and contain disease pressure, wheat production is under great threat,” says Abeyo. “It is very important that we continue to strengthen the national programs to overcome the rust problem in the region.”
With Yr27-virulent stripe rust races now widespread throughout the world, Ethiopia’s story has echoes in many CIMMYT partner countries. The challenge is to work quickly together to identify and replace susceptible varieties with the new, productive, resistant materials.
CIMMYT
January 06, 2012
Resistant wheats and Ethiopian farmers battle deadly fungus
October 08, 2011
Two new stem rust-resistant wheat varieties released
by Erick Akasa
Scientists have released two new wheat varieties resistant to the wheat rust disease. Ug99, as the wheat rust is commonly known, is a serious disease that attacks the stem of wheat leading to low yields.
Ug99 is wind-borne disease and can travel large distances. It has seven races within the lineage and there may be chances of mutating further.
Resistant cultivars are now being released in several countries in Africa and Asia. With all these cultivars farmers will benefit not only from resistant to stem rust, but resistance to other diseases, and have higher yield than with existing varieties. They will also contain the quality characteristics needed by farmers.
In Kenya the two varieties released are Robin and Eagle-10, which are currently being multiplied by the Kenya Seed Company. Close to 10 tons of seeds will be available for distribution to the farmers by the end of the year.
According to Dr. Dave Hodson of the International Maize and Wheat Centre, CIMMYT Ethiopia, the two new resistant wheat cultivars released by KARI -Njoro have good resistance to Ug99 under intensive screening in Kenya.
Hodson said if enough farmers grow these resistant types then it will do a great deal to reduce the problem of stem rust.
“The new varieties are affordable to the farmer to manage since there will be reduced pressure to diseases hence less problems to the small scale farmer who cannot afford high cost of production,” Dr Hodson said.
He advised breeders to avoid using single major genes since with rust, they mutate and can overcome resistance with time.
“Although maize is still the most important cereal in the country, wheat has become increasingly important due to rural urban migration and changing dietary habits,"assistant minister for Agriculture Gideon Ndambuki says.
The demand for wheat has been growing at 5 per cent per annum and this has not been matched by production.
"Currently, the national demand for wheat has increased to nine hundred metric tons (900, 000MT) against a national production of three hundred thousand metric tons (300,000 MT)," notes Ndambuki.
Ndambuki said wheat production can be increased by addressing current constraints facing the farmers especially small scale farmers who not only have limited resources for production, but also lack access to technologies for production.
He said the new technologies have come at the right time since the use of fungicide has not saved the farmers either because the cost of producing wheat has increased by more than 40 per cent given that the farmer has to spray more than three times and each spray may cost not less than Sh 3000 per hectare.
Africa Science News
June 12, 2011
Stem rust-free wheat varieties developed
by Paul Voosen
A multinational group of scientists has developed farm-ready wheat resistant to a virulent and devastating plague that has slowly spread from Africa into the Middle East, carrying with it the threat of famine.
Researchers at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico will announce next week that they have developed wheat varieties showing "near immune" resistance to deadly stem rust disease. Once thought as well-conquered as polio, stem rust is known for killing as much as half a harvest.
A mutant strain of the fungus that causes stem rust appeared in Uganda a decade ago, tearing through previously resistant crops. Scientists found that the fungus, Ug99, could infect 90 percent of the world's wheat, causing a surge of concern from the United States to India. Wheat provides a fifth of the world's calories; a mass outbreak risked plunging many societies back into hunger, reversing agriculture's gains in the developing world.
The outlook was grim. Conventional methods of containing the disease failed, most spectacularly several years ago in Kenya, where Ug99 mutants soon overcame an introduced resistance. The fungus spread, appearing in South Africa and Iran. Blowing in the wind, its minute spores dance on the edges of wheat-dependent countries like Egypt and Turkey, threatening their populations with massive crop failure.
Those failures could still come, and the disease is far from conquered. Vigilant tracking is needed. The resistant wheat has not been widely deployed, and it could face bureaucratic or funding hurdles in its African spread. But the wheat, proven to survive heavy disease pressure in Kenya, is the best shot farmers have of stopping stem rust in its tracks, scientists say.
"We need that stuff," said Ronnie Coffman, the head of the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat project at Cornell University, a $67 million effort funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. "This is the major project that we have."
The CIMMYT effort was led by Ravi Singh, a wheat breeder and pathologist mentored by Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, who himself first defeated stem rust in Mexico many decades ago. Singh is one of the few remaining experts able to eyeball the shape and spew of a rust pustule and understand the genes underlying the trait, Coffman said.
"If we didn't have what Ravi and his colleagues have put together over the years," Coffman said, "we wouldn't have anything to deploy in the countries in the path of Ug99."
Singh is one of a rare breed. At most some 10 researchers in the world retained expertise in stem rust prior to Ug99, according to Jim Anderson, a wheat breeder at the University of Minnesota. As the disease disappeared from the farm, investment slacked and only a few centers like CIMMYT kept up programs studying the plague.
"It just really wasn't seen as a problem anywhere throughout the world," Anderson said.
Singh will announce the results of his group's work next week at a stem rust workshop in St. Paul, Minn., home to one of only four labs worldwide equipped to study Ug99 and its mutants. (The United States and Canada accept Ug99 only in winter; South Africa and Australia have banned Ug99 imports.) Singh published an advanced description of his team's progress last month in the Annual Review of Phytopathology.
The gains made by Singh's group represent a stark change in how crop disease is tackled, moving away from the boom-and-bust cycles that have long characterized breeding. There were easier paths they could have explored, but their introduced resistance should remain durable, not undermined in a few years, he said.
"We don't want this to be a cat-and-mouse game," Singh said. "This is looking toward a little bit longer term."
The resistant wheat was developed in large part without the advanced molecular tools that have widely penetrated breeding efforts in many labs. It also flies in the face of traditional approaches to resisting disease, which involve crossing single disease-resistance genes into a crop. Singh eschewed this approach, instead breeding up to five "minor" genes into his wheat, an intricate technical feat accomplished at a rapid pace.
Farmers in Ethiopia, who have had to make do with less-than-ideal wheat, are clamoring for the resistant varieties, frustrated with the government's decision to multiply the seed first, Singh said. India has committed to generating 8,000 tons of the seed, while, if USAID financing holds, the crop should be distributed in countries like Nepal, Pakistan, Egypt and Bangladesh.
The final test for the resistant wheat will come over the next couple of years, once farmers sow the crop in volume. While the multiple genes introduced into the wheat should pose an evolutionary conundrum to the Ug99 and its mutants -- it is typically much easier for pests to overcome single genes -- there are no certain bets, said Jorge Dubcovsky, a wheat geneticist at the University of California, Davis.
"The durability of the different genes is something that only time will tell," Dubcovsky said.
Should the resistance hold up, scientists and governments would still face the costly enterprise of spreading the wheat to countries most at risk from Ug99. While regions like Europe have less to fear from stem rust, given their massive reserves of fungicide, it will take Western and local investment to propagate the wheat in Africa and the Middle East, Singh said.
"Developing these resistant varieties does not mean we have won the battle," he said. "These have to be grown by farmers. It still takes effort to put it into the farmer's field."
Many farmers have little desire to replace their crops. Wheat varieties in the developing world are often 10 or 20 years old, and while farmers in Kenya have had painful encounters with stem rust, their peers in Iran, which has not suffered from an outbreak, may be reluctant to change crops. Most will have never encountered stem rust before.
"Farmers get comfortable with certain varieties," said Minnesota's Anderson. "It may have drought resistance or be particularly well adapted to their region. They may have to see it in their neighbor's field."
Conditions vary in each country, from farm regulators down to individual farmers. The public wheat sector is infamous for its bureaucracy and seed release committees, and some of those standards may have to be waived, Coffman said. Plus, some African countries lack the facilities to multiply wheat seeds, let alone cross the immune crops into local varieties.
"It's really important to get the seed out there, but it's an enormous challenge," Coffman said. "It's enormously expensive. You think about what it costs to change all of the wheat varieties in the world. Think of the area."
The push for a durable variant is far from complete. Beyond Singh's group, breeders are focusing on rust-resistant strains based on single genes, which are easier to develop. Singh suspects these single-gene varieties could be deployed in regions unlikely to experience yearly rust outbreaks, while his wheat provides the first line of defense in Africa and the Middle East.
Singh's approach to Ug99 involved overturning an orthodoxy that has been held by much of the breeding community since the Green Revolution and spearheaded by Singh's past mentor, Borlaug.
Breeders have long divided disease-resistance genes into "major" and "minor" categories. Major genes provide resistance individually, allowing breeders relatively cheap and quick methods of developing hardy crops. Minor genes, meanwhile, might slow a disease's grasp without halting it entirely, or may only become effective during maturity. Alone, they make unattractive targets.
Decades ago, wheat breeders chose to focus on major genes, which soon led to spectacular success against stem rust. Borlaug and others discovered, through sheer grinding effort, a gene called Stem Rust 31, or Sr31, which provided complete rust protection. Scientists moved Sr31 into wheat across the world, protecting crops for decades, sparing millions of lives. But finally, in Uganda, Sr31 fell to Ug99.
Many geneticists could have predicted the failure of Sr31. While major genes have many desirable traits, they are vulnerable to mutations: A single switch in a pathogen's DNA can allow it to overcome the genetic defense. For example, there are 70 major genes known to halt stripe rust, another wheat disease, but only three remain widely effective. Since its discovery, six mutants of Ug99 have already appeared, overcoming various major genes.
Scientists have long known that disease resistance based on multiple genes is far more likely to remain durable, as evolution makes it difficult for microbes to simultaneously adapt to two different genes. In the early 1980s, Singh read the work of a Canadian scientist, Doug Knott, who predicted that introducing four or five minor genes into wheat would cause a broad resistance to all varieties of stem rust. He found Knott's conclusions convincing.
Back then, working out among the chaff, Singh could see evidence that major genes were not the only good bet. There were wheat varieties that had resistance no one could explain, he said.
"You start to see things which don't fit to the model," he said.
Until Ug99, though, Singh's interest in minor genes remained largely academic. Seeing the failure of major genes against the fungus, Singh and his collaborators began breeding minor genes into CIMMYT's wheat stocks. The scheme oscillated between field sites in Mexico and Njoro, Kenya, with crops planted twice a year.
Beyond one minor gene, Sr2, little was known about the genes to be targeted, but Singh suspected that Knott's hypothesis would hold true: Four or five minor genes would grant near immunity.
There are few organizations that can match the sheer numbers Singh threw at the problem. Breeding is, at its heart, a game of odds, and getting crops that carry minor genes, along with all the other traits desired by farmers like grain length, requires long odds. And so Singh spread his bets widely, growing about 2 million wheat plants over CIMMYT's many acres.
This is brute-force breeding in classic Borlaug style, Cornell's Coffman said. "The rest of the breeding world is amazed by the numbers that they throw at it," he said. "But it gets results."
By last year, at the end of their first long-term breeding cycle, the team had developed 298 varieties that expressed resistance or near immunity to Ug99 and its variants. Many of these crops grew full and plump, yielding 10 percent more grain than typical, outdated African wheat. Singh hopes this difference will sell many local farmers on making the change.
If the wheat proves durable, it will have secondary effects for the future, too, Singh said. Every acre devoted to developing stem rust resistance is an acre not going to pressing concerns like drought tolerance or lower fertilizer demands, he said. If minor genes lead away from major gene's boom-and-bust disease cycle, it could free up needed intellectual space.
"People should not take for granted that food is guaranteed forever," he said.
But before then, the world will watch and see whether the minor genes hold off the rust.
"You don't know something's going to be durable," Coffman said, "until it endures."
New York Times
July 26, 2010
New rust resistant wheat seed on its way to farmers
Stem rust rises again… and again
Stem rust is an old foe. Norman Borlaug, the late Nobel Peace Prize winner and father of the Green Revolution, battled this fungal disease in the 1950s. After years of painstaking plant breeding, he and his team endowed improved wheat varieties with rust resistance genes. The most popular source of resistance, gene Sr31, was later bred into most of the world’s wheat. For decades its resistance held and wheat crops flourished. Many thought stem rust was defeated and research and funding shifted to other priorities.
But now it is back. And mutating. Four new strains able to overcome previous forms of genetic resistance have crept into wheat fields, causing international alarm, according to Ravi Singh, CIMMYT distinguished scientist and geneticist/pathologist. "Ug99 and its four new variants now threaten major wheat growing areas in every continent," says Singh. "Eighty percent of cultivated wheat varieties worldwide are susceptible."
Since Ug99 appeared in Uganda in 1998 and overcame resistance genes, experts have feared the worst: massive global crop losses leading to increased food insecurity. Within a decade, its deadly spores had moved into Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Yemen, and Iran. A damaging race of the Ug99 family has recently appeared in South Africa.
In response, the world has rallied: scientists have sought new sources of resistance and joined in global initiatives to fight rust; national governments have sped seed multiplication and varietal testing and approval procedures.
Experts from the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) (shown here) and the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR) have performed a remarkable service by helping screen thousands of experimental wheat lines from breeding programs worldwide each year under severe, natural infections of Ug99 stem rust.
Efforts are starting to pay off. The Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI) was founded in 2005 and provides a key venue for the world's wheat and rust experts to exchange information about the disease and its movements, as well as about resistant wheat lines. At a recent meeting, BGRI participants discussed progress by several countries in producing resistant seed. Sources included resistant lines from CIMMYT, from the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), and in some instances from their own breeding programs or commercial suppliers. According to reports, new stocks of resistant seed should be ready for distribution to farmers by 2011—significantly sooner than the 10 years it usually takes for a new variety to be released, tested, and made available.
The release of a new variety is usually slow and subject to tough criteria that vary from country to country. After being developed and selected in breeding programs, candidate varieties undergo years of tests. The best are moved into multiplications trials, where a larger amount is planted for seed production. To get Ug99 resistant seed to farmers more quickly, several countries are testing promising varieties and increasing their seed at the same time—an expensive approach, as only seed of the few varieties selected will finally be used.
The Seed and Plant Improvement Institute (SPII), Iran’s national wheat breeding program, has released five bread wheat and one durum wheat cultivars that are resistant to Ug99, says M.R. Jalal Kamali, CIMMYT-Iran senior wheat scientist. Iran is expected to account for 95% of the Ug99 resistant wheat seed produced in seed multiplication efforts, according to Kamali.
In an initiative supported through the USAID Famine Fund, six countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Ethiopia, Nepal, and Pakistan) embraced this quicker production method and sowed 52 hectares with 11 varieties, producing nearly 145 tons of Ug99 resistant seed in the 2008-09 crop cycle. In the same growing season, Iran planted 34,000 hectares and produced 80,000 tons of Ug99 resistant wheat seed. Large-scale seed production continued into 2009-10 and combined the seven countries have sown over 47,000 hectares, anticipated to yield 118,000 tons of improved seed. If seed production continues as anticipated, Bangladesh, Egypt, and Iran will have enough Ug99 resistant seed to sow at least 5% of their national wheat area. One hectare of wheat produces enough seed to sow 20 hectares, so 5% is the safeguard threshold for replacing susceptible varieties in case of a Ug99 outbreak. Four additional countries will likely reach this target by the end of 2010.
So what is the difference between these new Ug99 resistant varieties and those of the past? Rust resistance has historically been based on major genes. Single major genes block entry of spores into plant tissue. This type of resistance is highly-effective in the short term, but also sets the stage for its own downfall, creating strong evolutionary pressure that favors more virulent rust mutants.
Minor genes offer partial protection. In this sense, they are harder to breed for, because their presence is less visible in field experiments. But most wheat experts agree they represent the safest path to crop security. “With minor genes, the disease it not eliminated, but its attack on the plant is slowed," explains Singh. "Like the code for a combination lock, several minor genes in tandem in the same variety are hard for the pathogen to 'decipher' and provide more durable resistance. CIMMYT’s strategy has been to identify and breed minor genes into wheat varieties, as well as assisting partners in this challenging task.”
CIMMYT
Metal silos lock out maize pests
Skilled artisans look to expand their businesses, delivering quality silos at affordable prices.Farmers in developing countries typically lose 20-30% of their crop due to poor grain storage facilities. Through a project with roots in Central America, African maize farmers are adopting metal silos to protect their families' food supply and source of income.
Six mouths are a lot to feed so Pamela Akoth, a 39-year-old Kenyan farmer and mother to half a dozen children, doesn’t want any weevils or borers—two of the most common post-harvest pests—nibbling at her grain supply. Akoth grows maize on 0.7 hectares in Homa Bay, western Kenya. In the past, she stored her grain in a traditional granary: a structure built with mud, branches, and cow dung that allows free entry to the maize weevil and the larger grain borer, the two most damaging pests of stored maize in Africa. Infestation starts in the field and continues after harvest when grain is stored. Losses of 10-20% are reported three months after storage, and this goes up to more than 50% after six months.
On the advice of the Catholic Diocese of Homa Bay and with help from a subsidy program—the Agriculture and Environment Program (AEP) of the Diocese of Homa Bay helps needy farmers to acquire metal silos by providing interest-free loans—Akoth purchased a metal silo able to store 20 bags (1,800 kilograms) of maize; roughly what her land yields. Made of galvanized metal, the silo is airtight, so it keeps out insects and suffocates any that might have snuck in with the stored grain. “I am happy that since I started using the silo I don’t experience any loss of grain,” Akoth says. “I have enough to feed my family and even some left over that I can save and later sell, when there is a shortage in the market.”
Akoth is one of many farmers who has benefited from the Effective Grain Storage Project. Supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the generous unrestricted contributions CIMMYT receives, this effort aims to improve food security in sub-Saharan Africa through effective on-farm storage technologies, like metal silos. Participants are promoting the silos and training artisans who build and sell them. “The focus of the project is to ensure that farmers use only well-fabricated, high-quality metal silos,” says Fred Kanampiu, CIMMYT agronomist and former project head. "We are training artisans who will make and sell these silos."
Embu farmer Esther Nduku feels better equipped to feed her family year-long, with proper storage for harvested maize grain.Local manufactureres cash in on silo demand
The Effective Grain Storage Project has supported two artisan workshops in Homa Bay and Embu, with a total of 37 artisans trained. One of these is Eric Omulo Omondi, a 23-year-old metal worker based in Homa Bay. Along with 29 other artisans, he attended a free training workshop on metal silo construction in 2009. Since then, Omondi has made 15 metal silos and his average monthly income has tripled.
“I was lucky enough to have been selected by the diocese as one of the artisans to be professionally trained,” Omondi says. The training exercise was facilitated by CIMMYT, who contracted a skilled artisan from Central America. There and in South America and the Caribbean, the POSTCOSECHA program (also funded by SDC) had launched the use of metal silos for storing maize grain, significantly reducing post-harvest losses among more than 300,000 families.
To date, the current project is responsible for the construction of 146 silos across Kenya and Malawi. Two strong local partners, World Vision International in Malawi, and the Catholic Dioceses of Embu and Homa Bay in Kenya, host training sessions and promote metal silo use. In Malawi, metal silos have been used since 2007, initially supplied by a private company contracted by the government to distribute silos throughout the country. “Over the past few years, farmers have recorded high maize harvests, and now even request silos of a 7.5 ton capacity,” says Essau Phiri of World Vision-Malawi.
In Mchinji District, Central Malawi, artisan Douglas Kathakamba has benefited from the CIMMYT-World Vision collaboration. He launched his metal works business making ox-carts, door and window frames, and bicycle ambulances, but has found even greater profit since 2007 by building metal silos. As a result of silo income, he has set up a new workshop, sent his five children to school, and even covers the costs of university studies for two adopted children.
Douglas is now an ardent supporter of the metal silo and receives many customers through referrals. He also educates rural farmers. In Kachilika Village of northern Malawi, he has recently worked with a farmers’ club that had never heard of metal silos. The 25 members store their grain communally and, after Douglas constructed and donated a silo to them, commissioned him to build four more. With the proceeds from increased grain sales, the members now pay for children's schooling and purchase items such as clothing, domestic products, and farm inputs for the next season.
“Before the introduction of silos, we were using sacks and nkhokwe (the traditional granary), but we were not able to save much,” says Andrew Kasalika, the club chairman. “Now, we can say that our lives have changed.”
A particularly dedicated safe storage advocate in Kenya is Sister Barbara Okomo, a former Homa Bay teacher and current principal of St. Theresa’s Girls’ Secondary School in Kisumu, roughly a two hour drive from Homa Bay. Since she started working with the Diocese’s Agriculture and Environment Program (AEP), Okomo has had artisans fabricate 40 metal silos at her schools, which include 10 at her current school. The silos are made at the site of use to cut costs and make it easy for adopters to access.
Traditional grain storage structures are porous for pests.“I have used the silos for several years now, and I am convinced that this is the best method to store grain,” Sister Barbara says. “With other storage methods, we would lose up to 90% of our stored grain—now we lose nothing.” Schools have been early adopters of metal silos because many grow and store grain year-long to feed their students.
To save you need to spend
A challenge for African farm households is the initial costs of a silo. Though relatively cheap—in Homa Bay, a three-bag silo costs about USD 74 and a 20-bag silo USD 350—and with an effective lifetime of more than a decade, the silos more than pay for themselves, in terms of food security and surplus grain savings. But the average monthly cash income of a Homa Bay farmer ranges from USD 40 to 130. This means that family heads often have to choose between providing basic needs and investing in the silo. “Without support from the Diocese, I wouldn’t have been able to buy a silo,” says Akoth. Representatives of Equity Bank have met with stakeholders in Homa Bay to discuss micro-finance opportunities that would allow many more farmers to purchase metal silos. Micro-financing would also help more artisans enter the emerging silo industry, as current investment capital costs are high.
“Metal silos bring food security to the poor,” says Tadele Tefera, the current EGS project coordinator. “Not only what farmers harvest, but more importantly, what they store over seasons, could make a difference in the livelihoods of small-scale farmers.”
CIMMYT
May 17, 2010
Biotech titans battle on the African front
by Philip Brasher
The bitter battle that seed giants Monsanto Co. and Pioneer Hi-Bred wage for the hearts and pocketbooks of farmers doesn't end in the United States. They're going at it in Africa, too.
The profit potential in Africa is limited. Production of corn, the two companies' signature food crop, is dominated in Africa by poor, smallholder farmers, who often till two or three acres at the most. There is little commercial-scale corn production outside of South Africa.
Still, there is public good will to be gained in Africa, if not a lot of money. Concerns grow about the impact of climate change and a growing population globally and in sub-Saharan Africa in particular.
St. Louis-based Monsanto and Pioneer, the Johnston-based unit of DuPont, are collaborating in a project called the Global Harvest Initiative, which promotes the use of technology to increase food production. Deere & Co. and grain processing giant Archer Daniels Midland Co. are the two other partners.
"It's a competitive industry. We compete vigorously. At the same time, we have the same goals," DuPont CEO Ellen Kullman said in an interview.
But on the ground, Pioneer and Monsanto are the same tough competitors as they are back in the United States, where they are engaged in legal battles over the rights to prize biotech traits.
For now, Monsanto would seem to have the edge.
Both companies are working to make corn more resistant to drought, but Monsanto is ahead in developing a genetically engineered version. Monsanto wants to have a royalty-free version of the crop, adapted to African cultivars, on the market by 2016.
Its commercial version is scheduled to reach the U.S. market in 2012.
To that end, Monsanto donated its technology, including the bacterium gene that increases drought tolerance, to a project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The breeding and testing of the plants is being done in connection with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, which is closely associated with the work of Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug.
Monsanto also has another leg up on Pioneer with a product already popular in South Africa, technology that makes corn resistant to two insect pests that can ravage the crop in Africa. For now, the two companies have shared a Monsanto-developed technology, known as Mon 810, in South Africa, the only country in sub-Saharan Africa that has allowed commercial production of a GM food crop.
Monsanto hopes to commercialize this year a new version of its insect-resistance technology, called Mon 89034, that is supposed to provide corn better insect protection than the current technology. Mon 89034 produces two toxins, instead of just the one found in Mon 810.
Monsanto licensed Mon 810 to Pioneer but refused to share the new product. Pioneer doesn't have a rival product ready for the market.
Mon 89034 could be one of the first biotech food crops to be commercialized somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa outside South Africa. Monsanto applied to conduct field trials of the seeds in Kenya this year.
Employees of Pioneer, which operates a research farm near Delmas, a corn-growing region east of Johannesburg, seem to relish the underdog role. They scoff at Monsanto's claims to control more than 50 percent of the corn seed market in South Africa. They also express some skepticism and concern about Monsanto's drought-tolerant corn.
"The expectations from the farmer is that if you put this (Monsanto's bacterium) gene in the plant it will grow without water. And that's not going to happen," said Willem Engelbrecht, who manages Pioneer's South Africa business.
Pioneer in February announced a project for Africa modeled after Monsanto's drought-tolerance program. This one will use Pioneer's technology to make corn produce yields on less fertilizer, a trait known as nitrogen efficiency. Like the Monsanto project, it will be funded by Gates and the African research will be conducted by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.
Kulani Machaba, who manages Pioneer's government registrations in South Africa, says the nitrogen-efficient seeds would benefit farmers, "especially small-scale" growers.
Meanwhile, the two companies continue to struggle for market share with conventional hybrid seeds, which can be found at farm suppliers, called agro-dealers, in rural towns of east Africa. The seeds are typically sold in 2-kilogram bags, enough to plant about one-quarter acre. The seeds are a pricey proposition for poor farmers at 380 Kenyan shillings, or about $5.
The two U.S. giants have another problem in common. When small-scale farmers do buy hybrid seeds, they frequently save some of the grain from their crop and use it for seed the following year, even though hybrid grain loses its high-yielding properties when used as seed.
Des Moines Register
May 12, 2009
Maize in Kenya: The search for a successful subsidy
Addressing this problem, Maize Seed for the Poor (MSP), a pilot project in Kenya, is exploring ways to offer farmers subsidized agricultural inputs to boost farm productivity, while also energizing local seed markets.
Gathered together under the bright sun and clear Kenyan skies highlands, several hundred farmers in Kavuturi, a village in the Embu district, wait in line to receive coupons for discounts on improved maize seed. Maize, the most important food crop in Kenya, provides more than a third of the calories and proteins consumed in the country. Yet many smallholder farmers lack the cash to purchase improved seed, an input that can greatly enhance crop yields and farm families’ food security, and if only a few farmers are willing or able to purchase seed and fertilizer, then the markets necessary for the supply of these products will never develop.
Maize Seed for the Poor (MSP) hopes to help change this. The recently-launched project targets farmers in Kenya’s Embu and Kisii regions and includes partners from CIMMYT, the Seed Trade Association of Kenya, the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), and the International Food Policy Research Institute, and receives funding from the USAID and the American Seed Trade Association.
Working together, these organizations have distributed 16,200 coupons between mid-March and the beginning of April. The coupons can be used to purchase seed at a discount from selected agro-dealers, who then cash the coupons at Equity Bank in Kenya where MSP has opened a Ksh 1.5 million (about USD 19,350) account. All coupons are printed with security features such as watermarks and UV-readable images to prevent fraud.
A worthwhile mission
“We are trying to determine the most cost-effective way to bring affordable inputs to the poor farmer,” says Hugo De Groote, a CIMMYT agricultural economist based in Kenya. To do this, MSP is using a randomized coupon system that, with later follow-up, will show which amounts and distribution methods provide the best benefits. But the trick is to help farmers without harming the local private seed industry. “We don’t want to diminish demand by giving seeds away. Seed companies need incentive to stay in business and provide these areas with agricultural inputs,” De Groote says. Economic liberalization in the 1990s led to the abolition of many state-led agricultural interventions—including input subsidies—in developing countries. This aid cutback contributed to stagnating crop yields and reduced food security in many rural households. Hoping to reverse these unintended consequences, several governments are now considering a return to input subsides, but in a carefully targeted form. A recent, successful example is Malawi, where a government program distributed coupons to farmers so they could purchase maize seed and fertilizer at reduced prices. With the added benefit of a good rainfall, maize production in Malawi doubled in 2006 and almost tripled in 2007. De Groote hopes that if MSP proves successful, the localized experiment can be used as a model for a national Kenyan program, similar to the one in Malawi. How it works
The MSP project uses two classification methods: one in which all farmers of the community are invited to participate, and a direct identification system that is designed to target only resource-poor farmers. Direct identification is done by a committee of village elders and other knowledgeable people who create a list of characteristics that define a family as resource-poor. Local households that fit the description are then asked to participate. All participating farmers are randomly assigned a coupon valued at 60 or 120 Ksh (1 USD=78 Ksh). Each farm family has the possibility of receiving two or five of these coupons. As an experimental control, some will receive no coupons at all (these farmers will be given either a kilogram of cooking fat or sugar for their troubles). However, this is not a give-away program. Participants can use only one coupon per 2 kg bag of seed, regardless of how many coupons they initially receive. Since a 2 kg bag of improved maize seed from the Kenya Seed Company typically costs 240 Ksh, a coupon will not cover the full cost. The farmer must pay the remaining amount to experience the program’s benefits. “The idea is that farmers need to contribute to part of the cost. The use of multiple coupons is so farmers can buy different varieties, or buy them at different times,” De Groote says. "Farmers are also not allowed to sell coupons, but can use them to buy seed for family or friends."
Farmers like the seed
“This maize is stronger than other maize,” says farmer Catherine Njura, who lives in Kawathi Village, Runyenjes, Embu district with her husband and three children. She received five coupons from MSP worth 60 Ksh each; she used one to buy a bag of Duma seed, priced at 360 Ksh and marketed by Seed Co. “We’d heard it was early-maturing and that it grew well when there was not much rainfall,” she says. Njura helps farm a 0.5 acre homestead which provides her family’s livelihood. They grow a diverse assortment of fruits and crops such as sugarcane, beans, and maize. Although Njura used no fertilizer with her new seed, her three-week-old maize plantlets appear to be growing well; previously Njura only planted recycled seed of a local variety. Analyzing the impact
Njura’s story shows how the program can achieve important aims like encouraging resource-poor farmers to learn about improved maize varieties, to use them, and to purchase quality seed from local providers. This benefits individual businesses like the agro-dealers and the bank, as well as assisting the region's economy. Njura also echoes feedback from farmers and other project participants, with regard to what can be improved. “(The instructions) were a bit confusing. Some people didn’t understand that they’d have to pay (anything for the seed),” Njura says.
The agro-dealers were generally very pleased with the coupon system, in that it increased their clientele, provided free publicity, and fostered a productive relationship with the bank (which offers a range of services from which they can benefit). But they also suggested simplifying the coupon redemption process, offering coupons for fertilizer, and ensuring that farmers receive the coupons well before sowing time. Targeting smallholders
“Women from our group said that if the coupons had been for one kilogram bags, they would have gone further,” says Madrime Nthiga, maize agronomist with KARI-Embu. “Some farmers are very poor—they work with as little as an eighth of a hectare of land, so with two kilograms, seed will go to waste.” Typical sowing rates for monoculture maize are 20-25 kg of seed per hectare, but farmers in Kenya often sow at far lower densities, and intersperse the maize with other crops in the same field, partly as protection against food insecurity. This strategy of diversification paid off for Njura and her family the previous year, when a severe drought made it difficult to get food or to feed livestock, and they drew upon fruit trees on their small homestead to avoid starvation. "All the crops dried up," she says. "We survived by eating bananas, mango, and avocado, which we sometimes boiled together. We couldn't afford to purchase maize at the market." The MSP coupons expired on 30 April 2009. Now the project researchers will analyze the costs of the approach, as well as which farmers participated and how they have benefited. The best elements from this experimental project will be incorporated into subsequent initiatives. "Ultimately, the best options will be those that are most reliable in targeting low-income farmers, delivering noticeable benefits to these farmers, and minimizing both direct administrative costs and the cost of 'leakage' to higher-income farmers," says De Groote. "This can only be ascertained from on-the-ground experience, which is what we're obtaining in this project."
March 23, 2009
New climate-ready maize varieties released in Malawi
The Government of Malawi on March 20 launched two new drought tolerant varieties in Balaka District, developed through joint efforts by Malawi’s Ministry of Agriculture and Food
March 18, 2009
Researchers announce breakthrough in rust-resistant wheat varieties
by Juma Kwayera
African crop scientists attending a conference in the Mexican town of Ciudad Obregon said they have made a breakthrough in developing wheat varieties that are resistant to wheat plague.
According to a statement on the new study findings at the conference, researchers from the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) and the Ethiopian Institute for Agricultural Research (EIAR) announced a breakthrough in their “efforts to develop new varieties of wheat that are not only resistant to Ug99, but also produce more grain than today’s most popular varieties.”
The research findings were backed by Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre, known by its Spanish acronym CIMMYT (or Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo) and Syria-based International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA).
Every region of the world is represented at the meeting in Ciudad Obregón, organised by the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative.
Mr Ravi Singh, a CIMMYT wheat geneticist and pathologist and lead author of the study, is quoted in the statement as saying that high-yielding, Ug99-resistant spring wheat varieties are rapidly emerging through an intensive international “ shuttle-breeding programme.”
“Breeding materials under development in CIMMYT’s test fields in Ciudad Obregón and Toluca and at ICARDA fields in Aleppo, Syria, are sent to Kenya and Ethiopia, where they are exposed to Ug99 in real world conditions. They are then sent back to Mexico or Syria for further refinement and then back to Kenya and Ethiopia for more exposure,” the statement said.
Through this approach, scientists who also shuttle between continents have produced new types of high-yield wheat that contains what plant breeders call “multiple minor genes” that have resistance to Ug99.
“Although this strategy may not provide the same level of protection as that provided by one or two major genes, it is high enough to be effective, and the rese a rchers believe that by forcing the fungus to overcome a larger array of genetic barriers, these new wheat varieties could provide long-term protection against future stem rust mutations,” it added.
There are numerous examples in the last century of stem rust mutating and “defeating” wheat plants that have contained single major resistance genes.
The statement cited “the alarming hallmarks of Ug99, (which) in Kenya has mutated and overcome two additional major stem rust resistance genes called Sr24 and Sr 36 that had been effective against the original form of Ug99.”
“We believe that this approach of endowing a plant with many minor resistance genes in combination can provide resistance comparable to the best single major resistance gene, giving us the potential to end this dangerous arms race against wheat stem rust,” Singh was quoted as saying, noting also that many countries have contributed plant materials and expertise to the programme.
Afriquejet
February 21, 2009
Scientists breed new wheat to resist disease
b International teams of plant scientists are stepping up their efforts to breed hardier types of wheat, a global food staple used to make bread, cereals and pasta. They're hoping the new wheat varieties will better resist the fungal diseases that are attacking wheat crops all over the world and threatening widespread food shortages. Stem rust and other fungal crop diseases have been ravaging wheat crops in Kenya and Uganda for nearly a decade and are now threatening to infect millions of hectares of wheat and barley crops in other countries in Africa, across the Middle East and Asia. Jorge Dubcovsky, an expert on wheat at the University of California at Davis, says it's vital that the world's wheat crops be protected from these aggressive fungal epidemics because wheat is so important to human nutrition: "We cannot afford to keep losing 10 or 20 percent of our crops to pathogens. And 20 percent of their calories everyday is coming from wheat. So, either you produce 620 pounds (281 kilograms) in wheat ever year, or a lot of people will go hungry," he said. Chemical fungicides offer some protection from rust diseases but they are costly and pose threats to the environment. The most profitable and environmentally friendly strategy for farmers, Dubcovsky believes, is to grow genetically resistant wheat varieties. Dubcovsky is co-author of a paper published this week in the journal Science reporting the discovery of a novel resistance gene in wild wheat in Israel. When bred into commercial varieties, the gene gives bread and pasta grains protection against a destructive fungal disease called stripe rust. Dubcovsky says the stripe rust is so aggressive that even with the modified gene, the wheat plant is only partial protected from the withering effects of the fungus "But it will be a lot slower, the infected areas will be smaller and at the end of the day if you have some infections, your varieties will be able to produce more," he said. In a second study published in Science, an international group of researchers at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, or CIMMYT in Mexico City, along with Australian and Swiss scientists, have concluded that a wheat gene called Lr34 that can give the plant long-term resistance to leaf rust, stripe rust, and powdery mildew. They say they would first like to use it extensively to impart disease resistance to wheat bread crops, and then try to protect crops that are used to make pasta. Co-author Ravi Singh, one of the world's leading plant scientists, is also involved in a project to stop the spread of perhaps the most aggressive of the wheat diseases, stem rust, which can destroy crops in a matter of weeks. Singh says the Lr34 gene was probably involved in efforts 30 years ago to breed stem-rust resistant wheat. "So, we have to still work on how it can also enhance the level of resistance to stem rust in the new wheat varieties. There are obviously other resistance genes, but we don't know at the genetic level what they do. CIMMYT is heavily engaged with many other institutions now in developing and testing wheat materials which are resistant. " Singh says he's hopeful the new rust-resistant wheat varieties will be available in at least eight affected countries, stretching from Africa to Asia, within the next two to three y
January 26, 2009
Kenyan, Ethiopian researches seek to identify stem rust-resistant wheat varieties
A deadly new pathogen is carrying off wheat farmers' harvests in eastern Africa, affecting the balance of trade in countries like Kenya, and threatening vast wheat lands in other developing countries.
Kenyan and Ethiopian researchers are working with CIMMYT to identify resistant wheats for the world, and new technologies are helping track the pathogen's spread.
According to Kenyan researcher Joseph Macharia, a new, highly-virulent form of the wheat disease known as stem rust is driving Kenyan wheat farmers off their land. "If farmers can't grow wheat, they just abandon the field, or some may switch to maize," says Macharia. "Wheat is a high-investment cereal, so if farmers lose their crop, they lose their investment and can't continue."
Stem rust is an age-old disease of wheat worldwide. Ug99, a new strain of stem rust, first appeared in Uganda in 1998. It was subsequently detected in Kenya in 2002 and Ethiopia in 2003, in Sudan and Yemen in 2006, and in Iran in 2007. The pathogen is expected to continue its migration to South and Central Asia, through the Middle East and North Africa, riding on the winds or by other means. Most currently-grown varieties in its path are susceptible, and the wheat areas at risk represent 20% of the global total and provide sustenance for 1 billion people.
In Kenya, Peter Njau, plant breeder and deputy director of the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) research station at Njoro, says the loss of wheat harvests to the pathogen affect both farmers and the national economy. "Wheat is the second-most important crop in Kenya—we produce 350,000 tons every year," he says, "but we need to import 450,000 tons more to meet national consumption demands."
This year, Njau and his team worked with CIMMYT on the Njoro station to test 20,000 wheat lines from more than 15 countries for resistance to Ug99. Wheat scientists from most of these countries came to Kenya to evaluate their material and see first-hand the pathogen's damage.
"This is a hot-spot for the disease," Njau says, referring to Nakuru District in the Central Rift Valley region of Kenya. "Disease incidence was so intense this year that 85% percent of the lines proved susceptible, and many supposedly resistant lines showed 20% greater infection than they normally would. New variants of the pathogen are appearing that overcome some of the most effective resistance genes in wheat."
But there is hope, too, according to Njau. "The experimental wheat variety Kingbird looked good under this year's conditions, and has performed well in tests elsewhere." Derived from CIMMYT germplasm, Kingbird is being used by the center to develop new varieties whose seed can be multiplied and distributed quickly to farmers in Ug99's probable path of migration. Njau has also identified an experimental wheat variety from CIMMYT's international stem rust resistance screening nursery that out-yielded the best reference variety by 27% and the average yield of varieties in the trial by 80%.
Global partners to arrest rust Ethiopian wheat researchers are also partnering with CIMMYT to evaluate wheat germplasm from around the globe for resistance to the pathogen. "Kenya and Ethiopia are doing the world a great service by conducting these trials," says CIMMYT wheat breeder Davinder Singh, who is working in eastern Africa to combat Ug99. "The countries also benefit by having access to seed of resistant lines from international sources."
Efforts in both countries form part of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative, led by Cornell University and supported by a growing number of donors, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the USAID-seed project, USDA-ARS, ICAR-India, Australia, China, Arab Funds for Agricultural Development, FAO-training, and a northwestern Mexican farmer association known as the Patronato.
To provide timely, reliable information to scientists and decision makers in at-risk countries, scientists in CIMMYT’s Geographical Information Systems (GIS) laboratory have used the popular satellite-image virtual globe "Google Earth" to create a program that tracks Ug99 occurrences, models wind trajectories and potential dispersion paths for the pathogen, and summarizes information on wheat production and susceptibility for countries in Ug99's pathway.
Called "RustMapper," the program is automatically updated twice weekly.
RustMapper is another component of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative, undertaken by CIMMYT, in collaboration with the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) and FAO, to fight the spread of wheat rust fungal diseases.
CIMMYT
October 23, 2008
Jury still out on usefulness of gene-modification for plant drought-tolerance
To satisfy the world’s growing demand for food, scientists are trying to pull off a genetic trick that nature itself has had trouble accomplishing in millions of years of evolution. They want to create varieties of corn, wheat and other crops that can thrive with little water.
As the world’s population expands and global warming alters weather patterns, water shortages are expected to hold back efforts to grow more food. People drink only a quart or two of water every day, but the food they eat in a typical day, including plants and meat, requires 2,000 to 3,000 quarts to produce.
For companies that manage to get “more crop per drop,” the payoff could be huge, and scientists at many of the biggest agricultural companies are busy tweaking plant genes in search of the winning formula.
Monsanto, the biggest crop biotechnology company, says its first drought-tolerant corn will reach farmers in only four years and will provide a 10 percent increase in yields in states like Nebraska and Kansas that tend to get less rainfall than eastern parts of the Corn Belt.
At a recent farm show called Husker Harvest Days, a few thousand farmers were guided past a small plot on which Monsanto had grown its drought-tolerant corn next to a similar variety without the “drought gene.” A transparent tent had shielded the plants from any rain through the hot Nebraska summer.
The results were, to be sure, less than miraculous. Both the drought-tolerant and the comparison plants were turning brown and shriveling, and they were about three feet shorter than the lush green irrigated corn growing nearby. But the drought-tolerant plants, which also contained a second gene to protect their roots from a pest, were a little greener and a few inches taller than the comparison plants, and their cobs were missing fewer kernels.
Monsanto said the improvement was significant. And the Nebraska and Kansas farmers who toured Monsanto’s plot, many of them facing water-use restrictions and soaring pumping costs for irrigation, said any improvement would be welcome.
“We pump water like there’s no end, and that’s not going to last forever,” said Tom Schuele, a farmer in Cedar Rapids, Neb. Monsanto’s competitors, including DuPont’s Pioneer Hi-Bred unit and Syngenta, say they also plan to introduce water-efficient corn in a few years. And companies are working on plants that can stand up to heat, cold, salty soils and other tough environments.
A small California company called Arcadia Biosciences is trying to develop crops that need only half as much nitrogen fertilizer as a conventional plant. Fertilizer is crucial to modern food production, but the large quantities used today damage the environment. And because fertilizer is made from natural gas, its costs have soared along with other energy costs.
Public sector scientists are also on the hunt. Researchers at the University of California and the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines are developing rice that can survive flooding, which causes major crop losses for poor farmers in the lowlands of India and other countries. While rice is typically grown in standing water, the plants will die if submerged for more than a few days.
Many of these advanced crops are being developed using genetic engineering. The technology, already used to make crops that can resist weeds and insects, has spurred worldwide controversy. But in an era in which people are marching in the streets of many countries to demand more food at lower prices, low-water crops might win over areas that now shun biotech crops, such as most of Africa.
“Drought tolerance to me is the most critical entry point,” said Calestous Juma, a professor of international development at Harvard who has advised African governments on biotechnology. “This is kind of reopening the window for genetic modification.”
Critics accuse the biotechnology industry and its backers of exploiting the recent global food crisis to push a technology that has been oversold and that could have unanticipated health and environmental effects.
Indeed, many past predictions of how biotechnology would create novel crops have not come to fruition. And some experts say Monsanto and its peers have not published enough information to prove they can make drought-tolerant crops.
“I want to see more, I guess, from the Monsanto work before I’d be convinced they’ve got it,” said John S. Boyer, an emeritus professor at the University of Delaware.
How much could be gained by use of these new crops is not yet clear. A report in 2007 by the International Water Management Institute, which is part of a network of agricultural research centers, concluded that genetic improvements would have only a “moderate” impact over the next 15 to 20 years in making crops more efficient in using water.
“Greater, easier and less contentious gains,” it said, could come from better managing water supplies, rather than trying to develop crops that can flourish with less water. But many experts say the situation is grave enough that all approaches must be tried simultaneously.
Poor growing conditions can reduce crop yields by 70 percent or more below their potential. American farmers, for instance, average about 150 bushels of corn an acre. But David K. Hula of Charles City, Va., won a competition last year by achieving nearly 386 bushels an acre, a measure of what modern crop varieties can achieve under optimal conditions.
In many areas, lack of water is the biggest limiting factor, and supplies of water for irrigation could be reduced further in coming years in order to supply more water to growing cities and proliferating factories.
Global warming is also expected to lead to drier conditions and more frequent droughts in some parts of the world. Scientists at Stanford, for instance, have projected that corn yields in southern Africa could drop 25 percent by 2030 because of warmer, drier weather.
Breeding water-efficient crops would seem to be straightforward: Just grow crops under dry conditions and choose the ones that do best for the next round of breeding.
It does not quite work that way, however. After several generations, the crops are indeed more resistant to drought. But there is a downside in that they often turn out to have lower yields when there is plenty of rain. So scientists are harnessing the same genetic techniques that have yielded insights into human health to decipher how plants control water use and adapt to stress. “We’ve probably made more progress in the last 15 years than we have in the last 5,000 years,” said Ray A. Bressan, a professor at Purdue.
In particular, he said, studies have overturned the conventional wisdom that water use is so complex that no single gene could have a big impact on it. “Single genes are having effects in the field that we never thought would be possible,” he said. That has opened the door for genetic engineering, which allows scientists to add a gene from another species to a plant, or even an extra copy of one of the plant’s own genes.
Critics say that biotech seeds, which are patented and tend to be costly, , might not be suitable for poor farmers in developing countries. The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, a group working for improved farm productivity on that continent, has said that for now it would avoid genetic engineering because greater gains for small farmers can be made at lower cost using conventional breeding. Indeed, there has been progress developing drought-tolerant crops using conventional breeding, despite the obstacles.
Syngenta, a big Swiss seed and agricultural chemical company, says it will introduce drought-tolerant corn developed by conventional breeding in 2011, followed by a genetically engineered version in 2014.
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico, the institute that sparked the output improvements of the Green Revolution decades ago, has bred drought-tolerant corn that is already being grown in Africa. Marianne Bänziger, director of the global corn program for the center, said the yields are 20 to 50 percent higher than local varieties during droughts, with no loss of yield in wetter years. Still, her institute, with financing from foundations, is working with Monsanto to develop genetically engineered corn that would be even more water-efficient.
Monsanto has said it would not charge royalties for using its technology in the African corn, to keep the seed affordable. It says that corn customized for Africa could be ready by 2017, only five years after it starts selling drought-tolerant corn to American farmers.
Various other approaches are being tried to make less thirsty crops. Performance Plants, a Canadian company, adds a gene that causes the plant to start preserving its water more quickly as a drought begins. In one field test, the yield of its genetically engineered canola barely fell when irrigation was cut in half. The yield of a comparison crop fell 14 percent.
Monsanto is going in the opposite direction — trying to keep the plant producing seed when a drought starts, even when its natural response would be to slow down in order to preserve water. “You don’t want a cactus,” said Jacqueline Heard, who directs Monsanto’s program for drought-tolerant crops. “You want something that keeps a plant very active.”
Monsanto will not say exactly what genes it is using, or in which species they originated. But one approach involves transcription factors, which are like master regulators, able to turn on dozens of other genes to orchestrate a plant’s response to lack of water.
But with so many downstream genes activated, there could be other effects on the plants besides less need for water. At a recent biotechnology conference, a university researcher showed a photograph of a cotton plant with an inserted gene for a transcription factor. The plant was missing most of its leaves.
No single approach is likely to suffice for all types of dry conditions. “Probably no one has found the magic gene yet,” said Jian-Kang Zhu, a professor of plant biology at the University of California, Riverside. “Probably there is no magic gene.”
May 04, 2008
Project targets small scale farmers for multiplication of improved seed maize
Victor Mulongo Mukalay, a former member of parliament, is now emerging as a small-scale maize seed entrepreneur in his home region of Lubumbashi, in Katanga province, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
In a province with nearly 750,000 households of small-scale farmers planting an average of 530,000 hectares of maize, it is unusual that there is no commercial seed company.
Mukalay is working with his neighbors on three hectares of land to produce maize seed to fill this gap, and is planning to acquire a maize seed processing machine to enable him to expand the scale of his operations. "Although this is our first season, I’m very optimistic we’ll meet our target of producing enough good seed for 300 farm households,” he says.“I’d like to contribute in my small way to increasing the availability of quality seed of improved maize varieties for small-scale farmers.”
Mukalay and his neighbors are multiplying breeders’ seed they receive through CIMMYT’s New Seed Initiative for Maize in Southern Africa (NSIMA).
They are using the open-pollinated varities ZM623 and ZM721—developed by CIMMYT in Zimbabwe but showing good adaptability in the DRC.Variety ZM623, developed through CIMMYT research on drought tolerant maize for sub-Saharan Africa, is particularly popular with farmers, who like its intermediate maturity, disease resistance, and grain type.
“We’re encouraged by this interest from community-based seed producers who are investing their own resources in maize seed multiplication,” says John MacRobert, CIMMYT Zimbabwe seed specialist and NSIMA coordinator. “This will surely increase the availability of improved varieties to small-scale growers.”
Two years ago, a cooperative project between World Vision International (WVI), Swaziland’s national research and extension system, and CIMMYT began working with a farmers’ group in rural Swaziland, providing technical and financial support for community-based seed production.
Today, 86 farmers are proud owners of Lesibovu Community Company, involved in the seed production and marketing of the popular, drought tolerant variety ZM521.This season they will start producing and marketing certified seed of the newly released variety ZM611.
“The training we received from CIMMYT in seed production, certification, and marketing aspects was very useful in helping us scale up our production from just 25 kilos to approximately 41,000 kilos of seed annually,” says John Mamba, the group’s chairman. “We now feel empowered to produce good quality seed.” The company has purchased a simple seed packaging machine and developed its own packaging label.
“It was necessary to build the group’s capacity in producing open-pollinated varieties and hybrids, seed inspection procedures, and maize seed standards,” says Peter Setimela, CIMMYT maize breeder. “This was the only way of ensuring that they supply high-quality seed and of making them competitive in the market.”
The South African government, through the Limpopo Province Department of Agriculture, is also supporting similar initiatives. Although they began just eight years ago, they have taken root and today are supplying as much as 5,000 kilograms of improved maize seed to hundreds of small-scale farmers who previously had little access to improved maize varieties. The bigger seed companies did not consider it good business sense to supply thousands of widely-dispersed, small-scale farmers.
Through strategies such as marketing the seed in smaller, more affordable packets and working with rural traders, the schemes have increased access to and uptake of varieties such as ZM421 and ZM521. Farmers prefer ZM421, another variety from CIMMYT’s work, because of its comparatively stable yield, drought tolerance, and early maturity. The latter was especially attractive, because it eases the burden of guarding the crop from marauding baboons, a major menace.
Farmers have also found ZM521 to be high-yielding and early-maturing, with good milling properties.
The South African National Seed Organization (SANSOR) has been involved in the certification of seed from the small-scale production schemes since 2002. SANSOR works closely with farmer producers to ensure their seed is of the required quality.
Producers must register seed plots within 28 days after sowing, have plots inspected at different plant growth stages, and present seed samples for certification.
Being in close contact with farmers makes it easier to include their feedback in varietal improvement research or in key aspects of seed production, meaning for example that the varieties developed can be better suited to farmers' cropping settings.
Maize is a major food staple not just in South Africa but in most of sub-Saharan Africa. Through NSIMA, the South African government is investing in training and extending financial and material assistance to community-based seed producers.
This in turn helps ensure small-scale farmers access to affordable, quality seed of improved maize varieties, enhancing their food security and incomes.
