|
CIMMYT Hosts World Bank Managers
for Study Visit
Twenty-one World Bank managers traveled to Mexico in
October to explore joint World Bank-CGIAR activities.
At CIMMYT, they witnessed first-hand how scientists
are developing a new generation of wheat- and maize-based
technologies that will help nourish, clothe, educate,
and sustain a burgeoning world population well into
the next century.
In developing countries, agriculture is the backbone
of the economy. To tackle stubborn rural poverty head
on, new crop and farming technologies are urgently needed
to boost yields, create wealth and prevent environmental
harm.
The first field visit was to maize fields in El-Batan
where participants saw war being waged against Striga,
a parasitic weed that decimates yields, and is responsible
for causing $1 billion in losses to farmers in Sub-Saharan
Africa.
CIMMYT field visit
Next, participants saw how day length and temperature
can severely impact maize productivity. Rising pestilence,
too, is a bane for maize farmers. David Bergvinson,
CIMMYT Entomologist, discussed maize pests and the importance
of building pest resistance, both in the field as well
as after harvest. CIMMYT's Insect Resistant Maize for
Africa (IRMA) project in East Africa is bringing biotechnology
to farmers' fields and world-class biosafety facilities
to Kenya's national program.
A program highlight was a presentation by Alex McCalla,
Chairman of CIMMYT's Board, entitled "An Overview
of the Role of Agriculture in Economic Development:
An Annotated Journey Through Some Interesting Literature."
Normally a semester-long course, this tour d'horizon
provided participants with a history of global agricultural
and economic development, squeezed into a 90 minute
session.
Staff from all five CIMMYT research programs - Maize,
Wheat, Natural Resources Management, Biotechnology,
and Economics - tackled the issue of conventional versus
cutting-edge approaches to increasing agricultural productivity
and reducing poverty in developing countries. The seminar
was designed as a "duel" between the two camps,
but at CIMMYT both approaches mesh and are being deployed.
Breeding efforts to overcome biotic and abiotic stresses
were
described and participants were shown how the breeding
programs inform and shape the biotechnology agenda,
and how biotechnology breakthroughs in turn help improve
breeding speed and efficiency.
Subsequently, the visitors saw wheat breeding plots at
the El-Batan research station. Wolfgang Pfeiffer and Richard
Trethowan, CIMMYT Wheat Breeders, gave an overview of
the history of wheat breeding at CIMMYT, discussing the
future needs of developing countries and how CIMMYT is
gearing to meet them. The breeders showed plots of wild
relatives of wheat. These looked quite unkempt compared
to the bread wheats, except that they contain a host of
untapped genetic traits that can be used to improve stress
tolerance in wheat. Wheat scientists refer to the wild
relatives as their "kitchen," because they hold
the "ingredients" breeders need and use to cook
up high-yielding, locally-adapted, stress tolerant wheat
varieties for the benefit of poor farmers.
At the conclusion of the field visits, Masa Iwanaga,
Director General, CIMMYT spoke about the evolution,
current status, and future challenges facing CIMMYT
and the CGIAR system. Francisco Reifschneider, CGIAR
Director, provided participants with an overview of
the CGIAR reform program. One participant, a former
CGIAR researcher, raised a point that is often neglected
in discussions about global food security and agricultural
development: "If funding for CIMMYT's wheat program
was stopped today," he said, "in 5 years maybe,
but definitely within 10 years, wheat production in
the developing world would plummet to pre-1950 levels."
The two-day visit was useful, both for the visitors
for whom agricultural research is just one item on their
smorgasbord of responsibilities, but also for CIMMYT
scientists who learned about how the World Bank views
agricultural research in a developmental and poverty-reduction
context.
|
