Maize breeder Surinder K. Vasal and cereal chemist Evangelina Villegas shared the World Food Prize on 12 October 2000 for their efforts to create a new kind of maize that could improve nutrition for millions worldwide especially children whose diets depend heavily on the crop.
In 1963, scientists at Purdue University were studying a set of seemingly commonplace Andean maize races and found something quite out of the ordinary. One sample contained a peculiar gene that significantly increased grain levels of lysine and tryptophan amino acids that are essential building blocks for proteins in humans, poultry, and pigs. Named "opaque-2" because it gave kernels a chalky appearance, the gene also conferred low yields and susceptibility to many pests and diseases. For these and other reasons, after years of breeding efforts, publicity, and hope, farmers still showed little interest in opaque-2 maize varieties and researchers in many quarters began to write off the discovery.
Not in CIMMYT, however. In 1970, the Center hired a young postdoctoral scientist from India to work with its cereal protein quality lab and develop a useful product based on the opaque-2 gene. Over the next 20 years, with strong support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Surinder K. Vasal would team up with Mexican cereal chemist Evangelina Villegas, using novel field and lab techniques to overcome opaque-2's drawbacks. Lacking biotech tools, Vasal capitalized on traditional breeding techniques to incorporate a series of special genes that countered the unwanted side-effects of opaque-2. To ensure that the value-added protein trait was not lost, Villegas and her lab group painstakingly measured amino acid content in the protein of some 20,000 maize grain samples each year. It was 12 long years before they began to believe they would accomplish their goal, according to Villegas. "Around 1982-83, through the use of modifier genes, we saw the real possibility of completely changing the appearance of the opaque-2 kernel, improving yield, and working on the other problems, while maintaining protein quality," she says.
New Maize for A New Era
Their new product was named "quality protein maize" (QPM) by former Maize Program director Ernest W. Sprague, a firm believer in its potential usefulness. Quality protein maize looks, grows, and tastes like normal maize, but it contains nearly double the lysine and tryptophan and a generally more balanced amino acid content that greatly enhances its nutritive value. A CIMMYT study found that QPM can contribute to reducing protein deficiencies, particularly in young children. In studies by others in Colombia, Guatemala, Peru, and, more recently, Ghana, malnourished children were restored to health on controlled diets using QPM. Nutritional studies with pigs, poultry, and other animals have all shown a significant advantage from use of QPM in animal feeds.
The Global Spread of QPM
During the late 1980s and 1990s, CIMMYT breeders Magni Bjarnason and Kevin Pixley built on Villegas' and Vasal's work to develop high yielding QPM varieties. Sasakawa Global 2000, an international organization that works to spread improved farm technology in Africa, promoted QPM in Ghana and several other African nations. The Brazilian research organization, EMBRAPA, developed and marketed QPM varieties. Most recently, CIMMYT breeder Hugo Córdova and his colleagues have developed high yielding QPM hybrids and tested and promoted them worldwide, with funding from the Nippon Foundation. "The yield advantage of new QPM hybrids as much as10% over local commercial hybrids, on average, and often more has caught the eye of breeders and policymakers in many developing countries," Córdova says.
"We believe we're witnessing a revolution unfolding," says CIMMYT director general Timothy Reeves. In 1999, he saw how a government program based on QPM had increased the food security and incomes of many families in Guizhou, China's poorest province. "Several farmers there told me they had often been without food supplies for two or three months each year and literally had to scrape, beg, borrow for scraps and the occasional root or tuber," Reeves says. "When QPM arrived, it not only helped with their own nutrition and income but also allowed them to start raising a sow or two. The turnaround in their lives was remarkable and all resulted from the new maize."
A Prestigious Award
Established in 1986, the World Food Prize is awarded annually to individuals who have advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity, or availability of food in the world. The Prize, sponsored since 1990 by businessman and philanthropist John Ruan, includes a cash award of US$ 250,000.
The first woman ever to receive the World Food Prize, Villegas said that she was initially surprised. "I'm grateful and happy to be co-recipient of this award, but the most important thing is that it will raise people's awareness about combating malnutrition. In hospitals in Ghana I saw children dying because they didn't have enough quality food. This made a tremendous impact on me; you feel powerless to do anything for them. I know QPM will not solve all the world's nutrition problems, but it will help."
For Vasal, now leader of CIMMYT's Asian regional maize program, the award caps a large list of honors in a long career dedicated to producing better maize varieties for developing country farmers. He credits Villegas and her team, though, for their central role in the accomplishment of QPM. "Without the biochemical laboratory, this breakthrough would not have been possible," he says. "Finally, Bill Mashler, who worked at UNDP at that time, and former CIMMYT deputy director general, Keith Finlay, also provided key support for our work on QPM."
For more information:
Surinder Vasal
(s.vasal@cgiar.org)
Hugo Córdova (h.cordova@cgiar.org)
Published on October 2000
August, 2004