See previous Plans

PEOPLE and PARTNERSHIPS
to Build Sustainable Livelihoods

Medium-Term Plan of the
 International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) 2002-2004+

Contents

Acronyms and Abbreviations PDF (533.68KB)

Meeting the Needs of the World’s Poor through Wheat and Maize Research HTML

Financial Highlights HTML

  Financial Tables
Table 1a. CIMMYT research agenda requirements, by output, 2000 (expenditure in US$ million)
Table 1b. CIMMYT research agenda requirements, by output, 2001 (expenditure in US$ million)
Table 2. CIMMYT research agenda: allocation of resources (expenditure in US$ million)
Table 3. CIMMYT research agenda project and output cost summary (in US$ million)
Table 4a. CIMMYT allocation of project costs to CGIAR activities, 2000 (in US$ million)
Table 4b. CIMMYT allocation of project costs to CGIAR activities, 2001-04 (in $ million)
Table 5. CIMMYT research agenda, 2000-04: investments by sector, commodity, and region (in US$ million)
Table 6. CIMMYT research agenda, 2000-04: expenditure by functional category, and capital investments (in US$ million)
Table 7. CIMMYT research agenda financing summary (in US$ million)
Table 8a. CIMMYT allocation of 2000 member financing to projects by undertaking (in $ million)
Table 8b. CIMMYT allocation of 2001 member financing to projects by undertaking (in US$ million)
Table 9. CIMMYT research agenda staff composition, 2000-04
Table 10. CIMMYT cash requirement, revenue flow, and currency shares (in US$ ’000)
Table 11. CIMMYT statement of financial position, 2000-04 (in US$ ’000)
   CIMMYT Project Portfolio
Project 1 (G1):

Maize and wheat genetic resources: use for humanity
Project 2 (G2):

Improved maize for the world’s poor
Project 3 (G3):

Improved wheat for the world’s poor
Project 4 (G4): Maize for sustainable production in stressed environments
Project 5 (G5):

Wheat for sustainable production in marginal environments
Project 6 (G6): Wheat resistant to diseases and pests
Project 7 (G7):

Impacts of maize and wheat research
Project 8 (G8):

Building human capital
Project 9 (G9): Conservation tillage and agricultural systems to mitigate poverty and climate change
Project 10 (R1): Food and sustainable livelihoods for Sub-Saharan Africa
Project 11 (R2):

Maize for poverty alleviation and economic growth in Asia
Project 12 (R3): Sustaining wheat production in South Asia, including rice-wheat systems
Project 13 (R4): Food security for West Asia and North Africa
Project 14 (R5):

Agriculture to sustain livelihoods in Latin America and the Caribbean
Project 15 (R6): Restoring food security and economic growth in Central Asia and the Caucasus
Project 16 (F1): New wheat science to meet global challenges
Project 17 (F2): Apomixis: seed security for poor farmers
Project 18 (F3): Biotechnology for food security
Project 19 (F4): Biofortified grain for human health
Project 20 (F5): Reducing grain losses after harvest
Project 21 (F6): Technology assessment for poverty reduction and sustainable resource use

 

Meeting the Needs of the World’s Poor through Wheat and Maize Research

Around one billion people in the developing world live on less than one dollar per day (Table 1) and their numbers are growing. These are the poorest of the poor, populations living in abject poverty and under extremely high levels of food insecurity. Nearly two-thirds (62%) of those struggling to survive on less than one dollar per day live in South Asia, and another one-fifth (20%) live in Sub-Saharan Africa. Latin America accounts for 5% of the world’s absolute poor, with the vast majority living in southern Mexico and Central America.

Table 1. Distribution of global population living below one dollar per day, late 1990s
Population living on less than US$ 1/day
Region  Total population (millions) Millions As percentage of total population

Latin America and Caribbean 

423 49 12
West Asia and North Africa 204 5 3
Sub-Saharan Africa 388 169 44
South Asia  1,266       515   41  
East and Southeast Asia 1,726    320    19      

Source: World Bank (2000), World Development Indicators.

Across the developing world, the numbers of absolute poor living in rural areas are disproportionately concentrated in the lower potential tropical production environments relative to the more favorable subtropical and temperate environments. Meeting the needs of the rural poor continues to be of predominant importance to CIMMYT, and we are also facing up to the challenge of providing for the rapidly rising numbers of urban poor. Rural poverty continues to be the overriding concern in Sub-Saharan Africa, Central America, and South Asia, but urban poverty and urban food insecurity are also escalating in South Asia.

Overall economic growth and price levels (particularly food prices) influence urban poverty, whereas several additional factors influence rural poverty. Some are well known, such as rapid population growth, dwindling access to resources, and limited technological options. The effects on rural poverty of new and emerging factors, such as global climate change and the deterioration of natural resources, are less well understood, although it is clear that sustainable management of the rural resource base can significantly enhance food security and improve the livelihoods of the rural poor. 

Given these circumstances, how can wheat and maize research make a difference to the world’s poor? Together, CIMMYT’s research and technology development help:

  • ensure sufficient and stable food supplies for subsistence farmers and poor rural households;
  • improve the nutritional security of the poorest of the poor;
  • ensure adequate food supplies at affordable prices for the urban poor; and
  • promote sustainable management of natural resources, especially in marginal production environments.

Research that contributes specifically to these objectives is described here; for additional detail see our project portfolio.

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Improving the Livelihoods of the Rural Poor

The increasingly commercial orientation of developing country agriculture, aimed at meeting the food needs of burgeoning urban populations, will go a long way towards improving the incomes and livelihoods of a significant proportion of the rural poor, especially small-scale farmers and landless households in the more favorable agricultural environments. A significant number of the poorest of the poor will not see the benefits of increased market orientation, however. These people often live in extremely marginal environments and have little access to production resources. CIMMYT’s work helps these desperate households improve their access to food in a number of ways.

 

Stress-Tolerant Maize
 One of the most important ways that our research helps the poorest rural people is by providing maize varieties that tolerate drought and low nitrogen conditions. These resilient varieties increase productivity in marginal environments, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. In eastern and southern Africa, farmers have few resources to counteract the poor soil fertility and erratic rainfall that severely limit maize yields. Droughts are common and have caused region-wide famine. Now, through CIMMYT’s Southern African Drought and Low Soil Fertility (SADLF) Project, farmers are obtaining new technologies that can help them produce a better maize crop even in challenging marginal conditions. Under farmer-managed conditions where grain yields typically average only 1.3 tons per hectare, outstanding experimental open-pollinated maize varieties and hybrids from CIMMYT, tested widely in 2000, gave farmers 30-50% more grain per hectare than the best commercially available maize. For a resource-poor farmer who may sow only two hectares of maize, the new hybrids would add over half a ton to household grain stores each year—a significant contribution to food security in isolated areas where one failed harvest means hunger. The new varieties and hybrids also yield on a par with their commercial counterparts under favorable treatment (i.e., adequate water and fertilizer).

This year, southern and eastern African countries will release several of these new varieties. Their advantages for poor smallholders became particularly apparent during the current season, when drought strongly affected crop production in Zimbabwe and South Africa. As a result, several communities and NGOs immediately started community-based seed production, and companies began to produce seed for sale.

In eastern, western, and central Africa, the Africa Maize Stress (AMS) Project also works to increase the food security and income of African farm families. Maize is grown under difficult conditions where low and declining soil fertility and insect pests significantly reduce harvests. Losses attributed to limited nitrogen in soils are estimated at around US$ 500 million annually. As an example of the severity of insect infestation, Kenyan farmers report losing 15% of their annual maize harvest to stem borers— equivalent to 400,000 tons of maize valued at US$ 90 million—and farmers in some areas have cited losses as high as 45%. Among other activities, AMS Project participants develop and disseminate maize that resists drought, low nitrogen soil conditions, Striga, and stem boring insects. To identify insect-resistant maize, the project helped the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) develop testing sites to rear and apply thousands of borer larvae each crop cycle. Maize that resists one or more borer species has been identified and is being made available to farmers. Similarly, testing sites where soil nitrogen is low are used to develop locally adapted maize that yields well despite low soil fertility. In the search for inexpensive testing techniques, root pulling strength has shown promise as a means to measure tolerance to low soil nitrogen. CIMMYT scientists also found that the ability of root tissue to conduct electric current was related to traits that affect tolerance to drought and low nitrogen. To screen maize plants for insect resistance without having to infest the plants in the field, project members have begun to use leaf toughness, a trait identified at CIMMYT.  In western and central Africa, research addressed cropping patterns for stem borer control, optimum density for maize cultivation in drought prone areas, and soil fertility management using organic and inorganic fertilizers, among other things. Results showed that intercropping maize with cassava or cowpeas can reduce yield losses from stem borers. The work in insect resistance is substantially bolstered by a major project— Insect Resistant Maize for Africa (IRMA)— which involves an integrated pest management approach to insect management, including evaluation of Bt strategies. To ensure that farmers can observe promising maize varieties and eventually obtain seed, CIMMYT and its partners in Africa have begun widespread on-farm testing using the "mother-baby" approach, which involves complementary sets of experiments grown by researchers and farmers under both optimal and farmer management. Project plans also involve the development, testing, and dissemination of stress-tolerant varieties of quality protein maize (QPM).

 

Heat-Tolerant Wheat
 Our success in raising the yield potential of wheat in hot, drought-prone environments strengthens food security and builds sustainable livelihoods in marginal farm households across these environments, particularly in South Asia, Latin America, and West Asia/North Africa. Three kinds of irrigated environment require wheat with medium to high levels of heat tolerance. In the first environment, wheat is sown significantly later than recommended and exposed to heat during grain filling, as in Pakistan and northern Mexico. The second environment is inherently hot and dry during the crop season, as in Sudan and parts of central India. In the third environment, wheat is grown during a warm part of the year when humidity is high as well. Central Bangladesh, northeastern India, and Paraguay are examples of locations where these two stressful conditions coincide.

To identify wheat that tolerates heat stress, CIMMYT sows yield trials two to three months later than the optimum date, so that grain filling occurs at temperatures between 30ºC and 38ºC. "Early heat" trials are planted in early October as well, to screen for early season heat response. Researchers have established that canopy temperature depression (CTD) shows particularly high correlations with yield under hot growing conditions. Correlations in the order of 0.5-0.8 have also been noted between CTD values of entries planted in small plots and their yield in larger plots, indicating that a certain level of screening can be done on  small plots before lines are entered into expensive yield trials. CIMMYT makes its best heat tolerant wheats available through two international nurseries: the High Temperature Wheat Yield Trial (HTWYT) for hot and dry environments and the Warm Areas Wheat Screening Nursery (WAWSN) for hot and humid environments.

 

Biotechnology to Secure Valuable Plant Traits
 Recent advances in biotechnology, gained through expanding knowledge of genomics and innovations in marker-assisted selection, are helping to improve the success rate in breeding stress-tolerant maize and wheat. Major new efforts in Sub-Saharan Africa to enhance drought tolerance and Striga resistance in maize are excellent examples. A particularly exciting area of CIMMYT’s biotechnology research—our work on apomixis—is directed at ensuring that valuable plant traits are retained in successive generations of seed. Since 1990, CIMMYT and France’s Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) have studied apomixis, the asexual reproduction of plants through seed, and examined ways of transferring apomixis to maize. Apomictic maize could help bring the benefits of stress tolerance and hybrid vigor to noncommercial farmers in low-potential environments bypassed by private seed companies, but the scope and complexity of the research challenge cannot be overstated.

To accelerate progress in this potentially revolutionary area, CIMMYT and IRD entered into a research collaboration with three seed companies in 1999—Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Groupe Limagrain, and Syngenta Seeds (formerly Novartis Seeds). For the seed-producing partners, enhanced knowledge of apomixis might create new options for improved seed multiplication and quality. For CIMMYT and IRD, the transfer of apomixis to maize (and other cereals) offers the long-term possibility of delivering superior crop traits to poor farmers through apomictic hybrids and varieties. Under the new agreement, CIMMYT and IRD are investigating the transfer of apomixis to cereals through a range of approaches. These include transferring genes conferring apomixis from certain species of Tripsacum (a wild relative of maize) to maize, isolating the genes controlling apomictic reproduction in Tripsacum for genetic engineering of apomictic cereals, identifying genes in maize and other species that are excellent candidates for producing the apomictic phenotype, and investigating the factors involved in controlling endosperm development in apomictic and nonapomictic species. (This last area of research is extremely important, because seed cannot mature properly without proper embryo and endosperm development.)

 

Farmer Participatory Research to Secure Valuable Plant Traits
 In their own fields in the developing world, in a setting that is very different from high-powered biotechnology laboratories, poor farmers are working with CIMMYT to identify and preserve desirable traits in their food crops. The value of genetic resource conservation (including in situ conservation) and participatory plant breeding for bringing desirable traits into varieties is particularly high for poor farmers in marginal environments. Participatory plant breeding (PPB) explicitly benefits disadvantaged rural people by offering methods for developing improved varieties that respond to their particular needs and constraints and thus are more likely to be adopted. In PPB, members of poor farm households, breeders, and social scientists engage in a systematic dialogue to identify traits valued by household members. Varieties with these traits are then developed and/or tested under farmers’ conditions, which are usually limited by serious stresses, such as low soil fertility, drought, and weed infestations. Because the benefits to the poor depend on the extent and quality of their involvement in PPB, it is important to generate an  interaction between farmers and scientists that produces suitable varieties at little cost and low risk for the farmers involved. The costs of participation may be particularly high for poor people, who usually have less time available or may be less able and willing to take risks compared to other groups. For this reason, a particularly valuable type of PPB for reaching the poor is participatory varietal selection (PVS). In PVS, farmers evaluate a set of finished or nearly finished varieties (either on the experiment station or in their fields, under their management) to identify which varieties are most appropriate for their circumstances, and, eventually, to obtain the varieties for themselves. Both PPB and PVS are proceeding with promising results for wheat in South Asia and for maize in both southern Africa and Mexico.

For example, in South Asia over the last three wheat seasons, PVS and PPB have been used to achieve two goals: 1) to obtain farmers’ assessments of new improved wheats and gain an understanding of the criteria farm households use to evaluate them, and 2) to promote adoption of new varieties and site-specific resource conservation technologies, and demonstrate the value of their combined use. Thanks to the active participation of resource-poor farmers, both approaches, especially PVS, have proved effective. In two villages in Uttar Pradesh, India, farmers identified a new variety that they preferred, HUW-468, and compared it during 1999-00 with their old variety, HUW-234, under conventional planting using the normal planting date and under zero tillage using a late planting date. HUW-468 yielded 15% more than HUW-234 under both planting regimes. HUW-234 is also highly susceptible to diseases such as leaf rust. Because of the PVS activities, HUW-234 may be replaced soon, diversifying the spectrum of varieties grown in farmers’ fields. In Nepal, women and men farmers engaging in PVS preferred the recently released variety BL-1473 because of its early maturity, lodging  tolerance, and bold, white grain. Based on these results, the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) will speed multiplication of BL-1473 seed. In the northern hills of Pakistan, the top three varieties identified by farmers in Sultanabad, Gilgit District, yielded 30-40% more than Suneen, the popular local variety. These varieties will be multiplied more extensively in 2000-01 to obtain enough seed to distribute to as many farmers as possible.

 

Providing Technology Where It Is Most Needed
 To ensure that our products are directed at meeting the needs of the poorest of the poor in  rural areas across the developing  world, we rely not only on the extensive experience of our  researchers and research partners (including farmers), but also on a great deal of data, other technical information, and information technology. Applications of GIS, crop models, and ex ante technology assessment, for example, help orient our research in ways that are most consistent with our mission.

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Improving Nutritional Security of the Poorest of the Poor

The diets of the rural and the urban poor tend to be deficient not only in calories but also in protein quantity and quality (i.e., amino acid balance), vitamins, and micronutrients. Women and children, who make up the vast majority of people living in poverty, usually suffer most from these deficiencies. Nutritionally fortified maize and wheat being developed at CIMMYT could make an enormous difference in nutritional security for poor rural and urban households. This research relies on the complementary tools of conventional breeding and biotechnology, as well as information from nutritional and socioeconomic studies, to ensure that the most appropriate varieties are developed.

 

Maize for Nutritional Security
 Quality protein maize (QPM), which has been introduced into more than a dozen developing countries through the efforts of CIMMYT, national programs, and Sasakawa-Global 2000, can increase protein availability in regions where maize consumption is high and better sources of protein are unobtainable—often because people cannot afford them. Because it contains nearly twice the lysine and tryptophan—amino acids essential for human nutrition—as normal maize, QPM delivers better quality protein to consumers than they would obtain simply by consuming normal maize. CIMMYT and its partners have developed stable, high-yielding, and disease- and storage-pest resistant QPM hybrids and varieties for diverse settings. In tests in over 40 nations, QPM hybrids often had a yield advantage of one ton or more per hectare over the best normal maize hybrids. New QPM synthetics—superior open-pollinated varieties formed from inbred lines—feature special characteristics such as low and uniform ear placement, resistance to ear rot and root lodging, and (most notably) levels of tryptophan (0.11% of the whole grain), lysine (0.475% of the whole grain), and protein (11.0% of the whole grain) all far beyond those contained in normal maize. Molecular markers and other advanced laboratory techniques are being harnessed to transfer and maintain the quality protein genes, which are the product of a natural mutation in maize. As a result, in recent years 14 developing countries have released dozens of new QPM hybrids and varieties for farmers, and several have launched major QPM promotion programs. More than 730,000 hectares in developing countries are sown to QPM today, and there is great potential for expanding its use.

Aside from improving the protein quality of maize, researchers have examined ways of increasing its micronutrient content in an intercenter project coordinated by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), "Identifying Agricultural Strategies for Reducing Micronutrient Malnutrition." Initially CIMMYT’s research on improving micronutrient levels in maize has been directed towards southern and eastern Africa, where white-grained maize is the major staple food and deficiencies of micronutrients and vitamin A are often acute. Researchers systematically evaluated nearly 2,000 maize varieties and landraces, representing the entire genetic base of white-grained tropical maize, to identify maize with higher iron and zinc concentrations. This undertaking was not as straightforward as one might think, partly because the environment in which a variety is tested greatly influences the concentration of micronutrients in maize kernels and partly because high micronutrient varieties often show lower yields. After considerable preliminary work, researchers developed experimental hybrids that could meet an additional 30%, 20%, and 10% of the daily iron demand of men, women, and pregnant women, respectively, without compromising yield, and they are exploring strategies to further boost nutritional value.

The challenge in developing maize with higher vitamin A content for southern Africa is to disguise its yellow grain color. Most maize consumers in the region strongly reject yellow maize for cultural and historical reasons. Researchers are investigating targeted incorporation of vitamin A in the embryo or disguising yellow grain color with other pigments, such as anthocyanins.

 

Wheat for Nutritional Security
 As with maize, breeding for high micronutrient concentration in wheat is a complementary and perhaps more sustainable means of reducing micronutrient deficiencies than supplementation and fortification programs. CIMMYT has identified significant variation in wheat varieties for iron and zinc, but the lines with the greatest concentration of these elements are either low-yielding or are wild relatives of wheat (the maize research described earlier produced similar findings). Research has concentrated on understanding the genetic bases of micronutrient concentration. This information will make it possible to transfer the ability to produce higher concentrations of iron and zinc from low-yielding wheats into higher yielding and/or widely adapted wheats. In addition to simply adding quantities of iron and zinc, it is also important to lower the amounts of other factors that often reduce their availability in the diet. One major negative factor is phytic acid, a powerful chelator of elements such as iron. CIMMYT is introducing low phytic acid mutants into tropical maize varieties to determine the effect on the bioavailability of micronutrients; similar options are being investigated for wheat.

 

Improved Nutrition and Bioengineering
 Iron, zinc, magnesium, and other micronutrients can be enhanced in maize and wheat by engineering new enzymes that control micronutrient uptake, movement, and storage. In addition, by modifying key enzymes, negative factors such as phytic acid can be reduced. As mentioned earlier, levels of critical vitamins such as vitamin A and folic acid may also be improved in maize and wheat. In an effort to improve grain protein quality, scientists from CIMMYT and CINVESTAV (Mexico’s Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados) inserted a gene for a seed protein from amaranth into maize. The protein produced has very high levels of lysine and tryptophan, much like QPM (which is not transgenic). This approach provides an additional boost to the amino acid profile in maize and could help to develop wheat (and other cereals) with better protein quality.

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Enhancing Urban Food Supplies

A key strategy for enhancing urban food supplies is to increase the competitiveness and profitability of wheat and maize production at the farm level. Dramatic reductions in the cost per ton of food crop production contribute substantially towards increasing and/or sustaining the profitability of wheat and maize production. The cost per ton of crop production can be reduced by a combined approach involving a shift in the yield frontier and an increase in the efficiency of input use.

CIMMYT’s efforts to shift the yield frontier of wheat, particularly in irrigated and high rainfall environments, along with its work on improved disease resistance, nitrogen- and water-use efficiency, and zero tillage, are all directed at reducing the unit costs of wheat production, raising its profitability, and increasing surpluses at the farm level. Particularly noteworthy is our collaborative work on enhancing the productivity and the sustainability of the rice-wheat systems in the Indo-Gangetic Plains, a major source of food for South Asia’s urban poor. In the case of maize, the development and promotion of high-yielding hybrids, particularly in Latin America and in Africa, contributes to increased food supplies for the urban poor.

 

Water-Use Efficiency in Wheat
 The amount of water available for agriculture is likely to decline steadily during the next 50 years as more water is diverted to meet the needs of urban centers. This problem will be most acute in developing countries where wheat and rice are grown under irrigation and urbanization is proceeding at alarming rates. Water shortages may affect more than 30 million hectares of irrigated wheat land, at a time when demand for wheat will be even higher than it is today. CIMMYT’s wheat breeders have crossed promising sources of drought tolerance (synthetic wheats, landraces, related species, and some adapted cultivars) with high-yielding, disease-resistant wheats. Their aim is to improve yield by combining tolerance to drought with responsiveness to improved soil moisture status. Disease resistance is also a key component of the strategy. The progeny of these crosses are evaluated under a combination of gravity basin and drip irrigation schemes. Drip irrigation gives breeders greater flexibility in controlling the timing of drought stress—a critical factor affecting yield in many production systems—and uses up to 50% less water compared to gravity fed irrigation to obtain the same yield. Wheats that respond well to water deficits at different stages of growth are identified and advanced in the breeding program. These materials are screened for rust and Septoria tritici resistance and further yield tested under drought and semi-drought conditions prior to inclusion in CIMMYT’s international yield evaluation network.

 

Nitrogen-Use Efficiency in Wheat
Breeders have developed a method to identify  wheats with better nitrogen-use efficiency. They crossed wheats that were good at absorbing nitrogen with others that utilized nitrogen exceptionally well. After eight years of testing, they confirmed that alternately applying first high and then low nitrogen levels to successive cycles of offspring produced lines that yielded better than all the others. This method, used throughout the breeding process, will ensure that all CIMMYT wheats combine good nitrogen uptake and good nitrogen utilization.

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Conserving the Resource Base for Current and Future Food Security

Especially in marginal environments, enhanced food security and improved livelihoods for very poor households are closely linked to management of the agricultural resource base. CIMMYT’s research addresses immediate concerns in resource management, such as soil and water conservation, and longer-term concerns, such as climate change.

In recent years, CIMMYT has actively promoted research on conservation tillage practices for wheat and maize production systems across the developing world. This emphasis is reflected in the launching of a new global project (Project 9: G9) that focuses on the development and dissemination of conservation agriculture practices, especially zero tillage, and incorporates a knowledge management component. A smaller, related project (F7) was closed in 2000; this frontier project had focused on methods and knowledge management for the development and dissemination of sustainable systems. This change was made for several reasons. First, conservation agriculture and conservation tillage are specific themes that tie together much of CIMMYT’s systems research in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Second, research on conservation agriculture is critically important and is likely to remain so over the longer term. Finally, compared to the project that was closed, the new global project will have the stature, level of resourcing, and permanence commensurate with its importance to CIMMYT’s mission.

The Rice-Wheat Consortium of the Indo-Gangetic Plains, for which CIMMYT is the convening CGIAR center, has been instrumental in developing improved tillage technologies that are being adopted rapidly throughout South Asia (see "Do Not Disturb the Earth"). Mulching and residue retention techniques are being promoted in smallholder wheat production systems in the Bolivian highlands. Conservation tillage has also made significant progress in subsistence maize production systems in the hillsides of Central America. This work by CIMMYT and its partners has confirmed once again that poor farmers, with access to proper techniques and knowledge, manage their resources as adeptly as more well-to- do farmers.

CIMMYT is strongly concerned about the future impacts and implications of climate change. Global warming could significantly increase the area under drought and high temperature stress, thereby affecting maize and wheat productivity in many areas. The good news is that the research agenda that CIMMYT is pursuing today for managing climatic stress will provide maize and wheat technologies that will help farmers adapt to climate change and mitigate its effects (see "Changing Technology for a Changing Climate").

Our work on developing drought- and high temperature-tolerant maize and wheat is a particularly important case in point. The area where stress-tolerant germplasm is needed will increase significantly over time. Similarly, the area that will benefit from our work on conservation tillage and water management will increase over time. Large-scale adoption of conservation tillage practices could help alleviate the effects of climate change through reduced emissions of greenhouse gases and reduced losses of soil carbon.

 

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Conclusions: Research Resources to Reach the Poor

These highlights of our research indicate CIMMYT’s commitment to providing strategies  that will enable poor people to overcome poverty and malnutrition and to cope better with climate change, economic uncertainty, and other forces that threaten to divide rather than unite the peoples of the world. The projects described in the pages that follow present a research agenda that is ambitious but necessary to accomplishing this mission.

The geographic allocation of CIMMYT’s research resources (Table 2) is consistent with the regional distribution of the world’s poor. More than one-third of our resources are spent in Sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the highest share of poor people in its population (Table 1) and lowest share of trained scientists and research infrastructure. South Asia accounts for 22% of CIMMYT’s resources, and Central America, with the third highest share of the global poor, accounts for 15%.

Table 2.  Allocation of CIMMYT research resources by region of the developing world
Region

Percentage of research resources
Central and Western Africa 4
Eastern and Southern Africa 33
Central and West Asia and North Africa 10
East and Southeast Asia 6
South Asia 22
Central America and Caribbean 15
South America 10
Total 100    

 


Do Not Disturb the Earth:
A Greener Revolution for South Asia’s Poor

An agricultural revolution is beginning in South Asia. Greener than the Green Revolution, it promises lower costs and significant environmental benefits as well as higher yields and increased production. It promises to benefit the landless and the resource-poor through opportunities for increased employment.

Although it draws inspiration from similar experiences in the Southern Cone of Latin America, it is largely locally developed. It is a tillage revolution, based on the principles of conservation agriculture. CIMMYT and the Rice-Wheat Consortium for the Indo-Gangetic Plains, in collaboration with other national and regional partners and stakeholders, have played a central role in its development.

Over the past three years, farmers’ use of zero tillage for wheat has increased dramatically, especially in rice-wheat rotations. In the 2000-01 crop season, the use of zero tillage in the western Indo-Gangetic Plains increased to around 100,000 ha, expanding from about 12,000 ha in the previous year and about 1,200 ha in the year before that. The speed of adoption is now driven by the pace at which privately owned implement shops can manufacture the necessary equipment. Initial surveys indicate that the bulk of adoption has been by smallholders. Many observers foresee millions of hectares of zero-tillage wheat in the Indo-Gangetic Plains within a brief span of years. Adoption is also proceeding in eastern India, the Terai of Nepal, and Bangladesh.

It is no surprise that farmers, policymakers, and environmentalists are all enthusiastic about these events. For a seemingly simple practice, zero tillage has an astonishing range of benefits. Yields are increased because it allows timely sowing. Costs are slashed because, compared to conventional methods, zero tillage uses little fuel for preparing land and pumping water. Herbicide use is cut or eliminated because the wheat, sown earlier, can more effectively shade out weeds. Cropping systems are diversified because up to six weeks are freed in the crop rotation. Diversified systems bring more employment. Greenhouse gas emissions are slashed because less fuel is used, less soil carbon is released from soil movement, and less nitrous oxide is emitted (nitrogen is used far more efficiently). Adoption of zero tillage on less than half of the rice-wheat area in the Indo-Gangetic Plains would save millions of tons of carbon emissions (or their equivalent in methane or nitrous oxide) and billions of cubic meters of irrigation water. Adaptations of zero tillage have been developed for four-wheel and two-wheel tractors. A variant is available that requires no implements or machinery at all. New resource-conserving practices are also being developed, such as bed systems, which are even more exciting. Bed systems are finding favor in farmers’ fields in India and Pakistan because they save water, reduce fertilizer and pesticide use, an  offer tremendous opportunities to diversify cropping systems. The development and dissemination of zero tillage and other conservation agriculture practices requires a partnership involving many participants:

  • farmer experimenters to lead in technology adaptation,
  • private implement manufacturers to simplify implement designs and make them commercially available,
  • state extension officials and workers to enable large numbers of farm families to become acquainted with the practice,
  • national agricultural research managers who provided critically important leadership and vision,
  • university and national program scientists who adapted the first prototypes to local conditions, fostered farmer experimentation, and assessed longer-term and environmental consequences, and
  • the Rice-Wheat Consortium for the Indo-Gangetic Plains, convened by CIMMYT, which facilitated the process.

Note: Information on specific activities in South Asia over the planning period can be found in the project portfolio in this publication, especially in Project 12: R3.

 

 

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Changing Technology for a Changing Climate

Many experts agree that human-induced climate change is a reality. They also agree that the people most vulnerable to such changes are the poor. As global temperatures rise, extreme weather events, from floods to droughts, will increase. Changing rainfall patterns, combined with population growth, will exert more pressure on water supplies. Currently 1.7 billion people live in areas where water resources are scarce; in the next 25 years, this number may rise to 5.4 billion. In drought-prone areas of Africa, reduced crop yields will lead to worsening malnutrition.

Agricultural science can help poor people cope with global climate change in at least three ways, by providing information to understand climate change, technology to adapt to it, and technology to mitigate its effects. All are important, and CIMMYT is making vital contributions to each one.

First, agricultural science can provide information to help us understand the consequences of global warming on agriculture, including projections of changes in agricultural productivity over time. We can compare favorable outcomes (e.g., improved plant growth from increased atmospheric carbon) with unfavorable outcomes (e.g., crop yield loss from drought and heat stress) for different geographical regions, agroecosystems, and climate change scenarios. For example, CIMMYT’s crop simulation modeling has shown that the net effect of global warming on developing country wheat production is likely to be neutral, because wheat yields are reduced with warmer (and therefore shorter) growing seasons, but they increase by about the same amount from a greater concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Second, agricultural science can help farmers adapt to climate change as it unfolds. Drought-and heat-tolerant cereal varieties can be made available in affected areas, for instance. These varieties become even more effective when they are grown with management practices that make the most of limited water resources. CIMMYT is committed to the development and dissemination of stress-tolerant germplasm and complementary management practices. Among these are several conservation agriculture techniques that improve yields and productivity with large water savings.

Third, science can help reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Zero tillage practices introduced to South Asia by the Rice-Wheat Consortium for the Indo-Gangetic Plains and CIMMYT may foster large reductions in such emissions. In South Asia, zero tillage saves diesel fuel used to plow land and pump water. Where conventional practices may use up to 100 liters of diesel fuel  per hectare, zero tillage cuts this back to 10-15 liters. Even more important, zero tillage slows or reverses the loss of soil organic matter, cutting carbon dioxide emissions even further. Zero tillage also improves nitrogen-use efficiency, so crop yields can be increased while fertilizer use actually goes down. As use efficiency improves, nitrous oxide emissions drop. Altogether, the introduction of conservation agriculture practices in the Indo-Gangetic Plains may save up to three million tons of carbon equivalent1 every year.

These are only a few examples of how CIMMYT research responds to the exigencies of climate change. Many more examples may be found in the project portfolio in this publication.

1 Carbon equivalent is a measurement tool for expressing methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide in a common term, taking into account the relative contribution of each greenhouse gas to climate change.

 

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Financial Highlights

 

2000 Operating Budget
CIMMYT’s budget in 2000 was US$ 38.6 million, higher than initially projected in September 2000 (US$ 37.5 million).

Additional resources in 2000 came from a combination of targeted funds, core restricted contributions from the European Commission (EC) and the Netherlands, and core special projects supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and other foundations. 

This increase in targeted contributions reflects several circumstances, both within and outside CIMMYT. First, our research portfolio continues to be highly relevant to the priorities of those who have traditionally supported international agricultural research. As we have shown in this Medium-Term Plan, our research products will help address some of the most serious development concerns that have emerged in recent years, such as the effects of climate change.

Second, throughout the nonprofit research sector, there is growing impetus and scope to support research with nontraditional sources of income. CIMMYT is developing an increasing number of highly focused partnerships with nontraditional supporters to address high-priority challenges for maize and wheat research. Nontraditional sources of funding accounted for approximately 17% of CIMMYT’s budget in 2000, including new resources from foundations and from advanced research institutes in the public and private sector. CIMMYT enters into such alliances only if they enhance our ability to achieve our mandate of service to the resource-poor and the environment. We are extremely cognizant of the debate over the potential of the private sector to distort the research agenda of the public sector, a debate that is perhaps most vigorous in academia but is nevertheless extremely relevant for international centers such as CIMMYT. At CIMMYT, if an alliance helps us to more quickly develop new, appropriate technologies and deliver them to farmers’ fields in developing countries, we regard it as a "win-win" alliance in which we can participate. 2

Third, the private sector and civil society as a whole have demonstrated a growing awareness of the need for private organizations to assume a greater share of responsibility for such development goals as human and ecological health. This awareness is likely to expand the opportunities for private and public research alliances oriented toward humanitarian goals.

2 A new publication, Global Public Goods for Poor Farmers: Myth or Reality? (Mexico, D.F.: CIMMYT, 2001) highlights CIMMYT’s approach to the development of global public goods.

 

2001 Estimated Budget
During 2000, CIMMYT contributed US$ 539,000 to its financial reserve, slightly less than anticipated. As at December 2000, CIMMYT’s reserves stood at US$ 5.521 million. Owing to the devaluation of most currencies against the US dollar and the re-valuation of the Mexican peso, CIMMYT managed exchange rate losses in excess of US$ 2 million (in core unrestricted, core restricted, special project, and peso-denominated expenses) during 2000.

Our budget estimate for 2001 is US$ 38.2 million, as projected in the September 2000  review of the financing plan for the 2001 research agenda. For 2001 we are forecasting that core unrestricted contributions will be at the same level as in 2000. Additional support through targeted funds will allow us to increase our emphasis on improving drought tolerance in maize and wheat though functional genomics and other approaches, to expand research in participatory plant breeding, to reinforce our efforts to further develop and disseminate QPM, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, and to strengthen our training initiatives.

 

Projected Trends over the Planning Period
During the 2002-04 planning period, we foresee an increase of about 2% per year, in real terms, in the Center’s budget. Most of the additional support will come from traditional CGIAR investors, but to command greater flexibility in responding to new challenges and opportunities, we will continue to pursue a resource mobilization strategy focusing on nontraditional sources of income and research support. We will also continue periodic reviews of our main activities to identify opportunities for cost savings. 

Given current trends, targeted funding is likely to constitute a growing share of research resources. We anticipate that more than 60% of Center income will be targeted in one form or another during 2001.

Approximately half of CIMMYT’s expenses are in Mexican pesos, and the peso continues to perform strongly against the  US dollar (over 2000, the Mexican peso appreciated by about 8.5% in real terms). Inflation was 8.9% in Mexico during 2000 and is projected to decline to about 7.0% in 2001. During the remainder of the planning period, the Mexican government projects inflation to fall by a further 3-4%.

Total expenses for salaries and allowances are targeted to remain below 60% of the total budget, as mandated by Center policy. Other operating costs are projected to remain consistent with long-term trends.

The most recent audited figures, including full project costing, indicate that indirect costs, as currently defined, are 26.5%. Full recovery of these costs from targeted contributions remains a critical component of our financial structure, helping to ensure the delivery of high-quality research products. Although we have been able to improve the rate of overhead recovery from previous years, we are still below the level of 20% (on average).

 

Center Staffing
Numbers of internationally recruited staff will increase slightly in 2001, in response to new challenges and opportunities. Two key positions are being added to Center Management in response to the changing environment in which CIMMYT operates. A Resource Mobilization Specialist will focus on nontraditional sources of income. An Intellectual Property Manager, recruited during 2001, will oversee CIMMYT’s portfolio of intellectual property and technical property (IP/TP), manage IP/TP rights, and ensure that CIMMYT is managing IP/TP issues for the benefit of our partners in developing countries.

On the research side, a Postdoctoral Fellow will join our Applied Biotechnology Program to work on cereal functional genomics, funded by special projects. In addition, several new Postdoctoral Fellows will join the Maize, Wheat, and Economics Programs. We also plan to recruit two specialists in modeling and farmer experimentation to reinforce our Natural Resources Program in southern Africa and at headquarters in Mexico. We anticipate that the number of adjunct staff (researchers working at CIMMYT on fixed-term projects or by agreement with other institutions) will grow as CIMMYT continues to expand its range of partnerships and access to complementary expertise in advanced research institutes.

The number of nationally recruited staff declined very slightly over 2000 and is projected to remain steady during the planning period.

 

Financial Indicators and Capital Investments
As previously indicated, CIMMYT’s reserves increased by US$ 539,000 during 2000. A steady increase in our working capital is projected for 2002-04, to reach a target of 90 days by 2004. To achieve this steady improvement in the reserve, CIMMYT has initiated a number of restraint measures, including reduced capital expenditure.

We continue to identify strategies for increasing the flexibility in our capital budget. The Center’s capital leasing program continued in 2000 for computer equipment, vehicles, and some field equipment. In 2001, an internally administered cost recovery system for the vehicle fleet (more than 300 vehicles), one of our major capital expenditures, takes effect. Under this new system, an annual capital purchase levy is charged on each vehicle to create a vehicle-purchasing fund. Vehicle operating costs may thus be funded from a range of sources and not solely from our capital budget.

Our most important capital investment in 2000 was the acquisition of 50 hectares in Puebla for a lowland tropical maize research station to replace the Poza Rica Experiment Station, which was severely damaged by flooding in October 1999. We are preparing the site (leveling the land, installing irrigation and drainage systems) and seeking additional resources to build the administrative office, training facilities, and other essential infrastructure. These resources will complement the generous support received from the CGIAR Finance Committee and the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).

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Published on May 2001

August, 2004