CGIAR Research Programs on Wheat and Maize: Addressing Global Hunger Dr. Thomas Lumpkin CIMMYT Director General 10 November 2012 CIMMYT’s Mission To sustainably increase the productivity of maize and wheat systems to ensure global food security and reduce poverty. CIMMYT’s Background: Key Facts  Headquartered in Mexico, CIMMYT is an international organization with 22 offices worldwide.  CIMMYT employs nearly 200 international staff.  CIMMYT’s genebank holds 27,000 accessions of maize and 170,000 accessions of wheat.  Annual budget of >110 million USD. Examples of CIMMYT’s Global Impact  Over 75% of wheat varieties in South America are derived from CIMMYT germplasm.  55% of wheat varieties in China are sourced from CIMMYT.  90% of all spring wheat cultivars grown in India and Pakistan originate from CIMMYT.  Over half of the maize varieties in the developing world have been developed using CIMMYT genetic materials Global Challenges: Increasing Demand 3,000 2,500 +28% 2,000 +102% +125% Rice Cotton 1,500 Soybeans +40% Wheat 1,000 Corn +76% 500 0 2000 2010 2015 2020 2030 Million Metric Tons Converging Challenges of Global Food Security “In the next 50 years we will need to produce as much food as has been consumed over our entire human history.” Megan Clark, CEO of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia Global Challenges: Heat Up to 23% of South Asia’s maize crop will be lost due to higher temperatures by 2050. Krechowicz, et. al., “Weeding Risk: Financial Impacts of Climate Change and Water Scarcity on Asia’ Food and Beverage Sector”, World Resources Institute, 2010. Global Challenges: Wheat and Maize MAIZE WHEAT RICE Percentage of Annual Income Used to Purchase Food + Malnutrition Rates Response of the CGIAR and CIMMYT CGIAR Research Programs • Dryland Cereals • Grain Legumes • Humidtropics • Water. Land and Ecosystems The Reformed CGIAR System MAIZE and WHEAT CRPs CGIAR Research Programs  Global Alliances for Improving Food Security and Livelihoods of the Resource-poor in the Developing World  Will benefit more than 1 billion farmers and consumers in tropical and subtropical Africa, Asia, and Latin America.  Strategic Initiatives for advanced breeding and genetics, improved agronomy, socioeconomics, and capacity building to address food insecurity, resource scarcities, and climate change. MAIZE CRP Partnerships  IITA – Nigeria – principal partner  SAGARPA - Mexico  KARI - Kenya  Syngenta Foundation  130 national agricultural research institutes  18 regional and international organizations  21 advanced agricultural research institutes  75 universities MAIZE CRP Strategic Initiatives 1. Socioeconomics for targeting and supportive policies 2. Sustainable intensification and income opportunities 3. Smallholder precision agriculture 4. Stress tolerant maize 5. Doubling maize productivity 6. Integrating postharvest management 7. Enhanced nutrition maize 8. Seeds of Discovery – genotyping/phenotyping collections 9. Novel tools and methods for NARS and SMEs 1-9: Training / capacity building MAIZE CRP Expected Impact  Increased productivity of target populations by 7% in 2020 and 33% by 2030.  Added annual value of $2.0 billion by 2020 and $8.8 billion in 2030.  Reach 40 million smallholder farm family members by 2020 and 175 million by 2030.  Provide enough maize to meet the annual food demand of an additional  135 million consumers in 2020  600 million by 2030. WHEAT CRP Partners  ICARDA – Syria – principal partner  Bioversity, ICRISAT, IFPRI, ILRI, IRRI, IWMI  86 National Agricultural Research Institutes  13 Regional and International Organizations  71 Universities and Advanced Research Institutes  15 Private Sector Organizations  14 NGOs and Farmers Cooperatives  20 Host Countries WHEAT CRP Strategic Initiatives 1. Technology targeting for impact 2. Sustainable wheat-based systems (agronomy) 3. Fertilizer and water-use efficiency 4. Higher yielding wheat varieties 5. Durable disease and pest resistance 6. Enhanced heat and drought tolerance 7. Breaking the wheat yield barrier (enhanced photosynthesis) 8. More and better seed (seed production and processing) 9. Seeds of Discovery – genotyping/phenotyping collections 10.Strengthening R&D capacities WHEAT CRP Expected Impact  An added value of wheat produced equaling $1.3 billion by 2020.  An additional $8.1 billion in wheat produced by 2030.  Enough wheat to feed an additional 56 million consumers by 2020.  Wheat to feed an additional 397 million by 2030.  Breaking the wheat yield barrier by 50%. Science Offers Opportunities Opportunities to Feed the Future CIMMYT’s Strategic Initiatives 1. Integrated programs, i.e. MasAgro, CSISA, SIMLESA 2. Seeds of Discovery 3. Precision nutrient management 4. Conservation Tillage 5. Marker assisted breeding 6. Hybrid wheat 7. Photosynthetic efficiency 8. Cellphone / internet decision support tools 9. Borlaug Institute for South Asia Opportunity – The Yield Gap 1. Opportunity: integrated programs like MasAgro Sustainable Modernization of Traditional Agriculture  General objectives: - Boost corn and wheat productivity.* - Increase returns on grain harvested. - Reduce agriculture’s climate footprint.  Targets low-income farmers, small- and medium-sized seed companies, national researchers. * By 2020: Annual rainfed corn production increased by 5-9 million tons; annual wheat production by 350,000 tons by 2020. MasAgro research components Take it to the Farmer (TTF), to integrate agri-food chain actors, with emphasis on small scale farmers, extension agents, input suppliers and market agents, to promote solutions to sustainable maize and wheat production International Maize Improvement Consortium (IMIC), to increase the competitiveness of the country´s seed industry in a PPP  Seeds of Discovery (SeeD), to use cutting edge technologies to unlock the black box of genetic diversity in maize and wheat 2. Opportunity: Seeds of Discovery Exploring the untapped biodiversity for maize and wheat > 150,000 ancestral genotypes > 170,000 ancestral genotypes in 27,000 maize populations New developments in genotyping and funding from Mexico are enabling us to unlock the entire native genetic diversity of maize or wheat Discoveries in Wheat Biodiversity Drought, salt, Insect and High yield, Hybrid and flood, heat… disease NPK efficiency photosynthesis resistance and quality traits Seeds of Discovery: how it works Breeding Gene banks Genotyping Introgression programs Phenotyping pipeline Trait values Environ- Common mental backgrounds adaptation Genetic Cultivars makeup Breeding Accessions Information Parental stocks materials Seeds of Discovery: tools Airborne Remote Sensing Platform for high throughput phenotyping Helium Blimp Unmanned Ariel Vehicle (UAV) • Fast, non-destructive screening over large areas. • Avoids temporal variation associated with ground based measurements. • Higher spatial resolution compared with satellite imagery. 3. Opportunity: Precision Nutrient Management GreenSeeker Impact  80 kg of nitrogen fertilizer saved per hectare for maize farmers in Mexico  91-104 USD/ha saved for wheat farmers in Mexico  Reduced environmental impact and fertilizer run-off 4. Opportunity: Conservation Agriculture Methods Impact  Minimal surface disturbance  35% increased maize yields by  Direct seeding farmers in Mexico  Zero-tillage  200 USD per hectare saved by smallholder farmers in Mexico  5-7% increase in crop yields using zero-tillage in India for wheat  97 USD increased farm income in India Opportunity: Agronomy (Zero Tillage) Conservation Agriculture: Mexico - Zero tillage vs. Conventional – Drought year ZT CT Hybrid maize grown under Hybrid maize grown under rain-fed conservation rain-fed, conventional agriculture and 150kg N/ha tillage and150 kg N/ha >6 tons per hectare <1.5 tons per hectare 5. Opportunity: Marker Assisted Breeding Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa  General Objective: wide spread use of high yielding, drought tolerant maize in Sub Saharan Africa.  More than 50 new drought tolerant varieties of maize released.  Targets are to increase productivity under smallholder farmer conditions by 20-30%; and reach 30-40 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa. DTMA: Yield Advantage Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa 14.0 12.0 10.0 8.0 6.0 4.0 2.0 0.0 0.0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 10.0 Yield of the trial (t/ha) Experimental Checks Best DTMA hybrids: 1 t/ha yield increase under drought Yield of thr variety (t/ha) Combining drought and waterlogging tolerance 6. Opportunity: Hybrid Wheat  Utilize chemical hybridizing and/or GM systems to develop cost-effective hybrid wheat systems  Establish heterotic gene pools in wheat using genomic association analysis and selection  Develop cost effective, high-yielding hybrid wheat targeted at smallholder farmers:  Establish wheat heterotic groups and develop parental lines  Develop experimental hybrid systems that allow seed production at competitive prices with >15% higher yield  Terminal heat tolerance  Attract private sector investment to wheat 7. Opportunity: Photosynthetic Efficiency 1. C3 rice to C4 rice (IRRI) 2. Chloroplast CO2pumps in wheat (CIMMYT-WYC) 3. Increased RuBP regeneration in wheat (CIMMYT-WYC) 4. Improved thermal stability of Rubiscoactivase (CIMMYT-WYC) 8. Opportunity: Cell-phone outreach  There are 5.3 billion mobile subscribers in the world (that's 77 percent of the world population).  8 trillion text messages will be sent in 2011.  In 2011, India had an estimated 34 million landlines compared to 865 million mobile phone subscriptions. 34 million 865 million Human Poverty Index 9. Opportunity: Borlaug Institute for South Asia  General Objective: Build state-of-the art research facilities in South Asia to support maize and wheat research and development and capacity building.  Conduct cutting-edge biotechnology and bioinformatics research.  Develop small farmer conservation and precision agriculture technologies in PPPs.  Engineer new wheat varieties which increase yields up to 50% and flood tolerant-heat resistant maize  Boost the Second Green Revolution. Borlaug Institute for South Asia 1. Ludhiana, Punjab (NW India): 500 acres of land on the Punjab Agricultural University Ladowal seed farm 2. Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh (Central India) 550 acres of land near Jawaharlal Nehru Agricultural University 3. Pusa, Bihar (Eastern India) 150 acres of land near Rajendra Agricultural University CIMMYT scientists make the difference Food security faces tremendous challenges But science offers amazing opportunities However leaders must act – You must act