The hottest on record, 2016 also marked another year that ICARDA has been on the frontlines of agricultural sustainability and innovation. The 2016 annual report highlights the organization’s efforts to provide farmers throughout the drylands with the latest tools, resources, and training to ensure that their livelihoods — and food security — are resilient to the increasing onslaught of climate change.

Click here to view or download a copy of the full report.

An Aug 2017 field trip organized by Alexey Morgunov (CIMMYT-Turkey) to the Omsk, Novosibirsk and the Altai Krai regions of Western Siberia, Russian Federation, with the Global Rust Reference Center and Aarhus University, Denmark, aimed to get more information on 2015-16 stem rust outbreaks that affected millions of hectares in the region (Shamanin et al. 2016).

With approximately 7 million hectares of short season, high-latitude spring wheat and increasing areas of winter wheat and some durum wheat, the region is an extremely important wheat production area.

The visit highlighted the importance of wheat in this region and the strength of the research programs, but also the vulnerability of grown varieties to stem rust.

Significant changes appear to have occurred in recent years, making stem rust an emerging disease of economic concern. Further research is urgently needed, both to understand the pathogen dynamics and to increase farmers’ use of resistant varieties.

Click here to read the full blog on the Global Rust Reference Center web page.

The challenge for WHEAT is no less than to raise the productivity, affordability and quality of wheat and wheat-based foods for 2.5 billion resource-poor consumers in 89 countries today, as well as meeting rising demand from a world population expected to surpass 9 billion by mid-century.

Click here to see how 2016 activities and advances in science and partnerships are empowering farmers and catalyzing wheat value chains, amid political instability, fragile food markets and warmer and erratic weather.

EL BATAN, Mexico (July 1, 2017) — The urgent global response to wheat blast, a little understood fungal disease that appeared suddenly and blighted wheat crops in Bangladesh in 2016, has received a big boost from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), which is funding an initial four-year research project to breed blast resistant wheat varieties.

The wheat blast pathogen, which can move on air currents or ride infected grain, is likely to spread soon throughout South Asia, a region where rice-wheat cropping rotations cover 13 million hectares and nearly a billion inhabitants eat wheat.

Under the initiative led by the Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), researchers from nearly a dozen institutions worldwide will join forces to develop high-yielding varieties with resistance to blast, reducing the risk of catastrophic crop losses.

“This research project aims to identify sources of resistance, characterize the resistance genes, and develop DNA markers to create resistant, locally-adapted wheat varieties and make them available to farmers,” said Pawan Singh, head of wheat pathology at CIMMYT, an organization whose breeding lines are used by public research programs and seed companies in over 100 countries. “The work could not be more critical, given the likelihood of blast’s spread and its deadly virulence for wheat varieties worldwide.”

Caused by the fungus Magnaporthe oryzae pathotype Triticum (MoT), wheat blast was first identified in Brazil in 1985 and has threatened and constrained wheat farming in South America for decades.

Fungicides offer only partial control of blast, according to N.C.D. Barma, director at Bangladesh’s Wheat Research Centre (WRC). “Under the right conditions, the fungus can develop with lightning speed, blanching and withering the grain,” Barma said. “By that time the farmer’s losses are near total.”

Wheat experts and government officials in Bangladesh, in collaboration with CIMMYT, sounded the alarm last year, when a surprise blast outbreak struck 15,000 hectares of wheat fields near the country’s border with India.

By Mike Listman/CIMMYT

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (June 30, 2017) – Farmers in Pakistan are eagerly adopting a nutrient-enhanced wheat variety offering improved food security, higher incomes, health benefits and a delicious taste.

Known as Zincol and released to farmers in 2016, the variety yields harvests as high as other widely grown wheat varieties, but its grain contains 20 percent more zinc, a critical micronutrient missing in the diets of many poor people in South Asia.

Due to these benefits and its delicious taste, Zincol was one of the top choices among farmers testing 12 new wheat varieties in 2016.

“I would eat twice as many chappatis of Zincol as of other wheat varieties,” said Munib Khan, a farmer in Gujar Khan, Rawalpindi District, Punjab Province, Pakistan, referring to its delicious flavor.

Khan has been growing Zincol since its release. In 2017, he planted a large portion of his wheat fields with the seed, as did members of the Gujar Khan Seed Producer Group to which he belongs.

The group is one of 21 seed producer associations established to grow quality seed of new wheat varieties with assistance from the country’s National Rural Support Program (NRSP) in remote areas of Pakistan. The support program is a key partner in the Pakistan Agricultural Innovation Program (AIP), led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

“Over the 2016 and 2017 cropping seasons, 400 tons of seed of Zincol has been shared with farmers, seed companies and promotional partners,” said Imtiaz Muhammad, CIMMYT country representative in Pakistan and a wheat improvement specialist.

MONTPELLIER, France (June 5, 2017) – The 2017 Olam Prize for Innovation in Food Security was awarded to the “Adapting durum wheat varieties to the Senegal Basin for food security” project led by Filippo Maria Youssef Bassi, durum wheat breeder at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Area (ICARDA).

By Matthew O’Leary/CIMMYT

EL BATAN, Mexico (May 30,2017)– In an effort to stamp out hidden hunger, scientists are calling for support to make zinc-biofortification a core trait in the world’s largest wheat breeding program.

At least 2 billion people around the world suffer from micronutrient deficiency, or hidden hunger, which is characterized by iron-deficiency anemia, vitamin A and zinc deficiency.

Zinc deficiency remains a crucial health issue in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. As a key nutrient in red meat, zinc deficiency is prevalent in areas of high cereal and low animal food consumption.

By Mike Listman/CIMMYT

EL BATAN, Mexico (May 17, 2017) – Through a natural, affordable alternative to farmers’ heavy use of nitrogen fertilizers, science now offers an option to boost crop productivity and dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to the authors of a report that will appear this week in the journal Plant Science.

The new study describes certain plants that possess a trait known as biological nitrification inhibition (BNI), by which they suppress the loss of nitrogen (N) from the soil and improve the efficiency of its uptake and use by themselves and other plants.

The authors, who form part of a new BNI research consortium, propose transferring the BNI trait from those plants to critical food and feed crops, such as wheat, sorghum and Brachiaria range grasses.

“Nearly a fifth of the world’s fertilizer, for example, is deployed each year to grow wheat and the crop only uses about 30 percent of the nitrogen applied,” according to Guntur Subbarao, a researcher with Japan’s International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS) and lead author of the study.

MONTPELLIER, France (May 15, 2017) – CGIAR has launched a new portfolio of research programs designed to reduce by 150 million the number of people who do not have enough food to eat in developing nations. By transforming agricultural and food systems, the CGIAR Portfolio 2017-2022 is the second generation of CGIAR’s Research Programs and Platforms aimed at reducing rural poverty, improving food and nutrition security and improving natural resources and ecosystem services.

CIUDAD OBREGÓN, Mexico- Ravi Singh compares plots of wheat lines growing in the fields of Obregón to determine which lines have potential as new varieties. Relying on reams of statistical breeding data and an experienced eye, the head of bread wheat improvement at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) evaluates plants for resistance to rusts and other diseases, height, tillering ability, grain fill or the mass and size of the spikes, and general vigor or robustness. After detailed evaluation, the fate of the plant is determined: it is selected for advancement and harvested for seed for a yield trial, or it is passed over. With his team, Singh surveys tens of thousands of small wheat plots each season.