Cereals offer greater health and nutrition benefits than commonly acknowledged, despite often being considered “nutrient-poor,” say scientists.

Cereal crops like maize and wheat deserve greater consideration as part of a healthy, nutritious diet, according to the authors of a new paper.

A review of agri-nutrition research and dietary guidance found that the potential health benefits provided by cereals were often overlooked or undervalued as part of nutritious diets, including their role in reducing non-communicable diseases such as heart disease and diabetes.

The study identified two key explanations for the oversight. The first is that many cereal crops with varying nutritional qualities are indiscriminately grouped under the broad category of “staples.”

A second problem lies in the fact that cereals are usually considered to be a major source of dietary energy alone. However, reducing nutritional attributes to macro- and micro-nutrients misses other beneficial elements of cereals known as “bioactive food components.” These include carotenoids, flavonoids, and polyphenols, and compounds that comprise dietary fiber.

“Most whole grain cereals provide differing amounts of proteins, fats, minerals and vitamins, in addition to being important sources of dietary energy,” said Jason Donovan, a senior economist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and co-author of the paper published in Food Policy.

“Only relative to other ‘nutrient-rich’ foodstuffs can cereals be described as ‘nutrient-poor’.”

In the paper, entitled Agri-nutrition research: Revisiting the contribution of maize and wheat to human nutrition and health, the authors called on researchers and policymakers to embrace the multiple dietary components of cereals in addressing under- and over-nutrition, micronutrient deficiencies and the growing global problem of non-communicable diseases.

“Through increasing the availability of, and access to, healthy foods derived from cereals, we can better address the growing triple burden of malnutrition that many countries are facing,” said Olaf Erenstein, co-author and director of CIMMYT’s Socioeconomics program.

“To feed the world within planetary boundaries, current intakes of whole grain foods should more than double and address tricky issues like the current over-processing, to make the most of the nutrition potential of maize and wheat.”

While some carbohydrates can create a glycemic response that has negative effects on diabetes and obesity, dietary fiber in cereals comprises carbohydrates that are fermented in the large intestine with largely positive metabolic and health effects.

In addition, the naturally-occurring compounds found in maize and wheat can be enhanced through conventional breeding, genomic selection and bio- and industrial-fortification to offer enriched levels of beneficial components.

For example, scientists at CIMMYT have worked on new maize and wheat varieties with additional levels of vitamin A and zinc to help address some of the nutritional deficiencies found worldwide. Researchers are also improving how cereals are produced, processed, and stored to increase productivity and improve food safety while maintaining their nutritional benefits.

One of challenges in maximizing the nutritional benefit of cereal-based foods in diets is that the processing of grains often causes substantial losses of essential vitamins and minerals. Meanwhile, manufacturing industries create ultra-processed foods that often contain noxious qualities and components, which contribute directly to the significant and increasing global health and economic costs of non-communicable diseases.

“If we are to end hunger by delivering healthy, diverse and nutritional diets in the next decade, we need a broader and more nuanced understanding of the nutritional and health-promoting value of diverse foods, including cereals,” added Nigel Poole, co-author and Professor of International Development at SOAS University, London.

“Cereals and so-called ‘nutrient-rich’ foods are complementary in agri-nutrition, both of which require additional research, resources and attention so that one does not replace the other.”

RELATED PUBLICATIONS:

Agri-nutrition research: Revisiting the contribution of maize and wheat to human nutrition and health

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION OR INTERVIEW REQUESTS:

Donna Bowater, Marchmont Communications, donna@marchmontcomms.com, +44 7929 212 534

This piece was originally posted by The International Maize and What Improvement Center (CIMMYT):

CIMMYT is the global leader in publicly-funded maize and wheat research and related farming systems. Headquartered near Mexico City, CIMMYT works with hundreds of partners throughout the developing world to sustainably increase the productivity of maize and wheat cropping systems, thus improving global food security and reducing poverty. CIMMYT is a member of the CGIAR System and leads the CGIAR programs on Maize and Wheat and the Excellence in Breeding Platform. The Center receives support from national governments, foundations, development banks and other public and private agencies. For more information visit www.cimmyt.org

In breakthrough science using recent advances in sequencing, the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium presents an annotated reference genome with a detailed analysis of gene content among subgenomes and the structural organization for all the chromosomes. To read article in Science, click here.

A BBC report on this momentous finding mentions CIMMYT as a leader in work to help meet the food demand of the 9.6 billion people expected to populate the earth by mid-century.

 

by Katelyn Roett, Mike Listman / October 12, 2017

New research shows improved wheat raises the quality of life for men and women across rural communities in Afghanistan.

A recent report from Gennovate, a major study about gender and innovation processes in developing country agriculture, found that improved wheat varieties emerged overwhelmingly among the agricultural technologies most favored by both men and women.

In one striking example from Afghanistan, introducing better wheat varieties alone reduced women’s work burden, showing how the uptake of technology – whether seeds or machinery – can improve the quality of life.

“Local varieties are tall and prone to falling, difficult to thresh, and more susceptible to diseases, including smuts and bunts, which requires special cleaning measures, a task normally done by women,” said Rajiv Sharma, a senior wheat scientist at International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and country liaison officer for CIMMYT in Afghanistan. “Such varieties may comprise mixes of several seed types, including seed of weeds. They also give small harvests for which threshing is typically manual, with wooden rollers and animals, picking up sticks, stones, and even animal excrement that greatly complicates cleaning the grain.”

Both women and men spoke favorably about how improved wheat varieties have eased women’s wheat cleaning work.  “Improved seeds can provide clean wheat,” said an 18-year old woman from one of the study’s youth focus groups in Panali, Afghanistan. “Before, we were washing wheat grains and we exposed it to the sun until it dried. Machineries have [also] eased women’s tasks.”

Finally, Sharma noted that bountiful harvests from improved varieties often lead farmers to use mechanical threshing, which further reduces work and ensures cleaner grain for household foods.

Gennovate: A large-scale, qualitative, comparative snapshot

Conceived as a “bottom-up” idea by a small gender research team of CGIAR in 2013, Gennovate involves 11 past and current CGIAR Research Programs. The project collected data from focus groups and interviews involving more than 7,500 rural men and women in 26 countries during 2014-16.

Some 2,500 women and men from 43 rural villages in 8 wheat-producing countries of Africa and Asia participated in community case studies, as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat.

“Across wheat farm settings, both men and women reported a sense of gradual progress,” said Lone Badstue, gender specialist at the CIMMYT and Gennovate project leader. “But women still face huge challenges to access information and resources or have a voice in decision making, even about their own lives.”

According to estimates of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), if women farmers, who comprise 43 per cent of the farm labor force in developing countries, had the same access to resources as men, agricultural output in 34 developing countries would rise by an estimated average of as high as 4 percent.

“Gender-related restrictions such as limitations on physical mobility or social interactions, as well as reproductive work burden, also constitute key constraints on rural women’s capacity to innovate in agriculture,” Badstue explained.

Gender equity drives innovation

The Gennovate-wheat report identified six “positive outlier communities” where norms are shifting towards more equitable gender relations and helping to foster inclusiveness and agricultural innovation. In those communities, men and women from all economic scales reported significantly higher empowerment and poverty reductions than in the 37 other locations. Greater acceptance of women’s freedom of action, economic activity, and civic and educational participation appears to be a key element.

“In contexts where gender norms are more fluid, new agricultural technologies and practices can become game-changing, increasing economic agency for women and men and rapidly lowering local poverty,” Badstue said.

The contributions and presence of CIMMYT in Afghanistan, which include support for breeding research and training for local scientists, date back several decades. In the last five years, the Agricultural Research Institute of Afghanistan (ARIA) of the country’s Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation & Livestock (MAIL) has used CIMMYT breeding lines to develop and make available to farmers seed of 15 high-yielding, disease resistant wheat varieties.

Read the full report “Gender and Innovation Processes in Wheat-Based Systems” here.

GENNOVATE has been supported by generous funding from the World Bank; the CGIAR Gender & Agricultural Research Network; the government of Mexico through MasAgro; Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ); numerous CGIAR Research Programs; and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

 

By Katie Lutz/CIMMYT

EL BATAN, Mexico (August 24,2016)- High returns to global wheat research Building on more than a half-century of proven impacts, the global wheat improvement system led by CGIAR centers continues to be the chief source for wheat farmers in Africa, Asia and Latin America of critical traits such as high yields, disease resistance and enhanced nutrition and quality.

A recently-published study found that CGIAR-derived varieties – nearly all traceable to CIMMYT and ICARDA breeding programs – cover more than 100 million of 220 million hectares worldwide and bring economic benefits of as much as $3.1 billion each year. To achieve impacts in wheat agri-food systems, CIMMYT and ICARDA depend on national partnerships in over 100 countries and critical support from CGIAR Fund Donors and other contributors, whom we sincerely thank on behalf of the world’s wheat farmers and consumers.

By Mike Listman/CIMMYT

EL BATAN, Mexico (April 8,2016)- Just published by CIMMYT and WHEAT, the report “Impacts of International Wheat Improvement Research 1994-2014,” shows that varieties on nearly half the world’s wheat lands overall — as well as 70 to 80 percent of all wheat varieties released in our primary target regions (South Asia, Central and West Asia and North Africa) — are CGIAR related. Other key findings include the following:

• Fully 63 percent of the varieties featured CGIAR genetic contributions. This means they are either direct releases of breeding lines from CIMMYT and ICARDA or have a CGIAR line as a parent or more distant ancestor.
• Yearly economic benefits of CGIAR wheat breeding research ranged from $2.2 to $3.1 billion (in 2010 dollars), and resulted from annual funding of just $30 million, representing a benefit-cost ratio of between 73:1 and 103:1, even by conservative estimates.
• In South Asia, for example, which is home to more than 300 million undernourished people and whose inhabitants consume over 100 million tons of wheat a year, 92 percent of the varieties carried CGIAR ancestry.

By Mike Listman/CIMMYT

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (November 19,2015)-Nearly 10,000 smallholder farmers in marginal, far-flung areas of Pakistan are harvesting more, eating better, and earning cash from their wheat crops, as a result of a partnership that is working to offer widespread access to improved wheat seed and farming practices.

“The extra grain from the new varieties will be enough for my family for three additional months,” said farmer Khan Said of Swat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, as he surveyed his tawny, sun-kissed wheat field. He also hoped the extra straw from his crop would earn him about US $140.

In autumn-2014, participating farmers in 63 moderately-to-highly-food-insecure districts received a 25-kilogram bag of seed of the new varieties—enough to sow a quarter hectare and compare their performance with that of traditional varieties, as well as helping to grow more seed for redistribution. The new varieties are high-yielding and resist wheat rust, a fungal disease whose three forms—stem, leaf, and yellow rust—are found on as much as half of Pakistan’s wheat area and which constitute a rising threat to the crop.

“Our results show a yield advantage of more than 100% in harsh environments for the new varieties and, after just one season, farmers are attesting to significant improvements in their food security and livelihoods,” said Krishna Dev Joshi, CIMMYT wheat improvement specialist who is coordinating the contributions of 27 partners with this aim. “This proves how, with better access to seed of new varieties and technical support, Pakistani farmers can benefit from the latest wheat science and replace older, rust-susceptible varieties.”

According to Joshi, if half of the harvest from the new varieties were saved as seed, this could be sown on at least 30,000 hectares, producing enough additional seed to cover 1 million hectares in the third year with no extra costs, through farmer-to-farmer seed flow networks, and ultimately creating visible impacts in the project area. The follow-up surveys indicated an overwhelming acceptance of new wheat varieties, as over 87% of participating farmers saved their seeds to expand area under the varieties.

By Mike Listman/CIMMYT

BEIJING, China (March 30, 2015)- Benefits of three decades of international collaboration in wheat research have added as much as 10.7 million tons of grain — worth US $3.4 billion — to China’s national wheat output, according to a study by the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy (CCAP) of the Chinese Academy of Science.

Described in a report published on 30 March 2015 by the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat, the research specifically examined China’s partnership with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the free use of CIMMYT improved wheat lines and other genetic resources during 1982-2011. The conclusions are based on a comprehensive dataset that included planted area, pedigree, and agronomic traits by variety for 17 major wheat-growing provinces in China.