Americas
CIMMYT has several offices in the Americas, including global headquarters in Mexico and a regional office in Colombia. Activities are supported by an additional 140 hectares of stations in diverse agro-ecological zones of Mexico. CIMMYT’s genebank in Mexico stores 27,000 maize and 170,000 wheat seed collections – key to preserving the crop genetic diversity of the region. CIMMYT projects range from developing nutritionally enhanced maize to mapping regional climate change hot spots in Central America. The comprehensive MasAgro project aims to increase wheat production in Mexico by 9 million tons and maize production by 350,000 tons by 2030. CIMMYT promotes regional collaboration and facilitates capacity building for scientists, researchers and technicians.
Top shelf: Who has access to the healthiest processed foods?
Nutrition, health and food security
As processed food products gain popularity in Mexico City, researchers are keen to understand variation in access to healthier maize- and wheat-based foods across differences in purchasing power.
Scaling farming innovations: what, why and how
Capacity development
A group from Chiapas gets frameworks and tools to make innovations sustainable.
Mexico’s heirloom corn is dying out–but this designer has a plan to stop it
Innovations
Source: Fast Company (7 Jun 2019)
Designer Fernando Laposse collaborated with CIMMYT to find seeds and resuscitate six species of native Mexican corn.
Sustainable tradition
Nutrition, health and food security
Transition to sustainable farming using concepts from ancestral food production systems leads to healthier soils and diets in Mexico.
Biofortified maize and wheat can improve diets and health, new study shows
Nutrition, health and food security
New varieties deliver essential micronutrients to those who lack diverse diets.
Breaking Ground: Mechanization expert Jelle Van Loon goes as far as creativity allows
Innovations
CIMMYT’s mechanization team is in a quest to build the perfect machine for each farmer.
Tracing maize landraces, 50 years later
Environmental health and biodiversity
Scientists track down the families in Morelos, Mexico, who donated maize landraces to CIMMYT in 1966-67. Would they still be cultivating them?
Wild wheat relative genes to aid in battle against trio of pests
Nutrition, health and food security
Source: Phys.org (17 May 2019)
CIMMYT developed wheat lines to defend against pests by breeding durum wheat and Aegilops tauschii, a progenitor species of wheat.
New role in Nepal is “a dream come true”
Nutrition, health and food security
Cynthia Carmona on her transition from grant management in Mexico to project management in Nepal.
The geese in Morelos, Mexico
Nutrition, health and food security
Source: La Repubblica (2 May 2019)
Researchers from CIMMYT, the University of Wageningen and the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna published a tracing study on abandonment of maize landraces over the last 50 years in Morelos.
Chicago’s tortillas are better than ever, thanks to Masienda’s heirloom corn from Oaxaca
Nutrition, health and food security
Source: Chicago Tribune (22 Apr 2019)
Three million subsistence farmers producing heirloom corn in Mexico are protecting biodiversity.
UQ licenses high-yield wheat variety
Nutrition, health and food security
Source: Food Processing (16 Apr 2019)
Australian farmers to benefit from CIMMYT high-yielding, white-grained wheat.
