A new award recognizes contributions to the livelihoods and economic empowerment of women made by a former giant in the field of international gender research.

CIMMYT has been awarded an Excellence Through Stewardship (ETS) certificate of achievement for successfully completing the ETS audit requirements for its operations in Mexico and Kenya. ETS is a global, not-for-profit industry-coordinated organization dedicated to “promote the responsible management of agricultural technology, through encouraging product stewardship and quality management systems practices and by educating the public.” The ETS audit was an independent third-party review of CIMMYT’s quality management system and standard operating procedures (SOP) for transgenic research. “The successful ETS certification is an important milestone in implementing and modeling – teaching and demonstrating – responsible stewardship of transgenic research,” according to Kevin Pixley, Director of CIMMYT’s Genetic Resources Program. CIMMYT is the first CGIAR center to achieve ETS certification.

Sanjaya Rajaram, recipient of the 2014 World Food Prize, told more than 200 participants at the World Food Forum in Santiago, Chile, on 14 April, that he held hopes for a “second Green Revolution.”

The Zimbabwe Maize Breeding Programme was honored on 13 February 2015, as the 2014/2015 Presidential Award winners in agricultural research during a ceremony attended by more than 1,500 people at the Research Council of Zimbabwe’s 10th International Research Symposium held in Harare.

On 9 January 2015, Dr. Sanjaya Rajaram, the India-born plant scientist who led wheat breeding research at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) based in Mexico for more than three decades, received the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman award in Gandhinagar, India.