Innovations
Working with smallholders to understand their needs and build on their knowledge, CIMMYT brings the right seeds and inputs to local markets, raises awareness of more productive cropping practices, and works to bring local mechanization and irrigation services based on conservation agriculture practices. CIMMYT helps scale up farmers’ own innovations, and embraces remote sensing, mobile phones and other information technology. These interventions are gender-inclusive, to ensure equitable impacts for all.
USAID delegation tours sustainable agriculture activities in Bangladesh
Innovations
A delegation of USAID representatives recently visited southern Bangladesh to learn about sustainable agriculture activities in the area and emerging challenges to wheat production.
Scaling up research for impact
Capacity development
As part of a German Development Cooperation effort to aid the scaling up of agricultural innovations, Lennart Woltering recently joined CIMMYT’s Sustainable Intensification Program.
Q+A: Agricultural mechanization fuels opportunity for youth in rural Africa
Capacity development
Small-scale agricultural mechanization is showing signs it has the potential to fuel rural employment for youth in sub-Saharan Africa, according to researchers.
Breaking Ground: Hands on experience gives Carolina Camacho insight into farming best practices
Innovations
Tending her own crops gives Carolina Camacho insights into the challenges farmers face that she could never have learned in a classroom.
New selection method allows for rapid development of improved maize varieties
Innovations
MARS is helping maize breeders develop higher yielding and drought-tolerant improved varieties faster than ever before, according to a recent study from CIMMYT scientists.
Closing the circle: Kanwarpal Dhugga works at CIMMYT
Innovations
Growing up on a small farm in India’s northwest Punjab state, Kanwarpal Dhugga was a young boy when the first Green Revolution wheat varieties arrived in his village.
New maize hybrid shows resistance to stem borers in South Africa
Innovations
Smallholder farmers in South Africa can now access and grow new maize varieties with transgenic resistance to stem borers, the most damaging insect pest of maize.
Bangladesh urges $500 million in funds to intensify surface water irrigation
Innovations
Most current food security projections show that staple crop production must double by 2050 to keep up with global need, which will continue to expand.
Breaking Ground: Xuecai Zhang prepares future generation of crop breeders
Innovations
Xuecai Zhang wants to merge traditional maize breeding methods with new software and other tools to help improve farmers’ yields faster than ever.
Breaking Ground: Cesar Petroli on data-driven use of maize genetic diversity
Innovations
Access to genetic data can revolutionize research partnerships and lead to major benefits for crop breeders aiming to help smallholder farmers boost yields, says geneticist Cesar Petroli.
CIMMYT scientist cautions against new threats from wheat rust diseases
Innovations
Scientists are concerned over the proliferation of highly virulent fungal wheat diseases, including two new races of yellow rust and a new race of stem rust.
Breaking Ground: Caixia Lan on identifying building blocks for rust resistant wheat
Innovations
Support for research into breeding crops resistant to wheat rust is essential to manage the spread of the deadly disease, caused vast yield losses globally in recent years, says scientist Caixia Lan.
Breaking Ground: Bhoja Basnet sets sights on increasing wheat yield potential through hybrid seeds
Innovations
Scientist Bhoja Raj Basnet shares his journey from Nepal to Mexico where he joined CIMMYT as a postdoctoral fellow working in the bread wheat improvement program.
New study reveals how controlling wheat hormones can cool hot crops
Innovations
A plant-aging hormone could increase wheat yields by 10 to 15 percent in warm locations, according to a recent study published in New Phytologist journal.
Crop sensors sharpen nitrogen management for wheat in Pakistan
Innovations
Pakistani and CIMMYT scientists are working with wheat farmers to test and promote precision agriculture technology.
