July 1995
ALEPPO, Syria -- A barley line developed by ICARDA is helping Chinese farmers to raise yields by 20-25%, bringing millions of dollarsworth of extra income to the Yangtze basin.
The variety, Gobernadora, is resistant to scab (fusarium head blight), a major disease in the region which leads to the production of toxins in the seed,and can affect human and animal health. It has been a serious problem in China's Yangtze basin but is also common elsewhere in the country, affecting seven million hectares sown with wheat and barley in twothirds of China's provinces. It also caused billion-dollar losses in the Midwest of the USA in 1993-94.
Over the last 10 years, however, Professor Liu Zongzhen, plant pathologist at the Shanghai Academy of Agriculture Sciences, has identified a new source of scab resistance in Gobernadora, which is one of the ICARDA cultivars supplied to China. Besides scab resistance, it also has high resistance to Barley Yellow Mosaic Virus, another common problem.
Gobernadora has been widely adopted by Chinese farmers under the name Zhenmai 1. In 1995, farmers in Shanghai and three nearby provinces planted over 100,000 hectares to the new variety--and are receiving yields 20-25% higher than from traditional varieties, representing millions of dollars of extra income.
According to Professor Liu, who has spent many years researching scab-resistant varieties of small-grain cereals, there is another major benefit of Gobernadora/Zhenmai 1. A large number of livestock can be fed on the extra barley grain, resulting in more meat for market--and more manure, widely used in China as organic fertilizer.
Professor Liu's achievement is based on collaborative work with ICARDA, which holds a worldwide mandate for barley improvement. It does much work on it in the Middle East, where it is based. However, one of ICARDA's senior barley breeders, Dr Hugo E. Vivar, is based at CIMMYT (the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center) in Mexico, from where ICARDA's Latin American program is conducted.
"Its important that we find out exactly why Gobernadora/Zhenmai 1 has this trait," he says. "ICARDA's Latin American program is now working with Oregon State University in the United States to find out more about the scabresistance inheritance mechanism, using new biotechnology tools. This summer, double-haploid plants--an alternative plant-improvement technique--will be used to to analyze crosses between Zhenmai 1 and a susceptible malting parent, to find out more about the inheritance of scab resistance.
"When we see their resistance or susceptibility, our colleagues at Oregon will do molecular marker analyses, another biotechnology tool for finding the genes that control scab resistance," says Dr Vivar.
"It's satisfying work, because in the end these diseases hurt people, not plants. Diseases on crops have always caused severe economic losses, with the potato famine caused by late blight in Ireland in the 19th Century often cited as the worst instance. It forced millions of people to emigrate. Any research that helps prevent such catastrophes in the future is money more than well spent."
Contact: Mike Robbins, Communication, Documentation and Information Services, ICARDA, P.O. Box 5466, Aleppo, Syria.
Fax: +963-21 213490, 225105.
Tel.: +963-21 213433, 213477, 235220, 225012, 225112, 225635.
Telex: (492) 331206, 331208, 331263 ICARDA SY.
Cable: ICARDA Aleppo.