ICARDA Caravan 6

into what is today CIMMYT. This had become part of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), founded by a group of donors in Washington D.C. in 1971. In 1977, ICARDA was established to serve farmers in the hot, dry environments, and in the 1980s the two centers founded the CIMMYT/ICARDA joint dryarea wheat  program for the WANA Region. As a very broad general rule, the CIMMYT side of the partnership produces lines for the better growing conditions in the region, while ICARDA concentrates on the tough marginal areas with rainfall of 500 mm or below.

read wheat is the staff of life. It is the largest single source of human food. It covers a greater percentage of arable land than any other crop in the world. It was the first mainstay of settled agriculture. It originated in the West Asia and North Africa (WANA) region, and today that region consumes more bread wheat per capita than any other--185 kg per head a year, projected to rise to 219 kg by the end of the century. In fact, about 10%--47.8 million tonnes--of the world's total wheat production was grown in WANA in 1993. Of this, about 37.1 million tonnes was bread wheat; however, durum wheat is also significant. The WANA region is especially important because it produces about 63% of the bread wheat grown under drought conditions. And this is a food product; only about 7% is used for feed. So although CIMMYT--the Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maiz y Trigo, based near Mexico City--has a world-wide mandate for wheat, it shares this with ICARDA in the WANA region.

        The program is not dogmatic about breeding exclusively for either irrigated or rainfed wheat; the latter is clearly more appropriate in a region where groundwater is now often scarce and/or saline, but in some areas (such as the Gezira and Rahad irrigation schemes in Sudan), irrigated wheat is not only the best but probably the only answer. Fortunately, ICARDA's research stations provide a range of conditions. Its facility at Terbol in Lebanon has long-term average rainfall of 600 mm, fertility is good and bread wheat is grown and tested under supplemental irrigation. But at another of its stations, at Breda in Syria, ICARDA breeds rainfed bread wheat under conditions of  poor fertility and just 283 mm rainfall.
         This variation is increased by the use of simulated environments on the main ICARDA research farm at Aleppo. Thus early planting, supplemental irrigation and high fertility can "bring on" a crop so that breeders can better test for disease resistance and frost tolerance. But late planting, low-input testing is also used to test for, amongst other things, tolerance to extreme heat. In this way, breeders can identify sources of resistance to a wide range of climatic extremes and pests and diseases.
        This testing is backed up by a growing range of biotechnology tools. Gene mapping can pinpoint the source of resistance to (say) Hessian fly (a devastating insect pest in North Africa). But it may have been found in a line that lacks other needed characteristics. So the sources of resistance will be transferred into plants that do have those characteristics through crossing, and varieties rapidly developed through such techniques as double haploid breeding, which ensures that that trait is heritable--that is to say, that it will appear in the plant in each generation. Quality and nutritional value can now be assessed quickly using Near-Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy, or NIRS, a tool which ICARDA is also using on a wide range of other crops (see A broad spectrum of barley in Caravan No. 2).  Bit by bit, varieties are built up which incorporate an extraordinary range of desirable characteristics, of which outright yield will be just one, and perhaps not even the most important.
        This reflects the change in approach over the last few years. Food supplies remain a grave concern all over the developing world today. But the objective now is to bring about yield increases that will last over a wide range of environments, providing food security and using, rather than eliminating, genetic diversity in plant breeding. This is reflected in the fact that about 35% of the bread wheat  crossing program is devoted to abiotic stress tolerance (that is, heat, drought, or cold) and about 44% towards pests and diseases. To do this, the CIMMYT/ICARDA program must test its products under an even wider range of biotic and abiotic stresses than the ICARDA stations can provide. So it screens at at least 75 different locations around the region. This system is called multilocation testing, a very powerful tool in the breeding program.
        But the program could not do this on its own.
        As can be seen from the examples of Egypt, Sudan and Syria, the program is based firmly around cooperation with national agricultural research systems (NARS). The philosophy is simple; support NARS, and then they will be able to help themselves. Some NARS may lack anything from farm machinery and transport to simple things such as  labels and crossing bags. Sometimes the CIMMYT/ICARDA bread wheat project will supply items of this sort, as well as arranging training at ICARDA or CIMMYT headquarters or elsewhere. Over the years, this has led to a strengthening of national programs, so that they have taken a greater share in the collaborative program itself. This has led, for example, to the leading role Morocco now plays in the North African component; it has also had great success breeding for resistance to Hessian fly and Russian Wheat Aphid (RWA). Meanwhile Egypt has been identifying heat-tolerant varieties, and these can now be found in Sudan and Yemen as well.
        Cooperation extends to networks for various pests and diseases; for example, on foliar diseases, viruses, heat tolerance and water-use efficiency, organized through ICARDA's Nile Valley and Red Sea Regional Program; collaborative research on entomology, with Morocco; farmer-participatory breeding, with Turkey and Lebanon; epidemiology, with Iran; germplasm characterization, with Tunisia and Turkey; wheat adoption studies, with Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria; and a number of other areas covering, as far as possible, all the national programs in the region.
         But perhaps the most exciting is the exchange of genetic material. As we have seen, one of the functions devolved to the national programs is the evaluation of CIMMYT/ICARDA international nurseries.
        However, besides reporting on the program's products, the national programs are also supplying a growing amount of germplasm themselves for incorporation into the breeding program. This can include landraces and wild relatives collected by the national scientists in a wide range of environments.
        The genetic material in these accessions is priceless. Since the start of the CIMMYT/ICARDA project nearly 20 years ago, about 21% of this material has found its way into the breeding program in one way or another. It finds its way out again in the international nurseries distributed by the program.
           Thus a desirable characteristic could have been spotted, and exploited, by a peasant farmer in, say, 10th century Morocco; identified in a descendant landrace by a modern Moroccan scientist; gene-mapped in ICARDA's biotechnology lab; and incorporated, by way of a double-haploid cross, into a line containing another characteristic spotted, and exploited, by a Syrian farmer at any time since settled agriculture began in the region eight thousand years ago.
        Together these traits, united in one breeding line, will go to the national program in Sudan or Turkey, and, if satisfied with its performance, the national program will release it to farmers. Through CIMMYT, this material will go even farther.
        Earlier in this article, we said that the origins of the CIMMYT/ICARDA wheat program go back to the Green Revolution and beyond. We did not claim that it went back eight millenia. But perhaps it does.


Guillermo Ortiz-Ferrara was CIMMYT Bread Wheat Breeder and Regional Representative stationed at ICARDA for 14 years until June 1997. He is now CIMMYT's Wheat Breeder and Regional Coordinator for South Asia and is based in Nepal. Sanjaya Rajaram is Director of the Wheat Program at CIMMYT, Mexico. Mike Robbins is Science Writer/Editor, ICARDA.

        Between them, ICARDA and CIMMYT have had an enormous impact on wheat production in WANA and beyond. Three examples in the WANA region are particularly striking; those of Egypt, Sudan and Syria.
        In the mid-1980s, Egypt's Agricultural Research Center (ARC) became concerned at the relatively low wheat yields in Upper Egypt--they were about 3.3 t/ha, which ARC felt was below potential. It identified the causes; they included poor agronomic practices, bottlenecks in seed supply and inadequate extension information. And, importantly, they included the use of traditional varieties.
ARC had long had a productive relationship with ICARDA's Nile Valley Regional Program (NVRP). Through NVRP, ARC and ICARDA implemented a program of on-farm trials and demonstrations. After five years, farmers participating in the program saw yields of 6.3 t/ha.  In the meantime, wheat production in Egypt as a whole was shooting up--by about 125% between the early 1980s and 1992. Over roughly the same period, the wheat area under modern varieties--many bred by ARC and the CIMMYT-ICARDA wheat program--rose from 32% to 83%.
        In 1992/93, ARC and NVRP carried out a study* on the project in Upper Egypt (to be exact, in Sohag and Qena Governorates) to find out what the economic returns to the farmer of the new technology had been. Farmers who adopted the whole package could see returns of LE 4 for every LE 1 spent.
        The study stressed that the rate of return on investment in technology had been raised by a series of well-timed reforms by the Government of Egypt; these freed up the market and greatly improved farm-gate prices--a demonstration of how holistic approaches to agricultural development will often achieve more than piecemeal improvement. Nonetheless, the results were also an impressive vindication of agricultural research itself as a tool for fighting poverty and raising productivity.
        Meanwhile, scientists at ARC Sudan were also taking a hard look at bread-wheat production. Sudan was badly hit by the famine that struck the Horn of Africa in the 1980s, and since then has been working hard to achieve food security. Part of ARC Sudan's strategy was to raise lentil production, and in this it had considerable success; ICARDA's Nile Valley Regional Program was heavily involved in this (see Lentil: How Sudan fought back in Caravan No. 2). This was, again, partly the result of a holistic approach; the Sudanese had included credit and processing facilities in their calculations. With wheat, however, they faced a specific problem.
        The climate in Sudan is harsh. Even in winter, the daytime temperature is over 30°C. Wheat is not generally regarded as a heat-tolerant crop. But if bread-wheat production could be expanded south of Khartoum into the big Gezira and Rahad irrigation schemes, production might soar. There had been two previous attempts to bring bread wheat south of Khartoum, in 1918 and 1940, but they had failed.
        ARC and ICARDA started to test heat-tolerant lines developed out of CIMMYT/ICARDA material. The best bet seemed to be Debiera, a cultivar of Indian origin, which is highly heat-tolerant. The next step was to transfer the resulting package of technology to farmers' fields; this was done with the help of Sasakawa-Global 2000, a Japanese/American NGO. By 1992, about 80% of Sudan's wheat area was planted to the new cultivar. Production of bread wheat rose threefold, to an average of around 600,000 tonnes. In 1992, it rose rather higher, giving Sudan virtual self-sufficiency. Since then, production has fluctuated, but it has never fallen back to its former level.
        ARC Sudan's achievement in this has been tremendous. It was also a good example of partnership; Sudanese scientists made the breakthrough by, first, seizing the initiative in the drive to raise production, and second, by bringing in the international agricultural research centers and other partners. Something similar has happened in Syria. In the 1980s, wheat yield had risen to 1.5 t/ha, against 0.6 t/ha in the 1950s. However, Syria's Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform (SMAAR) knew that more could be done. 
        Syria was a significant bread-wheat producer for the ancient world. It helped feed the Roman Empire. SMAAR saw no reason why the country should not be self-sufficient again. By 1995 yield has reached 2.6 t/ha, and production had been virtually doubled in five or six years.
        Syrian scientists had worked through the 1980s to breed new bread-wheat lines in collaboration with CIMMYT/ICARDA scientists. Analysis by SMAAR and ICARDA in 1995 suggested that these new lines were responsible for about 35% of the increase. The remainder came from better packages of agronomic practices, including fertilizer and irrigation, put together by Syrian researchers.
        Egypt, Sudan and Syria--just three of the countries that have had success with wheat working with the CIMMYT-ICARDA joint dry-area bread-wheat program. Others include just about all those that have sought to increase wheat production in a hot, arid environment. And CIMMYT, of course, spreads its net even wider, playing a worldwide role in the fight to produce more bread. But the story begins long before the founding of either CIMMYT or ICARDA, going right back to the beginning of international agricultural research in its modern form.
        "The earth is so lacking in life force; the plants just cling to existence. They don't really grow; they just fight to stay alive. Nourishment levels are so low that wheat plants produce only a few grains, and even the weeds and diseases lack the food to be aggressive. I don't know what we can do to help these people, but we've got to do something."
        Thus  wrote a young United States scientist, Dr Norman Borlaug, to his wife shortly after his arrival in Mexico in 1945. He had been sent south by the Rockefeller Foundation to try and raise wheat production. And he did do something; 25 years later the poor had a lot more to eat--and he had the Nobel Peace Prize.
        What Dr Borlaug did, in effect, was to develop the modern science of plant breeding. His greatest success was to produce dwarf wheat varieties. In brief, wheat landraces the world over had become very tall, a result of generations of intercropping and other factors. This looks impressive, but a tall plant can bend over--and this limited the benefits from fertilizer. Dr Borlaug took Mexican plants he had bred for rust resistance and crossed them with dwarf varieties from Japan. The result was the spectacular yield increase which later became known as the Green Revolution, and which is thought to have saved millions of people in Asia from starvation in the late 1960s.
        In the meantime, the shoestring operation with which Dr Borlaug had begun in Mexico in 1945 had developed

* The report, Economic returns from improved wheat technology in Upper Egypt, by Drs A. Aw-Hassan, A.A. Ali, M. Mansour and M.B. Solh, is available from ICARDA, price US $10.