Two of the world’s leading agricultural research institutes have announced more details of an exciting new Alliance to help improve the lives of the millions of poor farmers in the developing world growing the cereal crops rice, wheat and maize.

The Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico first announced the formation of their new IRRI-CIMMYT Alliance in May this year. Following a second round of talks at CIMMYT’s headquarters in Mexico earlier in June, the two centers have now announced three important new initiatives of the Alliance.

Focusing on common areas of research, the IRRI-CIMMYT Alliance has developed action plans that go far beyond day-to-day scientific collaboration between the two centers, which are recognized as key players in the Green Revolution in agricultural productivity that started sweeping the developing world in the 1960s. The three initiatives will build on the combined expertise and research capabilities of IRRI and CIMMYT and lay the foundation for the Alliance’s future impact and achievements.

The three initiatives are the following:

• A new joint program for intensive farming systems in Asia

• A single unified crop information system for rice, wheat and maize - new integrated cereal informatics center

• An integrated cereal systems knowledge-sharing portal for extension workers and national programs

The two centers have agreed to jointly contribute resources to the development of these three Alliance initiatives and that each activity should reflect a continuum of research from exciting basic research to practical applications. The Alliance is also emphasizing the complementarities of maize, rice and wheat in profitability, nutrition, genomics and farming systems.

As an important next step, Alliance scientists will now begin consultations with appropriate partners in the national agricultural research and extension systems (NARES) of Asia to further define themes, key research issues and work plans for other specific activities.