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April 1, 2008
Source:
CIMMYT E-News, vol 5 no. 3, March 2008
CIMMYT fosters regional partnerships and provides seed to
help researchers in Thailand get drought resistant maize to
farmers.
“We are very, very dry,” says farmer Yupin Ruanpeth. “Last year
we had a drought at flowering time and we lost a lot of yield.”
In fact, she explains, during the last five years, her family’s
farm has suffered from severe drought three times in a row. The
soil is good and in a year with no drought they can harvest five
tons of maize per hectare, but last year they could only harvest
three tons per hectare.
Geographically, the Thai province of Nakhon Sawan lies only a
short drive from lush lowland paddy fields, but it seems a world
away. In this region the rainy season (between May and
September) brings enough water for a single crop, usually of
maize or cassava, and in the dry season the fields lie fallow.
Almost all maize in Thailand is rainfed, grown under similar
conditions.
At the Thai Department of Agriculture’s Nakhon Sawan Field Crops
Research Center, Pichet Grudloyma, senior maize breeder, shows
off the drought screening facilities. Screening is carried out
in the dry season, so that water availability can be carefully
controlled in two comparison plots: one well-watered and one
“drought” plot, where watering is stopped for two weeks before
and two weeks after flowering. Many of the experimental lines
and varieties being tested this year are here as the result of
the Asian Maize Network (AMNET). Funded by the Asian Development
Bank, this CIMMYT-led project has brought together scientists
from the national maize programs of five South East Asian
countries to develop drought tolerant maize varieties and
deliver them to farmers.
AMNET achievements
“We already have two releases under AMNET,” explains Grudloyma.
These are varieties produced by the national maize program,
focusing prior to AMNET on resistance to the disease downy
mildew, which have also proved themselves under drought
screening. The first, Nakhon Sawan 2, was released in 2006. The
second, experimental hybrid NSX 042029, has been popular in
farmer participatory trials and with local seed companies, and
is slated for release in 2008. “This is the best hybrid we
have,” says Grudloyma with pride. “It's drought tolerant,
disease resistant, and easy to harvest by hand.” The two hybrids
incorporate both CIMMYT and Thai breeding materials, a legacy of
Thailand’s long relationship with the Center.
In current work under AMNET, the Thai breeders are crossing
lines from the national breeding program with new drought
tolerant materials provided each year by CIMMYT. “We screen for
drought tolerance in the dry season and downy mildew resistance
in the rainy season, and take the best materials forward each
year,” explains Grudloyma. “We now have many promising hybrids
coming though.”
Funding from the project has also had a big impact on the team’s
capacity to screen those hybrids. “We had a small one to two
hectare facility before; now we have four hectares with a
perfect controlled-irrigation system. Because we’ve been in
AMNET, we have good varieties and good fieldwork and screening
capacity. This is leading to other projects, for example we’re
currently working with GCP [the Generation Challenge Program].”
Thailand has also taken on a role in seed distribution,
receiving and sharing seed from the AMNET member countries, and
testing the varieties on the drought screening plots at the
Research Center.
Sharing knowledge across borders
For Grudloyma, this collaborative approach is a big change.
“We’ve learned a lot and gained a lot from our friends in
different countries. We each have different experiences, and
when we share problems we can adapt knowledge from others to our
own situations.”
The Thai researchers can come up with many examples of things
they have learned from their AMNET partners. “We saw the very
friendly relationships between a number of seed companies and
the Vietnam team, and we tried to modify the way we worked in
Thailand,” says Grudloyma. “This year we shared promising
hybrids with seed companies before release. Before that we just
worked with farmers and small seed producers, and the seed
companies could buy seed after varieties were released.” The
result has been wider distribution of new drought tolerant
varieties: this year the group received orders for enough
parental materials for NSX 042029 to produce 300 tons of seed.
“We learned how to evaluate farmer preferences better from the
Philippines team,” adds Amara Traisiri, an entomologist working
on responding to these preferences. “We now use their method in
all our field trials with farmers and we’re getting a more
accurate picture of what farmers want.” This information caused
the group to include ease of hand harvest as another trait to
consider in their breeding program, after realizing how
important it is to farmers. And the learning continued at this
month’s annual regional training meeting. “Today, we learned a
system for farmer participatory trials,” says Grudloyma,
referring to a session on planning and analyzing trial data from
CIMMYT maize breeder Gary Atlin. “With these new ideas to direct
us we’ll be able to get better results.”
Almost all Thai maize farmers grow improved hybrid varieties,
and for Ruanpeth, her priorities are clear. “Drought tolerance
is very important”, she says, and dismisses other traits, such
as yellow color. “No, I want varieties that are drought
tolerant.” She likes to try the latest hybrids and has grown
more than 10 commercial varieties. She eagerly accepts the
suggestion from Grudloyma’s team to try their new hybrids on a
small area this year.
The project has built capacity and relationships that will
endure, according to Grudloyma. “Our station is now very good at
working with drought,” he says, “and we’ll continue cooperation
and providing germplasm. We already have plans for collaboration
with China and Vietnam.” CIMMYT’s role in providing germplasm
and access to new knowledge and technologies has been vital, as
has its leadership. “It’s very hard to get hold of germplasm
from anywhere except CIMMYT,” says Grudloyma. “It’s also
difficult to come together: we needed an international
organization to coordinate and facilitate regional interaction.
With CIMMYT everything is easier.” |
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