Wheat is grown on about 10 million ha in the tropical highlands and lowlands of the world, where it is an important food source. Many farmers in these areas work under subsistence conditions. Wheat diseases in tropical regions can be severe and require significant efforts to control. For economic and environmental reasons, host plant resistance is the most appropriate and sustainable disease control method. We describe highland and lowland tropical wheat regions and discuss CIMMYT's breeding strategies, philosophies, and progress in developing resistance to the major diseases such as rusts, foliar blights, fusarium scab, BYD, and spot blotch. Additionally, we review the role of national wheat research programs and beneficial spillovers of our combined breeding efforts to other wheat production areas of the world.
Abstract:International agricultural research has historically been an example par excellence of an open source approach to biological research. Beginning in the 1950s and especially in the 1960s, a looming global food crisis led to the development of a group of international agricultural research centers with a specific mandate to foster international exchange and crop improvement relevant to many countries. This formalization of a global biological commons in genetic resources was implemented through an elaborate system of international nurseries with a breeding hub, free sharing of germplasm, collaboration in information collection, the development of human resources, and an international collaborative network. This paper traces the history of the international wheat program with particular attention to how this truly open source system operated in practice and the impacts that it had on world poverty and hunger. The paper also highlights the challenges of maintaining and evolving such a system over the long term, both in terms of financing, as well the changing 'rules of the game' resulting from international agreements on intellectual property rights and biodiversity. Yet the open source approach is just as relevant today, as witnessed by the recent global food crisis and looming crop diseases problem of global significance.
Breeding for resistance to rust diseases in wheat is an example of productivity maintenance research. Productivity maintenance research is necessary to avoid contractions in the wheat supply curve that result from changes in the biological or physical environment. In this study, the benefits of incorporating nonspecific resistance to leaf rust caused by Puccinia recondita into modern bread wheats (Triticum aestivum) have been estimated using data on resistance genes identified in cultivars, trial data, and area sown to cultivar in the Yaqui Valley, Sonora State, Mexico. In the most pessimistic scenario, the gross benefits generated in the Yaqui Valley from 1970 to 1990 were 17 million U.S. dollars (in 1994 real terms). Even when costs were overstated and benefits were understated, the internal rate of return on capital invested was 13%, well within the range recommended for use in project evaluations by the World Bank. Substantial economic benefits likely are associated with deployment of nonspecific resistance in many wheat-producing areas of developing countries where farmers change cultivars slowly because of delays in cultivar release, incomplete seed markets, and economic factors related to adoption or where disease pressure is heavy and the costs of treating disease outbreaks is high.
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