Feed the Future: Integrated Pest Management in South Asia

Innovation That’s Making a Difference: Integrated Pest Management in South Asia

March 14, 2013

Marty McVey, USAID Board for International Food and Agricultural Development | Feed the Future | Blog

Marty McVeyMarty McVey learns more about the IPM Innovation Lab’s work in tomato grafting with Rangaswamy Muniappan of Virginia Tech .

The Hon. Marty McVey is a member, appointed by the U.S. president, of USAID’s Board for International Food and Agricultural Development (BIFAD).

The BIFAD advises and makes recommendations to the USAID Administrator on food security, development efforts, and implementation of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. It also monitors progress.

During his second trip in January with the Feed the Future Innovation Lab: Collaborative Research on Integrated Pest Management (formerly the Integrated Pest Management Collaborative Research Support Program), McVey visited food security projects in India, Bangladesh and Nepal. India is a strategic partner with Feed the Future, and Bangladesh and Nepal are Feed the Future focus countries.

We asked McVey a few questions about his visit and the exciting collaborations and progress he observed.

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First, tell us a little about your trip. Where did you go and why were you there?

I accompanied a team of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Innovation Lab personnel from Virginia Tech, Penn State, and the Ohio State University to South Asia to review the activities of the IPM Innovation Lab in this part of the world. I attended workshops, regional planning meetings, toured facilities of private sector and NGO partners), and met with U.S. Ambassadors, USAID Mission directors, partner scientists, farmers, and members of farming cooperatives in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal.

The purpose of my trip was to see how Feed the Future’s goals are being accomplished, particularly through the work of the IPM Innovation Lab with its many partners and programs in South Asia. What I learned was encouraging.

Who did you spend time with during the trip? How did you see various food security actors, particularly from the research community, interacting and working together to achieve Feed the Future goals on the ground? 

In Bangladesh, scientists from all three countries I visited, as well as representatives from USAID and The World Vegetable Center, attended a regional planning meeting for the IPM Innovation Lab’s Southeast Asia project. Interaction among scientists from the United States and host countries was lively and facilitated collaboration.

While visiting with the vice chancellor of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in India and our partnering scientists at that institution, I observed their strong commitment to working with us to foster increased use of organic farming methods.

In India, scientists from Senegal, Kenya, Ghana, and Guatemala—supported by Feed the Future through  the IPM Innovation Lab—attended a biocontrol workshop centered on the use of Trichoderma (a beneficial fungus used to attack fungi with deleterious effects) and Pseudomonas (a beneficial bacterium). Each of the scientists gave a presentation on the work they were doing in their home country. Through this kind of support, Feed the Future is exponentially expanding its impact and providing opportunities for scientists to learn new techniques. Those scientists then return home and share what they’ve learned, which translates to better in-country capacity.

The IPM Innovation Lab has also partnered with the Biocontrol Research Lab, a private company in India that produces biocontrol products to help farmers safely grow highly productive crops.

Through this partnership, farmers can learn about the benefits of using biocontrol methods to control pests and plant diseases and with the increased income they generate through these methods they are able to expand their use of such products. Companies find a viable niche in the economy. Everybody wins: Farmers increase their incomes without depleting or harming the soil and environment, companies are successful, and local communities have more and healthier produce to buy and consume. Public-private partnerships like this are helping to ensure that food security efforts in India are sustainable.

In each country I visited, the USAID Missions were pleased with the work of the IPM Innovation Lab and expressed that IPM Innovation Lab efforts are helping to achieve impact in advancing food security. In Bangladesh and Nepal, they are working to implement IPM packages (a set of techniques designed for a particular crop) in Feed the Future target regions.

What impact did you see the IPM Innovation Lab having? How was it making a difference? 

In Nepal, pheromone trap technology introduced by the IPM Innovation Lab is helping coffee producers manage the white stem borer of coffee, a serious pest in the region. Classical biocontrol of the papaya mealybug, thanks to an IPM Innovation Lab initiative, has restored production of papaya, mulberry, cassava, eggplant, and other crops to the pre-incidence level in southern India. And in Bangladesh, the IPM Innovation Lab helped successfully reverse the decline in eggplant production, a staple crop, by introducing eggplant grafting in 2004 to combat bacterial wilt. The farmers were very appreciative of this initiative.

The adoption of Trichoderma and Pseudomonas in vegetable farming in India is extensive. In Bangladesh, Trichoderma is produced with compost and distributed to farmers. The adoption of culture to attract and kill the melon fly on bitter gourd farms in Bangladesh is also very popular. The popularization of Trichoderma throughout the tropical world is spectacular and should be continued as it makes such a difference in the lives of smallholder farmers.

From your tweets, it looks like you spent some time with smallholder farmers. How was the IPM Innovation Lab working with them, particularly women farmers? What did the farmers have to say?

There are many success stories coming out of these countries regarding integrated pest management (IPM) thanks to the involvement of the IPM Innovation Lab. The farmers themselves are perhaps the most inspiring.

One of the biggest stories for me was my colleague’s account of a visit to a village near Kathmandu, Nepal. In this small village, women have been so successful at using IPM techniques that they are able to buy clothes for their children, pay for more schooling for them, and even build houses with the extra income they generate.

At another farmers’ cooperative, I learned that while it only has 27 members, 500 people benefit from the work of the organization. A woman sits at the head of this group. The members of this organization are able to make small loans to other members, allowing them to buy materials for building greenhouses, drip irrigation systems, sticky traps, or pheromones. All of this is allowing women farmers to sustainably grow more and healthier produce.

At a coffee plantation in Nepal I heard this story repeated: “Ninety percent of the beans that we grow are of better quality since we started using IPM techniques,” one woman said. And I learned from our collaborating partner in Nepal, iDE, that it focuses on working with women because they’re more reliable and committed than the men, and they are also better savers.

What encouraged you most about this trip, the projects you saw, and the people you met?

I was most inspired by the difference that Feed the Future, through the IPM Innovation Lab, is making in the lives of women farmers. I saw this with the women agricultural students and farmers who I met at the Sri Avinashilingam Krishi Vigyan Kendra University in India and with the women farmers who I met in Nepal.

Women farmers see firsthand how using biocontrol methods produces vegetables and crops that are safer and of better quality. They are using the extra income to improve the lives of their families. And they are forming organizations to extend the benefits to each other through loans. They’re also extending benefits beyond their organizations by working with other women’s cooperatives.

During my visit to the women’s agricultural university, I spoke to a large group of several hundred women farmers. It was encouraging to see these young women take a positive step for their own future and that of their communities by investing in themselves and in the future of agriculture through higher education. The university is set up such that it not only trains women in agriculture, but it also encourages small businesses by training students in activities such as fabric production and handcrafts.

What key messages will you take back to the BIFAD on the value/success of the IPM Innovation Lab?

Overall, the progress toward Feed the Future’s goals was encouraging.

South-South collaboration is strong and yielding results. The biocontrol workshop at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University was an example of this. By providing training to promising young scientists in other developing countries, the program is extending the benefits of IPM methods.

The research and practitioner community is flexible, responding to new challenges as they arise. Policy-makers sometimes lag behind. As scientists learn of new invasive pests and diseases, they are quick to adapt, figuring out new solutions to challenges on the ground. Government officials often lag behind in understanding the importance of acting quickly and red tape can slow effective techniques.

Women are making strides. Where women are allowed or encouraged to have agency in their lives, they are making a huge difference.

While adopting new strategies is risky for subsistence farmers, once they see results they become evangelists. To the subsistence farmer, new practices are suspect: If you are just barely getting by, why try something that may remove even that tiny profit altogether? And yet, from my visits to farming villages and through meeting with farmer collectives and speaking with farmers themselves, I learned that once a farmer sees (often through demonstration plots) that these new methods can work, they become enthusiastic advocates.

Public-private partnerships are promising. Public-private partnerships across the countries we serve through the IPM Innovation Lab were inspiring, with strong partners in every country that are helping create self-sustaining programs.

Change is incremental, but nonetheless effective. While we don’t always get a dramatic splash for our investments dollars in the developing world, it is money well spent. The smile on the face of a woman who has built a house using money she earned from IPM methods is invaluable. The pride of the young women embarking on higher level agricultural studies was inspiring. The enthusiasm of our scientist partners from developing countries attending the biocontrol workshop was gratifying as well. Often, as I mentioned above, it can be difficult to persuade a farmer to adopt new methods. But once we do, and are successful, word of mouth spreads to other farmers and villages and extends across a region. Over time, this has a huge impact.

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Follow McVey on Twitter for more on his trip and future updates. McVey will brief the public on his trip at the BIFAD board of directors meeting this Friday, March 15. Check out the webcast on Friday. We’ll also post the meeting minutes later on the USAID website. 

View more photos from McVey’s trip. 

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Plant Pest Interactions: How Soybean Aphids Trick Soybean Plant Defences

October 23, 2012 by Charlotte Elston

Following on from a previous blog on the interactions between soybean plants and soybean pests,  new research on soybean (Glycine max) responses to the soybean aphid (Aphis glycines) published in Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions has revealed some of the complex and fascinating interactions between pests and their plant hosts.  This recent research led by Dr Gustavo Macintosh and Matthew Studham from Iowa State University has shown that soybean aphids can suppress the natural plant defense response of soybean plants to the aphids through the activation of what is known as an antagonistic decoy response. For example, the aphid will induce a plant defense that is not particularly effective against the pest (the ‘decoy’ defense) while suppressing the effective defense in order for it to continue feeding on the plant.  It has further been found that aphids can actively suppress the effective defence responses of the plant while at the same time ‘hijacking’ the plant metabolism to improve the nutritional value of the plant for their own benefit. Soybean aphids do this by inducing asparagine synthase transcripts which improve the nutritional content of the phloem sap from which they feed.

Plants have evolved complex biochemical defense mechanisms that begin with the detection of elicitors, which are compounds that indicate a pest or pathogen attack. In the case of aphid attack, it is thought that elicitors could include aphid salivary proteins, which trigger an appropriate response in the plant to defend against the pest. The plant response is specific according to the type of pathogen or pest, for example when a plant is attacked by an insect pest which causes tissue damage it will produce toxins such as alkaloids. When attacked by a virus or bacteria plants may destroy cells to deprive the pathogen of nutrients required for growth. In addition, some of the plant volatiles emitted when the plant is under attack by insects pests such as aphids can be detected by the natural enemies of aphids, thereby ‘attracting’ the predators to a source of prey. These biochemical defense mechanisms in plants are controlled by plant hormones, which in soybeans include jasmonic acid (JA), ethylene (ET) and salicylic acid (SA). In addition to defence hormones, the abiotic stress hormone abscisic acid (ABA) has been shown to have various effects on pathogen resistance, and appears to be part of the plant’s response to aphid infestation. Interestingly, pests such as soybean aphids have evolved mechanisms to take advantage of the hormone signalling that controls plant defences, with some pests and pathogens producing hormones or hormone analogs, presumably to manipulate plant signalling to produce an ineffective decoy response that suppresses that effective defense response of the plant.

The soybean aphid is a phloem feeding insect pest that causes significant soybean yield loss worldwide. The aphid is native to Asia and has since spread throughout North America since it was first discovered there in 2000. This research has shown that salicyclic acid (SA) regulates the effective defence against the soybean aphid, while induction of the abiotic stress hormone abscisic acid (ABA) pathway may be a ‘decoy’ response that the aphids induce to counter the plant defences, since ABA suppresses SA response in soybeans. Furthermore, the aphids can ‘hijack’ the plant into producing a phloem sap with a higher nitrogen content, thereby making the sap more nutritious to the aphids. The changes induced by the soybean aphids have further implications for the plant since they appear to then make it easier for other pests, such as the soybean cyst nematode, to subsequently attack the plant. It is hoped further research in this area can help to identify soybean varieties that are more resistant to aphid and other insect pest attack and to predict how soybeans defences may react to new pests in the future.

An Adult Soybean Aphid © Ho Jung Yoo, Purdue University (via Wikimedia Commons)

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Plants have a memory of pests that spans generations

by Amy Coombs

In the age of industrial agriculture, seeds are often purchased in bulk from corporate growers that use heavy doses of pesticides. They then travel many miles to a farm where climate, soil and pest conditions are dramatically different. As a result, crops often encounter new ailments that never impacted first generation seed plants, which may have been protected from the most troublesome invaders.

This might not be the best approach, based on three studies published in the February issue of Plant Physiology. Not only does adversity in the parent generation appear to make the seed stronger, but it primes plants to fight the specific ailments that plagued their parents. ( More … )

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/02/plants-have-a-memory-of-pests-that-spans-generations.ars

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New crop varieties can cut poverty, study finds

Bernard Appiah

 3 January 2012 | EN

The new groundnut varieties are resistant to major pests and diseases

Flickr/SwathiSridharan

The thorny question of whether improved crop varieties do, in fact, lift peasant farmers out of poverty has been answered positively in a study of groundnut varieties, according to researchers at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), in Kenya.

Evidence that new technologies improve small farmers’ wellbeing is scarce because the impact of adopting technologies depends on many factors such as the existence of infrastructure, policies and institutions that are often not fully functional in developing countries. For example, technology that increases productivity may not reduce poverty if the farmers do not have access to markets to sell their extra crop.

In addition, some studies have claimed that building capacity is more important than technology for improving livelihoods.

Researchers from CIMMYT selected more than 900 households at random from seven major groundnut growing districts in Uganda and, in 2006, surveyed socioeconomic data and information related to the adoption of improved groundnut varieties. Groundnut is an important crop in Uganda.

Farmers who adopted any of four improved varieties resistant to major pests and diseases — developed by national and international organisations, and released in Uganda between 1999 and 2002 — were compared with non-adopters. The results of the study were published in the October 2011 issue of World Development.

“We found that the adoption of [improved] groundnut varieties significantly increased the net value of income by US$130–254 per hectare,” said Menale Kassie, one of the authors of the study. “Adoption of groundnut varieties also significantly reduced poverty as measured by headcount index [the proportion of people below the poverty line] by 7–9 per cent.”

In a related study, which has been submitted for publication, Kassie and colleagues found that adopting improved maize varieties also significantly improves rural households’ food security and decreases the extent of poverty.

Richard Edema, a plant pathologist and senior lecturer in the school of agricultural sciences at Makerere University, Uganda, said: “Studies [such as this one] can serve as feedback for agricultural scientists to assess whether new [crop] varieties are making real impacts on farmers’ lives”.

Okello David Kalule, head of the Uganda National Groundnut Improvement Programme, said that, although the new groundnut varieties produce superior yields, some farmers are still growing low-yielding varieties. The reasons for this, he said, include poor agricultural extension services and a lack of access to information about the new varieties.

“Local institutions should be strengthened to collectively improve access to seeds, credit, and information to increase both the spread and intensity of adoption,” he said.

Link to abstract

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Scientists ramp up sequencing of rice varieties

http://www.scidev.net/en/

Wednesday, 4 January 2012

Scientists ramp up sequencing of rice varieties

Roderick dela Cruz

 20 December 2011 | EN | 中文

Rice: eaten by over half the world’s population

Flickr/ IRRI Images

[MANILA] The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) has launched an ambitious collaborative effort to sequence the genomes of 10,000 rice varieties in two years, which could help breed new varieties that are stronger, faster-growing or higher-yielding than before.

The initiative follows the sequencing of the first rice variety, the Nipponbare cultivar, as early as 2004 by scientists from 10 countries, working in the International Rice Genome Sequencing Project. This took seven years and cost more than US$100 million. But since then only a few types of rice have been sequenced.

IRRI scientists see genome sequencing as key to developing new rice varieties adapted to challenges such as global warming and shrinking agricultural lands. Improved rice varieties are expected to help ease global hunger, as rice remains the most important crop plant, feeding more than half of the world’s 7 billion people.

Genome sequencing provides scientists with information about the hereditary structure of rice and will enable them to manipulate rice genes to produce improved varieties. It will also be helpful in understanding how rice will fare against disease and how it can grow in various weather conditions or land types.

Initially 3,000 varieties will be covered by the project, said IRRI. Among its partners for this phase are the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) and the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI). Funders include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and China’s Ministry of Science and Technology.

Bicheng Yang, director of branding and communication at BGI, said: “The ultimate goal is to sequence 10,000 rice strains selected from the rice gene bank collections at IRRI.”

This collection holds 119,000 varieties.

The project “requires a multitude of scientific and financial support,” according to Yang. “BGI performs whole genome sequencing and basic data treatment while scientists from CAAS, IRRI, BGI and possibly some other institutes will work together on further data analysis.”

The results will be shared with the public to promote rice breeding efforts, added Yang, and no single organisation will have exclusive rights to the data.

This article was modified 22 December 2011.

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‘Super wheat’ resists devastating rust

Published in SciDev Net

by Naomi Antony

 17 June 2011 | EN

http://www.scidev.net/en/news/-super-wheat-resists-devastating-rust.html

Stem rust can destroy wheat crops

Flickr/CIMMYT

‘Super varieties’ of wheat resistant to the deadly stem rust fungus Ug99 could replace wheat in affected areas in as little as two years — if farmers can be persuaded to adopt them, according to a wheat rust expert.

First discovered in Uganda some 13 years ago, Ug99 is increasingly virulent. It is spreading throughout East and Southern Africa, and spores have also reached as far afield as Iran and Yemen. Wheat breeders had been working on promising resistant varieties in Njoro, Kenya, in the hopes that one of them could combat the fungus.

Now they have bred new varieties with good resistance and with up to 15 per cent better yields than today’s varieties, said Ronnie Coffman, head of the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat Project at Cornell University, United States.

Stem rust, also known as black rust, is even more damaging than stripe (or yellow) rust which has wiped out about 40 per cent of harvests in Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.

The new varieties, developed by wheat breeding expert Ravi Singh and colleagues at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico, are resistant to both rusts. They were unveiled at the 2011 Borlaug Global Rust Initiative’s Technical Workshop in Minneapolis, United States, this week (13–16 June).

The varieties were developed by combining several plant resistance genes, which individually give low levels of resistance but when found together in the same plant make it more difficult for the Ug99 pathogen to unravel their combined defences, providing better resistance.

“We’re trying to raise awareness of these materials and convince farmers that they should adopt them before [wheat rust] grows endemic — especially in countries such as Ethiopia,” said Coffman.

Coffman said that the two most critical countries to tackle are Ethiopia and Yemen. However, as Yemen’s political unrest has impeded anti-wheat rust efforts — material recently sent to the country by CIMMYT perished in customs — breeders are initially focusing their efforts on Ethiopia.

“We believe that farmers in Ethiopia will accept the new varieties,” he said. “There is a major outbreak of yellow rust (stripe rust) there. It is not nearly as devastating as stem rust, but it’s significant and farmers want something resistant to it.

“These new varieties are resistant to both rusts so we’re hopeful that the incidence of yellow rust will cause them to accept the new varieties. Unless farmers have an incentive that they can see, they don’t tend to accept new varieties.”

He said that if the incentive works, the whole of Ethiopia could be growing resistant strains in just two years — and this same timetable could apply to the entire East African region. “But it’s a big if,” he added.

Singh said: “We need to see national governments making the investments in seed systems development, including seed production and distribution. In many areas there will need to be support and leadership from wealthy countries and international institutions to carry these innovations into farmers’ fields.”

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Feed the Future Initiative

Fact Sheet

The Norman Borlaug Commemorative Research Initiative:
Leveraging U.S. Research to Reduce Hunger and Poverty

Investing in agricultural research today contributes to the growth and resilience of the food supply tomorrow. When combined with other agricultural investments, improved technologies and practices can meet the need to feed an ever growing global population with less land, less water and a less certain climate. The U.S. has a unique role as a leader in agricultural science and technology, spanning early support for the Green Revolution up through the application of modern biotechnology.

Under Feed the Future, research investments will focus on priorities that:

• Advance the Productivity Frontier: A focus on breeding and genetics of staple crops and livestock to address major production constraints of pests, diseases, drought, and other risks to small scale producers as well as reach into the future to enhance yield potential.
• Transform Production Systems: In priority geographic areas where the poor are concentrated, integrate global technology advances with applied research on conservation of soil and water resources, extension and market access opportunities. This means taking a systems research approach to “sustainable intensification” of key African and Asia production systems on which the poor and hungry depend, linking research advances to national partners and programs.
• Enhance Nutrition and Food Safety: A focus on increasing productivity of grain legumes, reducing mycotoxin contamination of staples, biofortification of staple crops and increasing availability of animal source foods to improve dietary diversity and health, particularly in women and children.

As part of Feed the Future‘s strategy to help achieve these three objectives, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will partner to create the Norman Borlaug Commemorative Research Initiative. The Borlaug Initiative will leverage one of the world’s largest public research systems, spanning the USDA’s research agencies, increasing its relevance and impact on problems and opportunities faced by smallholder farm families in Africa, Asia and Latin America. This expanded relationship will add to USAID’s partnerships with U.S. universities, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, the private sector, and research organizations in developing countries.

The Borlaug Initiative envisions building on research supporting U.S. agriculture in a variety of ways. USAID will provide targeted support to USDA’s in-house research to enhance its benefits for achieving food security objectives in developing countries. USDA will realign some of its research investments in support of the strategy. Through its work with USDA’s research agencies, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the Agricultural Research Service and the Economic Research Service, USAID will expand and deepen collaboration between USDA and U.S. university scientists with counterparts in developing countries. By building on both USDA’s in-house and competitive research programs, USAID and USDA will multiply our investments and bring the best of U.S. science and technology to bear on reducing hunger and poverty in support of the Feed the Future Initiative.

Stem-Rust Resistant Wheats in the Horn of Africa and South Asia: USAID and USDA have joined forces with international partners to address this emerging threat. With potential global losses of up to $9 billion/year from wheat stem rust, and susceptibility of 80% of wheat varieties currently grown, varieties of wheat that are resistant to stem rust are critical to food security across Ethiopia and parts of the Middle East and South Asia. New resistant varieties have been developed in collaboration with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research Centers, and will soon be delivered throughout the region. Continued research is critical to ensure adaptation to additional countries at risk of an epidemic. U.S. farmers will also benefit from resistance identified by the research.

Wheat rust, Puccinia graminis (Photo by Ronnie Coffman, Cornell University)

 

 Eds. note:  A workshop “IPM for Feed the Future” has been organized for Saturday, August 6, 5:30 -8:30 PM at the XVII IPPC/APS meeting  in Honolulu, Hawaii.  The objective of the workshop  is to discuss the role of IPM in the U.S. government’s Feed the Future Intitiative. Speakers include a cast of world experts in the area of plant protection in international agricultural development. If you are coming to the Congress plan to arrive in Honolulu by early Saturday afternoon at the latest so that you can participate in this workshop which has significant relevance to the role of IPM in food security and mitigating global hunger.

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