Dhaka, Bangladesh
October 19, 2017
by Hans Braun, Pawan Singh, Ravi Singh, Shahidul Haque Khan, Velu Govindan
Members of National Technical Committee of NSB evaluating BAW 1260 in the field. Photo: CIMMYT
As wheat farmers in Bangladesh struggle to recover from a 2016 outbreak of a mysterious disease called “wheat blast,” the country’s National Seed Board (NSB) released a new, high-yielding, blast-resistant wheat variety, according to a communication from the Wheat Research Centre (WRC) in Bangladesh.
The breeding line BAW 1260, which is released as variety BARI Gom 33, was developed by WRC using a breeding line from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), a Mexico-based organization that has collaborated with Bangladeshi research organizations for decades, according to Naresh C. Deb Barma, Director of WRC, who said the variety had passed extensive field and laboratory testing.
“This represents an incredibly rapid response to blast, which struck in a surprise outbreak on 15,000 hectares of wheat in southwestern Bangladesh just last year, devastating the crop and greatly affecting farmers’ food security and livelihoods, not to mention their confidence in sowing wheat,” Barma said.
Caused by the fungus Magnaporthe oryzae pathotype triticum, wheat blast was first identified in Brazil in 1985 and has threatened and constrained wheat farming in South America for decades. Little is known about the genetics or interactions of the fungus with wheat and other hosts and only few resistant varieties have been released in Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay, countries most affected by wheat blast.
The Bangladesh outbreak was its first appearance in South Asia, a region where rice-wheat cropping rotations cover 13 million hectares and over a billion inhabitants eat wheat as main staple.
Many blast fungal strains are impervious to fungicides, according to Pawan Singh, a CIMMYT wheat pathologist. “The Bangladesh variant is still sensitive to fungicides, but this may not last forever, so we’re rushing to develop and spread new, blast-resistant wheat varieties for South Asia,” Singh explained.
The urgent global response to blast received a big boost in June from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, which funded an initial four-year research project to breed blast resistant wheat varieties and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), which also provided grant to kick-start the work in South Asia. Led by CIMMYT, the initiative involves researchers from nearly a dozen institutions worldwide.
Chemical controls are costly and potentially harmful to human and environmental health, so protecting crops like wheat with inherent resistance is the smart alternative, but resistance must be genetically complex, combining several genes, to withstand new mutations of the pathogen over time.
Key partners in the new project are the agricultural research organizations of Bangladesh, including the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), and the Instituto Nacional de Innovación Agropecuaria y Forestal in Bolivia, which will assist with large-scale field experiments to select wheat lines under artificial and natural infections of wheat blast.
Other partners include national and provincial research organizations in India, Nepal and Pakistan, as well as Kansas State University (KSU) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Services (USDA-ARS). The U.S. Agency for International Agricultural Development has also supported efforts to kick-start blast control measures, partnerships and upscaling the breeding, testing and seed multiplication of new, high-yielding, disease resistant varieties through its Feed the Future project.
BARI Gom 33 was tested for resistance to wheat blast in field trials conducted in Bolivia and Bangladesh and greenhouse verification performed by the USDA-ARS laboratory in Fort Detrick, Maryland. This shows the strength of partnership that is needed for giving a fast response to a problem, according to Hans Braun, Director of CIMMYT’s Global Wheat Program.
“Worldwide, we’re in the middle of efforts that include blast surveillance and forecasting, studies on the pathogen’s genetics and biology, integrated disease management and seed systems, raising awareness about the disease and training for researchers, extension workers, and farmers,” said Singh.
With over 160 million people, Bangladesh is one of the world’s most densely populated countries. Wheat is Bangladesh’s second most important staple food after rice. With an annual production of around 1.35 million tons and consumption of 4.5 million tons, the country currently imports more than two-thirds of its wheat grain at an annual cost exceeding $0.7 billion.
WRC will produce tons of breeder’s BARI Gom 33 each year, which will be used by the Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation (BADC), as well as diverse non-governmental organizations and private companies to produce certified seed for use by farmers.
“This year WRC will provide some quantity of seed to BADC for multiplication and The Department of Agricultural Extension will also establish number of demonstrations of the new variety in farmers’ fields of blast prone districts, during 2017-18,” said Barma.
As an added benefit for the nutrition of wheat consuming households, BARI Gom 33 grain features enhanced levels of zinc, a critical micronutrient missing in the diets of many poor people in South Asia including Bangladesh. Zinc deficiency is widespread in rural and urban populations of Bangladesh; it affects mainly pregnant women and children below 5 years of age.
Through funding support from HarvestPlus and CGIAR research program on Agriculture for Nutrition, CIMMYT is leading the global effort to breed biofortified wheat with better agronomic and nutritional quality traits. In this direction, BARI Gom 33 was developed at CIMMYT, Mexico through traditional cross-breeding approach, and shared to Bangladesh and other cooperators in South Asia through CIMMYT’s International Wheat Improvement Network, which celebrates 50 years in 2018. Three years of multi-site testing in Bangladesh showed competitive yields and about 30 percent higher grain zinc benefit, which led to fast-track release of BARI Gom 33 for improved food and nutritional security in Bangladesh.
Stable window 1 and 2 (W1W2) funding enabled CIMMYT and partners to react quickly and screen material in Bolivia, work with KSU and identify sources of wheat blast resistance.
The following W1 funders provided funding to the CGIAR to make wheat blast resistance possible:
Australia, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Canada, France, India, Japan, Korea, New Zeland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the World Bank.
The following funders also contributed vital W2 funding:
Australia, China, the United Kingdom (DFID) and the U.S. (USAID).
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