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innovations for a changing world contents messages message from the director general message from the chairman innovations for a changing world weather-proofing for a warmer world genebank investing in the future whole genome sequences what do they tell us keeping the good while targeting the bad rooting around for answers health checks for soils delicacies from a degraded land about icrisat icrisat governing board 2008 financial summary icrisat in the news icrisat rated superior based on cgiar performance indicators icrisat senior staff and collaborative staff partnerships publications and awards development investor partnerships initiated in 2007 research scholars during 2007 workshops conferences meetings during 2007 training courses held during 2007 publications list available on cd version awards 2008 2 3 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 27 30 41 46 55 59 60 1[close]
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message from the director general arl sagan one of the most popular american astronomers of our time 1934-1996 once said if you want to make an apple pie from scratch you must first create the universe on the other hand an ancient buddhist expression says if we are facing in the right direction all we have to do is to keep on walking while agricultural innovations have come a long way since man first toiled the land to produce food and the innovations developed by icrisat are not at sagan s apple pie stage we do have some successes that encourage us to keep on walking the year 2008 was witness to several major global challenges and to several solutions to meet them climate change has become a buzz-word and scientists the world over are working to mitigate the change rising to the available data on the impact this will have on agriculture and on the millions of poor farmers who depend on agriculture for their livelihoods icrisat offers ways to employ its methods and mandate crops which are climate change adapted biotechnology at the forefront of innovations for agricultural science offers more hope our scientists are using the power of biotechnology to ferret out genetic secrets that can be employed to tailor crops to existing environmental conditions and the needs of human nutrition scientists are also looking at the other side of the coin what are the implications of these solutions for the innocent bystander the non-targeted life forms c our crop physiologists are focusing on the otherwise hidden from view root systems this subject has many questions but not as many answers also the data from the survey of micronutrients in soils of india will point scientists in the right direction to both improve soil conditions where necessary and exploit the richness of soil where possible in early 2008 the world moved its collective gaze to svalbard made famous by the innovative use of its preserving permafrost icrisat contributed to this global seed bank by committing 111,000 accessions of its mandate crop germplasm to the vault icrisat went through a major external program and management review epmr in 2008 the review provided an opportunity to evaluate the science we perform and the impact it has on the peoples we serve chiefly the poor farmers of the semi-arid tropics the evaluation of the reviewers was encouraging the panel finds that icrisat is a strong well-funded research institute overall the panel commends icrisat for a well-balanced and substantive research portfolio we are humbled and motivated by this evaluation we are grateful for the support afforded us by our governing board our donors investors and partners we are committed to keep on walking till we achieve our goal william d dar director general 2[close]
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message from the chairman t he changing frameworks of local regional and global agricultural markets in 2008 have created new needs for continued technological innovations to enable poor smallholders to adapt to new market opportunities icrisat has a dual role of understanding the markets on which the farmers of the semi-arid tropics depend and at the same time to create platforms for new and old crops and farming systems to cope with both commercial and environmental changes the traditions of social science research in icrisat have again proved relevant as adaptations to climate change the challenges of adopting biotechnology and market demand for bioenergy become increasingly integrated parts of icrisat s research agenda in a more liberalised economy the cooperation between public and private partners must explore new avenues and for icrisat it has become important to ensure that its obligations to producing international public goods can be maintained in joint ventures with private industry innovative models for partnership are emerging as icrisat preserves its integrity as part of a changing global scene for international and national agricultural research the board has valued highly the fact that icrisat has managed to protect its core values in a year of changing perceptions of food security and yet has played a creative and positive role in trying to ensure that the international agricultural research system our cgiar develops to serve new realities good quality science is a prerequisite for having a strong voice when the reorganizations take place the board remains convinced that the strong financial support that came to icrisat from many sources in 2008 reflects a general appreciation of major achievements in 2008 and preceding years a positive external evaluation of the last five years has conveyed that scientists support staff management and the board of icrisat continue to serve the changing semi-arid tropics well as we participate in the changes of the cgiar itself we need to preserve those values and to enhance the impact that international public goods research can have for poor farmers and poor consumers there were more food insecure people in the world in 2008 than in 2007 as also in the semi-arid tropics the challenge grows fuelled by the changing markets the changing roles of the players and the changing nature of agricultural research itself in a changing physical environment the years ahead will tax icrisat s ability to adjust to change i am confident that icrisat will succeed stein w bie chairman governing board 3[close]
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rain clouds over the sahel can spell either chaos or crop success weather-proofing for a warmer world limate change predictions point to a warmer world within the next 50 years a trend that is increasingly being supported by `on-the-ground measurements however the impact of rising temperatures on rainfall distribution patterns in the semi-arid tropics sat of africa and asia remains far less certain icrisat has always been aware of the need to situate our research in the context of seasonally variable rainfall and the impact it has on rural welfare within the last 4 years however this work has received a new focus following global concern over the impacts of current climate variability and future change during the last year icrisat has been active in both consolidating its own climate change adaptation research as well as increasingly playing a lead role among the alliance centers of the cgiar facilitating international sharing of information in november 2007 icrisat celebrated its 35th anniversary by hosting a 3-day anniversary symposium entitled climate-proofing innovation for poverty reduction and food security dr martin parry co-chair of ipcc working group ii gave the inaugural address at the symposium icrisat together with 12 cgiar centers the world vegetable center avrdc and the international research institute for climate and society presented key aspects of it s ongoing research on climate change adaptation 6 c in addition icrisat together with icraf acted as guest editor of a special edition of agriculture ecosystems and environment agee entitled international agricultural research and climate change a focus on tropical systems this special edition presented 13 articles from international research institutes including icrisat it was published in june 2008 vol 126 issues 1+2 board approved operational research plan 2008-2015 in march 2008 icrisat s board of trustees approved our operational research plan orp entitled adaptations to climate change in the semi-arid tropics the strategy provides a focused description of the climate change development challenge in the sat the rationale for icrisat s involvement what we aim to achieve through our research and the outcomes we will achieve between now and 2015 the orp is structured around two key strategic considerations 1 unless vulnerable farming communities of the sat are empowered to cope better with current season-to-season rainfall variability adapting to future climate change will be a daunting challenge or impossible for most 2 given the lead time required to produce `finished products of adapted germplasm we are combining ex ante assessments of the impacts of climate change scenarios[close]
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on the performance of our mandate crops with investigations into the required plant characteristics that will both mitigate the negative and exploit the positive impacts of climate change a summary flyer of this orp has been produced and is available on request in pdf format `hypothesis of hope for the sat last may icrisat s crop modelers gis experts crop physiologists and plant breeders met in hyderabad for a working week using a range of weather data driven tools they initiated research to test the hypothesis that in the medium term 2010-2050 icrisat is well placed to help farming communities mitigate the challenges and exploit the opportunities that are posed by climate change through i re-deployment and re-targeting of the existing germplasm of its mandate crops and ii through the application of existing knowledge on crop soil and water management innovations whilst the work initiated during this week remains ongoing early outputs support the hypothesis specifically this ex ante analysis showed that · climate change will modify the length of the growing period across the regions of interest but that this can in large part be mitigated by the re-targeting and re-deployment of existing germplasm · predicted temperature increases will increase the rate of crop development with greater negative impacts on crop production than relatively small ±10 changes in rainfall · yield gap analyses show that the negative impacts of climate change can be largely mitigated through a dual strategy of a greater application by farmers of improved crop soil and water management innovations and b better targeted crop improvement approaches more explicitly focused on climate change adaptation expanding our portfolio in africa and asia between 2005 and 2007 icrisat partnered with meteorological services cgiar centers and leading climate science researchers worldwide in the development and initiation of eight specially funded director general dr william dar addresses the gathering while dr martin parry extreme left looks on during the symposium proof of concept projects centered on climate risk management in sub-saharan africa in the last year three more such projects have been funded of particular importance is the project funded by the asian development bank which has expanded this work to india peoples republic of china sri lanka bangladesh and pakistan sharing the lessons learned although all our projects are ongoing three key lessons have already emerged 1 current season-to-season rainfall variability has a strong influence on farmers perceptions and practice 2 new climate driven tools are very useful in characterizing climate induced risk and supporting farmer decision making 3 institutional and information support mechanisms to enable the effective use of climate information are essential last june the organizers of the fao high level conference on world food security the challenge of climate change and bio-energy invited icrisat to present a poster that described these lessons in more detail more detailed information on our climate change adaptation research is available at http www icrisat.org/gt-aes/adaption.htm farmers may not be able to avoid climate change but icrisat and its partners are working hard to provide them with more stable crop yields in such an unpredictable future 7[close]
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cgiar chair kathy sierra visits the genebank at patancheru genebank investing in the future s paroda genebank in 2006 icrisat published a book titled genes are gems unrelated to genebanks but if genes are gems then what better place to store them than in a bank icrisat s rs paroda genebank located on the campus at patancheru india is one of the largest genebanks in the cgiar system holding more than 119,000 accessions of its five mandate crops and six small millets from 144 countries ninety percent of these accessions are conserved under long term storage at -20oc to provide easy access to such a large number of accessions detailed information about each accession is stored in a database and can be accessed through singer the germplasm/data exchange network of the cgiar on the internet the genebank team continually enriches the collection and associated database so far nearly 700,000 seed samples have been provided to researchers in 144 countries and 654,000 seed samples to researchers within icrisat over the years sixty-six germplasm accessions have been released directly as cultivars in 44 countries contributing to the enhanced food security in these countries a vast number of accessions have been used as building blocks for numerous varieties and hybrids that are cultivated around the world for instance 8 r more than 75 national programs have released over 600 varieties of icrisat mandate crops using icrisat-supplied materials that trace their origin to lines in the genebank to ease and enhance the use in crop improvement of this unwieldy number of accessions icrisat scientists have developed core and mini-core subsets of chickpea finger millet foxtail millet groundnut pigeonpea pearl millet and sorghum several new sources of tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses and for agronomic traits were identified when these sets were evaluated such as early maturity and large seed size in chickpea and groundnut vegetable-type large-podded pigeonpea drought and salinity tolerant groundnut chickpea and pigeonpea and sorghum accessions with high sugar content icrisat s concept of the mini-core has been recognized worldwide additionally molecularly genotype-based reference sets which captured over 78 of the allelic diversity in the composite collections are also available for chickpea pigeonpea groundnut sorghum finger millet and foxtail millet http www.generationcp.org regional genebanks icrisat has established genebanks at its regional centers in niamey nairobi and bulawayo these genebanks conserve germplasm of the mandate crops the small millets[close]
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and other regionally important crops for utilization and distribution together they hold over 58,000 accessions of which nearly 15,000 have been characterized over 15,000 seed samples have been distributed regionally between 2003 and 2007 these genebanks regenerated over 7000 accessions tested seed viability of over 12,000 accessions and processed seeds of 11,000 samples part of the funds provided by the world bank supported global public goods gpg projects have been used to upgrade facilities and operations besides the nearly 15,000 accessions in the niamey genebank the genebank has its own backup collection of almost 10,000 groundnut pearl millet and small millet accessions germplasm adoption considering the average operational costs approximately us$20 million is needed to maintain 119,000 accessions in perpetuity to ensure the long-term availability of funds for genebank activities the global crop diversity trust and icrisat have established an endowment trust where the diversity trust committed us$8 million and icrisat us$2 million in a rolling multi-year plan for a total endowment of us$10 million the proceeds from the endowment which are at least us$450,000 per year will be used for conservation and management of the collections further icrisat has implemented the innovative idea of adopting germplasm icrisat staff members and non-traditional donors have contributed funds to adopt several accessions icrisat hopes and believes that more such philanthropists will come forward to adopt these priceless resources for the benefit of humanity svalbard global seed vault on the norwegian island of spitsbergen near the town of longyearbyen 130 m above sea level in the remote arctic svalbard archipelago a seed vault has been established to preserve unique duplicate samples of seeds held in genebanks worldwide the seed vault is managed under a tripartite agreement between the norwegian government the global crop diversity trust and the nordic genetic resource center the norwegian government finances upkeep of the structure itself and the bill melinda gates containers of germplasm ready for shipment to svalbard foundation and other donors assist selected genebanks in developing countries as well as the cgiar institutions to package and ship seeds to the seed vault norwegian prime minister jens stoltenberg and the nobel laureate wangari maathai the founder of the african green belt movement inaugurated the facility on 26 february 2008 and delivered together the first box of seeds containing rice germplasm from 104 countries icrisat director general dr william d dar participated in the opening of this global initiative to store the seeds of agricultural crops from across the world the seed vault has the capacity to conserve 4.5 million seed samples with each sample containing on an average of 500 seeds a maximum of 2.25 billion seeds can be stored at -18oc icrisat has committed to placing 111,000 germplasm accessions of its mandate crops in this vault in a phased manner over the next five years the first batch of 20,000 accessions was shipped in 2008 with biodiversity so important for the future of agricultural systems around the world our `banks contain our most precious assets we pledge to the world that we will make every effort to see that the crops under our mandate are safe secure and freely available for all to use 9[close]
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advanced dna sequencing instruments at icrisat-patancheru whole genome sequences what do they tell us n next few years there will be a flurry of published reports about sequencing of the complete genomes of many organisms what is this all about how long until we can apply this information to the breeding of new crop varieties that can help poor people in the semi-arid tropics first a little background a genomic sequence is simply the order of the four components bases in the long chains of deoxyribonucleic acid dna that is found in almost every cell of an organism in practice the sequence is written as a string composed of four letters a g c and t that represent the four bases a full genome sequence can be several million characters long genomic sequences of complex organisms such as plants and animals contain the code for the genes that condition how an organism looks responds to different stimuli and reproduces thus knowing an organism s genome sequence should provide great insight into how and why certain functions work and provide opportunities for improving an organism several plant genomes have already been sequenced the first was the lab pet arabidopsis chosen as a model system because of its small genome size small plant size and short life cycle that made it a convenient and relatively inexpensive 10 i species in which to study plant genes including how they interact with each other and the environment to produce phenotypic variation that we can see the next plant to be sequenced was rice also with a small genome size this was followed by the poplar tree the tropical fruit papaya and most recently january 2009 the tropical cereal sorghum one of icrisat s mandate crops the us department of energy s joint genome institute which is involved in most genome sequencing efforts selected sorghum for full genome sequencing because of its · small genome size compared to other tropical cereals having the high temperature tolerant water use efficient c4 system of photosynthesis for converting the energy from sunlight into sugars · close evolutionary relationships with other economically important grasses such as maize and sugarcane · even closer relationship with one of the worst weeds johnson grass and · reputation as a drought-tolerant food feed fodder and fuel crop researchers now have a powerful tool to help them develop more efficient ways to improve this crop.[close]
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they have first compared the genome sequences of sorghum and rice two important cereals whose most recent common ancestor lived more than 50 million years ago before their lineages separated the ancestral grass genome had duplicated providing greater opportunity for copies of different genes to evolve new variants some of which have new functions or lose functions and perhaps get lost because of this a substantial portion of sorghum genes are not found in rice and vice versa thus about 7 of sorghum gene-like sequences have no direct counterparts in the genomes of arabidopsis rice or poplar these new genes are probably responsible for many of the economically important differences between sorghum and rice but perhaps surprisingly they do not appear to have been that important in the evolution of the more efficient c4 photosynthesis system which appears to be largely based on evolution of new functions in variants of pre-existing genes the total number of gene-like sequences detected in sorghum and rice are similar roughly 30,000 the biggest difference between the sorghum genome and its much smaller rice counterpart is that the gene-poor repetitive central regions of the 10 sorghum chromosomes are four times larger than those in the 12 rice chromosomes this means that the gene-rich region of the sorghum genome is relatively small and one could probably identify most of the genes in other plant species by sequencing only these gene-rich regions when the function of a particular gene is determined scientists have a good idea about what the counterparts of that gene will do in other species and once they learn which gene controls a particular trait they can start looking for the most favorable forms of that gene for a particular target environment with the sequenced genome they can identify trait combinations that are likely to be associated due to physical proximity of genes on the chromosome for example if one could identify the gene sequence that is associated with the ma1 gene which plays a major role in the response of sorghum flowering time to environmental variation in daylength and temperature they could quickly brown midrib sorghum good for forage and biofuel move by marker-assisted backcrossing the most appropriate ma1 variant into a market-preferred variety or hybrid creating a new version that can be grown in a new production environment a more efficient way for plant breeders to adapt crops to perform better in a changing environment the sorghum genome sequence was recently used to identify the physical location of a gene involved in the production of lignin a component contributing to stem strength and digestibility search of the sorghum genome sequence for this gene identified its position and based on this icrisat and others could readily identify molecular markers for this gene greatly simplifying rapid transfer of selected mutant alleles into productive forage and sweet sorghum genotypes these new brown midrib sorghum lines have improved biomass digestibility important for both forage and biofuel uses of sorghum icrisat in collaboration with its many partners around the world continues to apply modern scientific tools such as whole genome sequencing to better understand the crops we work on and to produce improved varieties more effectively and efficiently for farmers in the semi-arid tropics 11[close]
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a ladybird beetle predating on aphis craccivora aphids on a chickpea plant inset ladybird beetle keeping the good while targeting the bad ppetite suppressant in 2008 insect-resistant transgenic crops expressing genes from the bacterium bacillus thuringiensis bt that control specific insect pests are being grown on some 40 million hectares in 25 countries these insectresistant crops have been deployed successfully for the management of bollworms in cotton and corn earworm and stem borers in maize insect species that feed on many crops including the icrisat mandate crops like chickpea pigeonpea and sorghum and cause considerable damage in farmers fields realizing the potential benefit to farmers efforts are underway at icrisat to develop transgenic chickpea and pigeonpea with resistance to pod borers as we screen for the best lines for effective control of the target insect pests we are also studying the effects of these on those insect species that are actually beneficial to the crops while considerable information has been generated on the efficacy of bt-transgenic crops against the effects on natural enemies of the crop pests in usa australia and china little information is available on the effects of insect-resistant transgenic crops on the non-target natural enemies of crop pests in the semi-arid tropics sat in asia and africa therefore scientists at icrisat studied the effects of bt toxins on the natural a enemies of the pod borer helicoverpa armigera one of the most important crop pests in the sat under laboratory and field conditions bug eats bug when an important biocontrol agent the parasitic wasp campoletis chlorideae of pod borer larvae are fed on bt-intoxicated pod borers larvae under laboratory conditions significant reductions in cocoon formation and adult emergence were observed in addition the larval period of the parasitoid was also prolonged by two days although there were no adverse effects on female fecundity scientists believe that the observed adverse effects of bt toxins on c chlorideae were largely because of poor nutritional quality and early mortality of the pod borer larvae when fed on bt-intoxicated diets in fact most of the larvae died in only five days while the parasitoid larvae needs eight days to complete development scientists were not able to detect any direct effects of bt toxins on the parasitoid and no bt proteins were detected in the larvae cocoons or adults of the parasitoid when fed on bt-intoxicated pod borer larvae the interactions of bt toxins were also studied on the generalist predator the ladybird beetle coccinellid beetle which is an important predator of aphids larvae of lepidopteran insects butterflies/moths 12[close]
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the parasitoid campoletis chlorideae parasitizing a pod borer helicoverpa armigera larva and other soft-bodied insects when ladybird beetle larvae were fed on diets containing either of two btproteins cry1ab and cry1ac reduced larval survival and adult emergence were observed as compared to the controls larvae fed on non-bt containing diets however such a forced dietary situation is highly unlikely to occur under natural conditions there were no adverse effects of the bt proteins when the ladybird larvae were reared on aphids fed with different concentrations of cry1ab or cry1ac in the artificial diets results suggest that direct exposure to bt-protein in the transgenic plants will have little effect on the survival and development of ladybird beetles testing with cotton icrisat scientists are also assessing the effects of bt-transgenic cotton on natural enemies arthropod biodiversity and the flow in the insect fauna of the bt proteins under field conditions so far there were no differences in the numbers of the generalist predators such as the coccinellid beetle ladybird beetle chrysopids lacewing and spiders clubiona and neoscona species extensive surveys in farmers fields in the indian states of andhra pradesh maharashtra and karnataka found no significant differences in parasitism of bollworm eggs and larvae on bt-transgenic and non-transgenic cotton scientists also observed that there was no significant differences in the abundance of natural enemies of crop pests such as coccinellid beetle chrysopid cotton leafhopper thrips ash weevils dusky cotton bug red cotton bug spiders and grasshoppers on bt-transgenic and non-transgenic cotton results to date predict minimal if any adverse effects of bt-transgenic cotton on the non-target natural enemies of crop pests nor on other beneficial insect species under field conditions this confirms the high degree of specificity that bt-transgenic crops have for the target insect species scientists will continue to monitor the effects of bt transgenic crops on the non-target insect species for longer periods of time under different agroclimatic conditions to better assess the potential effects in farmers fields 13[close]
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