increasing global crop production with bioscience
TRANSCRIPT
October 2012
Increasing global crop production with bioscienceSustainable Crop Production Research for International Development
To meet the challenge of feeding the world’s rising population, it is essential to ensure individual farmers are helped to grow more and get the best out of their land. Bioscience has a crucial role to play in achieving this.
Scientists are working together to look at ways to develop crops better able to grow in the harsh environmental conditions experienced daily by farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, including drought, poor soil and crop disease.
Over 40 international research organisations are joining forces in a unique £16M initiative that will harness bioscience to improve food security in developing countries.
Funding has been awarded to 11 new research projects which will develop ways to improve the sustainability of vital food crops in sub-
Saharan Africa and Asia. The projects aim to develop staple crops better able to resist pests and thrive in harsh environmental conditions.
The initiative, Sustainable Crop Production Research for International Development, (SCPRID) is funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the Department for International Development (DFID) and (through a grant awarded to BBSRC) the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with additional funding from the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) of India’s Ministry of Science and Technology.
Sustainable Crop Production Research for International Development
© B
ill &
Mel
inda
Gat
es F
ound
atio
n
A Kenyan farmer surveys her crop - three quarters of the world’s poorest people get their food and income from farming small plots of land.
Over one billion people globally are already undernourished and food security is a major issue with the world’s population forecast to reach nine billion by 2050. Environmental change, new trading patterns and urbanisation are all expected to increase pressures on food security in coming years.
Key facts11 international projects
16 partner countries
£16M funding
9Bn – predicted world population by 2050
1Bn – people currently undernourished
© C
redi
t – D
avid
Whi
te
Researchers at the BecA-ILRI Hub address key constraints to African agriculture, with a wide range of expertise, collaborations and state-of-the-art facilities.
As well as increasing sustainable crop yields for farmers and their local communities the knowledge and skills developed as part of these projects will be beneficial for crop production globally.
Each project includes at least one partner from the UK and one from a developing nation. This approach aims to build scientific capacity in developing countries, with the aim of developing research teams and projects that tackle other local scientific challenges.
UK collaboratorsJohn Innes Centre, National Institute of Agricultural Botany, the Sainsbury Laboratory and University of East Anglia
Overseas collaboratorsAarhus University, Denmark, Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research, Indian Council of Agricultural Research, Kenya Agricultural University, Punjab Agricultural University, India.
ContactDr Cristobal [email protected]
Young wheat seedling being attacked by yellow rust
© C
hrist
ine
Lang
, NIA
B
Wheat is a staple crop across most of the developing world and globally provides about 20 per cent of the calories and proteins consumed by humans each day.
Wheat production needs to increase dramatically in coming years to meet the needs of a rapidly growing world population, but disease is a continuing threat to current and future yields. One of wheat’s worst enemies is ‘wheat yellow rust,’ a disease responsible for yield losses of up to 70 percent or complete crop loss if the disease occurs early in the growing season.
To overcome the devastating economic and environmental impact of yellow rust, breeders and scientists have developed wheat varieties resistant to the disease, but a general lack of understanding about how the yellow rust pathogen overcomes the plant’s resistance means that new varieties have not stayed resistant for long. This five-year project aims to tackle this. Using new DNA sequencing technologies and a variety of strains of wheat yellow rust from Africa, India and the UK,
an international team of researchers will sequence current and historical collections of yellow rust to understand how the disease has evolved over time and across continents. This new information at a DNA level will help identify wheat genes best able to resist the pathogen for longer, enabling new varieties of yellow rust resistant wheat to be bred, grown and harvested.
Global DNA sequencing to tackle wheat’s worst enemy
UK collaboratorsUniversity of York
Overseas collaboratorsCentral Rice Research Institute, India and Cornell University, USA
ContactProfessor Ian [email protected]
© P
hil R
ober
ts, C
entr
e fo
r Nov
el A
gric
ultu
ral P
rodu
cts,
Dep
art-
men
t of B
iolo
gy, U
nive
rsity
of Y
ork
Rice growing in lab conditions at the University of York
Rice is the staple food for over two billion people, but more rice is needed to feed a growing global population. A quarter of global rice production, rising to 45 per cent in India, is in rain-fed environments, so the challenge of producing more rice, is further complicated by climate change, which is predicted to cause more drought and flooding in the future.
Researchers from the UK, USA and India will work together to access valuable genetic information about variation in ancestral wild species of rice to try and identify beneficial segments of the genome that help plants survive drought. These small segments from ancestral rice genomes can then be transferred into commercial rice varieties by breeding.
In parallel, researchers in India will conduct field trials using hundreds of lines of rice carrying chromosome segments of DNA from wild varieties to see how different varieties grow. Using this field information, scientists back in the lab will study the different varieties to build up a detailed genetic picture of what
causes increased resistance to drought in specific lines of rice.
At the end of the four-year project, the international team hope to produce improved drought tolerant rice varieties that are accepted and adopted by local communities in rain-fed areas of India, as well as new breeding tools to enable rapid further development of new rice varieties.
Unlocking ancient rice secrets to overcome rainfall extremes
UK collaboratorsNational Institute of Agricultural Botany
Overseas collaboratorsUniversity of the Free State and CenGen Pty, South Africa, Kenya Agricultural Research Institute-Njoro, Kenya and International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center based at El Batan (CIMMYT), Mexico
ContactDr Lesley [email protected]
© P
rofe
ssor
Zak
kie
Pret
oriu
s
Stem of wheat infected with stem rust
Stem (black) and stripe (yellow) rust are two of the most devastating diseases of wheat across the world. The diseases affect wheat crops globally, and are particularly destructive for small scale farmers in the developing world, where crop yields are low and fungicides are not a viable option.
In 1999 a new strain of stem rust appeared, Ug99 which resulted in over 80 per cent of wheat varieties becoming susceptible to this disease and contributed significantly to painful economic spikes in wheat prices. A more aggressive form of stripe rust was also detected in 2000 in the US which quickly spread to Europe and Western Australia, representing the fastest spread of a new pathogen race.
To reduce the social and economic devastation caused by these diseases, new high-yielding, disease resistant wheat varieties are desperately needed. Researchers from the UK, South Africa and Kenya are working on just that.
Over the next four years the team will carry out field trials in South Africa, Kenya and the UK, building on findings from their previous work, to characterise the genes responsible for existing resistance in wheat. Using DNA markers they will locate the position of the genes and measure the contribution of each gene to the overall resistance of the plant. This knowledge and the DNA markers developed will enable wheat breeders in the developed and developing world to accumulate the necessary genes into new wheat varieties.
Finding genes to protect wheat against devastating rust diseases
UK collaboratorsUniversity of Cambridge and Rothamsted Research
Overseas collaboratorsBiosciences eastern and central Africa - International Livestock Research Institute Hub (BecA-ILRI Hub), Nairobi. Kenya, and the Eastern and Central Africa Bean Research Network (ECABREN) coordinated by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Kampala, Uganda
ContactDr John Carr [email protected]
© C
IAT
Although bean varieties resistant to bean common mosaic virus exist, these plants die off if they became infected with another virus, called bean common mosaic necrotic virus that is widespread in Africa.
Beans are a vital crop in eastern and central Africa. Not only do they act as a natural fertilizer by enriching the soil with fixed-nitrogen, they are also an essential part of the regional diet because they are rich in protein and micronutrients such as iron. But aphid-transmitted viruses pose a serious risk to beans and other major crops, resulting in large losses.
Two of the main viruses are bean common mosaic virus and bean common mosaic necrotic virus. While there are some varieties of beans that are resistant to the former virus (because they carry the so-called I-gene) the latter virus - which is endemic to Africa - causes plants with this resistance to die. Over the next four years researchers from across the UK, Kenya, and Uganda will explore ways of controlling bean virus diseases by altering the feeding patterns and behaviour of aphids.
Existing work by researchers from the University of Cambridge shows that virus infection alters the biochemistry of plants to make them smell and taste different to insects,
including aphids, which results in the insect spreading the virus further. The international team will survey bean growing areas in three distinct ecological zones within Uganda to look at how virus infection shapes the distribution of aphids under natural conditions. In addition the team will use a combination of molecular analyses, mathematical models and further field observations to identify how to select and deploy plants that could act as decoys for aphids by attracting them away from beans and other crops.
Leaving a bad taste in aphids’ mouths
UK collaboratorsUniversity of Cambridge and National Institute of Agricultural Botany
Overseas collaboratorsInternational Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Philippines, AfricanRice, Tanzania and Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, India.
ContactDr Julian [email protected]
© IR
RI
Phentoypic variation in wild rice and domesticated rices.
Rice is the staple food for half the world’s population and more than a billion people depend on rice cultivation for their livelihoods. Current rice yields are not high enough to meet demand and limited genetic variation in cultivated rice is a major factor responsible for the declining rates of yield improvement since the Green Revolution.
Compared to wild varieties, modern crops have less variation in their genome due to the artificial selection of certain traits which has occurred over thousands of years.
An international team of researchers will spend the next five years mixing alleles from six wild rices with two cultivated varieties.
Using high-throughput sequencing to provide information about how the genomes have mixed and how they interact, the team will then look to identify specific genomic regions with beneficial traits for dealing with environmental stresses such as drought and breed them back into modern rice varieties.
The new seeds that are created will be grown in field trials by researchers in Africa and India, and if successful, supplied to local farmers to start harvesting.
Mixing the old with the new
UK collaboratorsCranfield University, Imperial College London and University of Southampton
Overseas collaboratorsInternational Rice Research Institute, Philippines, Bangladesh Rice Research Institute and Japan International Research Centre for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS).
ContactProfessor Guy [email protected]
© M
atth
ias W
issuw
a of
JIRC
AS
Differences between rice varieties in tolerance to soil zinc deficiency. The tolerant variety on the left has been bred from the sensitive variety on the right
Zinc is an essential micronutrient for all living organisms. In humans it is important for DNA synthesis, the immune system and wound healing - zinc deficiencies can lead to serious health problems. Soil deficient in zinc causes problems in plant growth and seriously limits crop production in many parts of the world.
Zinc deficiency is a particular problem in rice because of the chemistry of submerged rice paddy fields, which results in zinc being extremely insoluble and therefore hard for the rice plants to take-up. This means that zinc content in grains of rice - already much lower than in other cereals - is further reduced. Currently, to overcome the negative effects of zinc deficiency on rice growth and grain zinc content, large amounts of fertilizer need to be applied.
Focussing on rice, an international team of researchers will spend the next four years tackling the issue of zinc deficiency, in both soil and humans, by breeding rice varieties
that are more efficient in taking up zinc and concentrating it in the rice grains.
The researchers will work together in existing field trials and new laboratory experiments to understand the mechanisms of zinc uptake by rice plants at different stages of their growth cycle, and differences between rice types. They will use this genetic information to try to develop rice with higher zinc content despite being grown in zinc deficient soils.
Maximising health benefits with zinc enriched rice
UK collaboratorsUniversity of Sheffield; University of Edinburgh
Overseas collaboratorsAfrica Rice Center (AfricaRice), Tanzania; Kenyatta University, Kenya; Makerere University, Uganda; ICRISAT, Nairobi, Kenya; IRD/CIAT Rice Genetics and Genomics Laboratory, Columbia.
© D
r Jon
ne R
oden
burg
, Afri
caRi
ce
Field trial of rice cultivars at Mbita point Kenya. The rice cultivar on the left is very susceptible to Striga hermonthica whilst the cultivar on the right is resistant.
Over half the global population relies on rice for more than 20 per cent of their calorie intake and in Africa rice is the fastest growing staple food. To meet growing demand and to reduce rice-imports many African governments want to increase their rice production. However the soils of many of the rice-growing areas of sub-Saharan Africa are infested by the parasitic witchweed Striga. This parasite attaches to the roots of crop plants and steals nutrients and water causing severe stunting and yield losses of 60 to 100 per cent.
Rice cultivars that have natural resistance to witchweed would be a sustainable and cost effective solution, but knowledge about the genes that make some rice cultivars resistant to these parasites is poor.
Researchers from the UK, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Columbia are joining forces to address this. Over the next four years they will use cutting edge genomic approaches to identify resistance genes from the African rice species Oryza glaberrima and wild ancestors of rice for use in breeding programmes
to improve resistance and tolerance to witchweed.
Field trials will be established in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to test how well the new resistant cultivars grow in different environments and to identify the best witchweed resistant/tolerant rice genotypes available. Feedback about the performance of new rice cultivars will also be gathered from local farmers. In order to get the full picture, the team will also look at genes in witchweed that enable some of the parasites to overcome resistance in host plants and look at how these genes vary amongst different parasite populations from different regions of Africa.
Improving African rice to meet growing demand
UK collaboratorsUniversity of Exeter
Overseas collaboratorsUniversity of Arkansas, USA, Biosciences for Eastern and Central Africa, International Livestock Research Institute, Kenya, Kenya Agricultural Institute, Kenya, Makerere University, Uganda, University of Ohio, USA and Station de Recherches de Farako-Bâ, Burkina Faso.
ContactProfessor Nick [email protected]
© N
ick
Talb
ot, U
nive
rsity
of E
xete
r
Up close – rice plant leaf being destroyed by devastating rice blast fungus
At least 70 per cent of the world’s poorest people rely on rice as their staple food and it is estimated that by 2050, 50 per cent more rice needs to be produced. But rice production is under threat from ‘rice blast’, a devastating disease which destroys enough rice each year to feed 60 million people.
Rice blast, a fungal disease, is found throughout the world but is particularly damaging in parts of Africa. Precise figures for the impact of rice blast disease on yields are not known, but losses of 50-80 per cent are not uncommon.
In recent years, a successful rice development programme has run across Africa producing new high-yielding cultivars of rice that have been grown widely in sub-Saharan African countries, many, however, are susceptible to rice blast disease. Researchers from the UK, USA will join forces with scientists from Burkina Faso and Kenya to tackle this issue.
Over the next four years they will identify sources of resistance to rice blast by screening
a wide selection of rice varieties from around the world. Rice blast resistance genes will then be bred into cultivars that are specifically adapted to thrive in African countries, to produce durably resistant rice varieties.
New blast-proof rice for African nations
UK collaboratorsNational Institute of Agricultural Botany
Overseas collaboratorsNational Crops Resources Research Institute (NCRRI), Uganda and International Centre for Tropical Agriculture, Uganda
ContactDr Pamela [email protected], [email protected]
© A
nnet
Nam
ayan
ja, N
CRRI
Women threshing beans in Kabale district in Uganda
Beans are a vital crop across much of Africa, providing up to 45 per cent of people’s dietary protein. They are also an important crop economically as they are grown predominantly by small-holders, usually women, who sell any excess yield at local markets to fund their families. But bean production is hampered by many factors including poor soil, drought and in particular, a disease known as root-rot, which can result in yield losses of over 70 per cent.
Two types of bean root rots have already been identified by the National Bean Programme, which runs across several countries in Central and Eastern Africa and bean varieties have been developed with resistance to the disease, but the new varieties are specific to wetter, cooler highland regions and evidence suggests that root rot is spreading to dryer, warmer areas which have not previously been affected by root rot diseases.
To reduce crop losses by bean root rots, a team of international researchers will spend the next five years in identifying root rot resistant
varieties and initiating breeding programmes to improve market-class varieties. Their first task is to identify whether the spread of bean rootrot is caused by existing pathogens or whether different pathogens are responsible. Once they understand the make-up of the different root rot pathogens and the areas in which they occur, they will then start screening different varieties of beans to identify varieties with natural resistance to the different root rot pathogens. Working with farmers in Uganda, the team will then develop the tools and infrastructure to breed resistant varieties of beans suitable for growing locally.
Preventing bean root rot devastation
UK collaboratorsRothamsted Research
Overseas collaboratorsBiosciences Eastern and Central Africa hub, Kenya, Cornell University, USA and International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), Kenya
ContactDr Toby [email protected]
© P
rofe
ssor
Z K
han
Smallholders in their maize field in Kenya with Professor Zeyaur Khan from ICIPE.
Two vital food crops in sub-Saharan Africa, maize and sorghum, are vulnerable to the devastating impact of insects called Stemborers. These pests burrow inside the stems of the crops causing the plants to collapse and die and result in losses of up to 40 per cent.
To reduce such losses, local farmers often use a companion cropping system known as ‘push-pull’, or ‘Sukuma-Vuta’ in Swahili, using plants known to release smells that repel the stemborer and attract natural enemy insects that attack them. This technique could be improved significantly if the crops themselves released the odours. An international team of researchers will spend the next four years trying to achieve just that.
Researchers already know that certain farmer-selected varieties of maize release the odours, known as semiochemicals, but this valuable trait is not present in commercial hybrid maize and the crop varieties with it lack other important traits particularly for yield and quality.
Using state of the art semiochemical identification and genetic analysis technology the researchers will work with local farmers to look at different crop varieties and define genetic markers associated with the semiochemical trait to enable breeding programmes to move the trait into better crop varieties. The semiochemical trait will enable the crop to release odours, attractive to natural enemies of stemborers, after they have laid eggs on the plants and so reduce the loss caused by the pests, while still being high yielding crops.
Reduce crop losses with cereals that respond to pest attack
UK collaboratorsUniversity of Nottingham, John Innes Centre
Overseas collaboratorsUniversity of Sydney, Directorate of Wheat Research, India and the Agharkar Research Institute, India
ContactProfessor Ian [email protected]
© P
aul K
aspr
zak,
Uni
vers
ity o
f Not
tingh
am
Chinese Spring wheat
Wheat is the second largest staple crop across developing countries and India is one of the main producers. But with the population rising, demand is rapidly growing. For India, and other countries to meet this demand, new varieties of wheat are needed that can tolerate various environmental stresses including drought, poor quality soil and disease.
Over the next five years, an international team of scientists will examine genetic variation in wild wheat species to identify traits which could be used in cultivated varieties, providing tolerance to abiotic stresses such as heat and drought tolerance as well as biotic stresses such as resistance to pests and diseases.
The team from the UK, India and Australia will build on existing research into wild wheat variation to further identify the number and location of genes that control specific target traits. Relevant chromosomes from the wild wheat will then be incorporated into field trials across India to see how they grow and ultimately to develop superior wheat varieties
specifically suited to India to meet growing food demand.
Exploiting wild wheat to produce better Indian varieties
Contact detailsFor more information about the projects contact:Amanda Read: [email protected]
Details of BBSRC’s work can be found at: www.bbsrc.ac.uk
Details of DFID supported research can be found at: www.dfid.gov.uk/r4d
Details of the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation can be found at: www.gatesfoundation.org
Front cover image: Credit: Thinkstock/iStockphoto2012
Produced by RCUK’s internal service provider