ICRISAT and Ethiopia: Working with partners for prosperous semi-arid tropics

Science with a human face

Since early eighties International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) is actively participating and contributing to the cause of agricultural development

in Ethiopia especially through chickpea, sorghum and millets crop improvement, watershed based management of natural resources and adapting to climate variability and change in partnership with several national and international research, development and educational institutions.

Over the years this collaborative research has paid rich dividends. Eight of the 15 chickpea varieties and 24 of the 42 sorghum varieties released in the country are based on ICRISAT supplied elite breeding material. The chickpea revolution in the country stimulated by large scale adoption of market preferred large seeded kabuli chickpea varieties has contributed to 86% increase in production as a result of 39% increase in area and 34% increase in productivity during the past decade. This achievement has received the well-deserved recognition by receiving the prestigious Prime Minister’s award of excellence from Government of Ethiopia.

Ethiopia is also one of the major beneficiaries from ICRISAT genebank located at its headquarters in India. Over the years, EIAR availed about 1723 accessions of sorghum and 931 accessions of chickpea from the global collections.

and developmental activities in the country. ICRISAT is also committed to enhance the capacities of the national research system through various channels including formal and informal training programs, collaborative research and support to graduate students in the use of modern science tools and methods including marker assisted breeding and simulation modeling.

The country office will be further strengthened with additional recruitments at both national and international level and also will be supported by

These include participatory varietal trials and demos of pipeline and released varieties of chickpea and sorhum, marker assisted back crossing trials for Helicoverpa, heat and drought tolerant varieties in chickpea and striga and drought tolerant varieties and hybrids in sorghum, optimizing management for chickpea and sorghum, identifying and promoting options for sustainable intensification and improving systems resilience through integrated watershed management. Figure 3 gives a distribution of these activities across the country.

ICRISAT is a memberof the CGIAR Consortium

Science with a human face

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The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) is a non-profit, non-political organization that conducts agricultural research for development in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa with a wide array of partners throughout the world. Covering 6.5 million square kilometers of land in 55 countries, the semi-arid tropics have over 2 billion people, of whom 644 million are the poorest of the poor. ICRISAT innovations help the dryland poor move from poverty to prosperity by harnessing markets while managing risks – a strategy called Inclusive Market-Oriented Development (IMOD).

ICRISAT is headquartered in Patancheru, Telangana, India, with two regional hubs and six country offices in sub-Saharan Africa. It is a member of the CGIAR Consortium. CGIAR is a global research partnership for a food secure future.

ICRISAT-India (Headquarters)Patancheru 502 324 Telangana, IndiaTel +91 40 30713071 Fax +91 40 30713074icrisat@cgiar.org

ICRISAT-Mali (Regional hub WCA)BP 320, Bamako, MaliTel +223 20 709200, Fax +223 20 709201icrisat-w-mali@cgiar.org

ICRISAT-Kenya (Regional hub ESA)PO Box 39063, Nairobi, KenyaTel +254 20 7224550, Fax +254 20 7224001icrisat-nairobi@cgiar.org

ICRISAT-EthiopiaC/o ILRI Campus, PO Box 5689 Addis Ababa, EthiopiaTel: +251-11 617 2541 Fax: +251-11 646 1252/646 4645icrisat-addis@cgiar.org

About ICRISAT: www.icrisat.org ICRISAT’s scientific information: http://EXPLOREit.icrisat.org

Moving forward

Ethiopia is already emerging as one of the important hubs for ICRISAT research in the region and ICRISAT is in the process of further strengthening its research and developmental activities by developing various bilateral projects as well as those under CGIAR Research Programs in collaboration with EIAR and other government and non-governmental partners.

ICRISAT in collaboration with ICARDA and EIAR is actively pursuing a program to develop heat and drought tolerant chickpea varieties. It plans to expand and diversify this work to develop more vibrant seed systems and efficient management practices including enhancing nitrogen fixation benefits to further consolidate the gains achieved through the growth in chickpea area and productivity. In case of sorghum, developing varieties and hybrids that are high yielding and tolerant to striga and drought will be the priorities in addition to evaluation of varieties for their suitability to malt and bread making.

The emphasis of natural resource management work is on sustainable intensification of dryland farming systems through efficient and profitable use of available soil and water resources while making the systems more resilient to impacts of climate variability and change.

ICRISAT has also plans to strengthen the groundnut work after doing a critical analysis of the drivers for recent spurt in this crop and opportunities to consolidate and expand. There is a growing interest in the agribusiness incubator initiative in the country as well as in the region which will be fully explored and supported.

ICRISAT places special emphasis on equitable benefits to all gender and socially differentiated groups and the same will be integrated into its research

researchers from the regional and headquarters in areas such as biotechnology, gender studies, socio-economic and spatial analysis.

ICRISAT will continue to explore new opportunities to work with Ethiopian researchers, development workers, private sector and government departments in addressing the various challenges that the country is facing and in achieving the national goals of improving food security and nutrition, alleviating poverty, safeguarding the environment and attaining equitable distribution of benefits across various sections of the society. g

Director General William D. Dar inaugurating the ICRISAT Ethiopia office, along with EIAR Director General Fantahun Mengistu (right), and Dr Iain Wright, ILRI Director General’s Representative in Ethiopia (left).

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The ICRISAT developed broad bed and furrow system and animal drawn tool bar are the key components of the watershed based research carried out under the joint vertisol project implemented by a consortium of CG and other national institutions. A number of researchers from EIAR and other institutions from Ethiopia were also benefitted by the various capacity building activities that include apprentice, intern, short and long-term in-service training, research fellow, research scholar, visiting fellow and visiting scholar programs conducted by ICRISAT both at its headquarters and its regional office in Nairobi. Between 1972 and 2013 a total of 122 participants, 11 female and 111 male, benefitted from these initiatives.

Considering the large tracts of semi-arid and dry humid tropical areas in the country and opportunities that it offers to make a difference through crop improvement and accompanying management practices in the mandate crops and areas, ICRISAT management in 2013 has decided to open a country office which is its fifth country office in the Eastern and Southern Africa region.

The country office, which was formally opened on 9 November, 2013 jointly by the Director Generals of ICRISAT and EIAR has now embarked on a comprehensive effort to consolidate the ongoing work and further strengthen the collaborative work in a way that is truly beneficial to the country.

Country Overview:

Ethiopia, with a population of about 85 million is the most populous country in Eastern and Southern Africa region and second largest in Africa. Ethiopia, like many other countries in Africa, is a country that is heavily reliant on agriculture and the agricultural sector is critically important to both overall economic performance and poverty alleviation. Agriculture generates approximately 50% of the GDP and 90% of export earnings.

The agricultural sector has performed strongly over most of the last decade, but there is still substantial scope to sustainably improve production, productivity and profitability. Government has demonstrated strong commitment to the sector through allocation of more than 15% of the total budget. Nonetheless, food security remains a serious challenge and rising food prices threaten to undermine recent achievements in national development.

Extent and distribution of Semi-arid areas:

Ethiopia has many diverse agro-ecologies emanating largely from broad ranges of variations in altitude from 110 m below sea level to 4620 m above sea level and associated climatic factors. Nearly 47% of the country’s 113 m ha land area is covered by semi-arid and dry sub-humid climatic zones (Table 1) which are distributed throughout the country (Figure 1).

Area, production and productivity of ICRISAT mandate crops:

On-going Projects and activities:

Tropical Legumes II: Tropical Legumes II is a joint initiative of three international agricultural research centers, ICRISAT (chickpea, groundnut and pigeonpea), IITA (cowpea and soybean) and CIAT (common bean) with relevant national agricultural research system from 10 different countries in SSA and SA that aims to increase productivity and production of legumes and the income of poor farmers by 15%, with improved varieties occupying 30% of the total area planted by some 57 million poor farmers in the coming 10 years. It is expected that this will result in an additional value gain of more than US$ 300 million during that period. The project is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation and is operational since 2007.

In Ethiopia, the program is focused on commonbean (CIAT) and Chickpea (ICRISAT and ICARDA). Since 2007, TL II has released more than 50 new varieties, increasing yields between 18 and 124%, facilitated the production of nearly 93,000 metric tons of seed, and set up sustainable delivery channels for the seed to reach small farmers, trained more than 235,000 farmers, extension agents, and technicians about new seed varieties; and assisted in farmer adoption, sponsored 37 graduate and Ph.D. students to conduct research on legumes and trained national research organizations’ staffs, and helped equip the organizations with up-to-date equipment (http://www.icrisat.org/tropicallegumesII/)

HOPE: The project Harnessing Opportunities for Productivity Enhancement of Sorghum and Millets in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia (HOPE) seeks to help smallholder farmers increase the yields of the two dryland cereal crops in 11 countries of SSA and SA with financial support from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The project aims to increase sorghum, pearl millet and finger millet yields for targeted farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia by 35-40% in its first four years. In Ethiopia, the target areas include Western Hararge (Chiro, and Meiso woredas) and North Wollo (Sirinka and Kobo woredas) for sorghum and Western Gojam (Adet, Achefer, Guangua, and Dangila woredas) and Central Rift Valley (Arsi-Negele, Shashamane, and Siraro woredas) for finger millet. (http://hope.icrisat.org/)

AgMIP: The Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) is a major international effort linking the climate, crop, and economic modeling communities with cutting-edge information technology to produce improved crop and economic models and the next generation of climate impact projections for the agricultural sector.

The goals of AgMIP are to improve substantially the characterization of world food security due to climate change and to enhance adaptation capacity in both developing and developed countries.

Ethiopia is one of the four participating countries from Eastern Africa in this project. During the first phase comprehensive assessment of climate change impacts were made for maize Adama Woreda (district) in Oromia region and for wheat in Hintalo Wajirat Woreda in Tigray region (http://www.agmip.org/).

Other Activities: A number of other activities under different CGIAR research programs (CRPs) on grain Legumes, Dryland Cereals, Dryland Systems, Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) and Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) are also in progress.

Table 1: Distribution of land under different agroecologiesClimate class Aridity Index Area (m ha)Arid 0.03 - 0.2 31.0 (27%)Semi-Arid 0.2 - 0.5 38.6 (34%)Dry sub-humid 0.5 - 0.65 14.6 (13%)Humid > 0.65 28.9 (26%)Total 113.0

Figure 1: Semi-arid and sub-humid regions of Ethiopia

Among the ICRISAT mandate crops, sorghum is the most extensively grown crop while chickpea is the most economically important crop. In general, area under all ICRISAT mandate crops is increasing which reflects growing importance of these crops in the food security and income of smallholder farmers living in the harsh semi-arid region (Figure 2). The current total area under all ICRISAT mandate crops is about 2.65 m ha, which is 69% higher than that in 2000. In recent years, groundnut is getting increased attention by farmers in Ethiopia as evidenced by the fourfold increase in the area under groundnut between 2000 and 2012.

Over the past two decades, the country has witnessed significant improvement in the productivity of these crops (Figure 2). Yields of chickpea, sorghum and groundnut nearly doubled during the period 2000-2012 and that of millet increased by about 70% during the same period. This is a significant achievement compared to other countries in the region where the yields remained either stagnant or recorded a marginal increase. The emphasis by government to promote agriculture and availability of improved varieties that are mostly derived from ICRISAT availed elite breeding material are the major contributing factors. The current average yield of all crops is about 1.7 t/ha, though 80% higher compared to yields in 2000 and those currently being achieved by other countries in the region, they are still lower than the potential achievable yields. There is substantial scope for improving the yields at least by 100%.

Figure 2: Trends in area and yield of ICRISAT mandate crops in Ethiopia