Masaru Iwanaga, director general of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), talks to IFPRI Forum about the role of maize and wheat in world agriculture.

FORUM: Wheat was a key crop (along with rice) in the Green Revolution that unfolded about three decades ago. How relevant is wheat today and for the future, in the changing world of food and agriculture?

Iwanaga: Although maize is expected to bypass wheat in terms of total production in the next ten years, wheat will be the number one food crop. People in developing countries consume 85 percent of the wheat they produce. In contrast, animals consume most of the maize produced. As for rice, wheat will tend to displace it as incomes rise. Wheat’s central and growing role in food consumption means that developing-country production of this crop will have to increase by almost 50 percent by 2020, from the current 300 million tons to 440 million tons, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Because of its inherent characteristics, wheat has certain production advantages over rice and maize. It is far more efficient in the use of water, producing more grain per unit of water, and its geographic range greatly exceeds that of either rice or maize, spanning cold (winter wheat) to moderately warm (spring wheat) locations. Should production conditions for cereals become less favorable due to global warming or other environmental factors, wheat yields would be affected less than those of other major cereals. Wheat's importance in developing countries would also increase if developed countries removed farm subsidies, enabling prices to rise in low-income countries.

FORUM: What major technical challenges do agricultural scientists face in their efforts to improve wheat and maize varieties?

Iwanaga: For wheat the challenges are many, including difficulties in gene tagging and identification for economically valuable traits such as high yield; limited understanding of how environments affect yield, grain quality, and other traits; inadequate advances in techniques that would allow us to genetically engineer wheat with useful traits; inability as yet to exploit hybrid wheats in an economically feasible manner, even though they yield 15 percent more than normal wheat varieties; and farmers’ lack of access to market information, making it difficult for them to respond to changing opportunities or demands.

At the same time, limited access to germplasm makes it even more difficult to develop new varieties. The lack of diversity for some wheat traits highlights the need to focus more intently on working with the genetic diversity we can find. We believe this diversity is present in wheat's relatives and landraces, which are held in CGIAR and other gene banks. But we are concerned that intellectual property restrictions will reduce researchers' access to seed collections, DNA markers, and other technology.

Impairment of the free, global exchange of wheat germplasm would severely hinder future food security in developing countries, where the disastrous impacts of global warming and related environmental degradation are expected to hit first and hardest. Despite this disturbing possibility, free access to genetic resources carrying innate solutions to stresses associated with climate change will diminish as public and private actors implement quid-pro-quo exchange restrictions. Developing countries are bound to find themselves at the short end of the germplasm stick. Moreover, dissemination of new varieties is not expected to increase, as overall investment in agricultural research in developing countries is decreasing.

Maize is an extremely versatile crop, but in much of the developing world its yield is far below potential. The great genetic diversity found in tropical maize has enabled progress in breeding for a range of traits and we have seen significant advances even for difficult traits such as drought tolerance. Despite the solutions that breeding has provided for resource-poor maize farmers in developing countries, financial support for public maize breeding programs is decreasing. This, more than a lack of genetic variation or any other “technical” challenge, impairs the effective use of maize’s genetic resources.

Genetic variation may be most limited for traits such as resistance to insect pests and weeds, as well as for nutritionally important traits such as higher iron or zinc concentrations in the grain. The opaque-2 gene provides a way to increase the protein quality of maize. The gene, however, is recessive and easily lost as farmers recycle grain as seed. Dominant versions of the gene would therefore be desirable. Among important maize diseases, the hardest to address through breeding include banded leaf and sheet blight, which particularly affect large parts of Asia, and certain viral diseases.

The significant progress that researchers have recently made in improving the tolerance of maize to constraints such as drought and infertile soils is crucial for food security. Breeding for such traits could safeguard future harvests from the effects of climate change and maintain productivity as population growth pushes maize production into more marginal areas.

FORUM: What role should the private sector play in overcoming technical constraints to improved maize and wheat for poor farmers?

Iwanaga: In the case of wheat, the Australian Grains Research and Development Corporation’s investment in CIMMYT has led to benefits for farmers in both developed and developing countries. Groups like GRDC recognize such spillovers into developed world agriculture and see a benefit in ensuring that similar joint efforts continue. In these ventures there has been no restriction on the free distribution of germplasm to other partners.

The private sector has a role to play in several areas, including the following:

• Seed production and distribution to farmers. This is often still poorly understood and managed by the Future Harvest Centers of the CGIAR and local government agencies.
• Technology development. This is expensive and the Future Harvest Center breeding programs will remain users, not developers, of technology. Setting up suitable partnerships to ensure access to technology will be critical. An example is the Cooperative Research Center (CRC) for Molecular Plant Breeding in Australia. CIMMYT’s partnership in the CRC has ensured a steady flow of relevant molecular markers, which help identify traits, into CIMMYT’s wheat improvement program.
• Gene discovery. The Future Harvest Centers are world leaders in housing, phenotyping, and screening genebank collections, whereas the private sector has the resources to discover genes and tag or clone them.
• Technical services. The private sector could provide low-cost services to the Future Harvest Center breeding programs. Examples include marker-assisted trait selection, DNA marker development, and the development of transgenes. These would presumably be cost competitive with fixed delivery times.

As with wheat, private-sector maize breeding programs are typically oriented towards clients who provide profits, normally wealthier commercial farmers operating in high potential environments. Private-sector investment in research on constraints intrinsic to smallholder farming systems and stressprone environments will therefore always be limited.

The private seed sector has an advantage over the public sector in developing costintensive technologies such as transgenic crops. However, few of these technologies have reached poor farmers so far, as the private sector has little incentive to deploy costly technologies among poor farmers. Similarly, there are few examples of effective transfer agreements with the public sector that would reduce the costs of access for poor farmers to such technologies.

Despite the above, the private sector has played a significant role in disseminating seed of some improved maize varieties, whether of private or public provenance. Carefully crafted public-private partnerships for seed dissemination, therefore, should be sought, although these should supplement other efforts to develop sustainable systems for delivering affordable, quality seed to small-scale farmers.

FORUM: How important is biotechnology to the contribution that maize and wheat can make to food security in developing countries? In what way is it important?

Iwanaga: Much of the controversy regarding biotechnology is related to genetic engineering and the production of genetically modified organisms. This approach, however, is “just” one biotechnology tool for developing improved germplasm. At CIMMYT, for example, activities related to genetic engineering represent about 20 percent of the biotechnology effort and a small fraction of the Center's total budget. Most of our resources are allocated to the discovery of suitable DNA markers to incorporate numerous genes for target traits or environments into improved crop varieties.

Biotechnology will significantly influence our understanding of biological processes in many plant species and research to understand how genes work will help us to improve the performance of wheat and maize under diverse conditions. The challenges faced by public research centers such as CIMMYT include (1) how to develop the capacity to access and extract knowledge from the vast amount of information produced by genomics research; and (2) how to exploit this knowledge to meet the needs of our clients. CIMMYT should consider positioning itself as a global leader in the use of genetic information in order to provide innovative solutions to global problems and experimental frameworks for rigorous hypothesis testing in relation to traits and genes of interest.

Biotechnology is unlikely to bring "magic bullet" solutions for the sustainable production of wheat and maize, but biotechnology researchers working across disciplines can significantly enhance key traits in maize and wheat to make these cropping systems more productive and sustainable.

FORUM: The controversy over genetically modified organisms shows no signs of abating. How does this affect the prospects for better maize and wheat varieties?

Iwanaga: Obviously, improved maize and wheat varieties will continue to be developed via conventional (non-transgenic) means. There are a few transgenic products, such as maize with insect resistance based on gene constructs from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis that could be delivered to small-scale farmers in developing countries, but delivery is hindered by the current debate and regulatory requirements. Thus, the prospect of such products reaching farmers in developing countries in the next five years are slim. Many farmers want such solutions, but will have to wait.

There is good reason to field test transgenic crops, but such testing should only come after developing countries implement regulatory systems for biotechnology. No field testing of transgenic crops can or should take place until authorities fully establish such systems. The global nature of agriculture today also slows testing and deployment. Given the global nature of the controversy, policymakers are unsure about the impact their decision on genetically modified organisms will have on trade, even for non-transgenic commodities, or on external aid for development projects.

FORUM: What kind of biosafety regulation would both protect consumers and the environment and allow innovation for poor farmers to take place?

Iwanaga: Harmonization of biosafety regulations is probably the simplest and most straightforward approach to protecting consumers and allowing all farmers access to the technology. The current situation, where each country or region employs different requirements, often not accepting data from neighboring countries, complicates the process and makes seed deployment more difficult. While there may be good reasons for certain tests to be performed in a country, many tests are unnecessary. In addition, the type of test could be standardized.

In terms of what to regulate, more attention to the nature of the product as opposed to the method of production would help distinguish when a transgenic product is substantially different from conventional products. Today, all transgenics fall in the same category regardless of the trait or gene source, just to name two factors. In the not-so-distant future, transgenics using genes from the same species will be available. Appropriate regulatory systems to allow these to reach farmers should be considered now before the products are further developed.

Finally, I believe that for regulations to be effective, more effort should be invested in risk analysis. Depending on the country and the results, suitable biosafety regulations can then be put in place.