1. Backing a Winner

Things in Karabeji will never be the same. Year after year, farmers in this dusty village in Niger have been growing millet on a 95% sandy soil with very low organic matter. Fallow? It’s a thing of the past: with the need to feed more mouths from a soil getting poorer every year, farmers have all but abandoned this practice.

So how do they restore soil fertility? Well they did nothing. Or, almost nothing. True, fertilizer, when applied even at small doses could make drastic changes, but it needs to be bought. And money is a rare thing in Karabeji. So farmers were caught in a vicious cycle of no money, no fertilizers, low yields, low income. That is when the Projet Intrants, an FAO project promoting the use of agricultural inputs in Niger, came into play and helped make things literally greener in Karabeji.

In partnership with ICRISAT scientists, the FAO project and other partners assisted villagers in setting up farmers’ organizations, fertilizer shops, and storage facilities, and granted them access to credit through the inventory credit system, known as warrantage.

Warrantage allows farmers to store a part of their harvest as collateral on a loan from a community bank. The stored grains are then sold at higher prices later during the year. The profits are used to pay off the loan and buy inputs the following year, creating a cycle of increasing prosperity.

In Karabeji, farmers used the profits to invest in fertilizer, adopting the microdosing technology developed jointly by the University of Hohenheim, the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), and ICRISAT (see story in the January 2001 issue of SATrends). Farmers who took part in this program have now adopted soil fertility improvement technologies over the past three years and doubled their yields.

Other partners in Karabeji include the Niger Ministry of Agriculture, the French Cooperation, the NGOs Woodless Construction and Green Africa; MUTEC (Mutuelle d'Epargne et de Credit) a savings and loan organization, village banks supported by the French Agency for Development; the Luxembourg Government, etc.

The Karabeji case could be the model for achieving success in R&D for the coming years. Since the FAO Project operates at the national level, it has opened up opportunities for ICRISAT to move its technologies to a larger arena. ICRISAT is expanding the concept to Mali where Winrock International, the Novartis Foundation, and local NGOs are helping establish warrantage in several villages.

For more information, contact b.gerard@cgiar.org or b.shapiro@cgiar.org

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2. More than a Thousand Words

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. But for Dr V Mahalakshmi, ICRISAT Scientist (Bioinformatics), an image can be invaluable, if it’s properly recorded, interpreted and used.

Mahalakshmi is closely involved with the development of a web-based high-tech system for diagnosing and managing diseases, pests, and nutritional disorders of important staples of the dry tropics. This decision support system can help extension agents to quickly make preliminary on-site diagnoses of plant disorders and prevent crop failures. For poor farmers, it can mean the difference between survival and despair.

“There are a few such digital diagnostic systems for commercial crops, but this is the first of its kind for poor people’s staples in the semi-arid tropical region – the focus of our research,” says Mahalakshmi. “It was possible to develop this system thanks to the recent revolution in information technology, which offers quick and inexpensive ways of disseminating information.”

The system – intended for extension agents, farmers, and research students – is interactive and based on visual symptoms of plant disorders. For example, to identify the possible causes for stunted growth of chickpea, the user queries the system using keywords describing symptoms of the affected plants, such as stunted and orange leaf.

Triggered by the keywords, the program shows thumbnail pictures of the diseases that cause such symptoms. Clicking on the pictures provides detailed descriptions of the diseases and possible control measures. “The more keywords you feed in, the more specific the identification of the plant disorder,” explains Mahalakshmi.

Describing the digital diagnostic system as an evolving project, Mahalakshmi stated that risk models of disease and pest outbreaks would be added to make it more useful. Funding possibilities for finetuning the system are being explored.

The digital diagnostic system can be accessed from the Research link on the ICRISAT website http://www.icrisat.org/text/research/grep/homepage/expertsystem/intro.htm

For more information, contact v.mahalakshmi@cgiar.org

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3. Sowing a New Future for Eritrea

A country broken by war, racked by hunger, and helplessly wondering how to rebuild all that was lost. This is Eritrea after three decades of war. The situation is bleak, but there is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel in at least one domain – agriculture.

Following a call from the Eritrean Ministry of Agriculture, ICRISAT and other Future Harvest Centers responded quickly with offerings of seed and technical assistance, with funding from the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

ICRISAT’s role is particularly vital in this effort because sorghum, one of its mandate crops, is the most important cereal in the country. Partly because Eritrea and its neighbors are the geographic center of origin for the crop, ICRISAT’s request to extend the IFAD/World Bank/Eritrea Project, originally scheduled to terminate in July 1999, was approved. Eritrea’s Department of Agricultural Research and Human Resources Development (DARHRD) is the other partner in this project.

The joint effort has so far achieved spectacular results in:

• increasing productivity
• training national scientists
• seed production and distribution

To capitalize on the gains made thus far, ICRISAT proposed a comprehensive breeding strategy, in line with the national plan, for the next phase (2000-04).

Another project, a collaborative effort between Eritrea, DANIDA and ICRISAT, has also made significant strides in testing varieties, seed multiplication of selected sorghum and pearl millet varieties, variety releases by the national program, and training of national breeders and technicians.

Improved sorghum varieties and breeding lines continue to be introduced to the country after being jointly evaluated and selected by Eritrean breeders and farmers along with their ICRISAT partners. Seeds of farmer-selected varieties were multiplied both in Eritrea and at ICRISAT’s research facilities at Kiboko, Kenya, for distribution to farmers. Four varieties, 89 MW 5003 and 89 MW 5053 for the Eastern Lowland Wadis, and ICSV 210 and PP 290 for Eastern Lowlands, were selected.

In addition, 10 to15 new superior sorghum varieties were identified from adaptive trials in Eritrea. ICRISAT supplied foundation seed to initiate large-scale seed production for cultivation in the high potential areas of the Western Lowlands. An important component of the project was the collection and characterization of germplasm.

A national breeding program for sorghum was developed. It is expected that by 2003 a stream of new improved varieties will start flowing from this program – and that the glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel will fill the horizon.

For more information, contact a.obilana@cgiar.org

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4. A Casting Coup: Farmers’ Day 2001

Scientists meeting with farmers is a common enough event these days. Scientists meeting with policymakers is less common, but not unheard of. But organizing a meeting that mixes hundreds of farmers with non-governmental organizations, policymakers and scientists as part of a technology transfer strategy is a rare achievement. And ICRISAT pulled it off – not once, but on three consecutive days – with unqualified success.

The statistics speak for themselves: 2000 farmers and 80 senior government representatives from three Indian States met with ICRISAT researchers and managers from 28 to 30 September at its headquarters at Patancheru, India.

The 3 days were dedicated to the farmers of Andhra Pradesh (Friday), Karnataka (Saturday) and Maharashtra (Sunday). Each day was organized in partnership with these states, which were represented by Ministers for Agriculture, Vice Chancellors of agricultural universities, Directors of Research and Extension, and District Agricultural Officers.

ICRISAT Director General William Dar explained that if farmers and facilitators came together to see the results of ICRISAT’s research, the farmers would immediately identify the technologies they required, whilst enabling policymakers to see first-hand their needs, and to make quick decisions on transferring technologies to villages. The process would shave off years between the identification of a suitable technology and its dissemination.

His hunch proved right. Seeing farmers’ desperate need for seed of improved varieties developed by ICRISAT and its partners, the policymakers promptly planned for large-scale multiplication of chickpea and groundnut seeds with ICRISAT’s help. Joint proposals were made to promote the production of nuclear polyhedrosis virus (NPV) – an environmentally safe method to control the dreaded pod borer – at village level in Karnataka and Maharashtra.

But the biggest draw of all was the integrated watershed management technology, which prompted the Chief Minister of Maharashtra to seek the Institute’s expertise for such projects in his State. Karnataka’s Minister for Agriculture requested ICRISAT to provide technical backstopping to their US$ 150 million World Bank-supported watershed development programs.

The Farmers’ Day strategy also included private sector seed companies, who co-sponsored some of the activities and set up stalls at ICRISAT to sell seed and fertilizers to farmers.

The program was so successful that at the end of it, Dr Dar observed, "We now have 2000 more ambassadors of our mission and work spread across India." Similar Farmers’ Day programs have been held at other ICRISAT locations in Africa.

For more information, contact c.gowda@cgiar.org

Highlights of Previous Issues:

September 2001:Don’t Get Left on the Shelf • Nigeria Targets ‘Groundnut Leprosy’ • Two Heads Are Better than One • Desperately Seeking Seeds

August 2001:Finding Chinks in the Armour •  Brazilian Farmers get a Boost from the Sahel • Sahelian Partners Smash the Ivory Tower • What You See is What You Get - Simulation Modeling for Successful Farming

July 2001: Balaji Makes IT Waves • A Hot Date in the Sahel • It All Adds Up • More from Less • That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles

June 2001: Space-Age Partnership in West Africa • Bad Taste is Good • Out of Africa • Seed Priming: Rhapsody in Simplicity

May 2001: Dodging Drought in Kenya • Vietnam and ICRISAT Save Watersheds • Farmers Enrich Malawi's Soils • Groundnut Mystery Disease Identified

April 2001:Women Farmers Guide Scientists in Namibia •  Ashta Puts it Faith in IPM • Sahelian Farmers Place Their Bets • China and Pigeonpea: Love at Second Sight

March 2001: Agriculture: an Ally Against Global Warming? • Breaking the Spell of Witchweed • Groundnut Taking Root in Central Asia and the Caucasus • Zimbabwean Smallholders Drive the Research Agenda

February 2001: Somalia: Seeds Deliver Hope Amidst Chaos • The CGIAR Fights Desertification in Africa • Creating the World's First Molecular Marker Map of Chickpea • Aflatoxin and Cancer: Cracking a Hard Nut in Developing Countries

January 2001:Things Grow Better with CokeŽ: Micro-fertilizer System Sparks 50-100 Percent Millet Yield Increases in the Sahel •Groundnut (Peanut) Production Accelerates in Vietnam •  Pigeonpea Broadens Farmer's Options in Sudan •  Private Sector Invests in Public Plant Breeding Research at ICRISAT.