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| SATrends Issue 8 | July 2001 |
NEWS FROM THE DRY TROPICS:
- Balaji Makes IT Waves - Extra!
- A Hot Date in the Sahel
- It All Adds Up: Chickpea in Canada
- More from Less: Groundnut Simulation Modeling in India
- That’s the Way the Cookie Crumbles
- Highlights of Previous Issues
1. 
Balaji
Makes IT Waves
Dr Venkataraman Balaji, Head, Information Systems Unit (seen right with ICRISAT DG, William Dar), has won the prestigious World Technology Award for his pioneering work in the use of electronic information technologies to better the lives of villagers. Balaji is the first Indian to receive this award.
Other awardees this year include Shawn Fanning (Napster), Gordon Moore (Intel), and Craig Venter (Celera). Among those who didn't make it are Jeffery Bezos (Amazon), Michael Dell (Dell), Azim Premji (Wipro), Jack Welch (GE), and Jerry Yang and David Filo (Yahoo).
Balaji received the award, carrying a plaque and a citation, in London, UK, at the World Technology Summit (1-2 July 2001) – a unique gathering of over 200 of the world's key players in IT to explore the emerging technologies that will have the greatest impact upon industry and society in the first years of the 21st Century.
Balaji received the award in the category of Education. His work at the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai, where he worked until last year, deployed information and communication technologies in 10 villages in Pondicherry in South India. Using a hub-and-spoke model of data-voice communication these Information Villages communicated with each other and also accessed the Internet.
For example, the project obtained wave height predictions from the Internet and supplied these to Veerampattinam, a coastal fishing village. The information was downloaded from a US Navy website and converted to suit the latitude and longitude of the village. Similarly, the hamlet received thermal mapping of fish aggregation produced by the National Remote Sensing Agency, Hyderabad.
"We took up a simple challenge," Balaji said at the awards ceremony. "We wanted to see if IT could be meaningful to the poorest 20 per cent of the people of India and not just for professionals."
Other locally specific content from the project: a detailed document on sugarcane cultivation; a guide book on application of biofertilizers in rice cultivation; a how-to style document on herbal remedies for minor disorders among children; and a document on local religious festivals. Also, from the Internet the villages received results and mark sheets of high school and higher secondary school examinations.
"It was a surprisingly successful hybrid of technologies," Balaji said. "We used wired with wireless for communication, and solar with mains for power supply."
The village communities developed a strong sense of ownership towards the village centers. Another key feature was that rural women managed and used the village centers.
The award is meant to encourage the individual recipient to work further and create a “ripple effect”. Quoting Prof Swaminathan, Balaji said, "When much is given, much is expected."
For more information, contact v.balaji@cgiar.org.
Anyone traveling in the semi-arid countries of West Africa during the dry season cannot but notice the desolate and dusty brown landscape. Now, the date palm, an ancient tree that graces the landscape of the Middle East and North Africa, holds promise for a greener future.
The ‘tree of life’, as the date palm is known in the region, produces a highly nutritious fruit loaded with calories, vitamins and minerals. It is a highly resilient tree, requiring limited inputs in exchange for long-term productivity and multiple uses. Its extensive root system is able to absorb water from distant underground resources.
In a production system, the date palm can contribute to preserving the environment by reducing the need to overexploit other resources. In addition, its shade helps create a microclimate ideal for growing other fruit trees, vegetables and annual crops, even in the hottest months of the year. It can earn farmers additional revenues through the sale of dates, which are widely consumed in the region. Its by-products are used to thatch roofs, make baskets or as pillars in construction.
Taking note of the exceptional adaptability of the date palm in arid areas,
ICRISAT and its partners are promoting the commercial cultivation of this crop
among low-income Sahelian communities. The innovative program is being
implemented in partnership with the International Program for Arid Land Crops (IPALAC),
which is administered by Israel’s Ben Gurion University, the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), AGRHYMET (the regional
agricultural and meteorological organization), and the national agricultural
research systems of Burkina Faso (INERA), Niger (INRAN), Mali (IER) and Senegal
(ISRA).
The project will be implemented through a concept called the African market garden, using a holistic approach that combines biotechnology, agroforestry, horticulture and cereal production. The system is based on a low-pressure gravity-fed drip irrigation system and low input technologies.
The plants used to seed the project were obtained from highly specialized tissue culture laboratories in France, Namibia, and the UK before being shipped to Niger for hardening in a greenhouse created specially for the project. Great care was taken to eliminate the potential introduction of pests and diseases associated with propagation from offshoots. Farmers are guided on managing the entire system through training courses, videos and field visits.
The African market garden production system is a perfect example of integrated management of genetic and natural resources to increase food production and productivity.
For more information, contact s.koala@cgiar.org or d.pasternak@cgiar.org.
3. It All Adds Up: Chickpea in Canada
When world wheat prices began falling in the early 1990s, a small group of
risk-taking Canadian farmers began experimenting with chickpeas – a tropical
bean crop sometimes known by its Spanish name garbanzo.
Since then, large numbers of Canadian farmers have switched over, bringing profits to thousands of family farms while providing South Asia with a much-needed alternative source of this important staple food.
"Canadian chickpea exports are helping to stabilize prices throughout South Asia, easing shortages caused by drought," says University of Saskatchewan plant breeder Albert Vandenberg. Asian consumers depend on chickpea as a major source of dietary protein, usually consumed as a thick soup called dhal.
The chickpea varieties grown by Canadian farmers were developed from plants originally bred by two Future Harvest Centers in India and Syria: the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA).
In 1990, geneticists with the United States Department of Agriculture crossed ICRISAT and ICARDA lines to select varieties for northern latitudes. The breeding lines were then sent to Canada, where they performed well in Saskatchewan's drought-prone prairies.
The new varieties have been so successful that the area sown has doubled each year. This year farmers will harvest an estimated 400,000 hectares of chickpea worth almost US $200 million.
And that’s not all. Says ICRISAT chickpea breeder Jagdish Kumar, who ironically received his doctorate in Canada, “Additionally, a super-early chickpea line from ICRISAT, ICCV 96029, is being used in over 50% chickpea crosses in Canada’s breeding program. Earliness is often essential for escaping end-of-season frost and cold damage.”
Canadian farmers say that basic arithmetic is the driving force behind the increasing chickpea production. They receive an average of US 20 cents a pound (450 grams) for chickpea as opposed to 6 cents for wheat. An added benefit, they say, is that chickpea production is helping the next generation to stay in farming.
ICRISAT Director General William Dar notes that adoption of new chickpea varieties has boosted production ninefold in southern India, and the improved varieties are moving quickly into Bangladesh and Myanmar.
Dar adds that every dollar that industrialized countries invest in agricultural research for developing countries generates more than four dollars in exports to those countries, including a dollar in agricultural exports.
"Almost any way you look at it" he says, "it's a good deal for all concerned."
For more information, contact j.kumar@cgiar.org.
4. More from Less: Groundnut Simulation Modeling in India
Farmers in the drought-prone areas of Anantapur district, Andhra Pradesh, are
harvesting more groundnuts by sowing less.
Wary of new technology in their high-risk environment, Anantapur farmers have monocropped groundnut year after year. Although the national extension service has long recommended a groundnut/pigeonpea intercrop to stem soil impoverishment and break the pest cycle, the farmers were reluctant to break the pattern they knew. And rightly so. They had good reason for resisting the introduction of pigeonpea into the cropping system because the varieties they knew took far too long to mature, and they reduced groundnut yields by competing for water and nutrients. The situation appeared hopeless.
Until now. Scientists from the Acharya N G Ranga Agricultural University (ANGRAU) and ICRISAT are using computer simulation to introduce a new cropping system. The modelers tried short-duration pigeonpea and a different row arrangement. Using the Agricultural Production Systems Simulator (APSIM) – a cropping systems simulation model developed by the Agricultural Production Systems Research Unit in Australia, various options of intercropping short-duration pigeonpea with groundnut were evaluated.
The simulations compared sole and intercropped groundnut under various soil conditions over a 37-year period, using local weather data. The results showed that intercropping wasn’t so bad after all. Sole groundnut gave pod yields of 700-1000 kilograms per hectare, whereas intercropped groundnut gave only slightly less (600-900 kilos per hectare). This paltry difference was more than compensated by the pigeonpea harvest.
The scientists then held a workshop in Anantapur, where they explained these results to farmers and extension staff. The response was positive. Farmers decided they would try the new combination and follow the recommended crop management techniques. Twenty-four farmers from 3 villages volunteered to host trials on their fields in the 2000/01 season that would verify the model’s predictions under real conditions.
An improved groundnut variety (TMV 2) and four short-duration pigeonpea varieties (Manak, UPAS 120, ICP 88034, Durga) were evaluated under different combinations of soil depth and fertilizer application.
The trials were harvested and the news was good. The new intercrop generally gave higher yields than sole groundnut, and farmers got good prices for their pigeonpea as well. Best of all, stem necrosis disease, which had wreaked havoc on sole groundnut in previous years, caused little damage to intercropped groundnut.
Using models to convince canny farmers to adopt a new idea is no easy trick. The research partners that accomplished this have brought new prosperity to a difficult region.
For more information, contact v.nageswararao@cgiar.org or p.singh@cgiar.org.
5. That’s the Way the Cookie Crumbles
When you were a kid, how often did your momma tell you to stay away from cookies? Chances are she never said, “Here, dear, eat these cookies – they’re good for you!”
Yet
this is exactly what some mothers are telling their children to do. A new brand
of cookie named Sorbis Sorghum Wonders made of 100% sorghum flour is a
big hit with West African women and their children. The product is also gaining
recognition from health ministries and NGOs who recognize its value in the fight
against malnutrition, which annually kills over 6 million children below 5 years
of age.
So why haven’t West African kids been gobbling cookies made from sorghum, which grows throughout the region, for generations? The answer, says Dr Inoussa Akintayo, is because sorghum flour crumbles. “Sorghum lacks gluten, an element which binds the flour, and it crumbles easily. We have now discovered the technology to overcome this problem,” he says. Akintayo, who runs the West and Central Africa Sorghum Research Network (known by its French acronym ROCARS), says the discovery means huge savings for the rural poor.
The cookies have been improved by adding groundnut or cowpea to the flour, thus making them more nutritious because legumes are rich sources of protein. This also makes them tastier, as noted by the Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Development, Mali, which focuses on child malnutrition.
“Children don’t like the cowpea-enriched porridge traditionally prepared in this region, but they like the cowpea-enriched cookies,” says Dr O Niangado, Coordinator, Novartis Foundation. To promote the technology, Novartis has invited ROCARS to train rural women in biscuit and cookie production. Several such requests have also come in from various countries as well as such NGOs as the European Union-funded Program for Cereal Promotion, based in Senegal.
The new technology is the result of an excellent example of collaboration between various kinds of organizations. The partners include two national programs, Mali’s Institut d’economie rurale and Ghana’s Food Research Institute; one international organization, ICRISAT; and a regional network, ROCARS, which is supported by USAID.
One of the key players in this effort has been Mrs Modesta Akintayo, who, after sampling more than her share of sorghum cookies, happily transferred her technology to rural women! In the process, she also helped develop a new charcoal oven, which is much more energy-efficient than the traditional one for baking the cookies.
6. Highlights of Previous Issues:
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.
December 2000: International Symposium on SAT Futures • Centers Team Up to Help East Timor • Spatial Variability in Watersheds • World's First Cytoplasmic Male-Sterile Hybrid Pigeonpea • Groundnut (Peanut) Variety Boosts Malawian Agriculture • National Researchers Persevere in El Salvador • ICRISAT Celebrates India-ICRISAT Day • ICRISAT and World Vision International Work Together in Southern Africa.