Resilient seed systems for climate change adaptation and sustainable livelihoods in the East Africa sub-region: Report of training workshop, Addis Ababa Ethiopia, 17-21 September 2019

Bioversity International is implementing a Dutch-supported project entitled: Resilient seed systems for climate change adaptation and sustainable livelihoods in the East Africa sub-region. This work aims to boost timely and affordable access to good-quality seed for a portfolio of crops / varieties for millions of women and men farmers’ and their communities across east Africa. A first project training: i) contextualized farmer varietal selection, ii) provided practical demonstrations of tools for climate-change analysis, iii) introduced policy issues associated with managing crop diversity, iv) outlined characterization and evaluation of genetic resources, and v) articulated associated gender issues, and issues related to disseminating elite materials. The training concluded with a contextualizing field trip. In the workshop evaluation, 98% participants declared their overall satisfaction level to be high (74%) or medium (24%), indicating the training furnished them with good ideas for networking and using the tools and methods they learned about

“Seeds for Needs” experience to improve diversity, nutrition and crop productivity

The agricultural industry in Ethiopia is dominated by smallholder farming and rain-fed food production systems that are struggling with dwindling diversity and expanding mono- cropping. In order to address diversity, food security, and nutrition, sustainable agricultural production systems must place a greater emphasis on the efficient protection and management of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Growing multiple crops in a region is referred to as crop diversification. It can be achieved by introducing new crop species or varieties, as well as by altering the current cropping system. Typically, it might refer to incorporating extra crops into an already-existing rotation. Our seeds for needs experience will play an important role in enabling agriculture to improve crop productivity, nutrition and crop diversity productivity. Together with Ethiopian and international partners, Bioversity International has been conducting a crowdsourcing methodology and crop improvement strategy under the name "seeds for needs" since 2010 in order to comprehend and study the potential of these varieties in underserved areas and to improve the resilience of the communities where these varieties are grown. The main objective was to provide variation so that farmers could adjust to climate change. The Seeds for Needs Initiative, which leverages the genetic diversity already present to discover traits for adaptation to climate change, has been successfully implemented by Bioversity International. With the help of farmers, particularly women farmers, Seeds for Needs uses a participatory approach to choose a set of crops and varieties that will be further tested under their farming conditions using a crowdsourcing technique. The registration of two varieties in the Tigray region, development of more than 6000 recombinant inbreed lines and their adoption by smallholder farmers in Tigray, Amhara, and Oromia, and a number of scientific paper publications that highlight the most important traits of these varieties—including their high grain and biomass yield in marginal environments, resistance to diseases, and adaptability to climatic conditions that change from year to year—are among the most significant outcomes of these studie

Epidemiological factors of septoria tritici blotch (Zymoseptoria tritici) in durum wheat (Triticum turgidum) in the highlands of Wollo, Ethiopia

Septoria tritici blotch (STB) (Zymoseptoria tritici) is a major disease of durum wheat, an economic crop grown in the highlands of Wollo in Ethiopia. To determine the status of this disease, we conducted surveys in five districts of Wollo (Meket, Woreilu, Wadila, Jama, and Dessie Zuria) during the 2015 cropping season. We visited 75 farm plots to determine the prevalence, incidence, and severity of STB. STB prevalence varied among locations, genotypes, planting dates, growth stages, previous crops, plant population, weed population, and soil types. Similarly, disease intensity also varied along all independent variables. The level of incidence was high in all the visited districts, and the level severity ranged from 9.9 to 59.3% while the incidence varied from 50 to 100%. The mean differences in incidence and severity within the districts’ variable classes, altitude, varieties, growth stage, plant population, planting date, previous crop, weed population, and soil type were high. The independent variables, districts, altitude, varieties, growth stage, plant population, planting date, previous crops, weed population, and soil type, were significantly associated with high incidence and severity of STB as single predictor in the logistic regression model. A reduced multiple variable model was fitted using districts, altitude, varieties, growth stage, plant population, planting date, previous crop, weed population, and soil type as independent variables. High incidence (> 50%) and severity (> 25%) had a high probability of association to all independent variables, except previous crop. Low disease incidence (≤ 50%) and low disease severity (≤ 25%) had high probability of association to the previous crop. Environmental variables, cultivation practice, and responses were important for the development of STB. Therefore, these factors must be considered in designing strategies for the effective management of STB

Discussion with representative participants from Meket district on SI-MFS initiative activities implementation

Sixteen participants (M=15; F=1) have represented the community in this discussion. The objective of the discussion was to introduce the concepts of Si-MFS initiative to the participants and discuss on possible areas of intervention under this initiative. Furthermore, the role of WTL to link crowdsourcing winner varieties of durum wheat and faba bean to the surrounding farmers. Besides, the project team has discussed with Meket woreda administration and office of Agriculture about the initiative, main agricultural sector problems and designed possible alleviation solutions

Joining smallholder farmers’ traditional knowledge with metric traits to select better varieties of Ethiopian wheat

Smallholder farming communities face highly variable climatic conditions that threaten locally adapted, low-input agriculture. The benefits of modern crop breeding may fail to reach their fields when broadly adapted genetic materials do not address local requirements. To date, participatory methods only scratched the surface of the exploitability of farmers’ traditional knowledge in breeding. In this study, 30 smallholder farmers in each of two locations in Ethiopia provided quantitative evaluations of earliness, spike morphology, tillering capacity and overall quality on 400 wheat genotypes, mostly traditional varieties, yielding altogether 192,000 data points. Metric measurements of ten agronomic traits were simultaneously collected, allowing to systematically break down farmers’ preferences on quantitative phenotypes. Results showed that the relative importance of wheat traits differed by gender and location. Farmer traits were variously contributed by metric traits, and could only partially be explained by them. Eventually, farmer trait values were used to produce a ranking of the 400 wheat varieties identifying the trait combinations most desired by farmers. The study scale and methods lead to a better understanding of the quantitative basis of Ethiopian smallholder farmer preference in wheat, broadening the discussion for the future of local, sustainable breeding efforts accommodating farmers’ knowledge

Pre-implementation capacity building training on SI-MFS initiative

Building capacity of key implementing stakeholders is a prerequisite for successful implementation of projects. We have caried capacity building training on several topics under the framework of Sustainable Intensification of Mixed Farming Systems (SI-MFS) initiative. Briefing on SI-MFs, crowdsourcing platform for accelerated varietal evaluation and selection, and potential of local landraces for breeding and yield improvement for sustainable development were given for a total of 39 participants from 9 district agricultural officers, 18 kebele level extension workers and 12 selected model farmers from norther, central and southern parts of the country. This training workshop has also provided opportunity to strengthen collaboration among different actors of the project within the same district as well as across country. Furthermore, participants from the different corners of the country have shared experience and gained common understanding of the initiative to be implemented in their respective areas

Report of a policy dialogue workshop on open source seed systems for climate change adaptation in East Africa

The report gives a summary of a policy workshop that was held in December 2019 to discuss the complex issues related to access to and use of genetic resources for climate change adaptation. In particular, the workshop focussed on policies to support the further use in research and breeding, or possible ‘direct use in cultivation’ of materials that performed well in participatory trials supported by these projects. The workshop brought together practitioners from Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda from various non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and advocacy groups, policy makers from government departments, seed inspection and certification services and researchers and breeders

Integrating conventional and participatory crop improvement for smallholder agriculture using the seeds for needs approach: A review

In response to the climate change, it is essential to provide smallholder farmers with improved field crop genotypes that may increase the resilience of their farming system. This requires a fast turnover of varieties in a system capable of injecting significant amounts of genetic diversity into productive landscapes. Crop improvement is a pivotal strategy to cope with and adapt to climate change. Modern breeding may rely on the genomics revolution to speed up the development of new varieties with adaptive potential. However, centralized breeding may not adequately address smallholder farmers’ needs for more locally acclimatized varieties or groups of varieties. This, in turn, constrains adoption of new varieties that reduces the effectiveness of a resource-intensive breeding process, an issue that may be overcome with participatory, decentralized approaches. Whether high-tech centralized breeding or decentralized participatory approaches are better suited for smallholder farmers in the global South is hotly debated. Sidestepping any false dichotomies and ideological issues in these debates, this review provides a perspective on relevant advances in a breeding approach that combines the two approaches and uses genomics for trait mining from ex situ collections of genetic materials, participatory multilocation trials and crowdsourced citizen science. It argues that this new combination of high-tech centralized and participatory decentralized methods can provide a coherent and effective approach to breeding for climate adaptation and the present review advocates on a different way forward for the future research

A large nested association mapping population for breeding and quantitative trait locus mapping in Ethiopian durum wheat

The Ethiopian plateau hosts thousands of durum wheat (Triticum turgidum subsp. durum) farmer varieties (FV) with high adaptability and breeding potential. To harness their unique allelic diversity, we produced a large nested association mapping (NAM) population intercrossing fifty Ethiopian FVs with an international elite durum wheat variety (Asassa). The Ethiopian NAM population (EtNAM) is composed of fifty interconnected bi-parental families, totalling 6280 recombinant inbred lines (RILs) that represent both a powerful quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping tool, and a large pre-breeding panel. Here, we discuss the molecular and phenotypic diversity of the EtNAM founder lines, then we use an array featuring 13 000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to characterize a subset of 1200 EtNAM RILs from 12 families. Finally, we test the usefulness of the population by mapping phenology traits and plant height using a genome wide association (GWA) approach. EtNAM RILs showed high allelic variation and a genetic makeup combining genetic diversity from Ethiopian FVs with the international durum wheat allele pool. EtNAM SNP data were projected on the fully sequenced AB genome of wild emmer wheat, and were used to estimate pairwise linkage disequilibrium (LD) measures that reported an LD decay distance of 7.4 Mb on average, and balanced founder contributions across EtNAM families. GWA analyses identified 11 genomic loci individually affecting up to 3 days in flowering time and more than 1.6 cm in height. We argue that the EtNAM is a powerful tool to support the production of new durum wheat varieties targeting local and global agriculture