Abstract only

Food security in Asia, Africa and many other countries is threatened by Pgt race Ug99. A concerted effort to replace currently susceptible varieties with agronomically superior resistant varieties includes evaluation of newly developed resistant lines, and pre-release seed multiplication and faster dissemination in south Asia and Africa. These accelerated multiplication activities were initiated in crop cycle 2008-09 in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Ethiopia, Nepal and Pakistan, in addition to countries such as Kenya, Iran and India. Theobjective was to multiply sufficient seed of resistant varieties to plant about 5% of the wheat area in each country. This would ensure sufficient seed of resistant genotypes to displace current varieties. The principle applied in each country was evaluation of new resistant candidate varieties and pre-release seed multiplication of those found promising. The organized effort was successful in that more than a dozen resistant varieties were released in the six countries, and amounts of seed available at the time of release were several times higher than achieved by earlier release systems. The results also showed that new Ug99-resistant varieties possessed yield superiority over the most popular current varieties. This successful seed multiplication and distribution effort has provided confidence that participating countries can meet the threat of Ug99. Spill-over effects should also benefit other countries in the region.

Conservation Agriculture Program|Global Wheat Program|Genetic Resources Program

English

Lucia Segura

INT2917|INT3065|INT3018|INT1422|INT0610|INT0599

CIMMYT Staff Publications Collection