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Stress tolerant maize for enhanced food security and crop diversification Maize is grown as a staple crop often under highly variable, stress-prone conditions by some of the world’s poorest farmers. They often have few options other than to obtain their food and income from agriculture. Achieving food security is the incentive for many to allocate a disproportionately large part of their land to maize, leaving little area to other crops such as legumes or cash crops. Human malnutrition and soil degradation are frequent and few escape the “poverty trap.” CIMMYT is already seeing successes in implementing innovative approaches that generate stress tolerant, nutritious maize strains with significantly increased productivity under such harsh conditions. They permit farmers to produce more and healthier food on a smaller land area, leaving more labor and land for growing soil-replenishing legumes or cash crops. We are enhancing this pioneering work and deploying it to a wide range of stress environments worldwide. Back to Flagship Products index |
New or improved traits through allele mining and gene discovery to best use global crop biodiversity Improved tools and methologies for genetic improvementBio-fortified maize for improved nutrition and health Opportunities for income generation from special trait maize Wheat with enhanced water productivity and appropriate quality profiles Resource conservation technologies for maize and wheat cropping systems Capacity building in national agricultural research system breeding programs |
