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Title International Wheat Improvement: Highlights from an Expert Symposium
 
Names Reynolds, M.P.
Hobbs, P.R.
Ortiz, R.
Pietragalla, J.
Braun, H.J.
Date Issued 2008 (iso8601)
Abstract Wheat is grown on 217 million hectares worldwide, accounting for some 620 million tons of grain and providing one-fifth of the world’s total calorific input. In regions like North Africa, Turkey, and Central Asia, wheat provides fully half of total dietary calories. Half the world’s wheat area is found in developing countries, where steady increases in productivity since the Green Revolution, associated with improved yields, resistance to diseases, adaptation to abiotic stresses, and better agronomic practices, are now under serous threat. Challenges include increased demand, scarcity of water resources, unpredictable climates, increased urbanization and loss of quality farmland, and decreased public investments in agriculture. To meet the rising demand for wheat in a sustainable way, farmers need a new generation of improved cultivars, along with resource-conserving practices to grow them. In March 2006, with support from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), CIMMYT brought together 160 scientists from over 30 wheatproducing countries to discuss how to increase wheat production sustainably. Their presentations and discussions are being assembled in the proceedings International Symposium on Wheat Yield Potential: Challenges to International Wheat Breeding, to be published by CIMMYT in March 2008. The volume will include articles from the symposium already published in 2007 in special issues of Euphytica (volume 157:3) and the Journal of Agricultural Science (volume 145:1-3), as well as other papers from the meetings: Reports of the workshop “Stakeholder priorities for internationally-coordinated wheat research” involving representatives of major wheat producing countries on all continents whose remit was to develop a list of priorities for future wheat research that could best be tackled in a globally-coordinated fashion, and outlines of activities that would serve as templates for future project development for selected priorities. The summary of field day presentations by groups of collaborating scientists in attendance, illustrating the continuum between national, regional, and internationalcenter-based research activities. Reports of a pre-symposium survey soliciting statistics on wheat production and constraints to productivity and research from 19 countries in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa; Central and West Asia and North Africa; and South and Southeast Asia. Collectively these countries account for over 100 million hectares of wheat and around 90% of the wheat production in the developing world. The data were also used to prepare a general summary of the constraints to productivity and research across the above-mentioned regions.
Genre Conference Proceedings
Access Condition Open Access
Identifier http://hdl.handle.net/10883/1273