NewsletterHappeningsJuly 2017, No. 1743

Feature Story

Peanut-based product evaluation at Belgasha Government Primary School, Jamalpur District, Bangladesh.

Peanut-based nutritional supplement for school children in Bangladesh

To address high malnutrition among children in four poverty-stricken districts in Bangladesh, a pilot project

with partners across the peanut value chain was launched recently.

“The project builds an ecosystem of partnerships to deliver nutritional and livelihood outcomes on a large scale through innovations along the peanut value chain. It brings together Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) and ICRISAT, partners in science of discovery; and partners like NGOs and processing industries in the science of delivery,” said Dr David Bergvinson, Director General, ICRISAT, at the launch.

The new project will emulate a successful model of public-private partnership implemented by Christy Friedgram Industries (CFI)-Tamil Nadu, India, to achieve nutritional outcomes among the target population, and

build on the outputs of earlier collaboration between BARI and ICRISAT.

The innovations to be introduced include:

Peanut-based food supplements: Three energy- protein- and micronutrient-dense products were identified for acceptability studies – multi-millet peanut bar (30% peanuts) developed by CFI; peanut cookies (26% peanuts), and peanut-based spread (36% peanuts) developed by the NutriPlus Knowledge (NPK) Program of ICRISAT. An acceptability study was carried out jointly by ICRISAT and BARI, for all the three products among a representative sample of school children (5 to 10 years of age) in Belgasha Government Primary School, Jamalpur District, Bangladesh. The acceptability study showed that multi-millet peanut bar and peanut cookies are acceptable to the school children and preferred over the peanut spread.

Photo: BARI

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The products will be further refined at NPK Program by incorporating locally available grains from Bangladesh and the technology will be transferred to PRAN Agroindustries (PRAN) in Dhaka, Bangladesh, for local production.

Innovation in breeding: PRAN prefers bold kernel peanuts in its processing, so BARI will test advanced breeding lines that combine bold kernels with foliar fungal disease resistance and early maturity. High oleics are also preferred by PRAN for their shelf life; this will also be tested by BARI.

Dr BK Goswami, Director Support Service, BARI, noted that 10 peanut varieties were released in Bangladesh and the collaboration between BARI and ICRISAT had resulted in the release of five advanced breeding lines selected from international nurseries shared by ICRISAT (see table). In this pilot project, the short duration varieties ICGV 94322, ICGV 96342 and ICGV 96346 will be used.

ICRISAT’s peanut breeding program, along with the genomics and pathology groups, has successfully combined foliar fungal disease resistance with early maturity. Extensive field phenotyping for early maturity based on cumulative thermal time (CTT) and seed size enabled to combine these two traits. More recently, high oleic lines in Spanish and Virginia types were developed at ICRISAT using near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) phenotyping and single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) based genotyping. “Process innovation in breeding and testing pipelines enabled combining desirable traits in a single variety,” said Dr P Janila, Principal Investigator of the project and Senior Scientist - Groundnut Breeding, Crop Improvement, Asia Program, ICRISAT.

Md Mahatabuddin, COO of PRAN, presenting the work plan for PRAN and ADF.

Photo: Janila P, ICRISAT

About the project location

Identification of target sites for the project was based on two criteria. First, poverty and malnutrition are high; second, peanut is an important crop cultivated in the target regions and PRAN currently sources its peanuts from these sites. The districts – Kurigram, Lalmonirhat, Panchagarh and Jamalpur – are situated in northern Bangladesh. River erosion is a natural phenomenon here and thousands of families become landless in these districts during August–November. The lack of income reduces their ability to cover their nutrition requirement. According to the World Food Programme, 40 million people - a quarter of the population in Bangladesh - remain food insecure and 11 million suffer from acute hunger.

Introducing crop management techniques: Integrated crop management (ICM) includes seed treatment and application of gypsum for enhanced yields, while good management practices (GMP) include drying of pods upside down to avoid contact with soil and appropriate storage. Monitoring of aflatoxin contamination along the value chain will be done using ELISA kits to ensure food safety.

Improved seed systems: A model wherein the processing industry arranges supply of seeds of improved varieties to the farmers, and later buys the commodity from the farmers will be promoted in this project in collaboration with BARI, PRAN and the NGO – Agriculture Development Foundation (ADF). BARI and ADF will be involved in seed supply and enhancing adoption of ICM and GMP. This model enables farmers to procure quality seed of improved varieties and the processor is able to source quality peanuts.

Distribution of peanut-based food supplements among primary school children in Bangladesh.

Photo: BARI

Lesson learntPartnership with BARISharing of international nurseries with national partners leads to identification of superior lines with local adaptability and their subsequent release/commercialization.

ICRISAT varieties released in collaboration with BARI.

Variety Released name Trait Hybridization year

ICGS(E) 55 (ICGV 86072)

BARI Chinabadam-6

Short-duration

1983

ICGV 89259 BARI Chinabadam-7

High yielding

1985

ICGV 94322 BARI Chinabadam-8

Short-duration

1989

ICGV 96342 BARI Chinabadam-9

Short-duration

1991

ICGV 96346 BARI Chinabadam-10

Short-duration

1991

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Partners and stakeholders at the project launch.

Photo: BARI

Project: Promoting Peanut Based Food Supplements through Partnerships to Treat Malnutrition in BangladeshFunder: IKP Knowledge Park and United States Agency for International Development (USAID)Project partners: Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI); PRAN Agroindustries (PRAN) - Dhaka, Bangladesh; Christy Friedgram Industries (CFI)-Tamil Nadu, India; ICRISAT; and local NGOs based in Bangladesh

This work contributes to the UN Sustainable Development Goals

The project launch and work plan meeting was held at Dhaka from 4-5 July with over 40 stakeholders from BARI, PRAN, ICRISAT, Bangladesh Institute of Research and Training on Applied Nutrition (BIRTAN), Department of Agriculture and Extension (DAE), the SAARC office, and local NGOs – International Development Enterprises (iDE) and ADF.

Dr SM Bokhtiar, Director, SAARC Agriculture Center, said that there was a possibility of expanding the project to other SAARC countries. Dr PM Gaur, Theme Leader - Crop Improvement, Asia Program, ICRISAT, said that this is a unique project that encompasses innovations along the complete value chain, from farmer to consumer.

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Workshop

Participants at the breeding management system and data archiving training organized under TL III.

Data management for facilitating better crop breeding decisions

Training sessions on how to create field books, manage nurseries and archive data using the breeding

management system (BMS) were conducted for technicians from Uganda, Tanzania, and Ethiopia as part of the Tropical Legumes III (TL III) project activities.

The training focused on five major areas –

Use of BMS: Importance of data management and use of BMS as a tool.

Germplasm management: Searching and creating a germplasm list.

Trial field management: Creating trial field book, field map, field scorer, exporting trial book for data collection and importing trial data.

Nursery management: Creating nursery book, developing crosses, generating unique barcodes, exporting nursery book from BMS, collecting and importing nursery observation data.

Data collection: Use of handheld devices for recording data.

Urging participants to use the BMS, Dr David Bergvinson, Director General, ICRISAT, said, “Having been in your situation 20 years ago, I know data archiving is difficult, but what I can assure you after two or three seasons is that you will start seeing the benefit.”

Dr Moses Siambi, Research Program Director - Eastern & Southern Africa and Country Representative, Kenya, ICRISAT, emphasized on technicians being equipped to carry out preliminary analysis of data along with efficient collection of data. “You will be the master trainers, who will train colleagues at their workstations,” he said.

“BMS minimizes errors generated when analyzing data and hence we need to embrace it,” said Dr Chris Ojiewo, Theme Leader - Seed Systems & Project Coordinator - TL III, Genetic Gains Program.

The training held from 3-7 July at Nairobi, Kenya, had 18 participants and was facilitated by Dr Abhishek Rathore, Mr Anil Kumar and Mr Praveen Reddy from the Statistics, Bio-Informatics & Data Management theme, ICRISAT.

Project: Tropical Legumes III Investor: Bill & Melinda Gates FoundationPartners: International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), ICRISAT and National Agricultural Research System (NARS) in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria and India

This work contributes to UN Sustainable Development Goals

Photo: ICRISAT

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New PublicationsGenotyping-by-sequencing of three mapping populations for identification of candidate genomic regions for resistance to sterility mosaic disease in pigeonpeaAuthors: Saxena RK, Kale SM, Kumar V, Parupalli S, Joshi S, Singh VK, Garg V, Das RR, Sharma M, Yamini KN, Ghanta A, Rathore A, Sameer Kumar CV, Saxena KB and Varshney RKPublished: 2017. Scientific Reports, 7 (1813): 1-10. ISSN 2045-2322Abstract: Sterility mosaic disease (SMD) is one of the serious production constraints that may lead to complete yield loss in pigeonpea. Three mapping populations including two recombinant inbred lines and one F2, were used for phenotyping for SMD resistance at two locations in three different years. Genotyping-by-sequencing approach was used for simultaneous identification and genotyping of SNPs on above-mentioned populations. Composite interval mapping-based QTL analysis identified a total of 10 QTLs including three major QTLs across the three populations. The phenotypic variance of the identified QTLs ranged from 3.6 to 34.3%. One candidate genomic region identified on CcLG11 seems to be a promising QTL for molecular breeding in developing superior lines with enhanced resistance to SMD.http://oar.icrisat.org/10042/

Construction of genotyping-by-sequencing based high-density genetic maps and QTL mapping for fusarium wilt resistance in pigeonpeaAuthors: Saxena RK, Singh VK, Kale SM, Tathineni R, Parupalli S, Kumar V, Garg V, Das RR, Sharma M, Yamini KN, Muniswamy S, Ghanta A, Rathore A, Sameer Kumar CV, Saxena KB, Kishor PBK and Varshney RKPublished: 2017. Scientific Reports, 7 (1911): 1-11. ISSN 2045-2322Abstract: Fusarium wilt (FW) is one of the most important biotic stresses causing yield losses in pigeonpea. Genetic improvement of pigeonpea through genomics-assisted breeding (GAB) is an economically feasible option for the development of high-yielding and FW-resistant genotypes. In this context, two recombinant inbred lines (RILs) (ICPB 2049 × ICPL 99050 designated as PRIL_A and ICPL 20096 × ICPL 332 designated as PRIL_B) and one F2 (ICPL 85063 × ICPL 87119) populations were used for the development of high density genetic maps. Genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) approach was used to identify and genotype SNPs in three mapping populations. Based on the multi-location and multi-year phenotypic data of FW resistance, a total of 14 quantitative trait loci (QTLs) including six major QTLs explaining >10% phenotypic variance explained (PVE) were identified. Comparative analysis across the populations has revealed three important QTLs (qFW11.1, qFW11.2 and qFW11.3) with up to 56.45% PVE for FW resistance. This is the first report of QTL mapping for FW resistance in pigeonpea and the identified genomic region could be utilized in GAB.http://oar.icrisat.org/10043/

Wheat yield forecast using detrended yield over a sub-humid climatic environment in five districts of Uttar Pradesh, IndiaAuthors: Gurung B, Panwar S, Singh KN, Banerjee R, Gurung SR and Rathore APublished: 2017. Indian Journal of Agricultural Sciences, 87 (1): 87-91. ISSN 0019-5022Abstract: A study was carried out to forecast wheat yields in five districts of Uttar Pradesh namely Lucknow, Kanpur, Banda, Jhansi and Faizabad. The daily weather data on variables such as maximum temperature, rainfall, minimum temperature and relative humidity were arranged week wise from sowing to harvesting and the relations between the weather variables and yield was worked out using statistical tools like correlation and regression. The yield was detrended by obtaining the parameter estimates of the model. The detrended yield was used to forecast the yield of the crop using ARIMA model. The proposed method of obtaining pre-harvest forecasting of yield of crops was compared with the traditional approaches of forecasting and the proposed method was evaluated in terms of criteria such as goodness of fit of the model. It was observed that in all the districts, the proposed model performed better than the traditional method both in terms of goodness of fit as well as forecasting performance. http://oar.icrisat.org/10044/

Pre-harvest forecasting of crop yield using non-linear regression modelling: A conceptAuthors: Panwar S, Singh KN, Kumar A, Gurung B, Sarkar SK, Sivaramane N and Rathore APublished: 2017. Indian Journal of Agricultural Sciences, 87 (5): 685-689. ISSN 0019-5022Abstract: A reliable and timely forecast of crop production helps in planning, formulating and implementing policies relating to food procurement, its distribution, price, import and export and for exercising several administrative measures for storage and marketing of agricultural commodities. Thus pre-harvest forecasting of production is required when the crop is still standing in the field. An efficient forecasting is thus a pre-requisite for the food supply information system at district and state level. The final crop production estimates, though based on objective crop-cutting experiments, are of limited utility as these become available much later after the crop harvest. In view of this, there is a need for developing an objective methodology for pre-harvest forecasting of crop yield…http://oar.icrisat.org/10045/

Plant growth-promoting actinobacteria: A new strategy for enhancing sustainable production and protection of grain legumesAuthors: Sathya A, Vijayabharathi R and Gopalakrishnan SPublished: 2017. 3 Biotech, 7 (2): 1-10. ISSN 2190-572XAbstract: Grain legumes are frequently subjected to both abiotic and biotic stresses resulting in severe yield losses.

Global yields of legumes have been stagnant for the past five decades in spite of adopting various conventional and molecular breeding approaches. Furthermore, the increasing costs and negative effects of pesticides and fertilizers for crop production necessitate the use of biological options of crop production and protection. The use of plant growth-promoting (PGP) bacteria for improving soil and plant health is one of the attractive strategies for developing sustainable agricultural systems due to their eco-friendliness, low production cost and minimizing consumption of non-renewable resources. This review emphasizes on how the PGP actinobacteria and their metabolites can be used effectively in enhancing the yield and controlling the pests and pathogens of grain legumes.http://oar.icrisat.org/10046/

An assessment of the magnitudes and factors associated with postharvest losses in off-farm grain stores in KenyaAuthors: Mwangi JK, Mutungi CM, Midingoyi SKG, Faraj AK and Affognon HDPublished: 2017. Journal of Stored Products Research, 73: 7-20. ISSN 0022474XAbstract: Off-farm grain storage is an important postharvest undertaking by government, traders and processors in Kenya. A survey was conducted in 2014/2015 to assess the kinds and magnitudes of perceived losses experienced in off-farm stores, and the factors associated with them. Store supervisors or key personnel charged with grain storage in 39 public and 74 private stores, spread across the six maize-growing agro-ecological zones, were interviewed using a structured questionnaire. The findings provide important reasons for appraising current off-farm storage techniques with a view to taking possible actions for improvements. It is recommended that innovations to mitigate maize postharvest losses should also target off-farm storage, as the losses incurred are significant.http://oar.icrisat.org/10047/

Evaluation of Ageratum conyzoides in field scale constructed wetlands (CWs) for domestic wastewater treatmentAuthors: Tilak AS, Wani SP, Datta A, Patil MD, Kaushal M and Reddy KRPublished: 2017. Water Science and Technology, 75 (10): 2268-2280. ISSN 0273-1223Abstract: Ageratum conyzoides were evaluated in field scale subsurface flow constructed wetlands (CWs) to quantify its nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) uptake and

compare with wetland plants (Pistia stratiotes, Typha latifolia and Canna indica). The study found that Ageratum conyzoides can be used in combination with Pistia stratiotes, Typha latifolia and Canna indica to enhance removal of excessive N, P and fecal coliforms from domestic wastewater.http://oar.icrisat.org/10048/

On-farm assessment of post-harvest losses: The case of groundnut in MalawiAuthors: Tsusaka TW, Singano C, Seetha A and Kumwenda NPublished: 2017. Socioeconomics Discussion Paper Series, Series Paper Number 43, ICRISAT, Patancheru, Telangana, IndiaAbstract: An on-farm measurement was conducted in 2015 of groundnut post-harvest loss (PHL) in the Central Region of Malawi, aiming to assess the PHL in quantity and quality along the post-harvest processes at the farm level. A total of 15 voluntary farmers from Mchinji, Lilongwe, and Kasungu districts participated in the on-farm assessment using the count and weigh method. The close monitoring through resident enumerators revealed that during lifting, drying, stripping, and transport to homestead, an average weight loss of 133.6 kg (shelled nuts equivalent) per hectare was incurred, which is equivalent to 13.7 % of the harvest without post-harvest losses, translating to a value loss of USD 189.7 per hectare. Mitigation measures at each stage of post-harvest operations and methodologies for assessing post-harvest losses in groundnut are discussed.http://oar.icrisat.org/10049/

Genetic dissection of plant growth habit in chickpeaAuthors: Upadhyaya HD, Bajaj D, Srivastava R, Daware A, Basu U, Tripathi S, Bharadwaj C, Tyagi AK and Parida SKPublished: 2017. Functional & Integrative Genomics: 1-13. ISSN 1438-793XAbstract: A combinatorial genomics-assisted breeding strategy encompassing association analysis, genetic mapping and expression profiling is found most promising for quantitative dissection of complex traits in crop plants. The present study employed GWAS (genome-wide association study) using 24,405 SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) obtained with genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) of 92 sequenced desi and kabuli accessions of chickpea. Collectively, the essential inputs generated will be of profound use in marker-assisted genetic enhancement to develop cultivars with desirable plant architecture of erect growth habit types in chickpea.http://oar.icrisat.org/10062/

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