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CIMMYT’s heat stress tolerant maize hybrids (HTMA) in Nepal offer cheaper high-quality seed alternative to Indian imports


May 11, 2015

Source: CIMMYT Blog
by Tirtha R. Rijal, K.C. Govind and P.H. Zaidi

In Nepal, CIMMYT’s Heat Stress Tolerant Maize for Asia (HTMA) project held a hybrid maize field day on 16 April 2015 in Dumarvana and Nijgadh villages, Bara district, and on 17 April at the National Maize Research Program (NMRP), Rampur, Chitwan. The event was attended by over 70 participants who scored hybrids by preference and criteria. They rated as the top hybrids, six HTMA varieties with scores higher than the best commercial hybrids.

To accelerate hybrid maize production and create climate-change resilient crops, NMRP joined the HTMA project funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Launched in 2013, the project focuses on developing and deploying high-yielding, climate-resilient hybrids for stress-prone ecologies in several South Asian countries, including Nepal. Every other year, new varieties and products are ready for on-farm testing and deployment. The first 24 high-performing hybrids were recently planted at four locations in Nepal, including three demonstration plots in farmers’ fields and one at the NMRP research station in Rampur.

Participants sit in field.Farmers, seed company representatives, agro-input dealers and national maize program participants along with CIMMYT and USAID representatives at HTMA demo. Photo: NMRP.

Maize is the second most important food crop in Nepal, after rice. It contributes approximately 25.7 percent of Nepal’s food basket and occupies around 26.0 percent of the total cropped area. About 55 percent of all maize in Nepal is consumed as food, 20 percent as poultry feed, 15 percent as animal feed; the rest is destined for various industrial, seed and miscellaneous uses. Nepal imports most (about 65 percent) of its domestic maize requirements, mainly from India. Most of the maize grown in Nepal is open-pollinated varieties (OPVs); however, new hybrid seeds introduced from India are greatly preferred by Nepali farmers. In view of recent trends, NMRP has focused on hybrid maize and has already released two maize hybrids: Gaurav and Rampur Hybrid-2.

Hom Nath Poudel, a maize farmer from Dumarvana village who hosted the demonstration at his farm, stated, “I am very impressed with performance of the new hybrids, because they are high-yielding and their ears are ready for harvest. We can use almost all the plant biomass as green fodder for our cattle.” Voicing concern about HTMA seed availability, Poudel said that next year, HTMA hybrid seed must be made available by seed companies or NMRP. If not, farmers will produce the seed themselves.

Men converse in field.
P.H. Zaidi discussing HTMA hybrids with Belay Mengistu, Agriculture Officer at USAID-Nepal mission. Photo: NMRP.

Nepal currently depends on hybrid maize seed imported from India. However, delivery is sometimes delayed, and the seed is not always high quality. Having a domestic source of maize hybrid seed would provide a good solution to these problems. Echoing the opinion of many field day participants, Hari Raj Bhattarai of SEAN Seeds, a Nepali seed company, said, “I am glad to see very promising HTMA hybrids, which we would like to adopt, produce, and supply to Nepali farmers.”

Belay Mengistu, Agricultural Development Officer, USAID, also expressed his pleasure at seeing “… promising HTMA hybrids in farmers’ fields just three years after the project launch. This is truly the way forward, with all stakeholders having a voice in the final product, especially farmers and even more so female farmers, who do most of the farming in Nepal.”

K.C. Govind, newly appointed NMRP coordinator, noted the interest shown by all stakeholders and said that NMRP will officially register the best HTMA hybrids so that they can be fast-tracked and brought into large-scale seed production by local seed partners, and made available to farmers.

Field day participants included local maize farmers, Nepali seed companies, agricultural input dealers, government seed system officers, maize researchers from NMRP and other maize research stations, the National Agricultural Research Council, and Belay Mengistu, Agricultural Development Officer from USAID. CIMMYT participants included P.H. Zaidi, senior maize physiologist and HTMA project leader, and A.R. Sadananda, seed system specialist.



More news from: CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center)


Website: http://www.cimmyt.org

Published: May 12, 2015

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