Our Mission

To understand and improve crop and agroecosystem health in the tropics.

The Problem

Most cultivated plant species are affected by a wide range of fungal, bacterial, and viral pathogens, arthropod pests, and weeds, particularly in tropical climates. These problems are compounded by the lack of technical resources and assistance to poor farmers in developing countries. Under these conditions, crop losses can often be significant or even total, affecting the livelihoods and food security of millions of poor rural and urban communities. In view of this situation, we could expect that the application of improved and intensive crop protection measures would contribute to the sustainability and enhancement of food production in these regions of the world. The application of Integrated Pest and Disease Management (IPDM) methods is the basis of CIAT's activities in the area of crop protection. Some of these methods include the development of resistant cultivars, including transgenic plants, and a variety of pest-and-disease control measures developed for specific plant pests and agroecosystems.

In many parts of Latin America, crop losses due to pests and diseases have prompted farmers to make excessive use of dangerous and costly pesticides as a means of intensifying crop production. This poses a severe threat to farmers' health and the environment and can make pest problems worse by giving rise to pesticide resistance in insects and pathogens and by destroying their natural enemies. IPDM is a knowledge-driven process. It emphasizes the use of increased information for making pest and disease control decisions and various strategies for disease and pest management in an economically efficient and ecologically sound manner. If IPDM strategies are to be effective, the limitations of the tools, the biology of the target pest or pathogen, the specific characteristics of the crop and its management have to be understood.

We study how crop plants and pathogens or insect pests interact and how biotic and abiotic environmental factors influence that interaction. We enhance the natural disease and pest fighting ability of plants along with other desirable agronomic traits so that higher crop yields and quality products are produced. CIAT maintains some of the largest germplasm collections of cassava, common bean, tropical forages and rice. Once sources of disease and pest resistance are identified in this germplasm, the most practical and cost-effective strategy to control biotic crop production constraints is the use of host plant resistance. Plants have pre-formed and/or inducible defence mechanisms to fend off pathogen or insect attacks. At the same time, pathogens and insects have their own evolving mechanisms to overcome plants' defence systems. Resistance to pathogens and pests contributes to minimizing the use of chemicals and thus, to reducing input costs and increasing protection of the environment. These are some of the reasons why we regard host plant resistance as the basic and most important component in an IPDM system.

Through the years, plant pathologists, entomologists, and breeders have been engaged in identifying and characterizing sources of resistance within plant species that are amenable to crossing. The advent of recombinant DNA technology and genetic engineering make it possible to use resistance sources across a wide range of unrelated organisms. This has removed the species barriers encountered in traditional plant-breeding methods, allowing the introduction of these genes into any plant of interest.

While fully recognising the controversy on transgenic organisms, we do not ignore the potential role they can play in arthropod pest, disease, and virus management strategies across several crops. The role of transgenic organisms in IPDM will increase in the future and has already been shown as a way of drastically decreasing pesticide use.

Transgenic resistance provides a potential application in breeding for resistance to diseases and pests for which no known sources of resistance are available within the plant species of interest. Furthermore, combining genes with different mechanisms of resistance through recombinant DNA technology may provide an advantage in building a fortified barrier that is more difficult for pests or pathogens to overcome. Therefore, resistance through transgenics should be viewed as a component of a comprehensive disease-and-pest management strategy to enhance productivity and quality, as well as protect the environment.

We study bacteria, fungi, viruses insects, and mites; bioinformatics, biological control agents and natural enemies of insect pests, biopesticides including plant and microbial compounds, biotechnology (cell and tissue culture, plant transformation and regeneration, microbial transformation, gene cloning), disease diagnosis, detection, pathogen population genetics, host and microbial genetics, genetics of disease and pest resistance, molecular genetics, and molecular plant-microbe interactions, general soil health and management. We test and apply disease and pest management methods in collaboration with partners including farmers.

IPDM strategies for marginal environments primarily benefit the families of small farmers by strengthening their food security and raising income through decreased crop losses to pests and diseases and lower expenditures on chemical controls. More rational pesticide use reduces a significant threat to the health of farmers and consumers as well as a major source of environmental contamination in agriculture.

CIAT's research on pest and disease management focuses on the Center's mandate crops (beans, cassava, and tropical forages throughout the developing world and rice in Latin America and the Caribbean) and agroecosystems (the forest margins, hillsides, and savannas of tropical America). In recent years this work has expanded beyond the development of host plant resistance in the Center's mandate crops to include all crops grown in target production systems. Our research also features stronger emphasis on biological and cultural control practices.

CIAT's IPDM research strategy consists of four phases:

• Problem definition—Through diagnostic surveys, we determine the nature of pest and disease problems and farmers' perceptions of them.
• Research—For the pests and diseases that cause the greatest damage, we conduct research to develop effective control measures.
• Pilot study—Using participatory research approaches, we carry out pilot studies to determine which control strategies farmers will adopt most readily.
• Implementation—Scientists at CIAT and in local and national organizations work as partners with farmers to develop efficient IPDM strategies.
  
  
  

New Proposals Approved in 2005

Download the table (212 kb).

Ongoing Special Projects in 2006

Download the table (61 kb).