Annual Report 2012 - African Agricultural Technology Foundation

36 AATF Annual Report 2012
WEMA Project Product Development team members during a field trip to evaluate various maize trials
in Potchefstroom, South Africa in April 2012
managed-drought stress, and random-drought stress in Kenya and
Zimbabwe in 2012. Some of the hybrids had yield advantage of 10–26
percent compared with the best check under optimum-moisture and 10–36
percent under managed-drought stress. The WEMA-Monsanto breeding
pipeline also showed another set of 10 DH trials with the best single-cross
hybrids ranging from 31–64 percent higher yield than the best commercial
check.
In 2012, the WEMA testing network was fully up and running
with more than 120,000 two-row and 120,000 single-row breeding plots
established by Monsanto, CIMMYT and the five partner countries.
Through this network, hybrid trial sets comprising medium-maturing
and early-maturing kits were evaluated across the participating countries
under optimum-moisture, managed-drought stress, and random-drought
stress conditions. All these showed 8–64 percent higher grain yield than
the mean of the best commercial checks. These promising hybrids formed
more than 60 percent of the list of hybrids selected for nominations into
the 2013 NPTs in Kenya and Uganda, and
for DUS observations in Tanzania.
300 million
number of people who
depend on maize as a main
food source in Africa
Disease screening
To ensure that WEMA hybrids are suitable
for the target environments, the breeding
lines and hybrids were consistently screened
for resistance to major diseases including
Deploying agricultural technologies for farmers