Since early 1960s, the international multilocation testing of experimental germplasm has become widely accepted as a viable approach to accelerating the germplasm improvement process. In the case of wheat and triticale, CIMMYT serves as the hub of one of the world's largest international testing networks - The International Wheat Improvement Network (IWIN); several hundred voluntarily cooperating agricultural scientists from both public and private sectors, located in over 100 countries worldwide, participate in the evaluation of experimental wheat materials contained in CIMMYT nurseries.
Spring bread and durum wheat, and triticale nurseries are distributed from CIMMYT in Mexico. Winter and facultative bread wheat nurseries are distributed by the TURKEY/CIMMYT/ICARDA International Winter Wheat
Improvement Program. Collaborative regional trials are also distributed from Central Asia, Siberia and the Eastern Gangetic Plains, and for specially targeted experimental probe experiments.
These nurseries are grown under a wide range of environmental conditions, and are subjected to numerous diseases and other stresses. How does it work?
- Improved wheat germplasm is dispatched, through nurseries targeted to specific agro-ecological environments, to this network of researchers.
- Data from these trials are then returned to CIMMYT, catalogued, analyzed and made available to the global wheat improvement community [access IWIN data].
- The ultimate beneficiaries of the fruits of this network are farmers who will receive improved bread wheat, durum wheat and triticale varieties.
Accuracy in recording performance data and its timely return to CIMMYT for analysis are critical to the success of the international testing network. Data from many researchers are fed into the system, and the pooled results form the basis of the international nursery data and reports made available by CIMMYT. The quality of these nursery reports is totally dependent upon the quality of the experiments and the data reported by each cooperator. The reports help guide subsequent breeding efforts, both by CIMMYT and by cooperating wheat researchers around the world.
CIMMYT assembles and distributes four basic types of international nurseries:
- Yield trials
- Screening nurseries
- Segregating populations
If you want to search by nursery check the list of nursery abbreviations.