CIMMYT and Cornell University are jointly leading a new international partnership within the landmark HyBread investment, supported by the Gates Foundation and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), to accelerate disease resistance in wheat for vulnerable farming communities in South Asia and East Africa
Efforts to protect wheat from fast-evolving diseases in South Asia and East Africa are getting a new international push through the Global Wheat Health Alliance (GWHA), a partnership within the Disease-Resistant Wheat Hybrids Initiative, known as HyBread. Co-led by CIMMYT and Cornell University, GWHA will connect gene discovery, field testing and pre-emptive breeding to help deliver stronger disease resistance in new wheat varieties and hybrids.
Wheat is the world’s second most widely cultivated crop, grown on more than 220 million hectares and serving as a staple food for billions of people. About one quarter of the world’s wheat-growing area is in South Asia and East Africa, where roughly 170 million tons are produced each year. In these regions, rapidly evolving fungal diseases including stem rust, yellow rust, wheat blast, and Fusarium head blight are threatening improved varieties and breeding populations, placing decades of agricultural progress at risk.
GWHA is designed to move resistance more efficiently from research into breeding pipelines and, ultimately, into farmers’ fields. Field testing sites in Kenya, Mexico, Bolivia, Bangladesh, and Ethiopia will evaluate thousands of wheat lines under high disease pressure, while research partners contribute resistance genes, gene-editing mutants and molecular markers that can accelerate selection.
Over three years, the alliance will generate large-scale disease phenotyping data, deliver wheat lines with stacked resistance to major diseases and train at least 100 scientists in disease evaluation and resistance breeding. Within HyBread, GWHA provides the foundation for stable disease resistance needed to support successful hybrid wheat development.
The partnership brings together complementary and world-leading strengths. CIMMYT leads disease screening, breeding and global germplasm distribution. The Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI), housed at Cornell University, provides scientific leadership, coordination and capacity development. The John Innes Centre and the University of Maryland contribute gene discovery, mapping, and gene editing expertise. National partners in Ethiopia (Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research), Kenya (Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization), Bangladesh (Bangladesh Wheat and Maize Research Institute), and Bolivia (Instituto Nacional de Innovación Agropecuaria Y Forestal) test and deploy improved materials in target environments.
GWHA builds directly on 15 years of successful global collaboration under the BGRI. Investments in the BGRI mobilized a global research community that successfully countered Ug99, a dangerous strain of stem rust that raised fears of major crop losses across Africa and beyond. The initiative also helped limit damage from severe outbreaks in Ethiopia in 2013 and 2021 and accelerated the deployment of resistant varieties across vulnerable regions.
The GWHA component within HyBread is co-led by Dr. Maricelis Acevedo, Research Professor in Cornell University’s School of Integrative Plant Science and Director for Science of the BGRI, and Dr. Pawan Kumar Singh, Principal Scientist and Head of Wheat Pathology at CIMMYT. Dr. Flavio Breseghello, CIMMYT’s Global Wheat Program Director, leads the broader HyBread initiative.
“Wheat diseases do not stop at national borders, and neither can the effort to protect wheat. The Global Wheat Health Alliance brings together the world’s best science with the communities who need it most. We are not just discovering resistance genes. We are building the networks, expertise, and institutional capacity needed to protect wheat for generations. The stakes are too high, and the window too narrow, for anything less than a fully coordinated global effort.”
Maricelis AcevedoResearch Professor, Cornell University, School of Integrative Plant Science; Director for Science, BGRI
“The pathogens are evolving faster than ever, and varieties must evolve ahead of them. The GWHA gives us the framework to move resistance genes from the laboratory bench to the breeding pipeline to the farmer’s field in record time. By linking CIMMYT’s global breeding engine with the extraordinary gene discovery work happening at our advanced research partners, we can stay ahead of the threat.”
Dr. Pawan Kumar SinghPrincipal Scientist and Head of Wheat Pathology at CIMMYT
“Hybrid wheat has the potential to transform productivity for smallholder farmers across South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. But that transformation will only succeed if hybrids carry the disease resistance that farmers need to manage real-world risks. GWHA is the disease resistance backbone of HyBread. Every hybrid we develop must perform under the stem rust pressure of the Ethiopian highlands, the blast threat expanding across South Asia, and the FHB risk that compromises both yield and food safety. By integrating the GWHA’s resistance pipeline directly into our hybrid breeding program, we ensure that breakthrough yield gains and durable disease protection are delivered together, as one package, to the farmers who need them most.”
Dr. Flavio BreseghelloGlobal Wheat Program Director, CIMMYT; Principal Investigator, HyBread
The GWHA workstream is supported by $2.7 million from the Gates Foundation and the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.
About CIMMYT
CIMMYT is a cutting edge, non-profit, international organization dedicated to solving tomorrow’s problems today. It is entrusted with fostering improved quantity, quality, and dependability of production systems and basic cereals such as maize, wheat, triticale, sorghum, millets, and associated crops through applied agricultural science, particularly in the Global South, through building strong partnerships. This combination enhances the livelihood trajectories and resilience of millions of resource-poor farmers, while working towards a more productive, inclusive, and resilient agrifood system within planetary boundaries.
CIMMYT is a core CGIAR Research Center, a global research partnership for a food-secure future, dedicated to reducing poverty, enhancing food and nutrition security and improving natural resources.
For more information, visit cimmyt.org.
About Cornell University and the BGRI
Cornell University’s School of Integrative Plant Science is a global leader in plant pathology and crop improvement research. The Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI), housed at Cornell, has coordinated the international response to wheat rust threats for over 15 years, building the scientific networks and human capital essential for global wheat security.
Media contact:
Borlaug Global Rust Initiative
bgri@cornell.edu
