TEXCOCO, MEXICO — The newly formed Global Wheat Health Alliance (GWHA) will work to protect wheat from diseases in South Asia and East Africa using gene discovery field testing and pre-emptive breeding.

Co-led by International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and Cornell University, the GWHA is a partnership within the disease-resistant wheat hybrids initiative known as HyBread.

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.

“Wheat diseases do not stop at national borders, and neither can the effort to protect wheat,” said Dr. Maricelis Acevedo, research professor in Cornell University’s School of Integrative Plant Science and director for science of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI), and co-leader of the GWHA component within HyBread. “The GWHA 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.”

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.

CIMMYT leads disease screening, breeding and global germplasm distribution. The 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.

Dr. Pawan Kumar Singh, principal scientist and head of wheat pathology at CIMMYT, is co-leading the GWHA component of HyBread with Acevedo. Dr. Flavio Breseghello, CIMMYT’s global wheat program director, leads the broader HyBread initiative.

“The pathogens are evolving faster than ever, and varieties must evolve ahead of them” Singh said. “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.”

Hybrid wheat has the potential to transform productivity for smallholder farmers across South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, Breseghello said.

“But that transformation will only succeed if hybrids carry the disease resistance that farmers need to manage real-world risks,” Breseghello said. “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.”

The GWHA workstream is supported by $2.7 million from the Gates Foundation and the UK FCDO.

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Susan Reidy is senior editor with World Grain and editor of the Grain & Milling Annual. She has 21 years of experience covering the grain handling and milling industries, the past 17 years with Sosland Publishing Company. She received a bachelor’s of journalism degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Connect with Susan Reidy on LinkedIn or via email.