Tag Archives: CIP

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‘Thank you, Margaret Thatcher’ – my Pioneer Interview with Gene Hettel

The head of IRRI’s Communication and Publications Services (CPS), Gene Hettel, is compiling a set of Pioneer Interviews with IRRI staff, past and present. These have been published in IRRI’s in house magazine for the past decade, Rice Today. In addition he usually also makes a video.

In mid-February 2010, just over two months before I retired from the institute, Gene and I found a time for my Pioneer Interview. If you want to know about many of the things I did at IRRI, and elsewhere – and some of my opinions about international agricultural research and how it’s organized, just watch the videos.

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Jim Bryan – a friend indeed

I first met Jim Bryan in February 1973, just under two months after I’d first arrived in Lima, Peru to join the International Potato Center (CIP) as associate taxonomist. Jim had returned from home leave in the USA taken at the end of 1972 after completing his contract with the USAID-North Carolina State University potato project in Peru. He joined CIP as Seed Production Specialist. Over time, Jim became my closest friend and colleague at CIP, but we didn’t always see eye-to-eye. Early on, Jim thought it was his role to ‘supervise’ my work – something I didn’t take kindly to, and told him so in no uncertain terms. But as I got to know Jim (and his wife Jeanne and family) better, I came to realise what a firm friend he could be, and how much about growing potatoes and potato production I could learn from him.

A native of Gooding, Idaho, Jim was born in March 1930. He served in the Korean War, and afterwards gained BS and MS degrees in agricultural education. He taught vocational agriculture for four years, then joined the potato program at the University of Idaho. In 1966 Jim was recruited as a Seed Specialist to join the North Carolina project by Dick Sawyer (who was to become the first Director General of CIP when it was founded in 1971), and moved to Lima with his wife, three daughters (Wendy, Julie and Mary) and son Chris. I guess he hadn’t expected to remain in Peru for the next 30 years, mostly at CIP. Like many expat staff joining CIP, Jim did not initially speak Spanish, and despite his best efforts he never really did develop a good command of the language. But that didn’t really matter; he tried . . . and if he couldn’t think of the words he needed, some arm-waving and the use of  “X, X, X” usually got him by, and was much appreciated by local administrative and research staff.

Jim’s work in seed production took him all over the world and he was much in demand by colleagues in national potato programs in many countries. That was because his feet were firmly planted in the potato fields that he loved. He always looked for practical solutions, and ones that were doable and affordable. He was an excellent teacher, never afraid to get stuck in, and his hands dirty. And this was the best way to get across the important concepts and practices of potato seed production and health. Jim was responsible for setting up the germplasm export facilities and procedures at CIP, to make sure that the diseases endemic to potatoes in Peru, especially virus diseases, were not spread around the world. In recognition of his important contributions to potato science, Jim was elected an Honorary Life Member of the Potato Association of America in 1992.

I moved to Costa Rica in 1976, and Jim joined my regional program for one year in 1979. He was assigned as a seed specialist for the new consortium program – Programa Regional Cooperativa de Papa (PRECODEPA) – funded by the Swiss government. One of the projects that Jim and I worked on was the development of rapid multiplication techniques for potatoes such as stem cuttings, leaf bud cuttings, and sprout cuttings through which it’s possible to produce 1 tonne of potatoes from a single tuber in a year. And we did achieve this with several varieties, producing the various cuttings in a screen house in Turrialba, and transplanting them to fields on the slopes of the Irazu volcano. Jim also trained many national program staff in these techniques. We developed a useful booklet on rapid multiplication techniques and some training slide sets, which seem quite crude today when you think what digital technologies can offer.

Transplanting cuttings on the Irazu volcano in Costa Rica

Checking potatoes grown from stem cuttings in the field, with Jorge Aguilar.

After retirement Jim and Jeanne moved to Seattle to be near their three daughters (meanwhile Chris was across the other side of the USA in Florida), and Steph and I had opportunity of visiting them there on more than one occasion. 

Jim and Jeanne’s Golden Wedding anniversary in Seattle, June 2003. Standing, L-R: Wendy, Mary, Julie, and Chris.

Jim was an avid stamp collector, and built up a wonderful collection of British stamps and any depicting potatoes from all around the world. A heavy smoker all his life, this eventually affected Jim’s health and he developed emphysema, and became dependent on an oxygen bottle. The last letter I received from Jim in early 2010, just after his 80th birthday, was still full of optimism however. He told me that one of his goals had been to reach 80, and every day afterwards would be a bonus. Sadly Jim died in August later that year.

Update: 23 February 2025
I just received an email from Wendy, Jim and Jeanne’s eldest daughter, that Jeanne passed away on Friday 21 February. Sad news!

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Cruza 148 . . . the serendipity of disease resistance

Just do a Google search on “Cruza 148” and and you will see more than 1,350 hits. Even Google Scholar generates more than 100 publications that make reference to Cruza 148. How did this potato clone from Mexico achieve its celebrity status? It is known for its resistance to bacterial wilt and late blight, and that it has been released in Burundi (as Ndinamagara), Uganda (as Cruza), Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Indeed, CIP scientist Greg Forbes reported in 2006 that it’s grown in the ‘poorest of poor areas’, and suggested that Cruza 148 is ‘the Superman of potatoes’. So how was this potato clone discovered, and what steps were taken to validate its resistance to bacterial wilt?

I spent my first three years with CIP in Lima, but in mid-1976 Dick Sawyer posted me to then Region II (Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean), to undertake research on adaptation of the potato to the lowland tropics, as part of the the Regional Research Program (formerly Outreach). So I landed in Turrialba, Costa Rica at the Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE), where I was to remain for the next four and a half years, supported first by Head of Outreach Dick Wurster and then by Ken Brown after Dick left CIP. Deputy Director General-Research Ory Page was also keen to establish some specific research projects in the regions.

After refurbishing a screen-house and office space, and hiring a couple of field assistants, Jorge Aguilar and Moises Pereira, and getting to know the region, I finally started my research. I received a batch of 207 late blight resistant clones from CIP’s regional office in Toluca, Mexico that were planted in a first trial in July 1977 on the CATIE experiment station. There had been no cultivation (at least for more than 20 years) of any solanaceous crops [1]. Each clone was planted in a 5-hill plot, in a randomized complete block, with just a single plot replication per clone.

There was no problem with initial growth of all clones, despite the rather warmer and wetter growing conditions in Turrialba. But after a few weeks we noticed, in just one of two plants, the first signs of the asymmetrical wilt typical of bacterial wilt (Ralstonia solanacearum, formerly known as Pseudomonas solanacearum).

I was fortunate that I had a contact, Dr. Luis Carlos Gonzalez, in the Universidad de Costa Rica – Laboratorio de Fitopatología, an acknowledged expert in bacterial wilt who had completed his PhD studies under Professor Luis Sequeira at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Luis Carlos soon confirmed the presence of bacterial wilt, and we took steps to carefully map the spread of the disease across all plots. Each week we carefully scored the presence/absence of wilt in every plant, and built up a comprehensive picture of the development of the disease among the clones under evaluation. But that mapping also showed us where there could be hotspots in the trial plots. After some 12 weeks or so, almost all of the clones were dead – except three apparently resistant, one of which was Cruza 148. Eight further clones showed only some slight symptoms of bacterial wilt.

Our first question was whether these disease-free clones had somehow escaped infection, even though we had the evidence that the disease was spread right across the site, and in the clones surrounding ‘resistant’ ones. Fortunately all three did produce a good crop of tubers, which we harvested and stored for future evaluation. After chitting we were ready for a second evaluation. We decided to use the same site on the experiment station, carefully tilling and mixing the soil to  ensure that the potatoes we planted would come into contact with the bacterium. Not long after sprouting, the two Indian varieties (I don’t remember the clone numbers, but hopefully our original data and reports, even the plot maps, are still filed away somewhere at CIP) succumbed to wilt, but Cruza 148 remained healthy, showing no signs of bacterial wilt.

We repeated the evaluation for a third time, using tubers harvested from the second evaluation plots. And once again in this third trial – in the same soil – Cruza 148 showed no signs of infection. But where had the resistance to bacterial wilt come from, and why was there such a high inoculum of the bacterium in these soils on the CATIE experiment station? Now although bananas were grown at CATIE, we did show that the bacterial strain was not the one that infected bananas, but Race 1 (as it was then classified).

It also happened that Luis Sequeira (a Costarrican by birth) was holidaying in Costa Rica and visited our plots in Turrialba. And very quickly, and based on his broader experience, he spotted a number of common weeds, family Asteraceae [1, 2] that were wilting.

We collected samples, and undertook all the appropriate phytopathological tests to show that extracts from these weeds were pathogenic on potato. That finding led to us develop a research project looking at the persistence of the bacterium in these Turrialba soils, and how the incidence of bacterial wilt could be reduced through various agronomic practices.

Reports about Cruza 148 are still being published 34 years after its potential was first uncovered in those early Turrialba trials. Now, we know that it is a carrier of the bacterium, which is rather a disappointment. But Cruza 148 has been used a standard control variety in hundreds of disease resistance experiments, and Peter Schmiediche was one of the first CIP breeders to include Cruza 148 in his program. And as far as I know it is still grown in those central African countries. Even if it has been replaced, it achieved impact for many years providing important food for many farmers and their families. I remember discussing Cruza 148 with Jim Bryan. He pointed out that one of  its disadvantages was the coloured flesh, and that it would be unlikely to be adopted by farmers. We now know that was not the case. In fact I have read some reports that farmers in Burundi use the tuber flesh colour to identify tubers of Ndinamagara!

Cruza 148 is one of those happy accidents of germplasm evaluation – you sometimes never know just what might turn up. Maybe it’s not a ‘Superman’ but, rather by chance, it has played a significant role in confronting a serious disease of potatoes, and contributing to food security.

[1] Jackson, M.T., L.C. González & J.A. Aguilar, 1979. Avances en el combate de la marchitez bacteriana de papa en Costa Rica. Fitopatología 14, 46-53.

[2] Jackson, M.T. & L.C. González, 1981. Persistence of Pseudomonas solanacearum (Race 1) in a naturally infested soil in Costa Rica. Phytopathology 71, 690-693.

The images below show bacterial wilt in a mature potato plant, with the typical asymmetrical wilt, and the vascular system of the tuber exuding millions of bacterial cells.