CANFA Comment

5 Sept: Mazatlan, Mexico
Just an update as we spend the morning in a hotel on the beach at Mazatlan on the Pacific ocean. Since the last email we left Mexico City for a visit to Cimmyt (the second time for Ray and I) but still very informative and interesting.

Fernando was in his usual charismatic form showing us the wheat breeding and conservation agriculture trials. This time though they treated us to a Mexican lunch with the research crew who had been in the fields putting blue tape on individual wheat heads, that would later be harvested by hand in order to keep the seed for further selection. The lunch was salsa and t-bone steak so we were really spoilt!

Heading north of Mexico City with have travelled through beautiful green and some very rich agricultural land - not how I had pictured Mexico at all. We have stopped off at an organic avocado and macadamia farm to see handmade biofertilisers in action. Eugenio Gras recommended this farm to us and he will be in Australia for another course in Mudgee later this month, which we are going to.

On the way, we stopped off at La Cofradia, a tequila farm and factory for lunch. The name tequila is licensed to only approximately three states in Mexico but this one was in the shadows of Tequila Mountain. We learnt how the pineapple of the agave (very similar to our aloe vera) plant is baked, fermented and distilled to form three types of tequila. We tasted all three and thought all were pretty good. After the tour of the factory, museum and shop we had a Mexican lunch outside with a mango margarita!

The hotel we're in is right on the beach but it also has swimming pools with a swim up bar and live music. We only have one more day with the bus and the rest of the trip will be by train so it will be different, but we are certainly seeing some wonderful countryside up the west coast of Mexico.

Anne Williams

1 Sept: New Orleans & Mexico City
Since our last update we spent a couple of days in the old French quarter of New Orleans - managed a swamp tour and dinner on a paddle steamer on the Mississippi, which was quite memorable.

We flew into Mexico a couple of days ago and had lunch at a beautiful old villa.It was very posh - the men had to wear a tie at least! We were treated like royalty but it was a wonderful experience. We didn't realise it at the time but we had 1942 tequila as a pre-lunch drink. It cost as much as the meal! Luckily, it was very nice!

Yesterday had a tour of the Presidential Palace frescos and cathedral (built on top of an Aztec pyramid). A lot of the buildings are leaning because Mexico City is built on top of a lake. It doesn't seem to stop 29 million people living here though. In the afternoon, we toured the ancient pyramids of the sun and the moon,set in beautiful countryside. Ray climbed both and I surprised myself in climbing the moon pyramid (feeling it now though).

Last night we went to the opera building and saw traditional folk dancing, which was very colourful and interesting.

We're off to Cimmyt at Teluco today. Unfortunately we couldn't line up Ken Sayre (the researcher we met in Germany and came to CANFA's conference in 2007), but we spoke to him on the phone yesterday. He is retired now but still coming in to work. We will meet up with David Bonnett, who Ray and I met last week while we were here.

From Teluco we're heading north into the countryside, visiting farms. We've only 10 days left of this wonderful trip, but we're missing everyone.

Anne Williams

19 Aug: Dallas, Texas
After another couple of flights, here we are in Dallas ready to leave tomorrow for Mexico. We're having a great time!

In St Louis we saw Monsanto's headquarters - 2,500 employees and 5,000 all up in St Louis.They spend more on ag research than the USDA does.

We went to Gavilon Grain Elevators, after which a couple of Texans lead us on a visit to their farms - pretty impressive. They are having more than a month of temps above 100F and in the midst of a serious drought which they are starting to compare to the 1930's Dust Bowl, but this time without the dust storms. Despite the dry they are still harvesting some crops such as sunflowers and cotton.

We had lunch at a real Texan bar at the Fort Worth Stock Yards - they had saddles as bar stools!

A free day tomorrow before another flight to Mexico which we are all greatly looking forward to.

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22 Aug: Cimmyt, Mexico
Hi there from Mexico City, our last visit on the GRDC’s The way we were trip.

Yesterday we went to Cimmyt and met the farm manager Fernando Delgardo (pictured here in wheat trials at Cimmyt) who ran an excellent experimental station with a lot of emphasis on breeding wheat and corn for international partners, but always kept in mind his obligation to improve the local farming systems that are around 1 acre per farmer (with livestock included). The chief breeder, Dr Ravi Singh from Sydney Uni, gave us an excellent insight into how plant breeding for wheat works and their ambition to be ahead of the next global catastrophe in wheat diseases. He was able to quote wheat breeds, like Cook and Hartog, that we direct descendants of Mexican Cimmyt breeding programs.

Australian, Dr David Bonnett showed us his trials pre-breeding to bring back the genetics of ancient grasses and durum wheats to bring more diversity into the genome pool, bringing hybrid vigour back into the breeding program so that they may be selected to put into the main line of breeding. We are privledged to met such clever people as we have travelled.

We are visiting the Australian Ambassador this afternoon and back to the headquarters of Cimmyt tomorrow before we fly back to Chicago to catch up with John Lawrie's tour of USA and Mexico. It will be great to catch up with them.

Anne Williams