A course entitled “Fieldbook and applied statistics – ICAMEX” aimed at scientists and research assistants from ICAMEX (Instituto de Investigación y Capacitación Agropecuaria, Acuícola, Forestal del Estado de Mexico) was held recently at CIMMYT-El Batán. Of the course’s 15 participants, eight scientists, including Director of Research Francisco Javier Manjarrez Juárez, arrived from ICAMEX; one participant represented Semillas Azteca; and six represented CIMMYT. The course, which was held during 31 January-02 February 2011 discussed various statistical applications, specifically, Feildbook software.

 The course touched on Fieldbook’s capability to create an inventory, a nursery, preparation of seed for a nursery, analysis of a trial, GxE interaction experimental design, management, basic management of SAS and other statistical models. Héctor Sánchez, Claudio Ayala, José Crosa, and Mateo Vargas led the course.

All of the course participants showed a great interest in the course and believe the information and skills they learned will be of great value in their everyday work. “I learned so much about Fieldbook that I never knew. These new techniques will prove very useful in the development of research activities that I perform at work— specifically in the follow-up and evaluation of those activities. I also learned a little about statistical application, but we weren’t able to explore it enough. It’s a complicated subject that requires more time,” said one of the ICAMEX researchers.

Manjarrez expressed interest in conducting more courses, such as this one, at CIMMYT. The courses would cover topics relevant to ICAMEX staff.

During the closing ceremony, the participants received an award recognizing event participation.

A training workshop on the integrated International Maize Information System (IMIS)-Fieldbook platform was held for scientists, technicians, and research assistants in Nairobi, Kenya, on 05-06 August 2010. Similar training was held in Zimbabwe on 02-04 August, and will soon be given in Ethiopia. Héctor Sánchez, crop information specialist based at CIMMYT-Mexico, conducted the course, which was attended by participants from CIMMYT and two invited representatives from the Western Seed Company, a Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa (DTMA) Project partner.

The training included presentations on the basic use of IMIS and IMISFieldbook. The latter has all the utilities of Fieldbook software, as well as additional functions for management of genealogy, inventory, and data. Hands-on training sessions covered topics such as installing the software, generating inventories and analyses, seed preparation for trials and nurseries, adding information to the IMIS database, and managing pedigrees using Fieldbook.

“We can now code our germplasm numerically, and upload it into a local database, which can then be exported to MaizeFinder,” said Silvano Assanga, one of the participants. MaizeFinder is a program, accessible on the internet, where information on the germplasm available at CIMMYT and performance data can be obtained. “With this software, it will now be easy to trace the parentage of a pedigree by generating a genealogy tree to see how the material was developed,” Assanga said.

The software is available at http://dtma.cimmyt.org/index.php/software.

 Two CIMMYT-Mexico department heads, along with Mateo Vargas from Mexico’s Chapingo Autonomous University, traveled to Peru this July to lead a five-day training course on field data analysis, with an emphasis on maize. The course, coordinated by Luis Narro of CIMMYT-Colombia, ran from 19-23 July 2010 at the campus of Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina (UNALM), in Lima, Peru.

Twenty-three fellow scientists and researchers (six were women) attended the course, which received Peruvian government funding specifically earmarked for CGIAR initiatives. Other sponsors included the university; the National Institute of Agricultural Innovation (INIA, part of the Peruvian Ministry of Agriculture); CIMMYT; and the institutions of attendees (six Peruvian universities, one Colombian university, and the International Potato Center, CIP).

CIMMYT’s José Crossa (head of Biometrics & Statistics), along with Vargas, filled two of the days with information on theory, analysis, and interpretation of experiment data (including full blocks at random and incomplete blocks); and stability analysis (regression models, AMMI, SREG, PLS, hereditability, and genetic correlations). Statistical analysis software (SAS) was used to analyze all the information.

Later in the week, Kai Sonder (head of the Geographic Information Systems Unit, GIS, part of the Socioeconomics Program) switched gears slightly and focused the following three days on GIS issues. He used local examples and data to show how to apply GIS to agricultural research, how to generate geo-referenced data with GPS in the field, and how to create maps and spatial data using the freeware applications DivaGIS and Geoda. All the participants received a DVD with spatial data and materials and programs used in the workshop. Complementing the workshop, Crossa also presented a conference on how to use phenotypic and genotypic data from multi-location trials to increase the genetic gain of selections. Held in UNALM’s auditorium for their postgraduate program, 50 people attended, including workshop participants, UNALM professors, and researchers from INIA and CIP.

The attendees thanked CIMMYT for organizing the event and others of its caliber, and highlighted the excellent quality of the course and the expertise of the workshop leaders. CIMMYT-Colombia thanks its CIMMYT-Mexico colleagues for their collaboration.

Reference management software is a common way for researchers to organize scientific articles and access citation information. Programs like Reference Manager and EndNote (both from Thompson Reuters) help users to organize references, while newer programs like Mendeley embrace IT and social networking as well.

Mendeley is first and foremost a reference management package and includes both a desktop application (Mendely Desktop) and a Web Interface (Mendeley Web). Mendeley Desktop indexes and organizes all of your PDF documents and research papers into a personal digital bibliography. It also gathers document details from your PDFs, allowing you to effortlessly search, organize, and cite them. It also looks up DOIs (digital object identifiers) and other related document details automatically. The drag and drop functionality makes populating the library quick and easy.

Additionally, the Web Importer allows you to quickly and easily import papers from resources such as Google Scholar, websites of journal publishers, and many others at the click of a button. Mendeley Web takes the experience a step further by allowing you to use shared and public collections to share information, resources, and experiences with fellow researchers. Members of your team will have easy access to each others’ papers.

CIMMYT’s collection of scientific papers references is available here. CIMMYT library can also provide this collection in a format compatible with other reference management systems. The Mendeley desktop application is free, as are basic features of the Mendeley Web. For larger collections, it is necessary to purchase space.

Peter Walker, who worked at CIMMYT from 1975 to 1980, died at his home in Mexico City on 17 November 2009 after a short illness. He was 77.

During his time at CIMMYT, Walker set up and managed the Statistical Services Unit, using a DG Nova 3 computer to analyze the results of large sets of international cooperative breeders’ trials, initially for maize and later for wheat, durum, barley, and triticale. In addition to managing the unit, he also worked with programming and statistics.

Walker was born in Leeds, England, in 1932. He studied mathematics and statistics at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and began a long and varied career in tropical biometrics in 1960 in Nigeria. He came to CIMMYT following work as an overseas liaison officer at the Rothamsted Experimental Station in the UK. After leaving CIMMYT, his subsequent career took him to Syria, Zimbabwe, back to Nigeria, and finally to Sri Lanka.

He retired in 1994 to live in Mexico. Walker is survived by his wife Nydia, as well as by two sons, two daughters, and five grandchildren.

Fifteen researchers gathered at the headquarters of the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) in Gazipur, Bangladesh, earlier this month to learn more about data processing. The course, “Statistical analysis of field experimental data using CROPSTAT,” ran from 11- 13 January 2010 as part of the project “Sustainable intensification of rice-maize systems in Bangladesh,” which is funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).

CROPSTAT is a data analysis program that uses balanced and unbalanced designs for single and multi-site analysis. None of the participants had used CROPSTAT before, though several had some background knowledge on other statistical software. CIMMYT-IRRI senior scientist and project leader Jagadish Timsina coordinated the course; Shahjan Kabir from BRRI, and Shalimuddin from the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), provided handson training. The project is jointly implemented by CIMMYT and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in collaboration with national partners: BARI, BRRI, the Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development (BARD), the Rangpur-Dinajpur Rural Services (RDRS), and the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC). The 15 researchers who attended the training were from the four project sites (Comilla, Gazipur, Rajshahi, and Rangpur) of BARI, BRRI, BARD, and RDRS.

After course completion, participants expressed interest in using CROPSTAT 7.2 to analyze ACIAR project data, and suggested a second, more advanced CROPSTAT course. One of the objectives of this ACIAR-funded, 5-year project (2008-13) is to provide training for researchers, farmers, and extension workers from governmental and nongovernmental organizations. The CROPSTAT training is one example of researcher-geared training.