March 2026 marked the latest milestone in the strategic partnership between the John Innes Centre and International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), with a visit to CIMMYT’s Obregón field station in Mexico.

Taking place during CIMMYT’s annual Visitor’s Week, which brings together researchers from across Africa, Asia, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States of America to address global challenges facing wheat production, including emerging diseases and climate pressures.

“The CIMMYT-JIC strategic partnership recognises the growing research portfolio between our institutes, which ultimately benefits farmers and food security,” said Professor Diane Saunders, Head of the Crop Genetics department at the John Innes Centre. “This visit was an opportunity to launch major new wheat research projects and continue building a strong community of early-career female researchers.”

The visit saw the launch of two new research initiatives and the delivery of training and community‑building activities designed to strengthen the next generation of scientists.

Director of the John Innes Centre, Professor Cristóbal Uauy said: “The launch of the Global Surveillance Advisory System and the Global Wheat Health Alliance really brings the CIMMYT–JIC partnership to life. Together, these projects connect cutting-edge discovery science with global surveillance and breeding efforts, creating a more integrated pipeline from fundamental research through to impact for farmers facing increasing disease threats.”

Launching new global research initiatives

A central focus of the Obregón meeting was the launch of two major new research collaborations.

Global Surveillance Advisory System (GSAS)

The visit included the official launch of the Global Surveillance Advisory System (GSAS), a new global partnership working to protect wheat and maize harvests from emerging transboundary pests and diseases.

GSAS builds on more than 20 years of  wheat disease surveillance, most recently though the Disease Early Warning Advisory System (DEWAS). The new initiative expands geographical coverage, uniting researchers across Africa, North America, Latin America and South Asia and incorporates disease monitoring for maize.

The project is led by CIMMYT, with the John Innes Centre playing a key role. Professor Diane Saunders leads a GSAS work package focused on developing and deploying wheat disease diagnostic tools, including the MARPLE Diagnostics platform which enables rapid field-based identification of wheat rust strains.

Global Wheat Health Alliance (GWHA)

Discussions in Obregón also advanced a second major initiative, the Global Wheat Health Alliance (GWHA). GWHA brings together breakthroughs in wheat disease resistance with cutting-edge research on pathogen evolution, helping to accelerate the delivery of new resistant varieties to farmers.

“This project will help to accelerate the translation of scientific discoveries,” said Professor Maricelis Acevedo, Director for Science at Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “GWHA will help make that process move as fast as possible to bring innovation in the field and while also building national disease-resilience capacity.”

Read more about the Global Wheat Health Alliance launch

2026 Women in Wheat training

The March 2026 partnership meeting also hosted the latest Rosalind Franklin Women in Wheat Champions workshop, which addresses the under-representation of women in senior wheat research roles by supporting early-career female scientists with training, mentorship and network building.

Margot Bolanos, Research Associate in Capacity Building and Partnerships for Women and Youth at CIMMYT participated in this year’s workshop, said “We’re all coming from different backgrounds, so it was useful to share with each other what we were trying to do. It’s important to share what we know and important to learn from each other. It was exciting to be here and as part of a room of women learning from each other”

This year’s focus was to provide career development and leadership skills that support progression to independent research positions, and training was provided by Professor Diane Saunders and Professor Maricelis Acevedo.

“I found it incredibly empowering to share, learn, and connect with women from such diverse backgrounds and experiences. It meant a lot to hear different perspectives and insights during the training sessions. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to form these connections and I look forward to us continuing to support each other in our shared goal of improving food security,” said Dr Rosh Badgami, post-doctoral researcher at the John Innes Centre.

About the CIMMYT-JIC Partnership

A formal CIMMYT-JIC partnership was established in 2021 to support collaborative research, knowledge exchange, and coordinated communications focused on the future of wheat.

“The John Innes Centre is a natural partner for CIMMYT. We share common interests but different foci – with JIC more focused on upstream research and CIMMYT more on the translation of those findings to farmers. There’s enormous value in working together,” said Flavio Breseghello, Director of the Global Wheat Program at CIMMYT.

Building on a long history of collaboration the partnership aims to:

• Develop and deploy new molecular markers for yield, resilience and nutritional traits in wheat to improve breeding speed and accuracy.
• Generate share and exploit new and existing diversity for improved wheat.
• Pursue new technologies to increase breeding efficiency for improved traits.
• Develop rapid disease diagnostics and global surveillance technologies.

Read more about the JIC-CIMMYT strategic partnership