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It's been a while since we heard anyone from the CGIAR talk about apomixis. Apomixis essentially means giving plants the capacity to reproduce asexually and the theory is that it would allow farmers to save hybrid seeds from year to year, since successive generations would be exact clones of the previous generation.

Back in march 2000, we noted in our report on hybrid rice that IRRI scientists felt that "to make hybrids affordable, even to resource-poor farmers, it is essential to develop apomictic varieties." At that point, IRRI's head hybrid rice researcher, S.S. Virmani, told us that while plans are underway to rapidly expand the acreage planted with rice hybrids, "there is no success so far [with apomixis] and it is still a long term goal of research."

A few weeks ago, The Financial Express of India reported that "IRRI said it was also experimenting with a new technology that will help farmers to use their own hybrid without depending on companies supplying the seeds."

"We are trying to do this by creating a gene which preserves the hybrid because the F1 variety cannot be used after first use," Virmani told the paper. According to the article, "He said experiments were on and it might take 10 to 15 years to come to any conclusion."

Not a very optimistic statement.

Farmers shouldn't hold their breathe.

IRRI and the ever elusive apomixis