Current agriculture encounters several challenges including increase in human population, increased meat consumption from income growth, climate change, and demand for healthier foods. Together this puts a tremendous strain on limited natural resources and on an increasingly fragile ecosystem. Today, 55% percent of habitable land is used for agriculture. Two-thirds (66%) of all annual fresh water withdrawals are used for irrigation. Energy is another vital input for agriculture productivity and experts are predicting increasing global competition for supply sources. Monsanto Company uses biotechnology, plant breeding, and agronomic solution to meet the increased food demand. In June 2008, we issued a three-fold commitment (produce more, conserve more and improve farmer’s lives for agriculture to be sustainable) that we call our Commitment to Sustainable Yield. Here, we present Monsanto pipeline to fulfill our commitment for sustainable agriculture.

Maize (Zeae mays L.) is a second important crop in the country and it is first staple food in high land region. The national average yield is 2.2 t/ha. About 80% maize areas falls in this region. An introduced fungus Gray Leaf Spot (GLS) caused by Cercospora zeae-maydis has caused yield loss an average of 75%. Genetic resistance has been effective control strategy to manage this disease. The main objectives of this work were to develop, evaluate and identify high yielding cultivars tolerant to GLS. Three sets of trials were conducted in Nepal and Korea. GLS evaluation trial-I consisted of 73 genotypes, GLS evaluation trial-II composed of 38 genotypes and mid altitude hybrid evaluation trial-III consisted of 12 genotypes. Exotic, semi exotic and local germplasm of different origins were used. Among these tested genotypes, tolerant genotypes were Thai 717S31-21-3×[TZMi407 × TZMi211-11- 2-1-1-B-B-B-B-B (5.2t/ha), Pioneer12 × MASynVAR-5 F2 (5.0 t/ha) and MA SynVAR-5 F2 × Thai 919 S3 4-5-4 (4.7t/ha) with GLS mean score 2.7, 1.5 and 1 respectively in trial-I. In trial-II, superior genotypes were KYM33 × TZi3 (7.6t/ha), KYM33 × TZi18 (7.5 t/ha) and KYM33 × P45 (7.4 t/ha) with GLS scores 1.4, 2.4 and 2.5 respectively. Similarly in trial-III, high yielding genotypes were MASynVAR-5 (11.0t/ha), and TZMi407×87036- 9-1-1-1-B-B-B/TZMi102×90113-5-3-2-2-B-B-B-B (9.8t/ha). These hybrids and their parents will use to introgress resistant genes to breed better tolerant maize cultivars for Nepal.