Rapid sharing of new farm practices need to be shared internationally.Ottawa—Strategies developed in one country to help farmers cope with the impact of climate change on their operations need to be shared with other nations, says The Wheat Initiative (WI), which was formed in 2011 by the G20 agriculture ministers.Peter Langridge, chair of WI's Scientific Board, told a recent meeting that wheat production is particularly susceptible to the impacts of climate change. “There are positive new developments coming out of research from around the world. For example, results in Canada and Australia have shown that farmers can capture an extra few weeks growing season through novel seeding strategies; wheat breeders in India have produced wheat varieties that optimize the growing season to allow double cropping with rice.“While the technology development is largely supported at a national level, the benefits from innovations should be global to satisfy the urgent needs,' he said. “This has been a major focus of the Wheat Initiative and there has been a high level of interest from both the public and private sectors and a strong collaborative ethos in the research community.”WI's role is to coordinate global wheat research in support of global food security and it has learned the importance of investment in the right technologies, their evaluation and implementation, he said. The recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change highlighted the impact of changing weather patterns around the world, which is major concern for crop growers.“Technologies, ideas and capabilities clearly do exist to ameliorate the impacts of climate change. The International Wheat Yield Partnership has provided a good model and example for building these delivery pathways. However, without effective and strong investments in international technology evaluation and delivery pathways by governments, we risk delaying or missing the narrow window of opportunities provided by science.”Adapting and improving agriculture technology will require “research funding and delivery strategies but there is a long path from technology development to its application,” he said.“At the international level, this path is usually slow and often relies on serendipity. Our experience in working has taught us that identifying the most appropriate technologies and devising a delivery path is not trivial. Are we capturing the full benefit of the national research activities?”The solution is building rapid pathways for technology evaluation and identifying what is available from national research programs and how and where they can be applied around the globe. “There are good models for doing this, but they do need to be supported and expanded.”