In this episode, Robin Davies speaks with Dr Bram Govaerts, the Director General of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). This is the second in a three-part series on the CGIAR network of agricultural research centres.
In this episode, Robin Davies speaks with Dr Bram Govaerts, the Director General of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). This is the second in a three-part series on the CGIAR network of agricultural research centres. You can hear Robin’s interview with the Executive Managing Director of CGIAR, Dr Esmahane Elouafi, in episode 320, and his interview with Dr Aly Abousabaa, Director General of ICARDA, in episode 322.
CIMMYT is a non-profit research organization dedicated to improving livelihoods through maize and wheat science and is one of the 15 research centres that make up the CGIAR network. With a focus on developing countries, CIMMYT works to enhance food security, nutrition, and agricultural sustainability. The centre is renowned for its vast gene bank, housing over 28,000 maize and 140,000 wheat varieties, and its pivotal role in the Green Revolution.
Govaerts brings a wealth of experience in agricultural innovation and sustainable farming practices. With a PhD in Bioscience Engineering and Soil Science from KU Leuven in Belgium, Govaerts has been instrumental in developing and implementing transformative agricultural strategies. His work has earned him several accolades, including the Norman Borlaug Award for Field Research and Application in 2014.
In this episode, Govaerts discusses CIMMYT's 2030 strategy, which focuses on nutrition, resilience, and system-wide approaches to agriculture. He highlights the organisation's efforts in climate adaptation, including the development of drought-tolerant maize varieties and conservation agriculture practices. Govaerts also emphasises the importance of gender equity and youth empowerment in agriculture, and the need for increased investment in agricultural research to address global food security challenges in the face of climate change.
Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University’s Development Policy Centre. Our producers are Robin Davies, Amita Monterola, Jackie Hanafie and Finn Clarke.
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"CIMMYT's scale is that we are active in over 80 countries globally. 70% of the wheat grown globally comes from our research. 50% of the corn or maize grown in the global south comes from our research. We safeguard biodiversity for humanity - think about 28,000 different maize traits, and then 140,000 different wheats. ... Australia has been and is a key partner for what CIMMYT can do for Australia. The estimates from ACIAR are that up to 90% of the varieties grown in this country have a background of CIMMYT's research. That is a direct benefit of investing in better food security in the Global South, with a direct impact on Australia itself."
Welcome to Devpolicy Talks, the podcast of the Development Policy Centre. We’re part of the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University, on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country in Canberra.
I'm Robin Davies.
This year we’ve re-launched our podcast after a more than two-year hiatus.
In this new season we’re bringing you a mix of interviews, event recordings and more in-depth documentary features relating to the topics we research at the centre – namely Australia’s overseas aid, development in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific, and regional and global development issues.
This twelfth episode of the season is an interview I recorded with Dr Bram Govaerts, the Director General of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). This is the second in a three-part series on the CGIAR network of agricultural research centres. You can hear my interview with the Executive Managing Director of CGIAR, Dr Esmahane Elouafi, in episode 11, and my interview with Dr Aly Abousabaa, Director General of ICARDA, in episode 13.
CIMMYT is a non-profit research organization dedicated to improving livelihoods through maize and wheat science and is one of the 15 research centres that make up the CGIAR network. With a focus on developing countries, CIMMYT works to enhance food security, nutrition, and agricultural sustainability. The centre is renowned for its vast gene bank, housing over 28,000 maize and 140,000 wheat varieties, and its pivotal role in the Green Revolution.
Dr Govaerts brings a wealth of experience in agricultural innovation and sustainable farming practices. With a PhD in Bioscience Engineering and Soil Science from KU Leuven in Belgium, Dr Govaerts has been instrumental in developing and implementing transformative agricultural strategies. His work has earned him several accolades, including the Norman Borlaug Award for Field Research and Application in 2014.
In this episode, Dr Govaerts discusses CIMMYT's 2030 strategy, which focuses on nutrition, resilience, and system-wide approaches to agriculture. He highlights the organisation's efforts in climate adaptation, including the development of drought-tolerant maize varieties and conservation agriculture practices. Dr Govaerts also emphasises the importance of gender equity and youth empowerment in agriculture, and the need for increased investment in agricultural research to address global food security challenges in the face of climate change.
[00:41] Bram Govaerts: My name is Bram Govaerts. I'm the Director General of CIMMYT, known for the wheat and maize work that we do. CIMMYT is based in Mexico City. We have 17 offices around the globe, all of them in the Global South, and we have activities and impact in over 80 different countries.
CIMMYT is part of the network of institutions that make up the CGIAR. We no longer use the long name, just the abbreviation. I'm very happy also to be here with my colleague, Ali, who is the Director General of ICARDA. Together, ICARDA and CIMMYT are, let's say, sister centres, and we, together with the other centres, really form a dynamic network with a clear footprint in the global south to work on food security and nutrition security.
[01:38] Robin Davies: What centres does CIMMYT have in the Asia Pacific region?
[01:42] Bram Govaerts: We are very active in the region. We have our key offices in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal. But from those offices, we work also in other countries in the region. Of course, depending on the country, it's either maize or wheat-based systems. Those cereal systems need a lot of resilience, given climate change.
The big success of CIMMYT was the Green Revolution. A lot of attention back then was on the right level of calories, so people weren't suffering from that aspect. But today, we know we need more than that - we're looking for nutrition, and you cannot just survive on calories.
[02:24] Robin Davies: Okay. And what brings you to Australia?
[02:28] Bram Govaerts: Australia has been and is a key partner for what CIMMYT can do for Australia. The estimates from ACIAR are that up to 90% of the varieties grown in this country have a background of CIMMYT's research. That is a direct benefit of investing in better food security in the Global South, with a direct impact on Australia itself.
New varieties that we have developed for the global south have been introduced here in Australia or localized. So there is a direct link with food security and national security in Australia. There's also a link of wanting to unlock capabilities of Australian universities and scientists and to make that available into our research. CIMMYT is as good as our partnerships. So we have strong partnerships with Queensland University, ANU and other strong houses of knowledge, and we want to unlock all that capability to make it available for the Global South.
Last but not least, Australia has been, and hopefully will still be in the future, a very strong supporter and investor for CIMMYT. Through ACIAR and GRDC, there are clear investments which also ensure that what we do is relevant for Australian national agricultural interests, as well as for Australia's interests abroad.
[03:57] Robin Davies: And ACIAR is the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research. GRDC is...?
[04:03] Bram Govaerts: GRDC is the, I don't know what the abbreviation fully stands for, but it brings together the growers. So it's the Growers Association for cereals here in Australia. [Grains Research and Development Corporation]
[04:13] Robin Davies: Okay. And can you give me a sense of the scale of CIMMYT's operations? What's your sort of funding turnover each year?
[04:22] Bram Govaerts: CIMMYT's scale is that we are active in over 80 countries globally. 70% of the wheat grown globally comes from our research. 50% of the corn or maize grown in the global south comes from our research. We safeguard biodiversity for humanity - think about 28,000 different maize traits, and then 140,000 different wheats. We safeguard that in Mexico with safety copies in multiple locations.
We also work on agronomy, so typical zero tillage, that's also very well known here in Australia, so we can have more crop per drop. And we also work on connecting farmers to markets with a strong view also on understanding power dynamics and social inclusion around innovation and technology adoption.
CIMMYT's annual budget is on a growth path because we believe if we want to stay relevant, but also, given all the threats of climate change and the need to diversify the cereal systems, we need to do a better job. We need to increase our impact and footprint, or we're never going to get ahead of the curve. So today, we are at a budget of $200 million per year, which we have the ambition to grow further over the coming years. In 2020, CIMMYT was at a budget level of $90 million a year, and we have increased it now to 200 million, and we have the ambition to increase it further.
[06:01] Robin Davies: This is an interesting picture. I assume most of that funding comes from official development assistance.
[06:07] Bram Govaerts: Most of our funding comes from country development assistance or from important foundations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and of course, also private sector. That's a recent development that private sector is directly investing in CIMMYT. We do want to amplify or to diversify our investment portfolio, because I think this is not only about development cooperation. This is really about the global network of science and innovation for food security and nutrition security.
We really need to develop the resilience in those food systems, and we need to look at those nutritious qualities. So that also means that maize and wheat on their own, or corn and wheat is not enough. You need to diversify those systems. So we need to look at crops like millets, sorghum, chickpeas, and of course, ICARDA has a whole portfolio that could do that. So by joining also those efforts, we can diversify the cereal systems.
But also, CIMMYT is opening up its research capacity, its data system capacity. We are simulating environments in multiple research centres around the world, so we can simulate 90% of the environments where cereals are grown. That same capability, we want to activate it for what we call opportunity crops, crops that have been less invested in, like for example, chickpeas, and actually leapfrog or accelerate the development of resistance in those crops. I mean, if you talk about those crops like chickpeas, everybody knows that there's a lot of disease pressure, for example, and that is because it hasn't been invested at the same pace as probably corn and maize and wheat have been invested in.
[07:44] Robin Davies: I guess what makes your organization particularly interesting is that, unlike many of the CGIAR centres, the crops that you work on are heavily grown in developed countries. And as you say, a lot of the varieties that CIMMYT is responsible for developing are now being grown in developed countries in commercial markets. So given that a lot of that research was funded by either philanthropy or ODA, how do you manage that? There are huge commercial benefits for somebody in this research way down the track, how do you get some of that back?
[08:28] Bram Govaerts: That's a good question. First and foremost, of course, for corn, a lot of the corn is grown in the developing countries. It is a staple for many developing countries. So don't underestimate the direct impact on food security, while in those more developed countries, corn is used for other applications less directly connected to food security. Sometimes wheat, opposite to what we sometimes think, is still a very important crop for countries like Pakistan and India. So there's a strong footprint also in the global south.
But fair enough, your question about the Global North. There are global North actors that are, of course, reaping the benefits. 60% of the wheat grown in the US also comes from CIMMYT's research, and 90% here in Australia. So I guess on the one hand, you have the investment by those countries in that research portfolio. And you could ask, how can we get some royalties or flows back of funding?
When CIMMYT was created, it was clear that we were created to make international public goods. So we don't patent, we don't lock away our IP. It is available for everybody. It's open access. Having said that, we are looking at new models potentially to make sure that we have some revenue stream back from those maybe more commercial situations. At this point, that is definitely not the majority of our funding.
Also, wheat is not really a commercial crop. It's more a crop that goes through the public sector, given the fact that you can recycle seed. Of course, for hybrid maize, we strongly work together with the private sector, but we focus on smallholder farmers, where actually the private sector traditionally doesn't want to grow. So what we're doing is we are de-risking some of that and working strongly with local seed companies in Africa, South Asia and Latin America.
[10:26] Robin Davies: Okay. All right, now I should actually ask you some of the questions that I sent you, but that was really useful background. All right, let me ask about the strategy. So Bram, can you talk a bit about CIMMYT's 2030 strategy, and how you're addressing the challenges of climate change and food security in developing countries, especially in relation to maize and wheat research?
[10:51] Bram Govaerts: Thank you very much. For that strategy, we did two exercises. One was to look at the future. The other one was to look at the past and then see what the path is to a better future. So we designed 2100 scenarios looking at what CIMMYT should look like if we want to be successful and have the world we would want in 2100. We designed several scenarios around that, and looked at no-regret investments, but also risks in the system, and how the area food systems would change.
We also analysed the Green Revolution - the good, the bad and the ugly. We know the good, but there were also issues, issues based on knowledge we didn't have back then, but we have today. So then immediately, the question is, what is that knowledge that we don't have today? And 50 years from now, people are going to criticise us for whatever decision we took because we didn't have the knowledge. And the conclusion out of that is we need rapid feedback loops. We cannot wait 50 years. We need rapid feedback loops for unintended consequences in order to make sure that we can course correct if new knowledge comes up.
That analysis identified what we call hills and mountains and some new aspects. And the key new aspects in the strategy are nutrition - so focus on nutrition and resilience. Focus, therefore, on diversification. You cannot do nutrition only with corn and wheat. You cannot make the systems resilient only with corn and wheat.
Second, a strong systems approach. It's not just about seed, it's not just about agronomy. It's about the full system that we need to look at. And it's about the transformation of the whole agri-food system.
And last but not least, a strong focus on gender equity, youth and social inclusion. As we see that power relations within communities, power relations within access to information and decision making, power relations within access to innovation, is something very important. We need to look at the social constructs in order to be sure that our innovations can be used by all and not by a few.
In order to achieve that, we have identified in the Strategy three pillars. The first pillar is the discovery pillar, our research and innovation. The second is the system development pillar, which is a pillar where we try to really look at complete systems interventions. For example, take three countries - Zambia, Tanzania, Malawi - and how can we bring the whole ecosystem of actors together and then actually intervene so that that whole area can have more drought resistance, for example.
Last but not least, we also have CIMMYT Inc, which is a working title, and that is really looking at our connection with startups. Can we have some of those more commercial activities? Can we de-risk some of the private sector actors going into the interest countries?
And then each of those three pillars are really working on different components: actions in science and innovation, actions in operation, our talent management, which is extremely important, resource mobilisation is always important. And then, of course, advocacy.
If I can focus a little bit on the actions in science and innovation within that, we have looked at five key objectives that we want to achieve:
1. CIMMYT wants to be a better partner, and we need to understand what that means to be a better partner for public and private sector, globally.
2. Our innovations, our seeds, our agronomy - how do we make that available?
3. We are really looking at livelihood trajectories. And the word trajectory is extremely important. It is not about measuring right now how many have changed at this point their livelihood. It's about equipping those families with a trajectory that gives them the livelihoods. It's very different to have kids going to school or going to university or have elderly. So it's the whole trajectory, not just a momentaneous measure of availability of food or food security.
4. The fourth objective is around doing that within the boundaries. So even if we are the best partner, have the best innovations and are supporting livelihood trajectories, if that is outside of the carrying capacity of the agri-food system, that is not an outcome we would want. So we want all that to happen within a sustainable, resilient agri-food system.
5. Last but not least, CIMMYT has a wealth of data. We have a network in the public and private sector, and so that last objective, we want to make sure that that data is available in order to do better decision making at the different scales. That can be a farmer deciding how much fertiliser to apply. Or it can be, as we speak today, it's the second part of the UN General Assembly. How do we make sure that those making those statements have access to our data to do the right decision making at those high-level conversations?
[15:16] Robin Davies: Okay, can I ask you for three quick examples? One, you talked about unintended consequences of investments made 50 years ago through the Green Revolution. Two, you've talked about the new focus on nutrition. Are there particular innovations, vitamin-fortified maize, or whatever that you can point to that have been important in the last decade or so? And three on climate resilience, same question, are there specific innovations that you can point to there?
[15:45] Bram Govaerts: Absolutely. So on the unintended consequences, the first example is, of course, the whole concept of sustainability, natural resource availability that came with the Brundtland Commission in the 80s. So when the Green Revolution happened, it was 60s and 70s. So that whole concept of circularity of systems was not necessarily top of mind. So today it is - we know water is finite. We know fertilisers are finite. We know fertiliser contributes to climate change through greenhouse gases.
So what we are changing as CIMMYT is that systems approach to really look at regenerative agriculture, conservation agriculture, and within that, looking at the systems. Don't underestimate that the Green Revolution did save hundreds and hundreds of millions of hectares of grasslands, of savannas, of forest. So if that wouldn't have been there, that would all be cleared. But today, there is more sophistication around that thinking.
On nutrition, a simple example from the wheat side: our new varieties in Pakistan are high zinc-charged, so they have higher content of zinc, and they have already benefited 96 million consumers with improved micronutrients, like zinc in their food.
Second, we are looking at crops that start from a healthy diet, and how can you locally produce that healthy diet? That sometimes means less maize in certain areas, which means we need to increase the maize production in the rest of the areas and free up space for vegetables, for some of the nutritious crops. So we're starting to work very closely with World Veg, which is the International Center looking at vegetables, so that we can open up space, so to say, on those farms, while we don't lose out on the availability of food security. So we increase the maize production per hectare so that there is space for those vegetables.
You also asked about climate adaptation. I think our biggest example is drought-tolerant maize. Were it not for the drought-tolerant maize varieties that are now available on 8.5 million hectares in Sub-Saharan Africa, the impact of El Niño would have been way worse than it was. Right now we see yield increases from 40 to 200% - on average, 40% higher yields with drought-tolerant maize when there is a drought.
And of course, another clear example is our conservation agriculture work that basically gets healthier soils, so that with the little rain that falls, you can produce more than losing the rain through erosion, etc.
[18:23] Robin Davies: All right. And if I can ask a parochial question, how does Australian agricultural innovation feed into your work in developing countries? You have made the point that it's a two-way street, but I'm interested about that direction.
[18:38] Bram Govaerts: Excellent. So it starts from, for example, Australia has very strong modeling capacity, and so the whole scenario building, the whole modeling decision support tools, is something we strongly work on with CSIRO.
Another clear example is you have a vibrant wheat community in ANU or a vibrant wheat community in Queensland University that is supporting us with upstream research. So a lot of those research efforts CIMMYT cannot do - we don't have that upstream capacity, but that upstream capacity that then zooms into a very applicable element around genetics, around a new trait, that is very important for us to then incorporate into our breeding pipelines.
Or a last example, Australia has been an extremely important partner for everything around monitoring of diseases. Of course, you have a history and you have strong knowledge on biosafety, and so towards that, our collaboration with universities here in Australia on monitoring diseases, rust, etc., that preventive monitoring has been a very strong contribution from Australia.
[19:46] Robin Davies: And how specifically do you work with the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research? Of course, they provide some core funding to you. But beyond that, how do you work with them?
[19:58] Bram Govaerts: So they provide core funding. They also provide specific funding, so bilateral. So several projects in the region are funded by ACIAR. ACIAR also has very knowledgeable staff members. So they also support us with insights, with technical capacity. So basically, they are our entry door to Australia, and then subsequently a lot of knowledge and sharing through the CAIGE program, for example, which is an exchange program between breeders in Australia and breeders in CIMMYT and in ICARDA. The entry door is ACIAR and their funding and their connections to the partnerships here in Australia.
[20:40] Robin Davies: So the CAIGE program is the CIMMYT Australia ICARDA Germplasm Evaluation program. Can you tell me a bit more about that?
[20:47] Bram Govaerts: That's really choosing for partnership north and south, and say knowledge should flow in an open borders concept. So what I mean is we really need an international network of evaluating our germplasm, and that's what CAIGE provides - it provides to make that network from Australia to the international evaluation network.
Every year, germplasm is exchanged. That means new seeds are exchanged, new varieties are exchanged. But also every year, experts from both sides go and visit each other's experimental fields, identify new potential germplasm that would be interesting for Australian industry or would be interesting for noodle making, because a lot of the wheat is exported to noodle-eating countries. So it is that enrichment of each other's research and interests that CAIGE is providing.
[21:41] Robin Davies: I'm going to skip one or two of the questions because I need to keep the overall thing within about 45 minutes. I would like to ask that question, though, for both of you really. So Bram, can you talk about your organisation's initiatives in empowering women and youth in agriculture, wherever you operate, but particularly in this region?
[22:05] Bram Govaerts: Absolutely. CIMMYT has drawn a very strong card on gender equity and social inclusion. We have recently hired a gender equity and social inclusion director that directly sits with the director general, so in the director general's executive office. The reason for that is because she is working across all our scientific activities.
We have been working a lot on gender sensitivity around gender aspects within the innovations, so within what kind of varieties are needed in order to include the traits that women are looking for, which were overlooked, probably in the past.
But also, how do we generate youth options? So we do a lot of work around entrepreneurship. Mechanisation is a clear example. So how can you use mechanisation as a way to stay strong within the agricultural sector? Data and decision tools - we work a lot with youth and youth startups in multiple countries. We have a whole youth program within Africa that is looking at that.
We also have a series that's called "Catalysts of Change." It is really featuring women leaders, science leaders from around the world. So we have now close to 30 - every two weeks we have a woman leader coming and talking about her leadership style. And the reason for that is we strongly believe that you can be what you can see. And so if women want to lead, or female scientists want to grow into such leadership positions, who are their role models? So it's really breaking that cycle of missing role models in order to be able to be more effective in your leadership style. So we want to bring to the organisation, to the CGIAR, those different role models as women leaders, as catalysts of change.
So really, our work on that goes from proactively, when we start thinking about the research, thinking about gender neutrality or not, and how to take a conscious decision about it, beyond just women and men with all kinds of excluded communities. The second step is then making sure that those activities can be done, the research can be done by everybody, and is then available for everybody. So that means as well in the workplace in CIMMYT, but also through our partnerships, how we set them up, deliberately taking that into account. Last but not least, we have specific activities for youth empowerment and women empowerment.
[24:31] Robin Davies: Okay, so in this region, you have spoken about CIMMYT's work in India, Pakistan. Do you have major programs in Southeast Asia, and anything in Papua New Guinea or the Pacific?
[24:43] Bram Govaerts: We have some activities there, and we are looking to be more active within the Pacific, especially around the farming systems work. But of course, for us, those are some of the expansion areas where we want to look at sustainability, where we want to look at carbon footprints. Specifically there, the corn work will be important for some of that area. CIMMYT is looking at becoming more active, especially also, of course, around migration and stabilisation of the security in the region.
[25:22] Robin Davies: I'd like to just, I guess, take a step back and think about the whole agricultural research system. What's your perception of how sustainable the current agricultural research funding model is? I mean, you're dealing with extremely difficult challenges. As you say, the institutions have all moved beyond increasing production and are now looking at resilience, nutrition, sustainability in a much more serious way. And yet, it seems to me, the level of investment, level of public investment in the whole agricultural research system has remained quite stagnant. What do you think needs to change?
[26:09] Bram Govaerts: We need to at least double those investments and do it rapidly, to be very clear. I think the whole setup of the model is flawed in its essence that we're charging and we are loading on agriculture more and more functions, right? Climate change adaptation, biodiversity, etc., but we are not accompanying that broader functionality with additional investments.
So I think the whole setup on how we invest in agriculture and how we do that vis-à-vis education and national and international security, etc., needs to change. We really need to make clear that the primary sector is the basis for development, and that is worth a lot.
Now, agriculture is a bit silent in that sense, and a lot of our research is about avoiding something from happening, and that is very difficult sometimes to keep funding going for avoiding something from happening, because it never happens. So you don't see the impact. The problem is, when it happens in agriculture, it's too late, and it's many times very difficult and very costly to fix.
So how do we visualise better those avoidances from happening, especially under climate change? This is going to be very important. So climate change investments, national and international security investments, health investments, because food is medicine, and you could calculate and say, what actually is the cost of not having our food system providing healthy food for social security or for medical bills, right?
So I think there's a setup to be done in the agricultural sector to better communicate with those other sectors and do joint investments.
[27:53] Robin Davies: And is part of the problem that point we discussed at the beginning, that a lot of the funding for the system at the moment comes essentially from charitable sources, ODA or philanthropy, which seems bizarre?
[28:06] Bram Govaerts: Yeah, I'm absolutely convinced that we should be way more clear about the very hardcore economic value, the hardcore well-being value. So not do it as an afterthought, and that agriculture is still a stability factor for the most developed countries.
So how do we shift away from this is ODA or development aid, vis-à-vis this is of a global interest to keep the stability? I think we saw some signals of that with the Ukraine-Russian war, right? That disruption in just one place - that could be in the future because of climate change, for example - is disrupting the total ecosystem. And some of the conflicts in the world come because of that. One conflict has a ripple effect through the food system. In other areas where food is all of a sudden no longer available, it creates unrest, etc.
So really being very clear and transparent about the hard economic value of the research we do, the hard global stability value of the research we do would require actually private sector investment and public sector investment in a prioritised way. Companies can no longer take it for granted that the grain, which is the basis for all of their food products, be it corn, be it wheat, be it millets, just arrive at the door of their plant. Business continuity is a hard fact, and they should invest hard dollars in that economic stability. It's in their own interest just to keep the business going.
[29:38] Robin Davies: Bram, well, thank you very much. I think we'll leave it there. That was really good, and thank you again for making time.
[29:46] Bram Govaerts: Thanks a lot. It's a pleasure, as always.
Amita Monterola: Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University’s Development Policy Centre. Our producers are Robin Davies, Amita Monterola, Jackie Hanafie and Finn Clarke. You can read and subscribe to our daily blogs on aid, international development and the Pacific at devpolicy.org, and you can follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter. You can send us feedback and ideas for episodes to devpolicy@anu.edu.au.