AUTHOR'S GUIDELINES (BASED ON ICARDA STYLE GUIDE Ver. 2002)

Abstract
The abstract or summary of your paper should not exceed 300 words NOT including title, authors, and affiliation of each author. The abstract may not contain any figures or tables. Please use MS Word 98 and above. Use Times New Roman font 12 pt with single spacing with 2.5 cm (1 inch) margins all around. The title should be in bold. The author(s) names with initials should be in the next line. Superscripts may be used to designate affiliation of authors if different from each other. An example is provided below:

Conservation of plant biodiversity in natural habitats
A.B. Damania¹, A. Amri², and A. Shehadeh<sup>3

1</sup> Genetic Resources Conservation Program (GRCP), University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA. Email: abdamania@ucdavis.edu
² Regional Office, International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), P.O. Box 950764, Amman, Jordan. Email: a.amri@CGIAR.ORG
³ Genetic Resources Unit, International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), P.O. Box 5466, Aleppo, Syria. Email: a.shehadeh@CGIAR.ORG

Conservation of plant biodiversity in natural habitats, in situ, is becoming a concern of the world community. United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED)'s Agenda 21, which was adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, urged nations to take responsibility for conservation of indigenous biodiversity, including the wider gene pool of crops. Syria, which is located in the heart of one of three world nuclear centers of agricultural origin, is rich in wild ancestors and relatives of globally or regionally important crops: wheat, barley, lentil, chickpea, vetch, chickling (Lathyrus spp.) and annual medics. These wild species have been growing in these areas for millennia and during their long history of existence they have accumulated a number of genes for adaptation for tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses. These genes may be needed in current or future crop improvement programs.

Unfortunately, a part of the original biodiversity in this region has been lost due to several adverse factors. Among the most determinate are overgrazing by small ruminants and a loss of the natural habitat caused by changes in traditional farming practice (cultivation of grazing land, fallow replacement), by urbanization and other human activities. The loss of genetic diversity in a crop gene pool is called "genetic erosion". This negative trend is especially severe in most wild crop progenitors, not only in Syria, but also in other countries of the Near East. Recently, the Syrian national program, in collaboration with international centers, has conducted a number of collection trips during the last two decades to locate and sample the remaining populations for conservation in gene banks (ex situ). Although this joint effect yielded a number of new genebank accessions, the trips conducted and subsequent studies revealed two factors for concern.

Paper Manuscript
Please use MS Word 98 and above, and Times New Roman font 12 pt with double spacing and 2.5 cm (1 inch) margins on all sides. The title should be in bold. The author(s) names with initials should be in the next line. Superscripts may be used to designate affiliation of authors if different from each other as in the Abstract. The Corresponding Author should be marked with an asterisk (*). The length of the paper should not be more than 4000 words excluding title, affiliations, references and tables. The editors reserve the right to edit papers that are longer than required.

Title
The title should tell the reader what the paper is about. Therefore, it should be brief and informative. Use common names for crops and avoid abbreviations. The usual limit for a title is 12 nouns (not counting " the", "of", "and", etc.).

Footnotes
Footnotes are generally not encouraged, but may be used if absolutely necessary. Number any footnotes consecutively.

References
References in the text of the paper should follow the author-date system (e.g., Johnson, 1978; Johnson and Jones 1975; Green et al. 1980) with no comma between author name and date. Use the following examples in references which should be listed alphabetically at the end of your paper.

Journal article
Damania, A.B. 2002. The Hindustani center of origin of important plants. Asian Agri-History 6: 333-341.

Murphy, P.J., J.R. Witcombe, P.R. Shewry and B.J. Miflin. 2002. The origin of six-rowed barley from the Western Himalaya. Euphytica 31: 183-192.

Books
Brues, A.M. and G.A. Sacher. 1952. Mineral Cycling in South-eastern Ecosystems. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, USA.

Rawson, H. 1981. A Dictionary of Euphemisms and Other Doubletalk. Crown Publishers, NY, USA.

Chapter in a Book
Bari, A., A. Della and J. Konopka. 1998. Locating diversity using germplasm passport data and herbarium records: case of Aegilops in Cyprus. Pages 53-56 in Use of Triticeae in Wheat Improvement (A.A. Jaradat, ed.). Science Publishers, Enfield, NH, USA.

N.B.:- Do not capitalize the chapter title, but capitalize the book title.

Chapter in Symposium Proceedings
Amri, A., J. Valkoun, M. Ajlouni, R. Assi, Y. Sbeith and A. Saad. 2003. Promotion of in situ conservation of dryland agrobiodiversity in West Asia. Pages 38-39 in Sustainable Development and Management of Dry Lands in the 21st Century: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Development of Dry Lands. 14-17 September 2003, Tehran, Iran.

Hawtin, G.C. 1982. The genetic improvement of faba bean. Pages 15-32 in Faba Bean Improvement: Proceedings of the Faba Bean Conference (G. Hawtin and C. Webb, eds.), ICARDA/IFAD Nile Valley Project, 7-11 March 1981, Cairo, Egypt. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, The Hague, The Netherlands.

N.B.:- In the second example there is no need to repeat the sponsor's address in publisher's place as the sponsor's address and the location of the conference are the same, and the sponsor is the publisher of the proceedings volume.

Entire Proceedings
Hawtin, G. and C. Webb (eds.). 1982. Faba Bean Improvement: Proceedings of the Faba Bean Conference, ICARDA/IFAD Nile Valley project, 7-11 March 1981, Cairo, Egypt. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, The Hague, The Netherlands.

ICRISAT (International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics). 1975. Proceedings of the International Workshop on Grain Legumes. ICRISAT, 18-20 January, Hyderabad, India. ICRISAT, Patancheru, AP, India.

N.B.:- The sponsoring institute takes the author's place if there are no editors.

Unpublished reports and papers
Avoid quoting the above

Personal Communication
Citations referring to communications which cannot be retrieved by readers should not be included in the reference list. Such communications (personal letters or verbal discussions, etc.) should be mentioned in the text as follows: …. as was recently discovered (A.B. Damania, ICARDA 1999 pers. comm.).

Articles "in press" or "under preparation"
Journal articles, book chapters that are accepted for publication but not published as yet can be included in the references list, but they will be without volume and/or page numbers. In this case the words (in press or under preparation) should be at the end of the reference.

Tables
Each table title should be self-explanatory. All tables should be numbered consecutively and referred to in the text at appropriate places as Table 12 (for example). Do NOT embed your table in the body of the paper. Include it at the end of your paper or in separate files. There should be only one table per page.

Figures
Each figure title should be self-explanatory. All figures should be numbered consecutively and referred to in the text at appropriate places as Fig. 11 (for example). Do NOT embed your figure in the body of the paper. Include it at the end of your paper or in separate files. There should be only one figure per page.

Photographs
Photographs can be submitted as *.jpeg or *.tiff files only. Color photographs do not reproduce well in black and white. However, if the subject is bright they can be included.

Grammar and spellings
Please use grammar and spellings according to Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary.

Numbers
Use a numeral or numerals
For expressing any number that immediately precedes a standard unit of measure
(abbreviated):

3 g     18 mm     300 m²

For a date, an expression of time, a page number, a percentage, a decimal quantity, or a numerical designation:
4 March 1993     the time is 08:15              page 218
37.8 g               a magnification of 50          27%

For a number implying arithmetical manipulation
18 multiplied by 2     a factor of 2

In most situations not mentioned above, use words for numbers one through nine and numerals for larger numbers:
Seven plants     two flowers     15 leaves     28 pods

In a series containing some numbers of 10 or more and some less than 10, use numerals for all:
Germplasm scientists collected 5 genotypes of chickpea, 25 of durum wheat, 19 of faba bean, and 7 of lentil from a village near Aleppo.

Do not begin a sentence with a numeral:
Twenty-five seeds were sown in each pot.

If two related numbers occur at the beginning of a sentence, only the first need be spelled out:
Fifty or 60 seeds were sown in each pot.

In writing a large number ending in several zeros, either substitute a word for part of the number or add an appropriate prefix to a basic unit of measurement:
1.6 million (NOT 1,600,000) 23     µg (NOT 0.000023 g)

Use numerals for all numbers referring to figures and tables:
Fig. 22.     Table 13.

In general, use the decimal system rather than fractions:
About one-third of the plants in the field survived the disease.
All surviving plants (1/3 of those sprayed) were selected for crosses.

Dates and time
Write the day, month and year in this form:
12 April 1993 (NOT April 12, 1993)

Periods or seasons extending over parts of two successive calendar years should be indicated by the use of a solidus (forward slash):
The 1980/81 season     winter of 1979/80     fiscal year 1992/93

Use a hyphen to indicate continuing numbers - dates, time, or reference numbers:
1985-92
9:00-10:00 a.m.
pp. 40-55.
From 1985 to 1992 (NOT from 1985-92)
From 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
From April to May
Between 1985 and 1992 (NOT between 1975-92)

Spell out particular centuries:
Twentieth century (NOT 20th century)

Use full number for decades:
1960s (NOT 60s or sixties)