• In Turkey, collaborative projects include research on crop improvement, rhizobiology, pathology, socioeconomics, rehabilitation and management of common village pastures, and farming systems in the Taurus Mountains. Improved cultivars have been registered for farmer cultivation, with yield improvements of 10-30% or more.
• The Taurus Mountains project diversified the options for small farmers to include new crops such as triticale and forage legumes, and new varieties of wheat, barley and chickpea, as well as honey production. Small farms increased their income by up to 25%.
• Community-based rangeland rehabilitation in Central Anatolia was conducted with active farmer participation.
• New varieties of barley (4), wheat (5), chickpea (2) and lentil (2) were released for the dryland areas of Iran; improved production technologies were identified for farmer adoption.
• In Pakistan, the USAID-funded MART/AZR project, completed in 1994, strengthened research capabilities at the Arid Zone Research Institute (AZRI).
• ICARDA supplied germplasm of its mandated crops to researchers in Afghanistan working with FAO, SIDA, and NGOs operating from Pakistan. Nine wheat cultivars (with yield advantages of 14-20% over the local variety in trials) were recently released and adopted by cooperating farmers. National production of wheat has increased from 1.7 million tons in 1993 to 2.8 million tons in 1998.
  

Current Emphasis

Regional Coordinator/Wheat Breeder