ICARDA News

INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH IN THE DRY AREAS
P.O. Box 5466, Aleppo, Syria
Phone: (963-21) 2213433, 2213477, 2225112, 2225012
Fax: (963-21) 2213490, 2225105; E-mail: ICARDA@CGIAR.ORG
26 September 2002
For more information contact:S.Varma@cgiar.org
CIMMYT and ICARDA Rediscover
Their Partnership Strength
In a concerted effort to address poverty and food security in Central and West Asia and North Africa (CWANA), Dr Masa Iwanaga, the new Director General of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), based in Mexico, and Prof. Dr Adel El-Beltagy, Director General of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), based in Syria, organized a joint meeting of scientists from both centers in Cairo, 8-9 September.
    Mr Robert Havener and Dr Alex McCalla, ICARDA and CIMMYT Board Chairmen, respectively, were present. They both stressed the importance of the meeting in planning for future joint CIMMYT/ICARDA wheat improvement activities in CWANA.
Senior management and research staff from ICARDA and CIMMYT attended the joint CIMMYT/ICARDA CWANA Program Annual Meeting in Cairo, 8-9 September. Sitting (right to left): Mr Robert Havener, ICARDA Board Chairman; Prof. Dr Adel El-Beltagy, Director General of ICARDA; Dr Masa Iwanaga, Director General of CIMMYT; Dr Alex McCalla, CIMMYT Board Chairman.
Complementarity and cooperation should be the guiding rule in the relationship between both centers, they said.
    The two Directors General stated that after 25 years of cooperation, CIMMYT and ICARDA are in the best position to utilize the new tools of science for wheat improvement and create a synergy with the evolving wheat agendas of national programs, so that the outputs for poor wheat farmers in the region are maximized.
    Dr William Erskine, Assistant Director General for Research; Dr Thomas Blake, Director of the Germplasm Program; Dr Habib Halila, Coordinator of the Nile Valley and Red Sea Regional Program, and several senior scientists from ICARDA; and Dr S. Rajaraman, Director of the Wheat Program, along with several other senior scientists from CIMMYT participated in the meeting. Dr Ronnie Coffman, from Cornell University and a former ICARDA Board Member, served as moderator.
    The meeting was conducted in joint and concurrent sessions. During the joint sessions, scientists from both centers presented an overview of the on-going activities in wheat production improvement in CWANA. Presentations covered breeding, entomology, pathology and agronomy. Dr John Dodds, Advisor to the Director General of ICARDA, presented an overview of intellectual property rights issues in relation to wheat breeding and outputs. Issues related to joint publications and planning, fund-raising and appointment and staff designation were also discussed.
    During the concurrent sessions, the technical staff discussed the plan of work for 2002-2003, the role of each center, and the sources of funding.
    The two centers committed themselves to a single CIMMYT/ ICARDA joint program with renewed enthusiasm to increase wheat production in the different agroecologies of CWANA, with the goal of delivering sustainable wheat production technologies designed to improve rural livelihoods in the region.
    Bread wheat is the principal food source for most people in CWANA. The average person consumes more than 170 kg per year, the highest per capita consumption of wheat in the world. This dependence on wheat, combined with rapid population growth and increasing desertification, make this region the world's largest wheat importer.
    Poor farmers struggling to provide food for a growing population face formidable constraints, the foremost being the lack of water. Most of them depend on meager rainfall to grow their crops. Yields are low and the crop is attacked by a number of diseases and insect pests. Improved wheat varieties resistant to pests and diseases and tolerant to drought, along with techniques for efficient water management, are needed to boost wheat production.
    West Asia is the birthplace of wheat and it remains a treasure trove of wheat wild relatives, which can provide resistance genes. Rapid breeding of these genes into high-yielding, high-quality wheat varieties will improve wheat production around the world.

ICARDA's (www.icarda.org) mission is to improve the welfare of people and alleviate poverty through research and training in dry areas of the developing world by increasing production, productivity, and nutritional quality of food, while preserving and enhancing the natural resource base. ICARDA is a Future Harvest Center.
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