Four nations are cooperating in the $8.1 million Agrobiodiversity Project set up by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) of the United Nations Development Program will involve scientists, extensionists and farmers from Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria.
A two-day meeting at the Tel Hadya headquarters of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) thrashed out how the central and nationally-based elements of the agrobiodiversity project will work together.
Over the next five years the project will work closely with farmers and others using their local knowledge at two sites in each of the member countries to identify and maintain valuable landraces (local varieties) and wild relatives of cereals, legumes and fruit trees. This genetic diversity, and the local knowledge about the plants, is under threat from human activities such as adoption of new varieties, land reclamation and overgrazing by livestock.
GEF coordinator Ms Inger Anderson, of the UNDP, said safeguarding a diverse and wide-ranging genetic base for food plants strengthens food security in the arid and semi-arid areas. The conservation of biodiversity in farmer-grown cereals and other crop varieties, as well as the progenitors and wild relatives of these food plants, is particularly important.
Dr John Dodds, Assistant Director General (Research), speaking on behalf of Dr Adel El-Beltagy, Director General of ICARDA, added the region is a major center for the biological diversity of food crops. The maintenance of this biodiversity is an underlying part of the role of the Central Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), of which ICARDA is a member, in alleviating poverty and feeding people. Dr Mahmoud Solh, Director of International Cooperation, said that the project has a strong regional dimension and will be coordinated by ICARDA.
Scientists and officials from the member countries, and from the Arab Center for Studies of the Arid Zones and Dry Lands (ACSAD), based in Damascus, and the regional office of the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI), based at ICARDA, agreed to work together to ensure the maintenance of these plant building blocks for a healthy future. Without access to a variety of sources of genetic material, it might be difficult for plant breeders to develop new crop varieties to meet new future needs.
For more information on the GEF Agrobiodiversity Project, please contact: Dr Jan Valkoun, Head of Genetic Resources Unit at ICARDA. E-mail: J.Valkoun@cgiar.org.