Poor seed supply can be a major constraint to agricultural development. National programs sometimes still do not provide the right quality and quantity to farmers.
But for some years now, ICARDA has been working with national programs to strengthen seed supply. Now ICARDA’s Train the Trainers project, set to begin on 1 January 1996, should make a significant difference to the levels of expertise available in the West Asia and North Africa (WANA) region. It will concentrate on multiplication of seed technologists, rather than just seeds.
The project, which is receiving generous assistance from the Netherlands overseas aid organization, DGIS, will also be applied to the newly-independent states of the former Soviet Union. DGIS will contribute US$ 1.2m.
ICARDA’s Seed Unit, and its national partners, are already heavily committed to training national staff in seed technology. However, the DGIS-funded project will address some of the drawbacks of the way training has been implemented so far.
“The conventional approach relies on a large number of regional, sub-regional and in-country courses,” explains the Head of ICARDA’s Seed Unit, Dr Tony van Gastel. “It certainly works, especially with the good support we get from national partners.
“The trouble is that it just doesn’t reach enough people in the national programs. What they need are their own trainers. The new project will allow us to give intensive courses for representatives of national programs, who can then go back and organize their own training in their own countries. They will then be able to do so with a minimum of support from ICARDA.”
In fact, ICARDA started developing this approach several years ago. A train-the-trainers program in Egypt, organized jointly with the Central Administration for Seed, the National Agricultural Research Project and the Agricultural Research Council in that country, was successfully completed in 1993 with support from GTZ. Starting in 1990, six trainers were trained in methodology for field inspection of wheat-seed fields. Over the next two years, 111 field inspectors were trained in nine courses. In 1992 a similar project was organized on a regional basis with the University of Jordan, again with GTZ participation; this covered seed testing and seed health, and covered four countries and 64 trainees.
Activities under the new project during 1996-1999 will include courses on field inspection methodology, seed processing and storage, and seed-health testing; training seminars on legume seed production, pasture and forage seed production, small-scale seed production, and management of seed programs; and the production of manuals and other materials, in Arabic and French as well as English. By the time the project ends in 1999, 30 trainers will have been trained, and they are expected to conduct at least 12 in-country courses.
The Train the Trainers project is another step forward for ICARDA’s Seed Unit, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. It is committed to raising quality and quantity in seed supply through cooperation with national programs, and also acts as a focal point for the WANA Seed Network. This is a joint effort by all the WANA countries, from the Maghreb to the Mashreq and from Turkey to Sudan, to increase cooperation in seed production. Each country takes responsibility for specific activities; a Steering Committee meets every year to coordinate these. The secretariat is at ICARDA.
“The Train the Trainers project will significantly increase the number and quality of seed-production personnel in the national programs, assuring the development of effective seed programs the supply of good seed,” says Dr van Gastel. “It should also help accelerate the flow of new crop varieties—important, because it is pointless developing productive new lines if the farmers cannot get the seed.
“Moreover, it is a sustainable project. That is key to everything we do at ICARDA’s Seed Unit. Train a man in seed technology, and he can help farmers get better seed....train him to train others in it, and he can help 10 times as many, and go on doing so long after the project has finished. You are planting a seed for the future, as it were.
“We are all most grateful to DGIS for helping with this; and indeed to GTZ and our other partners for their continuing support.”