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
Website: http://www.icarda.cgiar.org

24 December 2003
For more information contact: S.Varma@cgiar.org
Meeting of the Plant Genetic Resources Committee
for Central Asia and the Caucasus

A Regional Plant Genetic Resources (PGR) Coordination Meeting for Central Asia and the Caucasus (CAC) was held from 8 to 11 December 2003 in Tashkent. Twenty-nine representatives of PGR Units from the eight CAC countries as well as genetic resource scientists from ICARDA, Australia and CGIAR-PFU Office attended the meeting.
     Dr Sherali Nurmatov, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Water Resources and Director General of the Uzbek Scientific Production Center for Agriculture, inaugurated the meeting. In his address, he assured the participants of his


Dr Sherali Nurmatov (third from left) and Dr Raj Paroda (center) opened the Coordination Meeting.
Government’s full support to PGR activities in the region. Dr Raj Paroda, Regional Coordinator, ICARDA-CAC and Head, PFU-CGIAR, chaired the inaugural session. He emphasized the importance of strengthening plant genetic resources conservation activities in the region. He said he was happy to see that the governments of CAC countries are actively working on establishing National Gene Banks.
     The PGR annual report was presented by Dr Ken Street, Agricultural Ecologist, ACIAR Project Coordinator, ICARDA; and Dr Zakir Khalikulov, Consultant-Scientist, CGIAR-PFU. Representatives from all the eight CAC countries presented country status reports on their collaboration with ICARDA. Dr Mackay, Curator, Australian Winter Cereals Collection, made a presentation on “Plant Genetic Resources in Australia.”
     The participants agreed to complete the inventory of ICARDA’s mandate crops by the end of April 2004. Also, a PGR web-page will become functional in early 2004. The workplan for the next year was discussed and finalized.

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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