The Nile Valley and Red Sea Regional Program (NVRSRP) operates through ICARDA's Regional Office in Cairo, Egypt. Its overall objective is to increase the incomes of smallholder farmers in Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Yemen through the improvement of productivity and sustainability of the production systems, while conserving natural resources and enhancing the research capacity of national scientists.

Collaborative projects
The crop commodity improvement projects within NVRSRP include: "Food Legumes and Cereals Improvement in Egypt," "Control of Wild Oats in Cereals and Other Winter Crops in Egypt," "Strengthening Client-Oriented Research and Technology Dissemination for Sustainable Production of Cool-Season Food and Forage Legumes in Ethiopia," and "On-Farm Demonstration of Improved Production Packages for Wheat in Sudan." Several activities address sustainable natural resource management, such as the "Natural Resource Management Project" in Egypt and the "Mountain Terrace Conservation Project" in Yemen. In addition, the "Problem-Solving Regional Networks Project," started earlier in all four countries, continued to operate with funding from the national programs.
     Other projects, undertaken in the NVRSRP countries and managed from ICARDA headquarters, cover such areas as integrated pest management in faba bean (Egypt), integrated cereal disease management (Eritrea), genetically engineered stress resistance in lentil and chickpea (Egypt), on-farm water husbandry (Yemen and Egypt), grass pea improvement (Ethiopia), village-based participatory breeding (Yemen and Egypt), and the development of biotechnological research in the Arab States (Sudan and Egypt).
     The following new collaborative projects were approved for funding and started activities in the last quarter of 2002:

• "Enhancing Food Security in the Nile Valley and Red Sea Region: Technology Generation and Dissemination for Sustainable Production of Cereals and Cool-Season Food Legumes," which involves Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Yemen. The project is funded by IFAD, and builds on the previous regional activities under the Problem-Solving Networks.
• "Developing Faba Bean Expert System in WANA Region," with Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan from the NVRSP region, and three other countries from WANA.
• "Leveraging NEPER Wheat Expert System for WANA Region." Seven countries are involved, among which two (Egypt and Sudan) are members of NVRSRP.
• An interim phase of NVRSRP on the "Development of Sustainable Agricultural Production Systems in Egypt through Resource Management" has been funded through the EU Food Aid Counterpart Program for a period of two years.

New partnership agreements
ICARDA signed a Twinning Agreement with the Central Laboratory for Agricultural Expert Systems (CLAES) of the Agricultural Research Center (ARC) and a Cooperation Agreement with the Desert Research Center (DRC) in Egypt. The agreement with CLAES aims to strengthen the existing research and training collaboration. The focus will be on the development of Expert Systems on crop and livestock production in dry areas, with emphasis on environmental stresses (drought, heat and salinity) and biotic stresses caused by pests and diseases. The agreement with DRC will focus on research and training on the optimal use of natural resources, improvement of rangeland and livestock production, and arresting soil degradation in dry and desert areas.

Workshops and coordination meetings
ICARDA cosponsored an international symposium on "Optimum Resource Utilization in Salt-Affected Ecosystems in Arid and Semi-Arid Regions," in Cairo, Egypt, in April. The Symposium was organized by the Desert Research Center, Egypt. Participants from 21 countries and representatives from the International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA), Arab Authority for Agricultural Investment and Development (AAAID), Arab Center for the Studies of Arid Zones and Dry Lands (ACSAD), Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA), German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ), and UNESCO attended the symposium. ICARDA also cosponsored a regional "Biosafety Development Workshop," organized by the Agricultural Genetic Engineering Research Institute (AGERI) in Egypt in April. The other cosponsors were the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO). More than 50 representatives from 11 countries attended the workshop and reported on the current situation of biotechnology and biosafety regulations and systems in their countries. ICARDA made a major presentation "The Potential Benefits of Biotechnology Research for Farmers Worldwide." An international conference on "Biotechnology and Sustainable Development: Voices of the South and North" was held in Bibliotheca Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt, in March. It was cosponsored by the Government of Egypt, Biovision, FAO, World Bank, OECD, CGIAR, ICARDA, AGERI, AAST, KISR, NAS and TWAS. The multi-faceted biotechnology debate covered scientific, ethnical and safety issues, and regulations, intellectual property rights, trade and economic issues. An ICARDA/UNU/ UNESCO international workshop on "Sustainable Management of Marginal Drylands: Application of Indigenous Knowledge for Coastal Drylands," was organized in Egypt in September.
     ICARDA and CIMMYT's joint CWANA wheat program Annual Meeting, held in Cairo in September, was attended by the two Centers' Board Chairmen, Directors General, Directors of Research and several scientists associated with wheat production improvement. Dr Ronnie Coffman, former Board Member of ICARDA, moderated the meeting. The objective was to further harmonize the activities in wheat improvement in the CWANA region.

     The Twelfth NVRSRP Regional Coordination Meeting was held in Cairo, Egypt in October. Directors of NARS of Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan and Yemen, in addition to more than 100 scientists from the four countries, senior scientists from ICARDA, and representatives from the Arab Authority for Agricultural Investment and Development (AAAID), FAO, the African Development Bank (AfDB), and the German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ) attended the meeting. Participants discussed the work plans of the newly approved project entitled "Enhancing Food Security in the Nile Valley and Red Sea Region: Technology Generation and Dissemination for Sustainable Production of Cereals and Cool-Season Food Legumes," besides reviewing the work of the past season. This was followed by the Steering Committee Meeting of NVRSRP, which was attended by the Directors General of the NARS of Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan and Yemen, and ICARDA representatives.
     National coordination meetings were held in Sudan, Egypt, and Yemen. A large number of scientists and research managers from the respective national programs and collaborating universities, and from ICARDA

participated in the meetings. Presentations covered key aspects of collaborative research. Plans for the following season were developed. The meetings emphasized the need for appropriate government policies for achieving rapid adoption of improved technologies developed through joint research.

     A follow-up regional training workshop on "Utilization of Expert Systems in Agricultural Research and Production" was jointly organized with the Central Laboratory for Agricultural Expert Systems (CLAES) in Egypt, in October, within the Twinning Agreement signed between ICARDA and CLAES. Thirteen senior scientists from Egypt, Ethiopia, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Qatar, Syria, Sudan, and Yemen participated in the workshop, which aimed at assessing the impact of the course that CLAES and ICARDA had been jointly conducting for the last five years.
     At the request of the Ministry of Agriculture in Ethiopia, ICARDA conducted an in-country training course on water harvesting techniques. Eighteen participants from various agricultural development research services attended. Traveling workshops on wheat, barley, wild oats, and resource management were organized in Egypt in March-April, with the participation of scientists from ARC and other institutions. The participants visited research activities in ARC research stations and demonstration plots in farmers' fields. Two traveling workshops were organized in Ethiopia, one on the improvement of lathyrus production, and the other on highland cool-season legumes. More than 30 participants from 12 research stations, as well as representatives from the extension department of the Ministry of Agriculture, participated in the workshops. A Regional Food Legumes Traveling Workshop was held in Egypt in March. Forty-five researchers from the region, along with researchers from ICARDA, Tunisia and Australia, visited various research activities and on-farm trials and demonstrations at research stations and in farmers' fields.

Technical Assistance/Outsourcing
ICARDA outsourced the coordination of a regional training course on "Water Management and Optimum Use of Water Resources in the Arid Region," organized by the Center in collaboration with JICA in Aleppo, April-June, to a water/irrigation scientist from the Soil, Water and Environment Research Institute of ARC, Egypt. Seven participants from Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Yemen participated in the course along with their counterparts from other CWANA countries.
     A team of three senior scientists from ARC, Egypt, visited Aleppo to work with their counterparts at ICARDA on the analysis of the data collected during the last five years from the Long-Term Trials (LTT) and Long-Term Monitoring (LTM) activities. It is expected that this analysis of data would lead to recommendations for the farmers in both the "old" and "new lands" in Egypt.
     A nematologist from CNR, Institute di Protezione delle Piante, Italy, visited Ethiopia to assist nematologists at the Ethiopian Agricultural Research Organization (EARO) in surveying nematode infestation of cool-season. This activity was conducted within the Ethiopian Legume Project funded by the Government of the Netherlands and implemented by EARO.
     Within the framework of the Twinning Agreement with AGERI, a systematic survey was jointly organized in the rainfed areas in North Coast of Egypt in June by AGERI, ICARDA and the Matrouh Resource Management Project (MRMP) to assess factors leading to the deterioration of fig trees there.

Interregional Cooperation
Four officials from the Ministry of Agriculture and L'Office de L'Elevage et des Pâturages (Livestock and Pasture Authority) of Tunisia visited Egypt in February to learn about the institutional aspects of livestock production in Egypt.
     ICARDA organized a 10-day study to Syria in May for a team of two farmers and one scientist from MRMP, Egypt, to expose them to the activities of barley participatory breeding, and to interact with Syrian farmers involved in this activity.
     The Arabian Peninsula Regional Program (APRP) and NVRSRP, in collaboration with the Central Laboratory for Agricultural Climate (CLAC) and for Agricultural Expert Systems (CLAES) of ARC, Egypt, organized a training course on "Information Technology Systems for Agriculture and Natural Resource Management in the Arabian Peninsula (ITAP)—Weather Station Network and Expert Systems." The course was held at CLAES and CLAC in Cairo, in June, and was attended by 14 participants from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Scientists and researchers from CLAES and CLAC conducted the course.