Over 80 varieties of wheat have been released in WANA and South Europe. By almost quadrupling yields in Syria since the 1970s, about 3.5 million hectares of land has been saved, and total impact exceeds more than 500 million dollars per year. Good progress has been made in developing high-yielding and disease-resistant lentil lines in the major lentil-producing countries in WANA as well as South Asia. In Ethiopia, new, improved varieties and production packages of lentil resulted in a 70% yield increase without costly inputs, leading to 42% of farmers in the target areas adopting the new varieties.
        The Center works with national programs on packages of faba-bean technology based on both new cultivars and improved agronomic practices. Farmers in Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia now obtain up to 200% extra yield.
        ICARDA has been working to develop improved cultivars of grass pea that are nutritionally safe. In 1999, several promising lines were identified and shared with national program scientists. Also, through in vitro techniques, new clonal lines are being developed.

        Another strategy is to develop new forage legume production systems for improved livestock productivity with better nutrition. The system introduces vetch in rotation with a cereal to replace monocropping. Vetch provides good-quality feed for sheep and goats, besides raising yields of the following barley or wheat crop because of improved soil fertility and breaking the cycle of cereal diseases and pests. Vetch has been successfully introduced in China, Jordan, Morocco, Syria and Turkey.
        Participatory research, involving farmers in selecting crop genotypes, is increasingly used by ICARDA. For example, in Eritrea where farmers are selecting barleys for further development, the likelihood of variety adoption is much improved.
        More than 100 cultivars of barley developed from ICARDA-supplied germplasm have been released in 34 countries. Improving the nutritional and technological quality of wheat is another important objective in ICARDA's crop improvement work. Biotechnological tools permit the efficient use of the enormous amount of variability existing in the Center's collection of landraces.
        ICARDA's biotech team is working on Hessian fly-resistant durum varieties through the Dryland Durum Wheat Improvement Program, a joint effort with sister center, CIMMYT, and national partners in the region. Morocco has developed new durum cultivars resistant to Hessian fly, and is addressing the problems of root rot, leaf rust and wheat aphids; Tunisia is working on improving durum for resistance to drought; Algeria focuses on crop adaptation to the Atlas high plateau and on grain quality; while Turkey focuses on adaptation to severely-cold areas of the Anatolian plateau, crop nutritional disorders and grain quality.

        Dr El-Beltagy also drew attention to ICARDA's role in promoting in situ conservation as coordinator of a major project on Dryland Agrobiodiversity, in which Syria, Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon are partners. The Project is supported by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) of the United Nations Environment Programme.
        Training is also an essential activity in ICARDA's agenda. Since its inception, ICARDA has trained some 8000 researchers from national programs, including 715 from 45 countries in 1999.
        Prof. Dr El-Beltagy emphasized the debt of gratitude owed by ICARDA to the donors supporting its work. "On behalf of the Center I would like to say 'Thank You' to all of them," he said.