CARDA and its sister Center the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI), and their partners, have established a plant genetic resources network to coordinate conservation of Central Asia's genetic heritage. Known as the Central Asian Plant Genetic Resources Network, it emerged from a meeting in Tashkent in late October 1996.
        And it looks as if, through its long-standing contacts, ICARDA has managed to find a donor to strengthen this network further. This assistance would take the form of a project, Preservation and utilization of unique pulse and cereal genetic resources of the Vavilov Institute.
       Conservation of  agrobiodiversity--the raw material of  tomorrow's future food crops--is of particular importance in harsh environments. The subject was covered in some depth in Caravan No.4. This is as true of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tadjikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan as it is of anywhere else. The region has undergone decades of monocropping for high cereals and cotton output, reflecting its role as a commodity supplier for the old Soviet Union, and this, along with environmental damage through lavish water use (which led to the draining of the Aral Sea), overgrazing and rangeland degradation, can lead to serious

• The absence of computer support in the documentation
   and information system.
• Insufficient contacts and germplasm exchange within the
   region and with VIR.
• Lack of training opportunities.
• Budgetary constraints.
• Insufficient interaction with the international community.
       The new network will split its activities into five working groups: field crops; industrial crops; range, pasture and forage crops; horticultural crops; and forest trees. It will also make an early start on the training aspect with a course on genetic resources conservation and documentation. Scientists will be brought there from VIR to help with the course. It will be conducted jointly by ICARDA, IPGRI and VIR.
       ICARDA and VIR have also drawn up a provisional collaborative workplan for 1997/98. This includes  harmonization of databases, so that the two institutions can identify what each one has and hasn't got, making exchange easier. At the moment it is sometimes unclear what VIR is holding in St Petersburg, and what is at their Southern genebank at Krasnodar. Also, ICARDA will support the participation of  VIR scientists in two conferences being held jointly with IPGRI in Syria in the spring of 1997, one on Triticae and the other on the origins of agriculture.
       In 1998 it is hoped that there will be joint evaluation trials of VIR and ICARDA germplasm at ICARDA to see what VIR has that would be useful in the West Asia and North Africa region.  A visiting scientist from VIR will be appointed to work at ICARDA for six months on the joint evaluation trial.
       In addition, ICARDA scientists will visit VIR during the season to work with documentation harmonization and develop future collaborative research activities in collection, conservation and evaluation of germplasm.
       It is this work that would be supported by the project currently under consideration for funding by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR). This will, if approved, involve ICARDA, VIR, and another long-standing partner of ICARDA's--CLIMA, the Centre for Legumes in Mediterranean Agriculture, a Commonwealth-supported institute in Australia. CLIMA and ICARDA have worked together on the transfer of ICARDA germplasm to build up the Australian lentil industry, among other things (see Cobber, Digger...and transgenic lupins, in Caravan No. 2).
       The project would reconstruct the link between the Central Asian Republics and VIR. ICARDA will multiply seed from Central Asia; it will then go to VIR, which cannot multiply all types at St Petersburg because of environmental constraints--it is too far north.
       It will also thus again have access to Central Asian germplasm, as it did before the breakup of the Soviet Union. ICARDA will ensure that the germplasm is safety-duplicated. And germplasm will go to CLIMA in Australia for pest and disease screening; the information thus gained will come back to all the partners in the project. In the meantime, a similar exercise will take place with the priceless collection held at VIR, which was a pioneer in germplasm collection and conservation in the early part of this century.
       ICARDA is well placed to work with partners in the former Soviet Union. Two of GRU's senior staff, including the first author, speak Russian!

Dr Jan Valkoun is Head, and Dr Larry Robertson Legume

loss of wild relatives of crops as well as locally-adapted farmers' varieties.
       The October meeting was attended by three-member delegations from each of the five Central Asian republics, along with participants from the prestigious Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry (VIR), based in St. Petersburg. ICARDA was represented by senior staff from its Genetic Resources Unit. The other body at the meeting was IPGRI; this has a regional program based at ICARDA's Aleppo headquarters, but IPGRI's European operation is also involved in this through its forestry network, FORAGEN.
       It's an exciting new collaboration, because the potential for swapping germplasm could be excellent. There is quite a similarity in the environments of the Central Asian and West Asia/North Africa regions, so there are bound to be opportunities for plant breeders on both sides to get their hands on new raw material.
       First, though, we need to harmonize systems and, where necessary, provide training and support to our colleagues. Unlike many areas, Central Asia does have expertise in biodiversity conservation. This is reflected in the existence of the Uzbek Institute of Botany,  which holds more than one million herbarium items from  Central Asia, and the Uzbek Institute of Plant Industry.
       The latter was established in the 1920s by the great crop researcher, Vavilov, as the Central Asian branch of the Vavilov Institute. With approximately 55,000 germplasm accessions, the Institute is the largest genetic resources center in the whole region. Unfortunately, the germplasm is stored in inadequate short-term facilities. But this will change if the plan materializes for building a new gene bank at the Uzbek Institute of Genetics with Japanese support.
       There are real constraints, however. Those highlighted by the October meeting were:
• Lack of adequate storage facilities.