adi Abou Grouf. Or, in English, Father of Grooves. It is an apt description of this steep wadi which descends from the North Egyptian plateau to the relatively fertile coastal plain below, overlooking the Mediterranean a few miles east of Marsa Matrouh in North-West Egypt.
     Marsa Matrouh is a resort town. It is easy to see why; a long, attractive beach curves round a sea which, even in winter, is a quite startling blue. The town stands on a coastal plain which varies in depth; it can be as little as a kilometer or two, but generally runs about five kilometers inland. Behind it rises a scarp of 100 meters or so which runs right along the coast. Behind this scarp is rangeland--a vast area with little vegetation and poor soil, but not desert. Down the scarp run the wadis. Wadi Abou Grouf is one of the most dramatic. Halfway up, one turns a bend to be confronted with a wall of rock 60 meters in depth. It is indeed surmounted by a deep groove, eroded by water pouring off the rangeland above--hence the name; another wadi is called Wadi Om El-Shaitan (mother of the devil), but no one seems to remember the story behind that one...
     It is through these wadis that the rainfall, such as it is, cascades off the bare plateau towards the coastal plain below. It can be forceful; the rain may be sparse, but in the Mediterranean region it often falls all at once. The result can be savage erosion and, once every 15 or 20 years, a flash flood--bad news for anyone who was trying to grow something in the wadi below.
At midday on a clear winter's day, as one stands in the now-dry wadi, the sea below is a spectacular color. Above, on top of the rock wall in the distance, a group of 15 or 20 figures emerge against the pale blue sky and starts to walk purposefully towards the steppe above. Their task: to ensure that this area is made as productive as possible--without disturbing the delicate balance of land and water resources.

he task is an urgent one throughout this part of Egypt. To tackle it, the Egyptian Government started the Matrouh Resource Management Project (MRMP) in 1994. The Project will continue until 2001, and is financed by the World Bank/International Development Association. ICARDA's role is to provide consultancy and technical backstopping for the project. The group walking along the edge of the escarpment on this warm winter day is composed of a number of specialists from MRMP, and four scientists from ICARDA. They are drawn from a wide spread of disciplines. They need to be, for they are dealing with three different agroecological zones and mixed farming systems, and they must treat them as a whole.
     MRMP's Director General, Mr Abdel Wahab El-Weteedy, believes strongly that development must be multidisciplinary. "You don't get much development without that," he says. He also emphasizes that the ultimate goal of MRMP is to eliminate poverty. "Don't look for poverty along the seashore," he urges the ICARDA team. "In the escarpment, people are very poor. They have few resources, and little access to services such as health." He feels strongly that there has been real progress in the project over the last year, but stresses the size of the task.  "Six years," he says, "will not be enough."
      The project area extends for about 300 km along the coast, and 60 km inland. Unlike most of Egypt, the area can support rainfed agriculture, but it is on the margin; there is about 140 mm of annual rainfall on the coast, but this drops by half just 20 km inland. The coastal strip is not bad for agriculture; the soil is capable of holding water, both from the scarce rain and from runoff from the steppe above. But this strip is generally about 5 km deep at best, and some of it is now built on. Behind it, for about 10 km, there is a zone about 10 km deep where agriculture is possible, based on a mixlivestock; where sufficient water accumulates in wadis and contours, it is                                 

possible to grow fruit trees. Finally, behind the escarpment, is the steppe, or rangeland, where people depend on livestock, supplemented by scattered patches of barley in very shallow depressions. This area is threatened with desertification.
      Wadi Abou Grouf is in the escarpment and presents an excellent opportunity for integrated, multidisciplinary teamwork. That is why MRMP's Deputy Director General, Dr Sobhi El-Naggar, has selected it for today's exercise. "I want to focus more and more on work in the field," he says. Like Mr El-Weteedy, he thinks that MRMP has moved faster towards its goals in the last few months than it ever has before, but there is much to be done; he wants to strengthen the capacity of the watershed staff. This is where the ICARDA team can help.