. . . technology-related research that improves scientific methods

Other technology-related projects that have involved the USA include Cooperative development of statistical methods useful for agricultural research in the dry areas and Production of PCR primers for detection of viruses. The former is a project with scientists from USDA/ARS, and the latter with the National Germplasm Resources Laboratory.
    USAID Linkage Funds are intended to facilitate collaboration between ICARDA and US Universities. Collaboration between Yale University and ICARDA was initiated in 1997 on the dynamics of land use and vegetation in South West Asia by the use of different categories of remote sensing products, mainly LANDSAT and AVHRR. By developing innovative technologies for interpreting remote sensing data, the project aims to explain land cover change in terms of climatic variations and trends of environmental degradation. The project provides opportunities for US scientists in the field of remote sensing to establish long-term contacts with international centers and national institutions in South West Asia and provides them with access to data sources and ground verification that they would not be able to obtain otherwise. The Center for Earth Observations at Yale is assisting ICARDA in expanding its remote-sensing capabilities and providing assistance in training in image analysis.
     ICARDA is also working with Texas Agricultural Experiment Station and Texas A&M University on a project called Cooperation on crop improvement and natural resource management, which covers GIS, remote-sensing, crop simulation models and natural resources databases. An Almanac Characterization Tool, a piece of GIS software that allows users to map, manipulate and display data results based on characterization routines within the software, has been developed for Syria. Datasets covering topics such as Population, Soils, Infrastructure, Ecology, Hydrology, Cultural, Agricultural and Climatic are included.