CGIAR Central Asia and the Caucasus

Significant Achievements

The significant achievements under the Program for CAC during the last nine years, starting May, 1998, are briefly presented in this section.

A. Partnerships

• Since independence of the CAC countries in 1991, this Program enabled NARS to resume their scientific interactions and provided a neutral forum for the much needed interface among them. This eco-regional program also enabled nine CG Centers and three ARIs to work together as a system-wide initiative to address important research priorities and capacity building of NARS. Regular exchange of information, planning, coordination and monitoring, through annual meetings of the Steering Committee, enabled the Program to have research prioritization conducted as a bottom up initiative so that on-going programs are oriented to address these priorities.
• Five of the nine CG Centers involved (ICARDA, CIMMYT, Bioversity International, IWMI, and CIP) and three ARIs (AVRDC, ICBA and MSU) have strengthened their programs in the region by posting their staff and attracted additional donor funding for new projects. Others are supporting the Program through their core budget and scientists from their Headquarters.
• The Regional Forum of the CAC countries (CACAARI) has also been established, which is now forging linkages among the NARS and other international organizations at the global level. PFU provided facilitation to CACAARI in order to strengthen partnership among NARS. Also, the CACAARI Secretariat has been established and a Constitution has been adopted by the elected executive committee of the Forum.
• The Program organized several meetings with donor organizations. Special meetings on the CGIAR Program for Central Asia and the Caucasus (CAC) are held during CGIAR AGM every year. The last such event was held during CGIAR AGM 2006 on 4 December in Washington, DC. The meeting, co-sponsored by the World Bank, IFAD, USAID and ICARDA, was attended by representatives of various donor organizations CG Centers as Consortium partners, and CGIAR Science Council. All participants highly commended the achievements of this project and assured their support to the CAC program. In future also, a high-level fund-raising activity is planned for the Program based on the request of the NARS partners and the Steering Committee Meeting of the Program.

B. Research

Plant Genetic Resources

• The Central Asian and Trans-Caucasian Network for Plant Genetic Recourses (CATCN-PGR) has been established along with eight Plant Genetic Resources Units on documentation and data management in each of the eight countries.
• A Regional Strategy for Conservation and Use of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture was developed and endorsed by all the countries of the region.
• In-situ conservation of fruit and nut trees in Central Asia is being supported. Through 18 joint collection missions in different countries, as many as 3,117 valuable cultivars and wild species have been collected.
• The activities on genetic resources conservation in CAC region are gaining momentum. At present, all CAC countries have functional gene banks.
• In the absence of germplasm exchange with institutions in Russia, including VIR in Saint-Petersburg, this program provided an opportunity for fresh inflow of germplasm material to the NARS. Annually, about 5,000 advanced breeding lines from 80 different nurseries of cereals, legumes, groundnut, rice, potato and sweet potato, vegetables, and halophytic plants supplied by ICARDA, CIMMYT, ICRISAT, IRRI, CIP, AVRDC and ICBA are tested in CAC region.

Germplasm Enhancement

• Research activities on germplasm enhancement have focused on testing and identifying most promising breeding materials with resistance to both biotic and abiotic stresses. Under this collaborative program, 37 new promising varieties consisting of winter wheat (14),triticale (4) spring barley (5), chickpea (6), lentil (3), lathyrus (1), soybean (2), mungbean (2) and groundnut (2) have been released in the region. These varieties have recorded consistently higher yield with superior quality and disease resistance over the local checks. Some of them are now covering large areas and getting popular with the farmers (Annex IV).
• Similarly, new crops such as chickpea and lentil have been successfully introduced into the cropping systems in Kazakhstan. In Uzbekistan, pearl millet has been introduced. Work on crop diversification with different crops such as safflower, sunflo wer, groundnut, chickpea, lentil, mungbean, faba bean, sorghum and pearl millet has been strengthened based on the needs of the national programs. This work also has been very much appreciated and is being continued by the national programs. Some of these crops are now adopted in the cropping systems of CAC countries.
• Sunn Pest resistant germplasm (Gene Pool) was established and distributed to NARS. In addition, a biological method of control gainst Sunn Pest with the use of insect-killing fungi collected from the affected insects was developed. Genes resistant to Yellow Rust were identified.
• Regional Rice Network for CAC has been established. Regional rice nursery trials have been successfully conducted.
• Promising clones and True potato seeds (TPS) have been identif ied in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
• Promising virus-resistant clones and True potato seeds (TPS) have been identified in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
• A Regional Vegetable Research and Development Network has been established.
• Entomologists in Central Asia have fixed several species of parasitoid and predator insects suppressing the pest number on agricultural crops. Some of them are very active and with help of the nectariferous plants are able to hold the number of pests much below the threshold level. Therefore, IPM activities are focusing among others at enhancing the biodiversity of native (nectariferous) plants that are able to attract the significant number of beneficial insects. To achieve this purpose, the most perspective species of nectariferous plants have been selected. In addition, the potential of the biolaboratories of Central Asia has been enhanced by introducing new entomophagoes. The results of the researches and the new IPM techniques that were developed have been imparted to farmers through various farmer trainings.

Seed Production

• Efforts are also directed towards large-scale seed production and availability of new varieties to the farmers. For example, winter wheat variety 'Dostlik,' released in 2002 in Uzbekistan, performed exceedingly well in drier and salt-affected areas. Initially, ICARDA procured 5 tons of seed from Turkey and Tajikistan during 2001, which catalyzed the process of its release in 2002 and further wide scale adoption through distribution of 8,000 tons of seed produced during 2004 among the farmers of Syrdarya, Djizzak, and Khorezm provinces. This variety is now occupying more than 20,000 ha in Uzbekistan. In addition, a new seed policy was developed for Uzbekistan.

Natural Resources Management

• ICARDA has completed two phases of the ADB—funded project on Soil and Water Management until now. Several dozens of improved technologies of water and soil management have been evolved under this project. They are now being widely out-scaled on larger areas for massive impact. For example, one of these technologies was planting wheat into standing cotton using minimum tillage. This technology is now being practiced in almost 30%, 40% and 60% of irrigated wheat areas in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, respectively, thus enabling increased cropping intensity.
• Water-wise, cost effective technologies were developed for rice-wheat cropping systems, reducing water consumption/irrigation requirement by 25-32% (70-90 cm). These technologies also allowed doubling the cropping intensity and reducing fallowing. Crops yields increased by more than 1.2 t/ha (30 %).
• Phosphogypsum (PG) application was fine-tuned and is being disseminated for amelioration of high magnesium sodic soils in Southern Kazakhstan. PG application rate of 3-4 t/ha in autumn before snowfall was found to improve cotton productivity by 33.1% by significantly improving the infiltration rates of the nearly impermeable soils, meeting phosphorus requirements of the crops, and improving soil health. The use of PG in agriculture also alleviates environmental pollution due to its current open-air dumping of PG nearby industrial sites in Southern Kazakhstan.
• Researches on technologies for conjunctive use of saline/drainage waters have demonstrated a good potential for saving fresh irrigation water (25-50%). These technologies also help in meeting crop water demands during periods of short fresh water supplies and preventing significant yield losses. They also facilitate double cropping and improve leaching efficiency.
• The on-farm trials on the use of mulching showed that mulching reduces salinisation rates. Under the experiments, mulching cut back unproductive losses of water through evaporation (20-30 cm) in cotton-wheat system, and increased crop yields of cotton-wheat system by 7-10%. In sloping areas under rainfed grapes growing terracing combined with mulching with plant residue and application of manure reduced water run-off and soil erosion and improved water use efficiency and yield of grapes. Supplemental irrigation and mulching increased soil moisture storage and growth rate of walnuts and plums in sloping areas.
• Several livestock production practices have been tested and some of them found promising, such as early weaning, early lambing, market oriented lamb fattening and milking of Karakul and Sarajin ewes for better income generation. Different strategies for range rehabilitation and feed production have been identified and introduced. Traditional livestock breeds in the Caucasus are being studied for molecular breed characterization.
• New crop rotation system in conservation agriculture practices for drought and salt-affected region of Karakalpakstan was developed.
• Conservation tillage and no-till direct sowing systems for carbon sequestration, soil and water conservation and sustainability of crop production were dis seminated. Timely application of initial tillage in cold highland fallow areas for increase rain-water infiltration reduces evaporation losses, improve soil physical conditions, and provide sustainable cereal production.
• In irrigated cotton-wheat system double cropping provides many advantages such as 2 t/ha of food grain, increase of ensuing wheat yield by 5-7%, economic efficiency, and increase of soil organic matter. Variety of crops were found adequate for double cropping, including mungbean, soybean, common bean, cowpea, groundnut, carrots, rice , sesame, maize and melons.
• Conceptual Framework for Transition to Integrated and Participatory Water Resources Management in the Fergana valley was approved and adopted by the Ministries of three countries in charge of water resources management; A new participatory water management institutions are introduced along hydrographic boundaries of main canals with management responsibilities (CMOs) divided by user participation in governing (UWUs).

Socioeconomic and policy researches

• The socio-economic research activities have been focused on rural livelihood analyses and economic assessment of technologies found promising under the projects implemented by CAC Program partners. The major impact and achievement in socioeconomic activities has been the greatly improved capacity in the region for conducting socioeconomic analysis following internationally accepted methods, for which no relevant basis was present in the region due to the different nature of economic science (mainly political economy) during the Soviet period and immediately after independence.
• By now, almost all the projects conducted by the CAC program partners in the region comprise a socioeconomic component following the requests of NARS partners on this regard. A paradigm shift that has been stimulated among the NARS partners with regard to the importance of socioeconomic science has largely enabled the better orientation of development projects towards more impact in terms of practical, farmer- and community-oriented benefits.

С. Capacity Building

• Capacity building is the area where the program has delivered its biggest impact in the region. All CGIAR centers in the Consortium have made considerable efforts to help NARS develop their human resources, including various trainings, study tours, traveling workshops, participation in international, regional and national scientific meetings and seminars, supply of computers and other research equipment, etc.
• A total of 6,615 national scientists benefited from various capacity building events. In addition, more than 9,000 farmers participated in various farmers' field days, farmers' fairs, traveling workshops, farmers' schools and demonstration activities. Special efforts were made to impart English language training to around 423 young scientists from the region since the beginning of the Program.
• Equipment in the form of agricultural machinery, computers, vehicles, weather stations, small equipments, office and lab supplies have also been provided. ICT networking for efficient communication through e-mail and Internet access has been established.
• All the centers involved in the CGIAR Program in CAC have been paying important attention to information dissemination. A large number of publications, scientific papers, booklets, brochures, leaflets, policy briefs have been and are being produced and disseminated among farmers and NARS partners by PFU and all Consortium partners both in English and Russian. Based on the needs and requests of national partners greater emphasis is being laid on producing these publications in local languages for better and easier impact among farmers.
• The CAC News is a quarterly Newsletter published in English and Russian for circulation among all the Consortium partners and other stakeholders. It covers the activities of the CGIAR Program in the region. So far, 34 issues of this newsletter have been published.
• To raise the awareness of the public and all stakeholders, the Program partners organize farmer field days, farmer fairs, traveling seminars, as well as present the result of their activities through local mass media, including press, TV, radio and different meetings.
• All Central Asian and the Caucasus countries expressed their desire to have access to global information system related to agricultural research and development. These countries have been isolated by geographic, political and language barriers. However, participation in international and regional workshops, e-mail, internet access, links to collaborating institutions, the CAC Newsletter, publication and reports have improved information exchange. The CGIAR Collaborative Program for CAC web-site was launched in September, 2001, and provides information about CGIAR centers and NARS partners and major achievements, in both English and Russian.