Knowledge Management Portal

India-Morocco Food Legumes Initiative is intended to strengthen and improve food and nutritional security of low-income people and the sustainability of poor farmers, and to conserve the natural resource base for sustainable production systems in India and Morocco. As part of the initiative, OCPF, UBKV, TSRD, RVSKVV, NEH, MESADM, KVKD, BMJ, BCKV and ICARDA, have agreed to collaborate in the dissemination and adoption of improved technologies to increase productivity of food legumes in India.

Effective knowledge management adds value to agricultural research for development. This project consolidates crucial information, helping to disseminate the solutions that rural communities and other partners need to address constraints and put in place sustainable land management strategies. It also helps to promote strategies and tools with the potential to help farmers optimize opportunities and raise their productivity, incomes, and livelihoods.

ICARDA is engaged in a four-year project, in partnership with the ECFS at Moscow State University, with support from the Russian Federation. This program supports research activities related to integrated land and water management in the framework of the CRP on Dryland Systems. It concerns both biophysical and socio-economic research, to improve productivity, reduce land degradation and increase climate change resilience in the agricultural production systems in Central Asia.

There have been virtually no sector-level studies on agricultural productivity in this region or on the role of public policies in improving productivity growth. This project will investigate how public policies, such as agricultural research, investment in irrigation capital, water pricing and others have contributed to agricultural productivity growth.

PAK-US Cotton Productivity Enhancement Project (2012-17) is being executed in collaboration with ICARDA. It is launching several breeding programs to evolve virus free varieties of cotton in Pakistan.ICARDA has divided the project into 13 different smaller projects and allocated them to some of the best public research departments such as NIBGE, CCRI, NUST, CMBE, Punjab Universty etc. USDA is providing technical support to Pakistani scientists on cultivation of US germplasm in Pakistan.

The Nile Delta covers an agricultural area of approximately 2.5 million ha, irrigated by a dense network of waterways, including 40,000 km of canals that branch off the Nile River and convey water to over 2 million farmers across several nested geographical scales and institutional levels. Intermingled with these conveyance canals are 18,000 km of drains, where water is both partially reused by farmers and pumped back to higher level delivery canals, and eventually conveyed to coastal lakes and the sea. The recycling of drainage water, a deficient or ill-maintained drainage system, and inappropriate in-field management of applied water contribute to salt loading of the system that has significant negative effects on its productivity (Ghassemi et al. 1995). Understanding the causes of, and developing management strategies to address, the issue of salt loads is imperative for the Government of Egypt.

Climate change (CC) is a real threat to agriculture production in Morocco and the North Africa region. Impact of CC is already visible on Moroccan agriculture. CC further aggravated the already existing problems, such as drought, salinity and heat stresses; pests and diseases and loss of biodiversity. People living in marginal/mountainous regions of Morocco who are already vulnerable and food insecure are likely to be the first affected. The rainfed crops like faba bean (Vicia faba L.) is affected due to the biotic and abiotic stresses and CC, resulting in decrease in the crop area and its production drastically in recent times compared to over two decades ago. The recent raise in price of faba beans has affected severely the poor people. Faba bean is an important food legume crop of Morocco with a multitude of uses. The grain has a special place in the diets of people in Morocco and the Middle East, Mediterranean Europe and China. The green immature seed is also favoured as a vegetable. It is grown as rainfed crop in many parts of the country. Faba bean provides much needed dietary proteins in the nutrition of poor people and also plays an important role in improving soil fertility (through biological nitrogen fixation) in marginal areas and in cereal based cropping systems. Among the food legumes grown in Morocco, faba bean tops with respect to area (200 thousands ha) and production (109 thousands ton). However, the country is not self sufficient in faba bean production and therefore imports from Australia and Canada for its domestic consumption. Major constrains for the production are biotic stresses (such as Orobanche, Chocolate spot, Ascochyta blight, rust) and abiotic stresses (such as drought, heat and cold).