Knowledge Management Portal

The project builds upon two consecutive projects which were funded by ACIAR and AusAID to improve the productivity and sustainability of crop production in the drylands of northern Iraq. The first project CIM/2004/024: Better crop germplasm and management for improved production of wheat, barley and pulse and forage legumes in Iraq, ran from July 2005 to June 2008; and the second project CIM/2008/027 Development of conservation cropping systems in the drylands of northern Iraq commenced in July 2008 to June 2012. The project is an extension of CIM/2008/027. It is led by the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) in Syria and coordinated in Iraq through the University of Mosul (UniMosul) and the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA). Field activities in northern Iraq were implemented by the Universities of Mosul, Anbar and Kirkuk, the Directorates of Agriculture (DOA) in Ninevah, Kirkuk, Salahahdin and Anbar, and the State Board of Agricultural Research (SBAR) in Baghdad and Ninevah. Australian training and research support was provided by The University of Western Australia (UniWA) and the University of Adelaide (UniAdelaide). Project CIM/2008/027 was highly successful in demonstrating in Ninevah that productivity and profitability of crops in the drylands of northern Iraq can be increased by the application of conservation cropping technologies involving zero-tillage (ZT), stubble mulching, improved crop cultivars and better crop management. Additional long-term benefits of conservation cropping include improved soil structure and reduced soil erosion. The adoption of ZT by farmers in Iraq has increased from a zero base in 2005/06 to approximately 6000 hectares in 2010/11. The project extension aims to consolidate the research and development conducted over the past six years and promote wider adoption of conservation cropping practices by farmers in Ninevah. This project was later amended and some activities were undertaken in Palestine

The Integrated Catchment Management and Capacity Building- project in Afganistan aims to improve the livelihoods of households dependent on dryland agriculture. To increase food security, it is critical to invest in soil and water conservation and associated technologies that enhance productivity and natural resource use efficiency, minimise risk and increase incomes. The project will strenghten local partners' human capacity and establish learning sites with improved conservation practices.

Conservation agriculture (CA) practices offer the opportunity to conserve natural resources, cut down production cost while reducing yield fluctuation and associated risk. The project will identify and address the constraints to adoption of CA systems by small-scale (<10 ha) and medium-scale (<20 ha) farmers (smallholders); develop low-cost machinery and adapted cropping systems; and upgrade the CA capacity of the national agricultural research systems.

The SARD-SC (Support to Agricultural Research for the Development of Strategic Crops in Africa) is a research, science and technology development project funded by the African Development Bank that has the overall goal of improving food and nutrition security and contributing to reducing poverty. The Project’s Wheat Component, managed by ICARDA, is one of the initiative’s four targeted efforts to improve the productivity and profitability of strategic crops (cassava, maize, rice and wheat).

There is widespread concern over the damage caused by modern agriculture to soil structure and the ecosystem services provided. One approach to overcome this problem is conservation agriculture (CA) which aims to maintain soil structure by minimizing soil disturbance, maximizing soil cover, and using crop rotation. However, despite recent legislation supporting minimum tillage and direct seeding, together with the efforts of pioneer farmers, CA is still practiced on less than 4% of the agricultural land in Europe (SoCo, 2009), while, for example, in Brazil, the share of CA is more than 60% (Mello and van Raij, 2006). The slow progress in Europe underlines the need for major improvements in the approach together with the consolidation of, and access to, information about alternative cropping methods and their biological and economic value and performance. To extend soil cover, CA uses subsidiary crops (SC) grown either as cover crops (CC) preceding or following the main crops, or as living mulches (LM) together with the main crops. There is an urgent need to review the current SC and to determine the value of other crops for use in such systems, particularly to cover the range of environmental variation across Europe. Appropriate choice and timing of use of such crops, adapted to regions, can help to minimize tillage and to reduce weed problems. Complementary development of appropriate tillage technology can also help to reduce the direct effects of soil disturbance while encouraging the establishment and development of both SC and main crops. The net effect of encouraging crop diversity within rotations should fit well with the current ecological view of positive correlations between diversity and stability, on the one hand, and between diversity and productivity on the other (Moreau, 2010).

Through the funding support of AFESD since the Memorandum of Understanding signed between AFESD and ICARDA in 2012, ICARDA enrolled 42 Young Arab Post Graduate students through three series of “Open Call for Application”. Among the forty-two students, 16 have been conducting a MSc and 26 have been conducting a PhD.