ICARDA annual report 2004

ICARDA Annual Report 2004
84
Participants of the seventh Program Steering Committee meeting of the CGIAR
Collaborative Program for Sustainable Agricultural Development in Central Asia and
the Caucasus (CAC), held in Baku, Azerbaijan, on 6-8 June, 2004.
op technologies for conservation
tillage, crop diversification, on-farm
water-use efficiency, and salinity
management. Promising results
were obtained with direct seeding of
wheat in standing cotton, raised-bed
planting of wheat, minimal tillage
for crop diversification after winter
wheat, alternative furrow irrigation,
and terracing and mulching on sloping
lands. Under the crop diversification
activities, new alternative
crops found promising are: chickpea,
safflower, soybean, common
bean, mungbean, buckwheat, and
groundnut. These crops are now
being adopted on large areas. The
alternate furrow system provided a
saving of water by 30%, and a
reduction on the pressure on the
drainage system by 40%. Based on
these results, obtained in southern
Kazakhstan, alternate furrow irrigation
technology is now practiced in
Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Work on feed and livestock
management has offered new
opportunities for income generation
through early lambing and
weaning, sheep milking, use of
alternative feed resources, and
rangeland rehabilitation. In view of
low nutritional value of rangeland
fodder, feed-block technology for
sheep feeding has been found
promising and was successfully
adopted by the farmers in
Uzbekistan and is being tested by a
number of farmers in other countries.
Also, fortification of poor
quality straw using ammonia has
proved to be useful.
Workshops and coordination
meetings
An inception workshop for the
ADB-funded project on “Improving
Rural Livelihoods through Efficient
On-farm Water and Soil Fertility
Management in Central Asia” was
held in Tashkent in February. More
than 60 participants attended the
workshop, including heads of
NARS and leading scientists from
all Central Asian countries and
Azerbaijan, representatives of ADB,
SDC, USAID, GTZ, NGOs, and
ICARDA. Later, the first steering
committee meeting of the project
was held.
A regional workshop on
“Strengthening Partnerships for
More Effective Planning, Research
and Development in Agriculture in
Central Asia” was jointly organized
in Tashkent by ADB and ICARDA
Participants of the regional workshop on "Strengthening Partnerships for More
Effective Planning, Research, and Development in Agriculture in Central Asia," held in
Tashkent on 23-25 August 2004. H.E. Mr Abduvohid Juraev, First Deputy Minister of
Agriculture and Water Management of Uzbekistan, and Dr Pratima Dayal, Senior
Agriculture Specialist of the Asian Development Bank, are seen here.