Caravan 4 : Review of agriculture in the dry areas

Abstract

This issue of Caravan describes how ICARDA is already altering plant-breeding techniques so that they not only exploit biodiversity, but conserve it in farmers’ fields as well, in the form of farmers’ varieties (landraces) that are fast disappearing in favor of improved varieties. It describes, too, how ICARDA is helping mount a multinational project in the Levant that will not only pioneer large-scale in-situ conservation, but perhaps provide a model for similar projects all over the world. It describes how ICARDA helped broaden the genetic base of a key subsistence crop in South Asia.