Trip report on a mission to East Azerbaijan, Lorestan, Kermanshah and Kurdistan provinces under the Iran-ICARDA food security project

Abstract

Two training courses of two full-days each with extensive professional interaction in classrooms, post-harvest seed facilities, innovation platforms and demos have been organized during the mission. A total of 89 project implementation experts from a wide range of private and public partner institutions in the four target provinces, namely DARI, AJO, RCANR, SPCRI, private seed producing and processing companies and agriculture service providers participated in the two courses (Annex1). The training courses covered the importance of quality seed in scaling out agriculture innovations and associated technical, organizational and managerial issues (Annex 2). The above issues have been presented, discussed and demonstrated. The subject matter specialists in the training courses were Dr Zewdie Bishaw and Dr Abdoul Aziz Niane from ICARDA, Dr Saber Golkari, Dr. Sadeghzadeh – Ahari, Eng. Hoseinpour and Dr. Pezeshpour from the Dryland Agriculture Research Institute (DARI). Simultaneous translations into the local language were provided for all presentations and discussions by Dr Sadeghian, Dr Rezaei and Dr Roohi. Relevant reference material on the subject matter in the form of training manuals and lecture notes have been provided in both soft and hard copy versions.