Wheat Improvement Program for Dry Areas

During the meeting of the Board of Trustees of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), the two Centers agreed to jointly implement the ICARDA/CIMMYT Wheat Improvement Program (ICWIP) in the Central and West Asia and North Africa (CWANA) region. ICWIP will be hosted in CWANA by ICARDA, which has its headquarters in Aleppo, Syria, and will include all research undertaken on wheat improvement in CWANA by both Centers, covering durum wheat and spring, facultative, and winter bread wheat. The Centers also agreed that the program should be managed by a jointly appointed director. As the first major outcome of the new agreement, which was officially signed at the Annual General Meeting of the CGIAR in December 2005, the two Centers have named Sanjaya Rajaram as Director of the new program.

Dr. Rajaram joined ICARDA in early 2005 as director of the newly formed megaproject Integrated Gene Management (MP2), which includes wheat improvement, after having worked as a wheat scientist at CIMMYT for 34 years. His association with ICARDA goes back to the 1980s, however, when a joint CIMMYT/ICARDA program was established at ICARDA. He also directed the CIMMYT staff posted at ICARDA in the joint program while he served at CIMMYT in Mexico.

ICARDA and CIMMYT are confident that Dr. Rajaram’s efforts will promote effective delivery of useful products to partners and, given his experience in wheat research and familiarity with both Centers, will both foster and make good use of the many synergies between the ICARDA and CIMMYT research teams.

For more information please contact Dr. Sanjaya Rajaram (s.rajaram@cgiar.org). Media contacts are

David Mowbray at CIMMYT (d.mowbray@cgiar.org, tel 52 55 5804 7668, cell 52 55 2220 2857) and