SAARC Agri Centre, ICRISAT ink pact to accelerate use of tech

A new partnership has been formed to build a network to accelerate use of technologies in agriculture across eight countries in South Asia.
This was announced at the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation - SAARC Agriculture Centre (SAC) and the city-based International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) here.
ICRISAT and SAC will look for opportunities to carry out joint research in areas of mutual interest by sharing existing resources and results, as well as facilitate policy changes in National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) to speed up the process of varietal release and dissemination in the region, a release from ICRISAT said.

Under the collaboration, new and appropriate technologies will be adopted for maximising production and to increase sustained productivity in stress-prone areas through the extensive SAARC network, it said.
This will help small-holding farmers to adopt these new and improved technologies to increase food production and raise their incomes in areas with limited availability of water.
"ICRISAT welcomes this partnership with SAARC to accelerate the release of proven crop production technologies across South Asia, especially improved varieties as has been done for rice. Apart from accelerated release of improved varieties, ICRISAT sees additional opportunities in sharing best practise in seed systems and can work with SAARC on their new Seed Bank," said ICRISAT Director General David Bergvinson at the signing of the pact with SAC Director Shaikh Mohammad Bokhtiar.

Bokhtiar said one of the biggest challenges for the region is food and nutritional security.

"In the past we did not talk about the nutritional quality of our agriculture but now it is of high importance. We will be working with the region to pull together a regional strategy for food and nutrition."
Being rice growing countries, the large use of ground water is a big issue, he said.
"We are also using and depleting so many nutrients from the soil, which will be a big problem for the next generation. SAARC can help facilitate the exchange of technologies between countries in the region," he added.

This collaboration will significantly contribute to the medium-term food and nutritional security in the region, he said.