Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 87 Document Number: C05769
Notes:
This paper originally published in Dellere, R. and Symoens, J.J., eds. Proceedings of the Seminar "Food and Nutritional Strategies : Concepts - Objectives - Application"; 1986 November 3-7; Brussels, Belgium. Brussels, Belgium : Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Co-operation and Royal Academy of Overseas Sciences, 1986. p. 335 355, The Hague, Netherlands : International Service for National Agricultural Research, 1988. 15 p. (ISNAR Reprint Series No. 4), The population pressures of the 1960s were basically responsible for major policy decisions to give a new direction to world agriculture, which had evolved for most of its 10,000 years around traditional practices. It was decided during this period to mobilize science and technology to transform this kind of agriculture into highly productive systems of farming. The concept of genotype-environment interactions was used to synthesize crop varieties which would take full advantage of improved levels of agronomic management. The newly discovered plant-type genes in wheat and rice have been extensively used in the process of genetic reconstruction of traditional cultivars of these crops which had been bred more for adaption to stress environments than for high grain yields. Many developing countries took bold policy decisions to reorganize and strengthen their agricultural research services in pursuance of these objectives. The new agricultural technology developed in this way has already made a significant impact on food production in some of these countries, more particularly in Asia and Latin America. The impact has been much less in Africa, where the national agricultural research systems are in an early stage of evolution following their colonial history. It has been argued that the problems of agricultural production in Sub-Saharan Africa are only quantitatively, not qualitatively, different from those of developing countries in other parts of the world. Africa also offers considerable potential for significant advances in agricultural production through the application of the new technology, and this must be the approach in the short term. In the long term, however, the problem of agricultural production in Africa will require a different kind of production technology for its relatively large areas of lands characterized by moisture and fertility stress. This new technology must be based on efficient techniques of soil and water management, with the agronomists playing a key role supported by soil scientists, water technologists, plant breeders and scientists from other disciplines. The multidisciplinary approach becomes particularly important in this context. This paper concludes with a brief discussion of ISNAR/s collaborative work during the past 6 years with a number of Sub-Saharan African countries to strengthen the organization and management of their agricultural research services.
