Alexandria, Egypt
April 3, 2008
The 10th International
Barley Genetics Symposium will be held at Bibliotheca
Alexandrina, Egypt, from April 5 to 10. The Symposium has been
jointly organized by the
International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas
(ICARDA), and Bibliotheca
Alexandrina with the support of Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO), and OPEC Fund for International Development.
The Symposium is the most important forum for barley scientists
and the industry worldwide, where results and current trends of
barley research and production are presented and discussed, and
future strategies are decided.
At Alexandria, scientists will deliberate on issues like global
barley production, improvement of crop quality, impact of
climate change and global warming on barley crop and new
technologies to overcome these challenges. It will also cover a
diverse range of applied and basic research on barley.
Barley is cultivated in over 56 million hectares of land the
world over and it is the fourth most planted cereal crop. Over
the last few years there has been a steady increase in barley
and scientists believe that with the increasing global
temperatures and the challenges posed by climate change, barley
cultivation would expand even more, as this crop grows in warm
areas.
“Barley can help people survive climate change and global
warming, it is the crop of the poor people,” says Dr. Stefania
Grando, ICARDA’s Principal Barley Breeder and the Chair of the
local organizing committee of the Symposium.
Besides being the staple food for the poor in parts of North
Africa, Central and South Asia, Barley is grown as a cash crop
in many developing countries and is used for malt production all
over the world.
It is for the first time that the Symposium is being held in
Africa and the Middle East Region. The First International
Barley Genetics Symposium was held in Wageningen, the
Netherlands in 1963. In the past it was held five times in
Europe (the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden,
and Czech Republic), twice in North America (USA and Canada),
and once each in Australia and Asia (Japan). The last Symposium
was held on 20-26 June 2004 in Brno (Czech Republic), and was
attended by about 350 delegates from all over the world.
Established in 1977, the International Center for
Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) is one of the 15
centers strategically located all over the world and supported
by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research
(CGIAR). With its main research station and offices based in
Aleppo, Syria, ICARDA works through a network of partnerships
with national, regional and international institutions,
universities, non-governmental organizations and ministries in
the developing world; and with advanced research institutes in
industrialized countries. This event is an example of the
cooperative and collaborative efforts to insure that our efforts
are meeting the needed research topics for the region and that
the outcome is of a focused and high quality scientific for
development product. |
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