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Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Opening Address
H.S. DARLING
Director General, ICARDA
My thanks for allowing me this opportunity to participate in this workshop on
ascochyta blight and winter planting of chickpeas to which I look forward with
enhanced pleasure because I am afraid, I can only give one day to it. I do begin
by wishing all concerned a success which the subject fully deserves, and which I
feel it will obtain. May I join Dr. Nour in extending a warm and wet welcome to
you all here to Aleppo. The wetness I cannot honestly claim we arranged it, we
welcome it but it is unexpected, unusual and a privilege for all of us. I only hope it
will not mar in any way our visit today to Tel Hadya field site. I would like to
welcome you here and say how glad I am that you made it in rather fragile times
without difficulty. I am sure that you will find your stay here well worthwhile. All
our services are available to make your time as enjoyable as we possibly can. May
it prove to be so.
I think this subject of ascochyta blight and winter planting of chickpeas is a
very important topic and I am glad that the privilege has been given to ICARDA
to lead the way with the workshop on this subject which in its own way is a
breakthrough of both scientific and practical importance. I am grateful for the
privilege given to me to say a few words on the subject as we open our workshop.
ICARDA from the very beginning has had a deep interest in research on
chickpeas in the West Asian and North African region. And this is not just a
casual interest, it is built into our mandate. We are charged by mandate from the
world authority that established us to carry out such research but in a regional
context. In the ICARDA region which is large enough from Pakistan in the East
to Morocco in the West, from Turkey in the North and the Mediterranean area
down to Sudan in the South, we have some 22-24 countries. Chickpeas are an
important crop to several millions of people in this region. The work on chickpeas
is largely conducted in our Food Legume Improvement Program or FLIP, as we
like to call it, which also has a mandate for lentils and faba beans and some
interest in starting work on dry peas as well. But for the time being we are
working only on chickpeas, lentils and faba beans.
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