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As you all know, and may I say how pleased I am, that ICRISAT has fielded
an adequately strong team for this occasion. ICRISAT has a world-wide mandate
for chickpeas. There is no reason at all why these two spheres of interest
should not compliment and support each other. In these days of shrinking values
of money due to inflation, recession and falling budget, those who support
stations like ICRISAT and ICARDA are becoming very conscious that no
money be wasted through unnecessary duplication of work. It has been a very
strong talking point for the donors that support us both in legume and cereal work
that we should not duplicate work being done in oter centres. For example, with
respect to cereals we had a fair amount of insistence that we do not repeat what
CIMMYT is doing almost at our own doorstep. ArAd the same might well have
been said about the work on chickpeas with ICRISAT having a world mandate
and ICARDA a regional mandate. I think with wisdom ICARDA and ICRISAT
saw this criticism coming and arranged to integrate the programs and run them
as one program without any wasteful and unnecessary duplication of work with
full cooperation and pooling and sharing of resources.
I am happy to say, and I hope Dr. Swindale of ICRISAT agrees, that the set
up is working very well indeed. We at ICARDA are pleased with it and I take
this opportunity to thank ICRISAT for the support, for its share in the leadership
and for the way it pulls its weight fully in this double job. In support of this
combined program a senior breeder from ICRISAT was posted by that centre to
ICARDA in 1978 to work here on chickpea problems. Subsequently in 1980, a
second breeder was asked to come here. I do not think there will be further
increase in the number of positions but there is a move afoot that ICRISAT will
post a pathologist here in place of the second breeder to help in this vitally
important area of the work which of course relates to ascchyta, the theme of our
workshop today. A further sharing of the work was the fact that, by the initial
agreement, ICARDA accepted the responsibility for work on the kabuli type
chickpeas which are prevalent in the ICARDA region and also are widely grown
in parts of southern Europe and Latin America, while ICRISAT retained the
responsibility for the desi types which are common in the Indian subcontinent
and so very important there. And this sharing has again worked well..In fact I
think this is to the credit of all concerned at the actual work level, far below the
levels of directors, that everything isworking out so well and I would like to thank
the staff concerned.
As far as work is concerned, ICRISAT did some initial work on ascochyta
blight but as this progressed it became obvious that this work could more suitably
be carried out at ICARDA under the conditions we have here. The disease
occurs naturally here, is a regular burden to us and was an obvious target for local
work. Here again the partnership arrangement worked well and the two centres
agreed that research at ICARDA would concentrate mostly on ascochyta blight,
while the main initiative for research on other important chickpea diseases
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