Faba Bean in the Nile Valley

In 1977 the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) established the Interna­ tional Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) with the aim offocussing on the problems confronting crop and animal production in the Near East and North Africa with special emphasis on rainfed agriculture. The main base of ICARDA's activities is at its principal research station near Aleppo in northern Syria. From here a wide range of research activities have been developed throughout the region served, in close collaboration with the national programs. This report concerns the activities of one such collaborative research project covering Egypt and the Sudan, the ICARDA/ IFAD Nile Valley Project on Faba Beans. It is by far the largest of ICARDA's collaborative projects and also the most successful. Faba Beans are an important food crop in many countries of the region and as such are a main focus of ICARDA's food legume program together with lentils and chickpeas. However, Aleppo does not provide a suita ble environment in which to conduct research of relevance to the irrigated agriculture of Egypt and northern Sudan: two countries in which faba beans are immensely important in the diets, particularly of the poorer sector in both countries.