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Dr
Kamel Shideed, ICARDA- Assistant Director General, International
Cooperation & Communication; start his opening address, by
welcoming all participants on behalf of Dr Mahmoud El Solh,
ICARDA Director General and appreciating State of Qatar and the
Ministry of Environment for hoisting the fourth APRP annual
meeting and their hospitality.
Food security, Said Dr Shideed, is facing the Arabian Peninsula
as a great challenge which is expected to become a greater
difficulty considering the climate change effects and population
growth. To address such a challenge it may require more efforts
on all levels for developing new production techniques and
decimating to the growers and other end users to overcome the
existing constrains of agriculture development in the Arabian
Peninsula such as fragile natural resources and climate changes.
The Arabian Peninsula, where most of the food items are
imported, is the poorest region in the world in terms of
availability of renewable water resources.
In
continue Dr Shideed acknowledged the APRP donors (AFSED, IFAD
and OFID) for their continuous financial support to ICARDA and
NARS which resulted in a good achievements on research
activities, capacity building of national teams and success in
developing new techniques that improved the agricultural
production and animal feed resources with less water consuming.
At
the end, Dr Shideed thanked the NARS and expressed his
gratefulness on the progress made by the project which is
achieved under the team spirit created among the project
components including ICARDA-APRP and NARS.
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