ICARDA has the serious and urgent responsibility for increasing the quantity and availability of food in the extensive North Africa-West Asia region, and therefore must give high priority to optimising the use of soil water and nitrogen which are considered to be among the main limiting factors to production. To obtain the knowledge to further this aim, and with the help of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), ICARDA is developing a special project on 'Increasing the Fixation of Soil Nitrogen and the Efficiency of Soil Water Use in Rainfed Agricultural Systems in the Countries of...

During the next 30 years, farmers must produce 70% more rice than the 550 millions tons produced today to feed the increasing population. Nitrogen (N) is the nutrient that most frequently limits rice production. At current levels ofN use efficiency, we will require at least double the 10 million tons of N fertilizer that are currently used each year for rice production. Global agriculture now relies heavily on N fertilizers derived from petroleUIll, which, in turn, is vulnerable to political and economic fluctuations in the oil markets. N fertilizers, therefore, are expensive inputs, costing...