Dar named head of int'l institute

For the first time, a Filipino is the director general of one of the 16 international agricultural research centers (IARCs) under the aegis of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

And, at 46, he is the youngest ever to head the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Patancheru, Andra Pradesh, India.

Dr. William D. Dar, former Agriculture Acting Secretary, assumed ICRISAT's top post early this year. He had earlier retired from government service.

Upon taking over as ICRISAT's director general, he said in a note to The STAR, he made "Doing science with a human face" as the banner thrust of the institute.

The institute was the first IARC to be created under Washington, DC-based CGIAR.

Established in 1971, CGIAR is an informal association of 58 governments, international and regional organizations, and private foundations dedicated to supporting 16 IARCs around the world. CGIAR aims to improve the quality and quantity of food production and the standard of living of poor people in the developing world.

CGIAR is advised on strategies, priorities, and funding of the IARCs by a 13-man Technical Advisory Council (TAC) currently headed by Dr. Emil Q. Javier, immediate past president of the University of the Philippines. Dr. Javier will head the TAC for five years.

Among the 16-CGIAR-supported IARCs is the Los Baños-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

ICRISAT covers the semi-arid tropics which encompass large parts of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. It aims to improve substantially the quantity and reliability of food production in the semi-arid tropics by improving both the cultivated varieties (cultivars) of major food crops and the management of soils and water.

ICRISAT concentrates on five major rain-fed crops grown by resource-poor farmers: sorghum, groundnut (peanut), chickpea, pigeon pea, and pearl millet.

Through the Los Baños-based Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD), ICRISAT has been undertaking several projects in the Philippines.

Speaking at ICRISAT's Workplanning Week 2000 early this year, Dr. Dar underscored the institute's three prime roles: bridge, broker, and catalyst.

"As a bride," he said, "we apply the comparative advantage of our international character to facilitate international transfers of research skills, information, and technology, for example from developed to developing countries."

Biotechnology and geographic information services (GIS) are examples of transfers from developed to developing countries, he added.

On ICRISAT's "broker" role, it will facilitate exchanges of germplasm, research information, and other technologies.

Dr. Dar elucidated: "Our various national, private, developed, and developing world partners trust that we will be an impartial broker where bargains need to be struck. Examples include germplasm transfers in the context of intellectual property rights issues; and trade-offs of natural resource management assets between communities and regions. One major example is the agreement with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that we should become mankind's guardian for some of the world's most precious biological resources, our gene banks."

On the institute's "catalyst" role, he said, ICRISAT will catalyze important new research thrusts addressing serious global problems and opportunities that are beyond the limits or capacities of national and local institutions.

"Here," Dr. Dar said, "we can certainly cite our desert margins initiative, our pearl millet molecular marker research, and our catalytic role in extending the benefits of modern pigeon pea germplasm and processing techniques to Africa, among many other examples."