The three-day deliberation meeting titled “Climate Resilient Wheat Crop Improvement for Food Security” was held on November 23 under the aegis of OIC’s Standing Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation (COMSTECH). Experts from Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Turkiye, Tunisia, Azerbaijan, and Morocco attended the meeting. COMSTECH has collaborated with Islamic Organization of Food Security (IOFS) and the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) for the successful organizing of the meeting. The purpose of the meeting was to share ideas, discuss strategies and develop alternative varieties of wheat crop which would be climate-resistant and tolerant of disturbed weather patterns.

Methods and ways to ensure long-term food security in the OIC member states were also discussed. Experts during the meeting stressed the adoption of new technologies to solve problems in wheat cultivation and strategies to effectively ensure long-term food security in the OIC member states.Similar other international organizations working on agricultural productivity and research in arid or saline conditions were also invited to the meeting.

They included Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS), Assistance to States for Control of Animal Diseases (ASCAD), International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), International Center for Bio-saline Agriculture (ICBA) and CIMMYI-Int. Experts from the members states of the OIC shared their strategies and methods on how to develop new varieties of wheat crop which would be resistant to climate change and aridity. They also discussed how to fight food insecurity in Afghanistan under the peculiar drought patterns of the country.

The meeting was addressed by the Director General of IOFS, Professor Yerlan Baidaulet; Coordinator General of COMSTECH, Professor Iqbal Choudhary and the Chairman of PARC, Dr Muhammad Ghulam Ali during its opening session on the first day. Members of the meeting agreed to develop an Action Plan on practical steps to achieve the goals of ensuring food security through the development and exchange of climate-resilient, higher yield and higher nutrition wheat crop varieties, through increased scientific cooperation and exchange of plant genetic material. OIC experts in the meeting visited the research laboratories of the PARC on the third day of the deliberation exercise.

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-WealthPk