Arab countries face difficulties in meeting their food demands, particularly in wheat, from domestic production and, therefore, depend on food imports in varying degrees. The region’s net imports of cereals totaled 58.2 million tons in 2007 (IFAD, Improving Food Security in the Arab World, January 2009) and is expected to increase to 73.1 million tons by 2020 due to the expanding demand of a growing population. Wheat imports alone will account for more than 50% of the total cereal net imports. In order to reduce the dependency on wheat import the Arab countries agreed on the need of an action plan that could contribute to increasing wheat production levels in farmers’ fields. This could be achieved by disseminating to farmers improved production packages that addresses the constraints facing the farmers such as low yielding varieties, poor plant water-use efficiency and inadequate agronomic parties and integrated pest and disease management. In addition and in several cases countries suffer from insufficient availability of well trained and experienced research and extension staff. Therefore the project addresses this constraint by contributing to the capacity building of staff of national research programs.
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