Use of Conservation Agriculture in Crop-Livestock Systems (CLCA) in the Drylands for Enhanced Water Use and Soil Fertility in NEN and LAC Countries

Dr. Aymen Frija is an agricultural economist with ICARDA’s Social, Economic and Policy Research Program. His current research interests focus on farm modeling, farm efficiency and productivity analysis, agricultural water management instruments, institutional performance analysis, and the economics of conservation agriculture.

Previously, he was a post-doctoral researcher at Ghent University in Belgium, specializing in agricultural water policy analysis in developing countries. He was also assistant professor and researcher at the College of Agriculture of Mograne, Carthage University in Tunisia.

Dr. Frija is the author of more than 50 publications. He is an active member of several scientific and professional associations, such as the African Association of Agricultural Economists and the Tunisian Association of Water and Environment. He holds a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Ghent University in Belgium.                                      

Sara Jani is the Project Monitoring and Knowledge Management Coordinator of the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning platform (MEL). She started her work with MEL in 2016. She provides support and training to ICARDA capacity, manages ICARDA knowledge products uploaded to the MEL Platform to ensure maximum compliance with FAIR principles. In addition, she works on updating MEL’s online user guide. Recently, she is involved in recording ICARDA projects and managing the contribution of ICARDA to the FAO-managed AGROVOC repository.

Previously she worked as the program administrator for the CRP- Dryland Systems Program and served as a senior secretary for the Integrated Water and Land Management (IWLM) when she first joined ICARDA in 2005 assisting project leaders, international and local researchers in administrative and financial matters.

She holds M.Sc in Business Management from the SKEMA International Business School and B.Sc in Business Administration from Aleppo University in Syria.

Dr. Hichem Ben Salem is the Director of the ICARDA’s “Diversification and Sustainable Intensification of Production Systems” Research Program and the ICARDA’s CRP Dryland Systems Focal Point. Dr Ben Salem earned a PhD in Animal Nutrition from the University of Bourgogne (Dijon-France) and Master of Sciences (MSc) on Animal Nutrition from the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Saragossa (Spain).

Before he joined ICARDA in 2014, Dr Ben Salem was the Director General of the National Institute of Agricultural Research of Tunisia (INRAT) for the period 2011-2013 and at the same time he was the Head of the Laboratory of Animal and Forage Production at INRAT since 2006. At the international level, Dr Ben Salem is the coordinator of the FAO-CIHEAM Network on Sheep and Goat Nutrition since 2000 and also coordinator of a research theme “Cactus: Forage, Rangeland and Environmental Protection” under the FAO-ICARDA Cactus Network for more than 10 years.

Along his career at this institute, he was in charge of a research program focusing on the potential use of alternative feed resources (fodder shrubs, crop residues, agro industrial byproducts, etc.) in sheep and goat feeding. He also investigated livestock response to different stressors (anti-nutritive factors in the diet, drinking water restriction or salinity, etc.) in terms of digestion, production performances and meat and milk quality.

Dr Ben Salem published around 100 papers mainly in international peer-reviewed journals and book chapters. He was also an invited editor of several special issues of Elsevier’s journals. Many of his articles report on findings on the replacement value of agro industrial by-products (e.g. silages, feed blocks and pellets) and fodder shrubs (e.g. Atriplex spp., Acacia cyanophylla) and cactus for conventional feedstuffs (e.g. barley and soybean meal) in the diets of stall-fed or grazing sheep and goats and the effects of secondary compounds (e.g. tannins and saponins) on digestion, productive performances and the quality of meat and milk of small ruminants. The two last special issues guest edited by Dr Ben Salem were entitled “Shrubby vegetation and agro-industrial by-products as alternative feed resources for sheep and goats” published in Animal Feed Science and Technology (Volume 147, issues 1-3 (2008)) and “Potential use of halophytes and other salt-tolerant plants in sheep and goat feeding ” published in Small Ruminant Research (Volume 92, Issues 1-3 (2010).

Dr. Hichem Ben Salem is the Director of the ICARDA’s “Diversification and Sustainable Intensification of Production Systems” Research Program and the ICARDA’s CRP Dryland Systems Focal Point. Dr Ben Salem earned a PhD in Animal Nutrition from the University of Bourgogne (Dijon-France) and Master of Sciences (MSc) on Animal Nutrition from the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Saragossa (Spain).

Before he joined ICARDA in 2014, Dr Ben Salem was the Director General of the National Institute of Agricultural Research of Tunisia (INRAT) for the period 2011-2013 and at the same time he was the Head of the Laboratory of Animal and Forage Production at INRAT since 2006. At the international level, Dr Ben Salem is the coordinator of the FAO-CIHEAM Network on Sheep and Goat Nutrition since 2000 and also coordinator of a research theme “Cactus: Forage, Rangeland and Environmental Protection” under the FAO-ICARDA Cactus Network for more than 10 years.

Along his career at this institute, he was in charge of a research program focusing on the potential use of alternative feed resources (fodder shrubs, crop residues, agro industrial byproducts, etc.) in sheep and goat feeding. He also investigated livestock response to different stressors (anti-nutritive factors in the diet, drinking water restriction or salinity, etc.) in terms of digestion, production performances and meat and milk quality.

Dr Ben Salem published around 100 papers mainly in international peer-reviewed journals and book chapters. He was also an invited editor of several special issues of Elsevier’s journals. Many of his articles report on findings on the replacement value of agro industrial by-products (e.g. silages, feed blocks and pellets) and fodder shrubs (e.g. Atriplex spp., Acacia cyanophylla) and cactus for conventional feedstuffs (e.g. barley and soybean meal) in the diets of stall-fed or grazing sheep and goats and the effects of secondary compounds (e.g. tannins and saponins) on digestion, productive performances and the quality of meat and milk of small ruminants. The two last special issues guest edited by Dr Ben Salem were entitled “Shrubby vegetation and agro-industrial by-products as alternative feed resources for sheep and goats” published in Animal Feed Science and Technology (Volume 147, issues 1-3 (2008)) and “Potential use of halophytes and other salt-tolerant plants in sheep and goat feeding ” published in Small Ruminant Research (Volume 92, Issues 1-3 (2010).

Zied Idoudi is an Agricultural Economist Engineer with professional expertise in conservation agriculture; agroecology; rural livelihoods assessment; agricultural innovation systems, monitoring and evaluation; knowledge management and communication. For the past six years, he has been involved in different Agricultural Research for Development Projects dealing with Diversification and Sustainable Intensification of Production Systems. He is currently a Technology Scaling Specialist (TSS) at ICARDA-Tunisia.

Claudio Zucca is a soil conservation and land management specialist with ICARDA, based in Rabat, Morocco. His area of research is sustainable land management, soil and water conservation, and land degradation. His research approach is based on interdisciplinary and multi-scale methods that integrate fieldwork and geomatics. He is interested in soil-genetic processes and soil geography and has performed basic and applied research in pedology, contributing to several soil survey and mapping studies.

Currently, Dr. Zucca leads research on soil carbon sequestration and the effects of bioavailable silicon on water use by crops in collaboration with crop breeders and plant physiologists. He also leads ICARDA’s work on soil and water conservation in the savannah belt of Nigeria and integrated watershed management in Ethiopia and Tunisia, and co-leads the scaling of sustainable land management practices and land degradation neutrality.

He serves as focal point for the international consortium on global soil partnership and world overview of conservation approaches and technologies. He is on the UN international roster of experts for combating desertification and serves on the editorial board of World Desertification Atlas. He has authored more than 40 journal publications.

Before joining ICARDA in 2015, he was senior researcher and associate professor at the University of Sassari in Italy, where he spent 15 years conducting drylands research. Zucca received his Ph.D. in Pedology and a master’s degree in Environmental Sciences from the Universities of Palermo and Milano Bicocca.