International traveling winter wheat seminar for a secure sustainable future

Every two years, since 2007, the International Winter Wheat Improvement Program (IWWIP) has conducted a traveling seminar to evaluate germplasm, assess current practices and relations, and develop a plan for future improvements in winter wheat production.

This year, IWWIP, in cooperation with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia (FAO-SEC), Krasnodar Agricultural Research Institute, and the All-Russian Research Institute of Cereal Crops organized a seminar in Krasnodar, Russia, during 22-26 May 2017.

More than 70 participants from 23 countries, including plant breeders, agronomists, seed specialists, and representatives of seed farms attended the four-day-workshop to learn about recent achievements in wheat breeding and strengthen international and regional cooperation on winter wheat.

As part of the mobile seminar, scientists visited the demonstration plots of Krasnodar Research institute and a number of farms in the region. The field excursions were accompanied by a detailed account of the institute’s innovative breeding varieties with record yields and cultivation technologies. During the 2017 harvesting season, 23 varieties of winter wheat and eight varieties of winter barley were sown in experimental fields.

Over the past few years, the Timashevskiy region has been leading the harvesting of cereals and leguminous crops. The achievement of consistently high results became possible due to many years of effective collaboration between farmers and the scientists of Krasnodar Agricultural Research Institute.

With more than 217 million ha planted annually, wheat is the most widely cultivated cereal in the world. It is also the world’s most important protein source and provides around 20% of the calories consumed by humans worldwide.

IWWIP is a joint program between the Government of Turkey, CIMMYT and ICARDA, serving winter wheat breeding programs globally, but with its main target in the Central West Asia and North Africa region.

In recent years, the traveling winter wheat seminar has visited Ukraine (2009), Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey (2011), Uzbekistan (2013), Azerbaijan, and Georgia (2015).