In brief

ICARDA is the global agricultural research center working with countries in the world’s dry areas. We support them to improve:

• The sustainable productivity of their agricultural production systems
• The incomes of smallholder farmers living on dry lands and in fragile ecosystems
• Nutrition and national food security strategies 

With our partners in many countries, ICARDA produces science based-solutions. These include new crop varieties (barley, wheat, durum wheats, lentil, faba bean, kabuli chickpea, pasture and forage legumes); improved practices for farming and natural resources management; and socio-economic and policy options to support countries to improve their food security.

All these products and technologies are international public goods science, freely available to all partners in developing countries and to development partners and international organizations.

Drylands agriculture in the world’s low-income countries is situated primarily in Central Asia, West Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, in large parts of sub-Saharan Africa and in Latin America.