ICARDA at ARC Conference and Exhibition in Egypt

Cairo, Egypt| 27-28 May 2025- ICARDA participated in the Agriculture Research Center Conference and Exhibition: Innovation and Entrepreneurship Towards Sustainable Agricultural Development, organized by Egypt’s Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation (MALR) and the Agricultural Research Center (ARC)

The conference stood out for its participation from leading international organizations, agricultural companies, ARC-affiliated research institutes and laboratories, university professors, researchers, innovators, and entrepreneurs in the agricultural sector. The event provided a platform to explore the latest trends in agriculture, sustainability, and innovation, and to connect with leading experts in the field.
ICARDA’s booth attracted significant interest from a large number of visitors eager to learn about our latest innovations in dryland agriculture and explore opportunities for collaboration to build resilience in dryland communities.

We were honored to welcome H.E.  Alaa Farouk, Egypt’s Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, to our booth.  Dr. Aladdin Hamwieh, ICARDA’s Egypt Country Coordinator, presented a range of our innovations that were on display including a range of resilient, climate-smart crops developed   through the collaboration between ICARDA and ARC   breeders such as genome-edited chickpea lines developed for drought tolerance, elite lines of chickpea and faba bean   resistant to biotic and abiotic stresses, and improved high yield, heat-tolerant varieties of wheat and barley. 

Barley took center stage in our exhibition as a vital, climate-resilient crop for  food and feed systems in Egypt and beyond, featuring in two groundbreaking innovations. First, ICARDA showed a newly developed version of the Egyptian staple baladi bread, made with an 80:20 blend of wheat and barley. We demonstrated that incorporating barley flour into bread wheat for baladi bread production maintains quality and nutritious value while reducing Egypt’s dependence on wheat imports, a critical concern for the world’s largest wheat importer.

Another standout barley innovation was the one-week germinated barley grown under controlled, soil-free conditions, to be used for animal feed while it is at the seedling stage. This innovation holds tremendous potential for livestock producers in water-scarce and arid regions, where growing animal feed is increasingly unsustainable. ICARDA has an ongoing collaboration with national stakeholders to expand barley cultivation in newly reclaimed lands, positioning barley as a climate-resilient, locally adapted crop and supporting Egypt’s broader goals of sustainable agriculture, efficient land use, and enhanced resilience of the food system.

ICARDA scientists also presented a range of advanced soil, water, and agronomy technologies such as Time-Domain Reflectometry (TDR) to measure soil moisture and thermal imaging cameras to detect water stress in crops. This technology works by sending an electromagnetic pulse along a probe inserted into the soil, with the reflected signal indicating the moisture content. TDR allows researchers to monitor water availability accurately, optimize irrigation scheduling, and improve water-use efficiency, especially critical in dryland agriculture where every drop counts.

On the second day Dr. Sawsan Tawkaz participated in a session titled “The role of international organizations in cooperation to develop the agricultural sector” alongside Arab Organization for Agricultural Development (AOAD), ACSAD, WorldFish, and Agricultural Export Council. 

"ICARDA brings global expertise to the countries we serve, delivering cutting-edge agricultural solutions tailored to farmers' needs. In the face of climate change, our close collaboration with national  agricultural research systems (NARS) is vital to ensuring impact on the ground." Dr. Sawsan Tawkaz, Coordinator - Biotechnology and Plant Cell Culture, ICARDA.

The exhibition provided an excellent opportunity to reaffirm ICARDA’s commitment to strengthening the resilience of Egypt’s agricultural sector against multiple challenges such as climate change, water scarcity, and its high dependence on food imports.