Regional Network for West Asia & North Africa in IPGRI-CWANA

Regional Networks

West Asia & North Africa

The West Asia and North Africa Network on Plant Genetic Resources (WANANET)

The West Asia and North Africa Network on Plant Genetic Resources was established in 1992 with the support of IPGRI, FAO and ICARDA. The Network is organized around six Working Groups. This Cooperative effort has played a valuable role in strengthening national programs in the area of plant genetic resources.

IPGRI CWANA Library, 2001

Other outputs include case studies on fruit tree species (i.e. almond and pistachio), the production of techniques to assist locating genetic diversity plus statistical tools to use in the analyses of PGR. During 1998 the Steering Committee of WANANET, with support from IPGRI CWANA, commenced restructuring the network by including NGOs and policymakers in its work and by seeking greater support and recognition by governments and regional donor organizations.

With the aim of enhancing cooperative efforts, that best reflect the new communication systems in PGR, and in line with the new trends in the region, WANANET is being currently changed into a virtual working environment. This new approach in networking will allow national programs in the region to communicate electronically, so as to exchange information and experiences more efficiently and cost-effectively. A survey across WANA was carried out in 1999 to assess and upgrade country capacities in electronic communication.

Follow up visits in 2000 to Egypt, Lebanon, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Morocco have taken place to integrate such a system into existing PGR capacities of national programs. It is expected that within 2001, an additional five countries will have such capacities in place

Regional Networks

In year 2002 two types of networks has been identified in order to ease knowledge transfer and collaboration between National Programs in the CWANA region and with other regions.

Logical Network, by appointing National Coordinator within each National Program in each CWANA region countries and availing state of art communication tools for them to communicate, collaborate and exchange knowledge; such tools include Video Conferencing, Voice over IP, Email groups, lists and discussion forums. These tools reduce the cost of traveling and increase the participation in any research related activities between National Programs.

Physical Network, by installing modeling tool namely Genetic Resources Information system (GRIS) Genetic Resources Information System. It aims to document and manage the genetic resources both in ex-situ and in-situ. GRIS consists of a static set of relational databases to document passport data and a user defined databases.

The user-defined part is created through internal simple developing environment to document characterization and evaluation information. GRIS is divided into 7 modules, Taxonomy, Surveying, Site Information, Sampling, Germplasm Management, Import/Export and system properties.

It is also equipped with publishing module that export passport data to a centralized on-line web published database. This feature helps National Programs to exchange their knowledge with each other using information and communication Internet technology available within there own capacities.

GRIS is currently running at Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Oman and Vietnam. For more detail on GRIS or networking tools please contact Webmaster of this site at k.durah@cgiar.org.

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Website last updated by Linda Fattal on 16-09-2003