Mahmud Duwayri

The potential of small-scale rainfed agriculture to strengthen food security in Arab countries

In most Arab countries, domestic agricultural production is insufficient. The gap between production and demand is likely to increase due to climate change and other factors. This review paper examines the challenges and possible solutions to ensuring food security in the future. It focuses on rainfed agriculture, which accounts for two-thirds of the region’s cropland, the bulk of its food staples, and almost all its rangelands. Given the scarcity of water and arable land, there are few opportunities in the region to expand cultivated area. But numerous effective, proven technologies are available that can increase productivity per unit area of land or volume of water. Crop technologies include, for example, new stress-tolerant varieties, supplemental irrigation and other techniques to increase water productivity, and conservation agriculture and other land management methods. Livestock nutrition and productivity could be increased with new forage or dual-purpose varieties, and greater use of alternative feed sources such as feed blocks made from crop by-products. The paper describes some of these technologies, and summarizes results obtained from on-station and on-farm testing. The key issue is poor adoption of available technologies. The priority for researchers and policy makers must therefore be to scale up investments in research and extension; encourage private sector participation; and create enabling policies to encourage technology adoption, market participation and more sustainable use of natural resources, by smallholder farmers.

Characterization and Assessment of Genetic Diversity of Wild Date Palm ( Phoenix Dactylifera L. ) in Jordan = توصيف و تقدير الاختلافات الوراثية لنخيل التمر البري ( Phoenix Dactylifera L. ) في الأردن

This study was conducted to survey and characterize wild populations of date palm in Jordan. Phenotypic parameters either vegetative, leaf morphology, physical and chemical properties of fruits, and genetic diversity within and among populations were also, analyzed. Ecogeographical survey showed that date palm trees are naturally growing in different locations across Jordan ranging in elevation from 390 m below sea level to 525 m above sea level with different levels of salinity. Eleven sites distributed all over the country were selected and the total number of populations studied was twenty four with three female trees randomly selected from each population. Results showed wide variations in morphological characters and in genetic diversity when using 12 Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) markers. Differences were detected in almost all phenotypic traits. The results of the study indicated a high degree of independence among the geographical origin and morphological data; Genetic variation analysis showed clustering of trees collected from the same population and closely related geographical location. The cultivated date palm Medjool was closely related with populations from Wadi Alhazeem and Al Bokharieh location that form a distinct cluster separated from other studied wild date palm populations with similarity up to 72 %.