Different crops in Uzbekistan, 1997

Introduction

In 1990 a 'Memorandum of Understanding' was signed with the Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry (VIR) at st. Petersburg to conduct a number of joint exploration missions in the USSR. Due to the political changes of 1991, for several years, it was not possible to conduct these missions, but in 1995 the two national genebanks resumed discussions in order to conduct some of the planned expeditions. VIR proposed to conduct the first mission in Uzbekistan and contacted the national genebank of Uzbekistan, the Uzbekistan Research Institute for Plant Industry (Uz-NIIR), located in Kibray near Tashkent. VIR took the initiative to make the arrangements with the genebank of the Uz-NIIR, and Dr. Karim I. Baimatov was appointed as the expedition leader. All arrangements necessary for the organization of the expedition such as expedition routes, transport, equipment ,crops to be collected, financial aspects, etc., were made in tri-partite discussions and the expedition was able to start at the first of August, 1997. The representative of CGN was Ir. L.J.M. van Soest.

In 'Documents' you will find the report of the mission (with an extensive list of collected samples), an article from the PGR newsletter and some articles from Dutch magazines.

In 'Background Documents' there are two short reports on other collecting missions to the same area, performed by other institutes.