The Director General of the National Agricultural Research Center (NARC), Dr. Nizar Haddad, inaugurated an international workshop held at NARC, in which eight countries from the Mediterranean basin participated, as part of a project ‘Zero Parasitic’ that aims to find innovative sustainable solutions for broomrapes prevention and integrated pest management approaches to overcome parasitism in Mediterranean cropping systems.

Haddad said that this workshop aims to find innovative solutions for the broomrapes, which has become one of the challenges facing farmers as a result of severe losses, as it is considered a harmful intrusive weed on a number of agricultural crops, and leads to a loss of up to 70% of production due to the difficulty of controlling it by traditional methods.

Haddad added that NARC, since its inception, has been seeking to find innovative solutions to the challenges facing the agricultural sector, especially those related to productivity, in cooperation with local and international partners, by harnessing research capabilities, exchanging scientific expertise, and disseminating scientific outputs to farmers to promote the agricultural sector and its sustainable development.

Dr. Adel Al Abed, Director of Deir Alla Agricultural Research Center, highlighted the importance of this coordination meeting for the Mediterranean countries, namely Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Spain, Germany, Morocco, Malta and Greece, in finding innovative solutions for the broomrapes, by discussing the results of the previous season, and setting an action plan for the next year. Experiments are being conducted on the broad beans and tomatoes season in all participating countries.

Al Abed added that the first meeting was held in Greece and that this meeting is the second meeting to evaluate the results to follow up on the progress of the project, and it will last for four days with the participation of expert researchers from eight countries of the Mediterranean basin.

Dr. Demosthenis KATSIS, one of the participating researchers from Greece, said that this workshop is important in exchanging experiences among the participants to find innovative solutions for the broomrapes and he pointed to the technical experiences that the participants will gain from the Jordanian experience in this field, he also referred to the professional and technical development of the research staff of NARC in many agricultural fields.