Overview of strategies and planned activities for 1989

Abstract

After a very successful planning meeting involving CIMMYT directive and regional staff (December 88), it is felt that 1989 will mark a turning point in the development of CIMMYT Regional Program for Central America and the Caribbean. The present overview of strategies and activities tries to capture the basic nature of such turning point. Accordingly, emphasis has been placed on the description of the new upcoming areas of operations, particularly, those involving strategic agronomic research, as well as the ones referring to the strong commitment to expand the interdisciplinary work agronomy-economics. Training activities will be as important as ever and are subsumed in each one of the major areas of research. More details of objectives and activities to met them will be available in the MBO plans which will be adjusted by each member of the team to conform the present guidelines. Since major changes are being incorporated, the implications of the present plan go beyond 1989 and will certainly enter in due time into the CIMMYT-SDC discussions which will shape the future of the Regional Program. In this context, priority countries have been tentatively ordered, with the commitment of being reviewed for the future in the light of the experience of planned operations in 1989. Critical issues as team location have been also discussed, some decisions taken and others committed to be-taken during the coming year. This is the perspective with which the following sections are organized.