CGPRT - Information on coarse grains, pulses, roots and tubers
It was not until the early 1980s, that CGPRT crops (coarse grains, pulses, roots and tubers) were recognized by research and development workers as an alternative source of food which could improve the diets of both rural and urban people in the developing world. These crops have an important role to play in subsistence and traditional farming and as industrial foodcrops, with a wide range of end-products. They are perhaps most vital in remote upland farming areas where the soil cannot sustain rice or wheat, for here they provide nourishment and income. Traditionally governments have placed a high priority on the production of rice and wheat as staple foods which are necessary for food security, and have therefore invested minimally in CGPRT crops. CGPRT crops include barley, maize, finger millet, teff, grain amaranth and millet; pigeonpea, chickpea, lentil, mungbean, black gram, pea, cowpea, lathyrus, groundnut, soybean, drybean and winged bean; yams, taro and arrowroots, cassava, potato and sweet potato. But during the past decade industrialization has given a new impetus to the production of some of these crops (especially soybean, maize and cassava) as raw materials for a growing feed industry and for the fast-food businesses which now partly dictate the consumption pattern of people in Asia. It was for this reason that in 1981 the Coarse Grains, Pulse, Roots and Tubers Centre (CGPRT) came into being in Bogor near Jakarta, under the auspices of the United Nations. Its objective is to initiate and promote research and training, and also to publish and supply information on socio-economic and related aspects of CGPRT crops in Asia and the Pacific. The Centre works hand-in-hand with other international research centres and universities, such as ICRISAT, CIMMYT, CIP, AVRDC, ACIAR, KIT, CIRAD, CIAT, IDRC and FAO. As a supplier of information, the Centre has established an Information and Documentation Service (IDS) to provide publication and distribution services; to gather, process and disseminate socio-economic data on CGPRT crops in Asia and the Pacific; and, through the database division, to process, collate and distribute information on these crops in the region. The IDS concentrates on the delivery of data on CGPRT crops to policy and decision-makers, researchers and to the private sector. The IDS collects socio-economic information on these crops for processing into user-focused formats. The Centre's publication programme allows independent authors to publish findings of relevant studies, and assists libraries and national agricultural research centres in establishing their own database systems. Since 1985 the Centre has published its own newsletter Palawija News, whose readership has increased from 300 to more than 3000. For more details. contact: the Director, CGPRT Centre, Jalan Merdeka 99 Bogor 16111. INDONESIA
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| Format: | News Item biblioteca |
| Language: | English |
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Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation
1991
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10568/45464 http://collections.infocollections.org/ukedu/en/d/Jcta31e/ |
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