U.S. universities, company help improve agriculture in northern Iraq

Mosul, Iraq – Soldiers from the 416th and 426th Civil Affairs Battalions delivered 20 bags of wheat seeds to the Ninevah Agriculture Directorate Saturday in an effort to improve farming conditions in the “breadbasket” of Iraq. The project was a culmination of three months of work to deliver eight varieties of wheat and barley from the United States directly to the farmers in Ninevah Province. The World Wide Wheat corporation and Texas A&M, University of Colorado State and University of Kansas State, contributed the Arizona-grown cultivars. Arizona wheat was chosen because it has adapted to a climate similar to that of Iraq.

Iraqi agriculture officials and Multi-National Forces said it’s important to introduce these new varieties of wheat into the region. Agriculture accounts for 50 percent of the Ninevah Province’s gross domestic product. If they are successful in finding a strain that will be heat, drought and smut, or wheat fungus, resistant, productivity will increase as well as farmers’ profits.

“In many cases, the wheat grown here has been the same wheat for the past 10 years,” said Lt. Col. John Maxwell, chief food and agricultural officer for the 416th Civil Affairs Battalion, from Norristown, Pa. “It has grown so long without crossbreeding that the wheat no longer has the protection or yield per acre it once had and the soil is wearing out.”

Dr. Abdulsattar A. Jassim, the Director General of Agriculture for Ninevah Province, has been interested in the study of agriculture since he was a child. Now, it is up to him and his team of specialists to test and analyze the cultivars’ growth and determine how the grain can best serve the farmers’ needs.

“Sample plots of soil throughout the region will be used to test the results of the cultivars’ exposure to diverse weather, water amounts, fertilizer and types of soil,” Jassim said. “That way, we can see which type of wheat is most compatible with which area.”

While it may take some time to find a solution to improve wheat production, experts are optimistic this is a step in the right direction.

“Some will do well and some won’t, which is why we brought in such a large variety,” Maxwell said. “But if they can grow a field of it, that seed becomes more foundation seed that can then become a variety of wheat that can be multiplied for generations.”

Release #041005d