BAKU, Azerbaijan, September 6. A delegation from Türkiye visited Azerbaijan to provide support in the field of plant health in the context of the FAO-Türkiye Partnership Programme (FTPP) from September 3 through September 5, Trend reports.
The delegation consisted of representatives of the FAO Subregional Office for Central Asia and experts from the General Directorate of Agricultural Research and Food and Control of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.
During the mission, a two-day workshop was held with the participation of experts from the Azerbaijan Food Security Agency and the Agrarian Services Agency of the Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources.
The workshop included a series of technical meetings in which the experts shared their knowledge, visited greenhouses, and contributed to a review of plant health emergency preparedness and management in Azerbaijan. In addition, key documents related to plant health were prepared by the Azerbaijan Food Safety Agency working in collaboration with FAO offices in Baku and Ankara.
Several of the visits and meetings focused in particular on the promotion of local, cost-effective, and proven development solutions tailored specifically to vegetable virus disease outbreaks.
The experts also shared their knowledge and experience of the assessment of institutional structures, capacities, strategies, and programs; emergency management, prevention, and response action plans; pest risk analysis; and the review and verification of Azerbaijan’s strategic program and emergency plan for the prevention and management of wheat rust diseases, prepared in the context of the CAC-Rust project.
The two-day workshop was opened by Elkhan Mikayilov, Head of Administration of AFSA; Bariz Mehdiyev, Assistant FAOR; Hakan Kalender, Agricultural Counsellor of the Turkish Embassy in Baku; and Fazil Dusunceli, Agricultural Officer, FAOSEC. During the workshop, Hasenem Ertaş, a plant health expert from the General Directorate of Food and Control, along with Pelin Keleş Öztürk and Ferhan Morca from the General Directorate of Agricultural Research, provided training sessions.
At the conclusion of the event, the participants agreed that the workshop and visits had established the groundwork for future collaboration in plant health and food security between Türkiye and Azerbaijan.
The objectives of the FAO-Türkiye Partnership Programmes are to provide support to ensure food security, rural poverty reduction, and sustainable forest management; combat desertification; and preserve ecosystems in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Türkiye, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, and other countries of mutual interest.
Established in 2007, the first phase of the FAO-Türkiye Partnership Programme on Food and Agriculture (FTPP) has benefited from trust fund contributions totaling USD 10 million, financed by the Government of Türkiye and represented by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. During the first phase of the program, 28 projects were implemented in 16 countries between 2009 and 2015.
In 2014, Türkiye and FAO commenced the second phase of the FTPP along with the first phase of the FAO-Türkiye Forestry Partnership Programme (FTFP) with additional funding of USD 20 million, bringing Türkiye’s total contribution to $30 million.