Technical Advisory Committee Sixty-Fifth Meeting, 18-22 October 1994: Report of the Meeting

Report of TAC 65 held at IFPRI, Washington D.C., October 17-22, 1995, Alex McCalla presiding. Ismail Serageldin, Chairman of the CGIAR, informed TAC about MTM94, and the agenda for ICW94. He said TAC would play a major role in a restructured CGIAR. TAC decided to develop a new priority report as a basis for allocating resources during 1999-2003, and priority considerations for 1996-1998. Two TAC sub-committees were asked to report at TAC 65 on the structure and composition of the proposed matrix of CGIAR programs.TAC provided guidance for the revision of a draft report on CGIAR regional commitments in West Africa. It considered a paper on CGIAR review processes which focused on the role of internal review processes at IARCs and discussed the status of a number of center and stripe reviews. A draft strategy paper prepared by a center directors committee on information in the CGIAR would, TAC concluded, require radical revision in the CGIAR mode of operation, and the creation of an inter-center working group. TAC offered an interim commentary for use by the center directors in revising the paper.In a joint session with center directors, TAC discussed issues on systemwide and ecoregional activities arising from a report prepared after a special meeting of TAC in August 1994. (This meeting was not separately recorded.) In addition to the general discussion, the report of TAC 65 contains exchanges between centers and TAC on seven proposed activities.TAC accepted a draft paper on the future CGIAR research agenda prepared for the ministerial level meeting, and agreed to consider post harvest technology in its next round of priority setting. It considered that the proposals of a workshop held at Zschortau, Germany, on soil, water, and nutrient management were covered by the existing list of systemwide and ecoregional initiatives