REPORT
On The Joint International Russian-Kazakh-Japanese Collecting Mission To South Kazakhstan (August 9-23, 2011)

     A collecting mission to Eastern Tajikistan (the Pamir Mountains) was organized by the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA, Aleppo, Syria) with the purpose of collecting landraces and wild relatives of cereals (wheat, barley, rye, Aegilops), grain legumes (faba bean, pea, cowpea, grasspea) as well as fodder crops (Lucerne, clover, cock’s foot, Timothy grass, etc.). The mission was attended by representatives of 6 countries - mostly staff members of Agricultural Research Institutions. During several days the scientific team was accompanied by journalists from the Aramco Magazine the main objective of which is the history and culture of the Muslim world. A representative of VIR Sergey Shuvalov acted as a co-organizer of the collecting mission and a deputy-head of the collecting mission team. On route to the Pamir Mountains, the team collected PGR in several regions of Central Tajikistan and then explored the Rushon, Shugnan, Ishkashim and Roshtkala regions of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province. A special interest represented routes along the Khuf and Bartang valleys, which haven`t been examined by previous collecting missions for a long time. A total of 363 samples was collected.