Agricultural Research Corporation
The Agricultural Research Corporation is the foremost agricultural research institution in Sudan, and undertakes most of the applied agricultural research in the country, and its headquarters is the city of Wad Medani in Gezira State. The beginnings of organised agricultural research in Sudan go back to 1902, when the first experimental farm was established in Shendi to test the potential for irrigated cotton production, then the Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratories were established in 1903, the Shambat Research Station in 1904, and the Gezira Research Station near Wad Medani in 1918 to serve cotton production in the Gezira Scheme, and it remained the historic headquarters of successive agricultural research institutions.
Research activity remained for decades a department within the government agriculture apparatus, until the major expansion in stations and programmes came, so the Agricultural Research Corporation was created in 1967 as a semi-independent public institution under the supervision of the Ministry of Agriculture, bringing under its umbrella research stations and specialised centres across the country. In 2001 the Corporation moved to the then newly created Ministry of Science and Technology, then returned in 2010 to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forests.
The Corporation's mission is to plan and implement applied research in food and non-food crops, forests and natural resources, and to develop varieties and technologies that raise productivity, support food security, reduce poverty and preserve resources. It is managed by a Director General assisted by deputies and general administrations for human resources, information, monitoring and evaluation, technology transfer and financial and administrative affairs, and it works through twenty-four research programmes in genetic improvement, crop husbandry, pest management and natural resources, and national committees including the Variety Release Committee. Among its documented achievements is saving cotton from diseases that threatened it in the first half of the last century by developing resistant varieties, and developing the two sorghum varieties Tabat and Wad Ahmed in the 1990s.
(Sources: Official website of the Agricultural Research Corporation arc.gov.sd — 'Overview' page; Library of the Agricultural Research Corporation arc-library.gov.sd — page introducing the Corporation; Arabic Wikipedia — entry 'Agricultural Research Corporation (Sudan)')
— Editorial Team