Technical Advisory Committee Seventy-Eighth Meeting, 27-31 March 2000: Report of the Meeting

Report of TAC 78 held at the World Bank in Paris, March 27-31, 2000, Emil Javier presiding. The draft report was approved without change at TAC 79. The Committee debated with stakeholders present the first version of a new vision and strategy for the CGIAR prepared following a special meeting of TAC (not recorded in the collection) in January 2000, and a joint meeting with center directors. The record includes several pages of comments by participants. The statement was to be revised for discussion with the Consultative Council at a meeting in April and then revised again for consideration at the CGIAR meeting in May 2000.TAC considered proposals from the centers for the period 2001-2003, and prepared recommendations for the CGIAR. It accepted the report of the EPMR of WARDA subject to incorporation of a new section on WARDA's Mission, Strategies, and Priorities. It was suggested that WARDA document its impact better. The Committee endorsed in general the EPMRs for ICARDA and IWMI, and prepared a comments (included in the meeting record) on all three reviews for the CGIAR. Hans Gregersen, former chair of the Impact Assessment and Evaluation Group (IAEG) and now chair of TAC's Special Panel on Impact Assessment (SPIA), reported on the integration of IAEG with TAC which was effective on January 1, 2000. He also reported on the ongoing work of SPIA. TAC also reviewed progress in implementing the review of plant breeding methodologies. It commented on papers from the CDC on strategies for Central Asia and the Caucasus, and Sub-Saharan Africa, and a proposal from the SGRP on investment in genebanks.