Global adoption of transgenic crops reached 67.7 million hectares in 2003 from 2.8 million in 1996. Delivery has occurred almost entirely through the private sector and adoption has been rapid in areas where the crops addressed serious production constraints and where farmers had access to the new technologies. Three countries (USA, Argentina and Canada), three crops (soybean, cotton and maize) and two traits (insect resistance and herbicide tolerance) account for the vast majority of global transgenic area.

This paper explores the use of actor-oriented approaches in natural resource-based development. It begins by reviewing the need to bring an analysis of actor linkages, coalitions and information flows higher on the agenda in planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Various tools which could assist in doing this are introduced and their use is illustrated in case studies of natural resource-based research and development (R&D) projects in Nepal and Bangladesh.

This document is on the Programma sull'Innovazione e lo Sviluppo Agroindustriale (PISA), which is an international program whose general objective is to support innovative projects of agroindustrial development aimed at generating value-added and employment in the rural sector of developing countries.

Uganda pioneered the use of budget support operations known as Poverty Reduction Support Credits (PRSCs) in the World Bank. PRSCs were designed to channel programmatic lending to support policy and institutional reforms in support of a country's Poverty Reduction Strategy, usually presented in the form of a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). In the case of Uganda the PRSCs were designed as a series of annual credits supporting a three year rolling program of reforms, based on Uganda's version of a PRSC, which is known as the Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) .

The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) implements participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) systems as a means of strengthening learning, self-reflection and facilitating institutional learning and change (ILAC) processes within Research and Development (R&D) institutions and local communities in Africa.

This study describes the evolving context and organisational linkages in the agricultural innovation system of Azerbaijan and suggests ways to promote effective organisational ties for the development, distribution and use of new or improved information and knowledge related to agriculture. Graph-theoretic principles and concepts are employed to assess the existing organisational linkages vital for agricultural innovations.

The livelihoods of mountain farmers are often constrained by poor access to markets and limited entrepreneurial skills for adding value to produce. Research and development organizations have now recognized that improving market access and enhancing the ability of resource-poor mountain farmers to diversify their links with markets are among the most pressing challenges in mountain agriculture.

Innovation systems and science and technology (S&T) projects supported by the World Bank have taken on many forms in the past several years. The Bank's involvement in industrial technology projects started in the 1970s, with Israel and Spain numbering among the first countries to receive support in the form of industrial technology development. This paper reviews the lessons learned in S&T projects that have been supported by the Bank, with an emphasis on the examples of the past decade (1989-2003).