CIMMYT and the Government of the Republic of Uzbekistan today signed an award agreement for the bridge phase of Advancing Wheat Innovation and Capacity in Uzbekistan (AWIC-UZ), a landmark initiative to modernize the country’s wheat sector. The agreement begins the conversion of the letter of intent signed in March 2026 into operational reality and builds toward the larger, more ambitious, follow-on AWIC-UZ program.
Wheat underpins Uzbekistan’s food security and rural livelihoods. Yet the crop faces converging and urgent pressures: climate change is compressing cropping seasons, yellow rust looms as a major biotic threat, soil-borne pathogens are silently eroding yields across key production zones, and Fusarium head blight raises an emerging quality concern. This phase of the agreement is designed to seize a unique window of opportunity, converting political will into concrete action through targeted scientific exchanges, the introduction of elite germplasm, and systematic disease diagnostics.
This award agreement stems from a wheat cropping and productivity assessment conducted in the country in 2025 by CIMMYT scientists in collaboration with Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Agriculture.
A Bridge to Transformational Change
The bridge phase will deliver immediate technical results while creating a fact-based road map for the full AWIC-UZ program.
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