The ACNARS project- Australian Contribution to a National Agricultural Research System worked in partnership with NARI- the Papua New Guinea National Agriculture Research Institute from 1999 to September 2005.

The project has played an important role in poverty alleviation in Papua New Guinea through its role in training and facilitating research. An important focus has been outreach and liaison, where research results- either published information or even more tangible results in terms of improved cultivars of crops are made available to stakeholders- DPI officers, other institutes, church based agricultural officers, and various NGO's.

Since the end of the ACNARS project in September 2005, the PNG Agriculture Innovations Grant Facility has been established and is currently facilitating many projects, run by a wide range of institutes and other organisations. The goal of this facility is to:-

Assist Papua New Guinea to improve the wellbeing of small-holders through improved productivity, quality and market-price competitiveness of their agricultural output by application of improved technology and information to production and marketing systems.

The projects are detailed at the AIGF web site- www.aigf.org.

The ACNARS project assisted NARI and other insitutes to collate a large volume of PNG agricultural research. The on-line (internet based) library information system is available at www.pngnais.org. This is known as the Papua New Guinea National Agricultural Information System, with citation information for 30,000 records. They are searchable in various ways. In time, recent publications and training material will be available, directly on-line. However, given the poor quality phone lines that most PNG researchers have to work with, we continue to rely on CD-ROM based information to provide soft copies of training manuals and reports and other publications.

The organisations, contacts and their interests are continuing to be updated at www.aigf.org - visit the orgs and contacts page of that web site. Note some facilities in this web site are only available to team members and project managers.

You can contact the project Team Leader, Dr Ian Grant directly. Others involved in the project can be contacted through this page.

Send mail to Dave Askin with questions or comments about this web site.
Last modified: 24-Mar-2006