and Water Management initiated in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan and financed by the Asian Development Bank.

• Improved irrigation technologies, developed and tested on-farm, increased the average yield of winter wheat by more than 40%, reduced soil erosion by almost 60% and increased water use efficiency by 50-100%. These technologies are ready for adoption on approximately 1.4 million ha in Uzbekistan.
• In southern Kazakhstan, improved irrigation technologies have led to about 30% less water being used than with traditional furrow irrigation. It has also reduced the pressure on the drainage system by 40%.
• Experiments using treated wastewater to irrigate fodder and industrial crops and tree plantations in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan have led to promising potentials for saving scarce water resources.
• Under the rainfed semiarid conditions of northern Kazakhstan, minimum and zero tillage techniques have resulted in grain yields 15% higher than those from deep plowing. Zero tillage has already been adopted by farmers on approximately 10,000 ha.
• Reduced tillage has led to promising results in Turkmenistan; water productivity increased by 25% compared with traditional deep-plowing practices.
• In Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, cotton planted as a double crop after winter wheat gave similar yield under no-tillage when compared with traditional deep plowing and monocropping. The no-tillage practice has now been introduced on about 4,000 ha in the two countries.
• Wheat-cotton rotation is becoming popular with the introduction of conservation tillage, varietal adjustments and alternate furrow irrigation technologies. It is expected that the area under this rotation in the CAC region will increase to about 200,000 ha in the next two to three years.

2.6 AKST and Its Impact on Agricultural Production and Development Goals

2.6.1 Impact on agricultural production and development goals

Increased agricultural productivity in the twentieth century has greatly contributed to the alleviation of poverty and hunger and enhanced economic growth. These results have mainly been attributed to increased investments in agricultural R&D. Globally, nearly US$731 thousand million (or 1.7% of the world's GDP) was invested in all the sciences in 2000, including research conducted by public and private institutions (Pardey et al., 2006a).

Among the developing countries, real research expenditures between 1995 and 2000 increased the most in the Asia-Pacific (11.9%) and the Middle East and North Africa (11.5%) regions. The overall average of the annual growth rate in research spending for developing countries was 8.6% between 1995-2000. The lowest annual growth rates were 1.9% for "other developing countries" (which includes several former Soviet states) and 3% for sub-Saharan Africa. China and India achieved the highest annual growth rates in research expenditures of 19.7% and 12.2%, respectively.

Similarly, trends of public spending in agricultural

R&D reveal that investments increased by 51% worldwide over the last two decades, from US$15.2 thousand million in 1981 to US$23 thousand million in 2000 (Pardey et al., 2006b). During the 1990s, developing countries as a group undertook more of the world's public agricultural research than did industrialized countries. The Asia-Pacific region has accounted for the largest share of the developing-country total since 1981, accounting for 32.7% of the global total agricultural spending on research in 2000. China and India alone accounted for 39.1% of the developing world's agricultural R&D expenditure in 2000, a large increase from their combined share of 22.9% in 1981.

Five developing countries (Brazil, China, India, South Africa and Thailand) accounted for 53.3% of the developing world's public investments in agricultural research in 2000, up from their 40% share in 1981. Meanwhile, only 6.3% of the global investment in agricultural R&D was conducted in 80 countries (mainly low income and home to 625 million people).

Research intensities (that is, agricultural R&D spending expressed as a percentage of agricultural GDP) provide relative measures of R&D investments. Industrial countries as a group spent 2.36% of agricultural GDP in 2000 on R&D, a noticeable increase over the 1.41% in 1981. Developing countries, on the contrary, have not experienced a measurable growth in the intensity of agricultural research since 1981. These countries spent only 0.53% of their agricultural GDP on R&D in 2000. These figures indicate that the scientific or knowledge intensity of agricultural production grew at a much faster rate in rich countries than in poor ones, suggesting an increased intensity gap over the past three decades (Pardey et al., 2006b). The Asia-Pacific region has experienced the lowest research intensity, <0.5%, since 1981. The West Asia and North Africa region is the second lowest region in terms of research intensity. Although most sub-Saharan countries had lower 2000 intensity ratios than in 1981, the research intensity in this region is still higher than it is in the Asia-Pacific and WANA regions.

Per capita agricultural R&D spending is another research intensity ratio. It reveals that rich countries spent US$692 per agricultural worker in 2000, while poor countries spent just US$10.

Historically, agricultural innovations in the form of improved crop varieties, livestock breeds and farm management practices were typically the result of farmer experimentation through adapting and developing earlier ideas and then passing on inventions to younger generations. Publicly funded research is relatively new. It began in the early to mid-1700s as part of the efforts of the agrarian societies that formed throughout the United Kingdom and Europe at that time. Consequently, the publicly funded and operated agricultural experiment stations developed around the mid-1800s (Pardey et al., 2006b). Both public and private agricultural R&D continued to evolve, from trial-and-error efforts of many individuals to large-scale input supply firms investing in their own private R&D facilities.

In agriculture, however, it is difficult for individuals to gain full advantage from their research investments. Thus it is widely held that government needs to invest in R&D for the public good. Even so, private investments are evident in agricultural R&D. About 36% of global spending on it in