aspects  of agricultural-environmental-social  systems  has been the bane of formal agricultural R&D in the developing countries (Roling and Wagemaker, 1998). Given the past record of Western science-determined research in much of public sector R&D in developing countries, especially Asia, changing priorities in the West might bring a positive turn in the funding patterns, bringing spillovers of knowledge that can enable better livelihoods for the rural poor and their environments in developing countries.
     Almost all formal AKST in ESAP is organized based on some Western, especially US, model of agricultural research. Given the overview of social and political drivers and in­creasing opportunities for education in the ESAP region (though rural areas will still lag behind) there will be new private and NGO sector actors involved in AKST. Then, with a committed program of institutional reform, this shift in research interests and allocations between rich and poor countries can push Asian economies to invest more heavily on environmental impact, food quality and gender sensitive technologies, and integrate more with research for non-farm rural employment, and other needs that are currently under-researched.
     Internationally and in the developed countries the slow­down in public spending has been more than compensated by increasing private funding of agricultural research. But the developing countries of the ESAP region have made lit­tle gains in private funding of agricultural research, though their share in total private sector R&D investment continues to be highest among the developing countries. Not much has changed since the finding that private sources fund less than 7% of total agricultural research spending in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Indonesia (Umali, 1992). Private investment in agricultural R&D is less than 10% of total agricultural R&D in the ESAP countries (Pray, 2001). More accurately, private investment in the region is only 8% of to­tal investment in agricultural R&D (CGIAR Science Coun­cil, 2005; Pardey et al., 2006).
     Private R&D in biotechnology has grown significantly in Asia (Chaturvedi and Rao, 2004; La Vina and Caleda, 2006; see Biospectrum various issues and APBioNet). In Asia, the magnitude of private sector presence in R&D will continue to be significantly different in different sectors, with health-biotech R&D (pharmaceuticals, vaccines and diagnostics research) being located largely in the private sec­tor (both domestic and FDI led investments in R&D in mul­tinational corporations [MNC] in Asia). Private R&D in agricultural biotechnology in the near future will be located largely within MNCs with strong product lines as they focus on buying all market-end firms/facilities in ESAP. Much of the non-MNC private biotech R&D is funded by domestic public or international donor funds, fuelled by the promise of profits (La Vina and Caleda, 2006).
     Contrary to conventional wisdom that private invest­ment in agricultural research and extension will increase in Asia-Pacific countries and that the role of the Government is to focus investment on basic research, human capital and infrastructure, and to provide an environment conducive to private research (Tabor et al., 1998; Chang and Zepeda, 2001), there is an increasing emphasis on the role of the government in research and other enabling investments in the agriculture sector (Byerlee and Echeverria, 2002; Hall

et al., 2002; World Bank, 2006c). Much of private invest­ment in agriculture is currently in the industrialization and capitalization of the sector. Given the trends of increasing urbanization and expected growth of value-addition and food retailing in ESAP, private investments will continue to be made in the off-farm parts of the agricultural production and marketing chain, in seed, fertilizers, herbicides, machin­ery, processing, retail marketing, etc., where the private sec­tor can commercialize technologies and knowledge outputs (Reardon et al., 2003). Increasingly, the argument for pro-poor agricultural/rural innovation is to look for complemen­tary investments in other organizations besides public sector and national agricultural research systems (NARS) that can play a major role in enabling generation and utilization of knowledge (including technology) (Hall et al., 2004; Biggs, 2006; World Bank, 2006c).
     This also reaffirms an interest in the NGOs or non-profit research entities investing in the agricultural sciences, with the current figure of 1 % of the ESAP agricultural research investment being made by them likely to increase in future, as partnerships with public and private R&D increases. In India, for instance, there are organizations like MSSRF, MANAGE, MYRADA, CISED, Mitraniketan, BASIX, and several of the NGOs who host ICAR-KVKs (the extension units under the ICAR—called Krishi Vigyan Kendra). These NGOs are at the forefront of not-for-profit research in ag­ricultural, horticultural and livestock systems. The lack of reform in the public sector agricultural research organiza­tions is one of the factors that promote the role of NGOs or not-for-profit firms in agricultural research (Raina, 2003a).
     Changes in dietary profiles in response to rapid urban­ization, growth of incomes and expansion of value-chains and food retail in ESAP show that in 2020 the demand for livestock and dairy products will be more than double the current level. While integrated crop-livestock systems and access to common property resources for herders and pasto-ralists may become crucial for poverty alleviation, there may be increasing investments in high-tech animal production systems. Much of this investment is expected to come from the private sector, especially from MNCs in food processing and retail.
     Overall, investments in agricultural R&D have proven that predictions of a decline in investment (Anderson and Purcell, 1996) have in fact been reversed in the ESAP coun­tries. Agricultural R&D investments have grown since the mid-1990s, a trend that may continue into the future, fo­cused on non-conventional but increasingly crucial issues for ESAP, such as green production systems, reduced envi­ronmental pollution, farmer friendly markets, open source software/genetic  material/protocols  and  gender  relation­ships. Increasing market opportunities will also bring in­creasing investments from private R&D.

4.2.6.2   Research organizations and institutions
The expansion of research organizations in agriculture and allied sectors was a phenomenon of the 1970s and 1980s in most of the ESAP countries. The current interest in these countries is on changing or reforming institutions or the rules/norms that govern these research organizations (By­erlee and Echeverria, 2002; Hall et al., 2002; Huang et al., 2002; Raina, 2003a). It is expected that this resurgence of