Abhatoo - Centre Nationale de Documentation

To analyse in a few pages public agricultural research (AR) in Mediterranean countries that are members of ICAMAS is hardly an easy task. The seminar in Istanbul certainly brought together for the first time a remarkable range of information thanks to the 12 national reports that were presented. However, despite the precautions that were taken by the organizers , notably the provision of a guideline, these reports were quite heterogeneous. Given the diversity of the situations analysed it would have been difficult to have done otherwise. The task was complicated by the different significance of the concepts used, for example , the definitions of autonomous institutions, researchers, or operating costs. Moreover, most of the authors had to limit their papers and thus emphasize only certain points while neglecting or glossing oversome quantitative and qualitative information which would have enabled an outside observer to better understand all of the national agricultural research systems ( NARS) and compare them.