Assessment of Available Field Instruments for Each Institution and Calibration Status, and Recommend Possible Additional Instruments to Complement the Existing Ones

Abstract

As a preparatory procedure of this ET project, the preliminary step was to visit the selected countries based on the prior communication with various NARS partners and ICARDA local offices about the feasibility of implementing the NENA-ETNet with recommendation for potential sites that can be equipped to be the benchmark sites in this project. The main criterion for country-site selection was the identification of partners where prior in situ ET measurements were carried out through various past projects and that would facilitate the use of already available ET measurement instrumentation, as having sufficient knowledge, manpower and crop field. Based on an initial survey (see template in Annex 1), five institutions (one each for the five participating countries) were identified. They were ARC-Egypt, NARC-Jordan, LARI-Lebanon, IAVMorocco and INRGREF-Tunisia. While this was already done during the proposal preparation phase and during the FAO-led Land and Water Days meeting, we also considered the congruency of sites with the Sida-funded project working on water productivity as well as ICARDA research vision of enhancing water productivity in the dry areas of MENA. In June 2019, several field missions were conducted to inspect and understand the prospects of the sites and scouting for potential sites in each institution, instrument availability and related maintenance and calibration status, and recommend possible additional instruments to complement the existing ones. The main objective of this activity was to carry out fact-finding missions in each country, visiting the managerial and technical representatives of the selected Institutions. Preliminary results of the mission are reported in Table 1.