Institution of Agricultural Research and Higher Education (IRESA)

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Ministry of Agriculture
Institution of Agricultural Research and Higher
Education (IRESA)
Agricultural Information Management
Agricultural Biotechnology for Knowledge sharing
in NENA Region2-4 July 2012 Cairo-Egypt
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Value of agricultural exportations in 2009
1849.5 MD
Horticultural products
Agrumes
Cereals derivates
Olive oil
Dates
Sea products
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Value of agricultural importations in 2009
2432.7 MD
Sea products
Sugar
Vegetable oils
Cereals
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Presentation of I. R. E. S. A

• 6 Research Institutes
• 4 Regional Research Centers
• - 2 Regional branches
• - 11 Higher Education Institutes
• - 20 experimental stations
• - 15 incubators for creating spin off
• 28 Research Laboratories
• 15 Research units
• - 270 Researchers (full time)
• 380 Scientists
• U.Y. 2010/2011 413 Doctorates and 933 Masters
• For more details, please consult the IRESAs Web
  site www.iresa.tn
• www.facebook.com/iresa.tunisie

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Plan for Agricultural Research
The priorities items established by Tunisia are

• Food security
• Preservation and sustainable management of
  natural resources (water, soil, erosion,)
• Development of crops of high added value for
  exportation
• Management of abundance of some products
• Quality of agricultural products (vegetables and
  animals)

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Priorities
13 priority domains were identified (June 2010)

• Cereals, legumes and forages
• Natural resources (water, soil, forestry) and
  climate change
• Breeding animal feeding
• Tree crop productions
• Horticultural crops
• Aridology Oasian agriculture
• Agricultural mechanization
• Fishing and fish farming
• Animal health
• Organic agriculture
• Post harvest transformation and
  industrialisation of agricultural products
• Plant protection Quality of agricultural
  products
• Socio economy aspects and agricultural policies
• Priorities are set up by Commissions of
  Programmation, Evaluation of Research in
  Agriculture (CPERAs) formed by researchers,
  scientists, representatives of development and
  farmers.

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The new Strategy

• An evaluation of the first decennial strategy
  (1999-2008) was undertaken by the National
  Committee of Evaluation of Research Activities
  (CNEAR).
• A new decennial plan was prepared.
• It includes new programs such as
• Organic agriculture
• Climate change
• Post harvest
• Plant protection
• Quality of agricultural products
• Socio economy aspects agricultural policies.

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ICT in Tunisia

• Internet users 4.000 000
• Subscribers 600.000
• ( broadband 518.000)
• Official email address 700.000
• Domain names (.tn) 16.800
• Web sites 12.000
• Internet service providers (ISP) 12
• 3G Providers 3

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               IP Backbone  Internet Service
Provider  IRESA
Tunisian Agency of Internet
Eumedconnect Router project ATI Kasbah
IRESA 30, rue Alain Savary Tunis
100 M National
100 M F.O International
FO 30 Mb.
Main PoP IRESA Kasbah
ESIATunis ENMVet. IRVT ISEPBG Soukra ISPA
Bizerte ESA Mograne ISPTabarka CNVZooSanitaire CRD
As Ben Arous, Manouba, Tunis, Ariana BIRH
PoP IRESA Kasbah (Ancienne Salle ATI)
PoP IRESA Kairouan
F.O 1Gb VRF
1 Gb
VRF
Backbone Tunisie Télécom
PoP IRESA Médenine
PoP IRESA Gafsa
VRF
VRF
PoP IRESA Sfax
PoP IRESA Sousse
PoP IRESA Nabeul
PoP IRESA Béja
WANs
WANs
LANs
Researh institutes , higher education Institutes,
regional research center, CRDA.
9 PoPs  Point of presence
October 2011.
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ICT infrastructure and Capacity 1/2

• In IRESA Division in charge of ICT (DTTIC
  Division of information technology and
  communication)
• 5 engineers 3 in computer network and 2  in
  computer programming
• 4 analysts in computer programming
• 1 technician in multimedia
• IRESA is an Internet Service Provider (ISP ) for
  the agriculture sector
• Web and information system hosting,
• E-mail provider,
• Security,
• Management of the agricultural national network,
• Development and management of RAIS.
•  
•  

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ICT infrastructure and Capacity 2/2

• IRESA websites W3C, Valid RSS
• www.facebook.com/iresa.tunisie
• Twitter _at_IRESA_Tunisie
• CIARD member
• OpenData project

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Library information systems

• IRESA use Horizon for virtual library
• improve the library information systems such as
• - Cataloging and classification,
• - Circulation,
• - Provision,
• - Procurement.
• The library of the agricultural scientific
  resources allows reaching electronic resources
  with knowing - the national and foreign
  collective catalogs in the agricultural field -
  bibliographical databases -)
• Electronic resources 1000 (thesis, memories...)
  full text .
• Dictionaries and thesaurus (Agrovoc)
• This library is actually online
  www.birsa.agrinet.tn

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Distance learning

• This experience started in 2004 with Water
  resources courses for technician degree.
• Many efforts were deployed in capacity building
  for teachers in digital pedagogy.
• Other specialties (field crops, animal health)
• Number of courses 40
• This distance learning system is composed of the
  following items courses, discussion forum, chat,
  agenda and mail.
• Learners having had their diplomas 500
• We plan to adopt scorm Sharable Content Object
  Reference Model (SCORM) collection of standards

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Existing mechanisms of accessing and exchanging
information

• All scientific and technical staff of the NARS
  has Internet access from their office and E-mail.
  ( LAN and wifi)
• All institutes have electronic library
  subscriptions such as American Chemical Society,
  Blackwell, Elsevier, IEEE, Informs, Proquest and
  Thomson Scientific. All of their scientific and
  technical staff and students have access to these
  libraries.
• The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library
  (TEEAL) (an easy-to-use database that gives users
  immediate access to full-text PDF articles) is
  used over the local area network and is updated
  every year.
•  

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Available infrastructure and financial facilities

• All institutes are connected to the Internet and
  intranet by the national agricultural network
  (AGRINET) which is managed by the IRESA and they
  are also connected to EUMEDCONNECT (The
  EUMEDCONNECT network serves the research and
  education communities of the Mediterranean
  region, and is linked to the pan-European GÉANT2
  network) Each institute is connected with a
  leased line and at least 1 Mbps of bandwidth or
  fiber optic.
• Number of scientific computing servers 2
• Ratio of Number of computers with Number of
  Scientific Staff 1

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Policy and strategies

• Since 2008, IRESA organized a steering committee
  in ICT and a steering and management committees
  for information security. These steering
  committees are headed by the president of IRESA.
• At the national level, a study defined and
  adopted a national policy/strategy in ICT (
  E-gov)
• ( benchmarking, policy/strategy, roadmap)
• IRESA participated in the evaluation and
  validation of this study ( adoption of the
  national strategy).

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• IRESA is member of
• FARA
• ARIMNET ( portal, database, communication tools)
  developed by IRESA
• AARINENA

Mohsen KRICHI krichi_at_iresa.tn