Abstract:

The National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO) is the premier organization charged with the responsibility
of undertaking, promoting and do ordinating Agricultural Research (crops, livestock, fisheries and forestry) and
ensuring the dissemination and application of research results in Uganda. To achieve this objective, NARO has
adopted the Partnership Approach to agricultural technology generation and dissemination. One of NARO's
partnership initiatives is the Client Oriented Agricultural Research and Dissemination (COARD) Project based at
the Serere Agricultural and Animal Production Research Institute (SAARI). With funding support from DFID, the
COARD project is piloting a competitive agricultural research grant system to facilitate the generation and
dissemination of productivity enhancing agricultural technologies for the Teso and Lango Farming Systems.
NARO's COARD project is currently working with over 40 CSOs and 50 government/ local government
departments in the Teso & Lango regions, carrying out participatory research & dissemination with over 2,600
farmers and 69 farmer groups. This article describes how various different organisations and farmer groups are
working together to address soil fertility issues in one of the initiatives supported by the COARD project.