Sunn pest, Eurygaster integriceps Puton, is the most damaging insect pest of wheat in West and Central Asia and East Europe. Host plant resistance has been investigated as one component of a total integrated pest management program for the control of this pest. In Syria, field screening of artificially infested wheat accessions from the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) gene bank, selected using the Focused Identification of Germplasm Strategy (FIGS), identified one durum wheat and eight bread wheat accessions with good levels of resistance at the vegetative stage to overwintered Sunn pest adults. ICARDA is using these sources of resistance in wheat breeding programs to develop cultivars resistant to overwintered Sunn pest adults, which damage wheat at the vegetative stage (shoots and leaves). This study also demonstrated that the FIGS approach was effective in mining genetic resource collections for useful traits.

Lentil is one of the important cool-season food legumes grown in many countries in the Mediterranean region. But a substantial yield loss is observed every year due to various biotic stresses. The Sitona weevil (Sitona crinitus Herbst) is a major insect pest limiting lentil productivity mainly in the countries of West Asia and North Africa region. The adult insects feed on the leaflets at seedling stage, and the plant suffers due to reduced photosynthesis. The larvae feed on the root systems and on the nodules, thus decreasing the ability of the plant to fix atmospheric nitrogen. Since sources of resistance to this pest in the cultivated lentil Lens culinaris Medikus subsp. culinaris are lacking, we searched for resistant sources in a collection of wild Lens species available in the ICARDA Gene Bank. We screened 315 accessions of wild lentil covering all known species/sub-species based on nodule damage at ICARDA's main experimental station (Tel Hadya, Aleppo), a hot-spot for the pest in the region. Large variation was observed in the percent nodule damage among accessions across species. Eight accessions,

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