  The Austrian Approach in Promoting Partnership in Balkan Areas: Research Cooperation and Networking between Austria, Kosovo and South Eastern Europe SALIH S.* University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Boku, Gregor Mendel St. no. 33, 1180 Vienna, Austria Received 10 November 2009; received and revised form 29 November 2009; accepted 5 December 2009 Available online 25 December 2009 Abstract Creating and improving the partnerships in order to strengthen the cooperation between institutions and contribute towards a sustainable regional scientific collaboration is of major preoccupation for the Austrian Science and Balkan areas. Permanent work in maintaining a diversity of wheat plants and cultivars is a key to survival of plants, which are undergone to the new abiotic and biotic stress (climatic condition, pests and disease) demonstrates to be a suitable issue to ve approached in this aim. The partnership between four countries is developing (Austria, Kosovo, Bulgaria and Romania), in order to implement the colaboration. Keywords: collaboratin, wheat, genetics, cooperation 1. Introduction Creating and improving the partnerships in order to strengthen the cooperation between institutions and contribute towards a sustainable regional scientific collaboration is of major preoccupation for the Austrian Science and Research Liaison Offices Ljubljana and Sofia. With this aim they initiated the founding scheme “Research Cooperation and Networking between Austria, Kosovo and South Eastern Europe”. An example of successful application is the project entitled emphasizing the Broadening the genetic basis of winter wheat germplasm of Kosovo, approved for financing in 2009. The partnership involves four countries: Austria, Kosovo, Bulgaria and Romania. The * Corresponding author. e-mail: salih.salihu@boku.ac.at participant institutions are: University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, BOKU Vienna, Faculty of Agriculture in Prishtina, Institute of Genetics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Cluj – Napoca [4]. 2.Backgrounds Permanent work in maintaining a diversity of wheat plants and cultivars is a key to survival of plants, which are undergone to the new abiotic and biotic stress (climatic condition, pests and disease). Identifying and development of germplasm carrying specific traits and trait combinations improves the performance in range of specific wheat-growing conditions. Broadening of genetic basis of wheat germplasm, and making it evaluable for further selection is one of the most important factor for increasing genetic diversity and for producing of stable high-yielding and widely adapted advanced breeding lines. Grain yield,             brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk