Completed The Centre for Tropical Agriculture expressed a desire to retain NRI personnel as a member of the Advisory Committee of the EU Centre for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation representing the interests of DFID. 1. To attend the annual plenary meeting in Wageningen.2. Occasional involvement in the Centre for Tropical Agriculture led activities. The future of the Committee is uncertain in the light of the Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CTA) potential role post-Lomé, though DFID representation remains. The annual meeting of the Committee was held in Wageningen in June 1998. This was the second meeting of the committee since the addition of Sweden, Finland and Austria. All EU members except Luxembourg attended and were actively involved in the meeting. Rather less satisfactorily, neither the ACP member of the ACP-EU Sub-Committee on Agriculture (M Adigo has now retired and there is no replacement) nor M Chiltz from the Commission was present.The published Annual Report for 1997 was available for distribution at the meeting and was backed by a series of short presentations by staff. Subsequent CTA presentations were made by department and integrated reports on progress in 1998 with planning for 1999 as recommended by the Committee last year. Quality of the presentations was good and it was notable that all used ICT effectively, in stark contrast to past years. Most of the presentations related activities to the five priority information themes established at the Montpellier seminar in late 1996.1.Conquering markets 2.Intensification & optimisation of production. 3.Natural resources management & environmental protection 4.Strengthening national agricultural systems. 5.Mobilising civil society. The shifts evident in the programme last year were further emphasised. These were: a move away from dealing with technical information towards capacity development; greater emphasis on market-led development especially in relation to civil society; increasing devolution of activities, including the establishment of regional Question & Answer services; more attention being paid to policy and partnership issues Dr Cooke presented an excellent briefing paper on the progress of the discussion between EU and ACP countries leading up to the post-Lomé period. The Advisory Committee formally endorsed the progress report for 1998 and supported the proposals for the 1999 programme. CTA Post-Lomé: There was a clearly expressed view by the Advisory Committee that CTA had demonstrated its value as a facilitating institution for communication, information management and dissemination; further, it considered that there was a continuing place for such a function in future EU development co-operation. I formed part of a drafting group to prepare a statement on behalf of the EU members of the Committee which has since been submitted to the Commission. Discussions are in hand on promoting collaboration between CTA and NRI, particularly in information management and initial contacts have been made with respect to web-based information resources.