The University of Hawai'i is receiving millions of dollars in grants to help Iraq rebuild an agriculture sector that's suffered from decades of neglect and isolation.

Last year UH won a $1.25 million a year, four-year grant from the Kurdistan Regional Government, which is located in Northern Iraq. The school's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources this year also received a $471,646 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant to provide advice to reconstruction teams in both regions via an Internet portal.

Hawai'i's humid, tropical farmlands and the arid deserts of Iraq don't share much in common. Yet, despite climate differences, farming principles in Hawai'i and the Mideast aren't all that different, said University of Hawai'i researcher Samir El-Swaify, who is directing the Kurdistan project, which involves assistance in both crop and livestock production.

"The fundamentals of agriculture are the same — you need to know about the land resources, the climatic resources, the vegetation resources," he said. "Our expectations are mostly to revive the educational system and to make sure the extension system is effective in delivering information. The infrastructural and information delivery schemes countrywide are now chaotic, to be blunt."

UH hopes to help about 300 Kurdistan teachers and government officials during the four-year program. Much of that training will take place in Iraq and nearby countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Syria. A group of 20 post-doctoral students and research fellows from Kurdistan will study here during the program. Another six faculty members a year will pursue sabbatical studies at UH.

The first faculty member to arrive at UH is Omar Ali Fattah Bayz, from Al-Suliamanyha in Kurdistan. Bayz, who arrived recently, will be working on a research project in Hawai'i for six months. He hopes to take new soil microbiology techniques back to Kurdistan to improve production of soybeans and other crops.

UH's Iraq outreach started in late 2003 with a one-year $3.8 million U.S. Agency for International Development grant to provide higher-education development in Iraq.

Under the grant, UH educators worked with the University of Mosul's College of Agriculture and Forestry and the University of Dohuk's College of Agriculture.

The success of that program, which also helped at least 300 Iraqis, helped UH land the Kurdistan grant, said El-Swaify, a UH emeritus professor.

"The success of that, which was substantial, led to recognition by the Kurdistan folks that they needed their own" program, he said. "This is no longer aid money. This is their own money. That's significant."

Earlier this month El-Swaify and colleague Ekhlass Jarjees returned to Hawai'i from a three-week trip to the Middle-East, which included 10 days in Kurdistan surveying locations for future demonstration farms and farmer assistance centers.

UH personnel will work with four Kurdistan universities as well as with officials from the Kurdistan Ministry of Agriculture, which essentially serves as the country's farm extension branch. UH also will fund 20 joint projects aimed at forging closer ties between Kurdistan universities and the Kurdistan Ministry of Agriculture.

"This is another way to get them to work more closely together," said Jarjees, an entomologist who was born in Mosul.

In addition to El-Swaify and Jarjees, other UH scientists involved in the Kurdistan project include Catherine Chan-Halbrendt, Ali Fares and Sahar Zaghloul.

Other UH efforts targeting Iraq's education systems include a joint project with Texas A&M funded by the USDA. That one-year effort, which concludes in September 2008, involves creating a Web site that can respond within 48 hours to agriculture-related questions from reconstruction teams in Iraq.

UH also is a subcontractor to Louis Berger Group Inc., which earlier this year won a $343 million agribusiness development contract from USAID.

Reach Sean Hao at shao@honoluluadvertiser.com.