Central Asia consists of five ‘transition’ economies (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) and covers 399.4 million hectares (Mha), about two-thirds of which are drylands. Developing sustainable land management options in this region must take into account the biophysical constraints (low rainfall, extreme rainfall variability, and heat and cold stresses), climate change effects above global average that may exacerbate those constraints, and couple this with the problems of socio-political and economic transition inherited from the former Soviet Union. Growing, predominantly rural, populations expect secure income options, wealth and stable and healthy food supply under changing environmental and socio-political conditions. Improving the productivity of drylands in Central Asia is therefore an urgent task for the nations and calls upon the national and international research communities to act. Natural resources in the region have been degrading over the decades as a result of the heavy emphasis put by the Soviet system on production instead of production efficiency. After independence, the transition in agriculture from a central command system to market-driven mechanisms has often been painful. Farmers, who were employees of the former state controlled collective farms and have now become private entrepreneurs, often lack knowledge, skills, and capital. They face dwindling and usually insufficient agricultural infrastructure, difficult access to markets (countries are land-locked, infrastructure is decaying and international borders constraining the flow of goods have been erected between the countries after independence), and, in some of the countries, strict government controls, inadequate institutions and often conflicting laws and policies. Water resources are being wasted in highly inefficient irrigation management systems; as a consequence, 40 to 60% of the land is highly salinized. Land is also often polluted with agro-chemicals as a legacy of former production systems; however, the effects of this seem to be diminishing as agrochemical use is much lower than it was in the past.