News

From the dry, freezing winters of Kazakhstan and Inner Mongolia (China), to the parched summers of central Chile, to the blistering heat of Australia, alfalfa—also known as lucerne—is the go-to crop to provide livestock with...

Stefan Schmitz | Executive Director

A collaborative global system for ex situ conservation of crop genetic resources is the vision that guides the Crop Trust’s work. As we decide where to direct our efforts in the coming years,...

The arid-zone grain sorghum can be made even more tolerant of drought, new research shows.

Drought tolerance in sorghum—the world’s fifth most important cereal crop—is measured in a number of different ways, including by looking...

FAO’s International Year of Fruits and Vegetables is being recognized all around the globe—including at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Among the first deposits of 2021 were seeds of watermelon, strawberry and pumpkin. The...

When the Svalbard Global Seed Vault opens this week, for the first time in 2021, the seeds of something really sweet will be among those deposited.

A package of 500 Fragaria vesca (woodland or wild strawberry) seeds will be...

In honor of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, the Crop Trust is highlighting some of our past interviews with talented women who work to conserve the world’s seeds.

Fulfilling the Crop Trust’s mission to ensure...

Crops are often threatened by a range of unfriendly organisms, including various kinds of bacteria, fungi, insects and weeds. These plant predators hamper efforts to adapt agriculture to climate change because they often thrive in...

Be honest—what do you think of the Crop Trust website?

Help us improve your future digital experience with the Crop Trust and its affiliate projects and platforms by participating in a short survey.

Click here to open the survey...

Bananas come in a huge array of different types, some say perhaps a thousand or more distinct cultivated varieties, but there’s only one kind found in most grocery stores, the so-called Cavendish. Bananas are produced by growing...

When the Growing Gets Tough, the Tough Get Pre-breeding

Much like dogs have wolves, our familiar crops have undomesticated relatives growing in the wild, which often have useful traits not found in their cousins grown on farms. As...

A global consortium on tea genetic resources will benefit tea-growing countries around the world, according to Professor Liang Chen, curator of the world’s largest collection of tea diversity and co-author of the Crop Trust’s Glob...

The new year is upon us, ushering in an updated Global Biodiversity Framework for the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD), covering the period 2021 to 2030 and beyond.

But with a new year comes the reminder that biodiversity...