News

Protecting and harnessing the earth’s biodiversity is more critical than ever to tackle urgent issues like climate change and hunger.  The GLF Biodiversity Digital Conference: One World - One Health brought together over 5,000...

Secure Crop Diversity, Secure Food

The global pandemic has not halted efforts to secure agrobiodiversity. Genebanks around the world continue to strive to conserve seeds and germplasm that will form the foundation of the world’s...

While the world seems to get further entangled in a web of concurrent crises, there are a growing number of leaders and experts who are sparking new hope and trust in the future. At the GLF Biodiversity conference on 28-29...

Tea-growing countries around the world would all be better served by sharing their knowledge and plant genetic material, according to Dr. Mahasen A B Ranatunga, Head of the Plant Breeding Division and Genebank at the Tea Research...

In-depth Audit Suggests Sustainable Way Forward For Key International Coffee Collection

For the past 71 years, the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE), located at Turrialba in Costa Rica has been...

Luigi Guarino | Director of Science

There’s been a lot of discussion during these past extraordinary months about the effect of the pandemic on the global food system. Such discussions often end in exhortations that “we mustn’t...

The genebank of the International Potato Centre (CIP) holds more than 6000 accessions of potatoes and distributes samples to users all over the world. But CIP often doesn’t hear back from those recipients of diversity.

“It’s...

“Everybody in Bangladesh loves carrots: all social classes, all ages, all religions, all casts,” says M.A. Rahim, a professor at the Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU). Rahim was the first plant breeder in the country to...

Safeguarding the foundation of our food system for future generations.

Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Norway (27 August 2020) - A unique 100-year experiment launches today at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The experiment, the first...

Last year, the CGIAR Genebank Platform completed the third year of its five-year lifespan. The Platform ensures that the CGIAR genebanks are running efficiently, that the crop collections they manage are conserved to a high...

How do you go about finding and collecting seeds from a scraggly looking crop wild relative in a prairie or a tropical forest, when you’ve never done it before? Once you’ve collected them, how do you keep track of the seeds...

A recent summit entitled Genetic diversity for more resilient food systems looked at the urgent need of safeguarding crop diversity due to the impact of climate changes on food production. Representatives of genebanks from around...