The Crop Trust is a non-profit international organization dedicated to conserving crop diversity and making it available for use globally, forever, for the benefit of everyone.

We work with donors and partners to lead global projects that protect crop diversity, conserve crop wild relatives and develop technology to make this diversity accessible worldwide.

We seek professionals with a passion for global food security and a strong drive to contribute to our mission of conserving crop diversity for future generations.

Securing Crop Diversity

Crop diversity is the foundation of resilient agrifood systems, yet many crops remain under-collected and at risk. This pillar supports national genebanks identify, collect, safeguard, document and safety duplicate opportunity crop diversity for the benefit of both their countries and the world at large.

Rescuing Crop Diversity

Partner genebanks increase or create collections of the prioritized opportunity crops. As a starting point, national genebanks in each country conduct a gap analysis to guide the collecting expeditions. Secondly, national genebanks carry out collecting missions to fill the gaps they identified and expand their collections.

Ensuring Long-term Conservation

Partner genebanks’ opportunity crop collections are documented and securely conserved, with a safety backup in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

The Funding Facility also supports the viability testing of existing collections, as well as the multiplication and regeneration efforts that allow the characterization and sharing of these materials. Characterization enriches the knowledge we have of these crops, and accession-level information is published online via Genesys.

Strengthening Data Systems and Tools

The Funding Facility partners are supported in data management of accession-level information and are encouraged to adopting the GRIN-Global Community Edition (GGCE), an open-source software package, to improve data management accuracy and efficiency of genebanks by reducing manual data entry and mislabelling through automated barcoding.

Through this sequence of activities, opportunity crop diversity is made available for use in the short, medium and long-term.

Building Genebank Capacity

The Funding Facility collaboration on capacity building starts with a genebank review, during which external experts evaluate the genebank's performance – what works and what needs improvement. This is followed by an agreement between the Crop Trust and its partners on what will be addressed during the project.

Building upon its extensive networks and expertise in conservation and crop diversity, the Crop Trust provides critical technical support and capacity building via annual workshops such as Community of Practice (CoP), Genebank Operations and Advanced Learning (GOAL), placement at international genebanks, and strategic visits from experts.

The capacity building program strengthens the capacity of national genebank staff to carry out essential genebank operations. Cooperation agreements between the Crop Trust and national genebank partners govern the partnership throughout the project.