Thiago Mendes of CIP examines trials of CWR-derived potatoes for late blight resistance at Oxapampa, Peru. (Photo: Michael Major/Crop Trust) Over a Decade of Wild Diversity Looking Back on the Crop…
Why potato? The potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is the most important tuber crop and the third-most important food crop globally, cultivated and consumed on six continents. The first potatoes were…
Why rice? Together with maize and wheat, rice supplies more than 42% of the calories of the human diet globally. Rice (Oryza spp.) is a staple food for about half of the world’s population.…
Capacity building was a key component of all phases of the project, from collecting and conservation to pre-breeding and evaluation. By mid-2021, more than 13,000 people from 124 institutions in 71…
The first step for plant breeders wanting to identify seeds that might have key traits they are looking for—drought or salinity tolerance, for example—is so called “passport data,” which includes…
“If we want to have crops that can cope with these challenges—if we want to ensure an ongoing food supply—then we need to go back to the wild and give pre-breeding with crop wild relatives…
Starting in 2012, more than 100 scientists from 25 countries on four continents took part in a six-year quest to collect the wild plant species that scientists and breeders can use to make our…
“We knew there were gaps in the wild relatives in genebanks,” said Nora Castañeda-Álvarez, then a researcher at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and…
Why Bambara groundnut? Bambara groundnut [Vigna subterranea (L.) Verdc] is a grain legume grown mainly by subsistence farmers in semi-arid West Africa, where it is the third most important grain…
