Why sorghum? Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) is the fifth most important cereal crop in the world in terms of production and harvested area. This drought-resistant cereal is a staple crop in…
Why sunflower? Over the last 50 years, sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) has become an increasingly important source of calories in global diets. The crop is mainly cultivated in sub-tropical and…
Why sweetpotato? The sweetpotato [Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam.] is one of the world’s principal root and tuber crops. It is the world’s seventh most important food crop, with more than 133 million…
Collecting In Numbers 25 countries worldwide 47 collecting partnerships with institutions 4,500+ seed samples collected and conserved Pre-breeding and Evaluation In…
“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)…
“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…
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…
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 Crop Wild Relatives (CWR) Project generated enormous amounts of data about the wild relatives collected, conserved, evaluated and pre-bred. It developed a number of databases and information…
Why apple? The apple [Malus domestica (Suckow) Borkh.] has been part of the human diet for thousands of years. The hundreds of varieties known today result from a long and complicated history…
