“Waterproof” versions of popular varieties of rice, which can withstand 2 weeks of complete submergence, have passed tests in farmers’ fields with flying colours. Several of these varieties are now close to official release in Bangladesh and India, where farmers suffer major crop losses because of flooding of up to 4 million tons of rice per year - enough to feed 30 million people.
Time-lapse photography reveals waterproof rice in action
‘Invincible’ rice on CNN

Stokes Seeds have devised a scheme through which both the company and their customers can contribute to the Global Crop Diversity Trust. Introduced only last week, donations have already started to arrive. We are extremely grateful to Stokes Seeds for taking this generous initiative.
Visit Stokes Seeds

After years of massive crop losses caused by a devastating virus, farmers are harvesting healthy disease-free varieties of cassava throughout the Great Lakes region. The recent violence in the area makes one particularly valuable characteristic of cassava even more important - it can be harvested whenever there is a need, or left in the ground when farmers are driven from their land.
Saving the People's Tuber on YouTube
Read the FAO news release

November 6th - The government of Germany and the Global Crop Diversity Trust signed an agreement at the Trust's Rome headquarters, for a 2008 gift of 1.5 million Euros to the Trust's endowment. This is the third installment in a planned donation of 7.5 million Euros, and the Trust is immensely grateful to Germany for its continued support.

If you want to keep something safe, build a mountain fortress above the Arctic Circle. That was Superman’s thinking, and it is the thinking — more or less — behind the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. TIME magazine has selected the Vault as one of the 50 best inventions of 2008.
Visit the TIME list
Watch the TIME video

Seed Hunter is a highly entertaining documentary about a topic that is vital for the future of planet: finding seeds that may help save the world from its greatest ever crisis - a global food shortage brought about by human-induced climate change.
read more

Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University is awarding the Trust’s Executive Director an honorary degree this week: “Many politicians, policy makers and scientists worldwide view Cary Fowler as an agricultural Superman, regardless of whether he can leap or fly over tall buildings.”
Read more in the SFU press release

Nikolai Vavilov, though recognized as the foremost plant geographer of contemporary times, was imprisoned by Stalin and died of starvation in prison in 1943. He worked at a time when few of his contemporaries appreciated the urgency of protecting the environment or thought about the gradual disappearance of valuable plant diversity. Between the wars, Vavilov collected seeds on five continents, and in so doing developed his revolutionary theory of the origins of our crops. A new blog brings to life his diaries, and recounts his adventures and discoveries as if he himself had had access to the internet while travelling the world.
Visit the Vaviblog

There is a danger that "the financial crisis will prompt politicians to say 'not now, we'll invest in agriculture tomorrow'... But it is painfully evident that short-term thinking has led to long-term problems that will not be solved with more short-term thinking".
Read the Vancouver Sun article by Trust Director Cary Fowler

A global search has begun for food crops with traits that are able to withstand changes to the climate.
Read the BBC article