(20 February 2010) Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Trust Board member, has been promoting the issue of crop diversity in Japan this week. She has met Parliamentarians from both Upper and Lower Houses, Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Hirotaka Akamatsu, Minister for Foreign Affairs Katsuya Okada, and Minister of the Environment Sakihito Ozawa, alerting all those she meets to the vital importance of conserving crop diversity. She has also met with the Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, the Crown Prince Naruhito and Princess Masako, and Prince and Princess Akishino while in Japan.
Read more about Wangari Maathai

(16 February 2010) Japan hosts the tenth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity later this year, and today Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Trust Board member, will give the keynote speech at a symposium in Tokyo on crop diversity. The event is co-organized by the Trust and the cross-party group of parliamentarians, GLOBE Japan – Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment.
グローバル作物多様性トラスト
Read the story at MCOT.net

(9 February 2010) A review of the conservation strategies recently developed with support from the Trust has been published in Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution. The paper provides an insight into the challenges to planning for – and implementing - an efficient and effective global system for crop diversity conservation.
Access the article from SpringerLink

(4 February 2010) As the Food Security and Climate Change in Dry Areas conference draws to a close, the final declaration promises to feature strong recommendations to collect and conserve biodiversity, and to use it to breed new “climate-ready” crop varieties and build resilient production systems. The Trust’s Luigi Guarino is there and has described the unfolding discussions.
Agro.biodiver.se

(January 29, 2010) The 2010 Annual Letter from Bill Gates draws attention to the importance of agriculture and the vital role of diversity. On the importance of technology, he writes about “the ability to gather plant samples from all over the world and use databases to keep track of thousands of plants grown under different conditions. This has accelerated the progress in conventional breeding”. With support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Trust is working on over 90 projects to collect, regenerate and evaluate thousands of crop varieties, as well as working on the information systems to ensure that this information is easily available to plant breeders worldwide.
Read more about the Trust’s projects here
Read Bill Gates’s 2010 Annual Letter here

(13 January 2010) We are extremely pleased to welcome the Slovak Republic to the growing number of countries which support the Global Crop Diversity Trust.
See full list of donors

(29 December 2009) The USA has pledged a further $10 million to the Trust's endowment for 2010. The Trust welcomes this generous support, which will take the USA's total commitment to $24.5 million. In Copenhagen US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack drew attention to the importance of agriculture in climate change. In particular, with regard to adapting agriculture to climate change, he said that we “must take advantage of the world's vast gene banks to identify traits that can help confer resistance to drought and temperature extremes in crops”. This pledge will strengthen the Trust’s work to ensure that this is possible.

(17 December 2009) Spain has announced that, for the second year, it will be giving €1,000,000 to the Trust. The Trust is extremely grateful for this valuable support.
See full list of donors

(15 December 2009) Congratulations to our Board member, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai, who is to become a United Nations Messenger of Peace with a special focus on the environment and climate change. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced that she will be inducted as a Messenger of Peace at a ceremony today in Copenhagen.
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(14 December 2009) Follow Trust Director Cary Fowler's Copenhagen diary on Facebook, as he promotes the importance of adapting agriculture to future climates.
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