International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA)

Parent Organization

CGIAR

Overview

Founded in 1967, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) is one of the world’s leading agricultural research organizations. It collaborates with international and national partners to improve livelihoods, enhance food and nutrition security, create jobs, and preserve natural resources. Its research and development programs focus on five themes: improving livelihoods, enhancing nutritional value, developing crops, promoting healthy crops, and managing natural resources. Its primary focus is on sub-Saharan Africa.

The IITA Genetic Resources Center holds over 38,000 accessions of major African food crops and provides them to researchers, farmers, and other users worldwide (Genesys) . 

The IITA genebank holds over 38,000 accessions of diverse crops, conserved as seeds, in vitro, in field genebanks, and under cryopreservation. Its main collections include cowpea, cassava, plantain and banana, yam, soybean, Bambara groundnut, and maize. It maintains the world’s largest and most diverse cowpea collection, with 15,000 unique samples from 88 countries, representing 70% of African cultivars and nearly half of the global diversity. Additionally, the genebank conserves key opportunity crops such as Bambara groundnut, African yam bean, and other legumes.

Mission

IITA’s mission is to ensure food security for some of the world’s poorest people and provide them with viable strategies that produce real, long-term results for economic development and community stability, while building an environmentally sound future that considers the impacts of climate change.

Related Projects

• BOLDER: IITA organized the stakeholders meeting in Benin and Ghana to identify the priority crops for the two countries. This provided the foundations for the BOLDER actions in West Africa.