BOLD

The sun is barely up when I meet Jasmin Salum in her family’s irrigated plot in Mumbivi, a small village just outside Singida in central Tanzania. The air is cool, still holding the last traces of night. The only sound is the...

While there are many ways to prepare them, modern potatoes are bred from a relatively narrow genetic pool. And yet, the diseases attacking potatoes continue to evolve. In East Africa’s highland potato fields, breeders and farmers...

I grew up in a multi-ethnic community in the suburbs of a town in Inner Mongolia, in northern China. My grandmother is a farmer and has had a great influence on me. She often takes me back to the village where she grew up and...

Coffee and chocolate are among the world’s most cherished indulgences. Yet behind every cup and every bar lies a vulnerable biological foundation that millions of livelihoods depend on.

An estimated 125 million people worldwide...

In times of climate crisis and accelerated biodiversity loss, genetic conservation is an investment in resilience. Every seed stored in a genebank represents a possibility for adaptation for future generations. Unfortunately,...

Africa’s population is set to double by 2050, with cities absorbing most of that growth. At the same time, diets are changing, climate shocks are intensifying and policies still favor a few major crops. Against this backdrop,...

With temperatures rising and rainfall becoming scarcer in Tunisia, more farmers will turn to drought-tolerant barley to sustain both their households and their herds.

A hailstorm swept across Tunisia’s Kef region and wiped out an...

Every seed in a genebank is on a journey. 

The journey starts when the seed is collected in the field, continues through various stages of cleaning and drying, takes a bit of a pause in long-term storage, and eventually continues...

In a wheat field an hour’s drive south of Casablanca, Dr Ali Sahri and his team pose for a photo as the swaying spikes tickle their legs. Behind their smiles lies an awesome responsibility: to safeguard Morocco’s unique crop...

LONGYEARBYEN, NORWAY, 22 October 2025 – Twenty genebanks representing every continent bar Antarctica deposited more than 21,000 seed samples to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault this week. Among them were new contributors from the...