Crop Wild Relatives

Plant breeders developing new crop varieties are finding success after shifting their gaze from the fields to the stars.

Scientists at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) in Rabat,...

Humanity is destroying biodiversity at an accelerating rate, and a major reason is agriculture. 

This is not a new revelation, but it is perhaps surprising, and welcome, that it should be repeated, with thorough documentation, by...

Crops are often threatened by a range of unfriendly organisms, including various kinds of bacteria, fungi, insects and weeds. These plant predators hamper efforts to adapt agriculture to climate change because they often thrive in...

When the Growing Gets Tough, the Tough Get Pre-breeding

Much like dogs have wolves, our familiar crops have undomesticated relatives growing in the wild, which often have useful traits not found in their cousins grown on farms. As...

A global consortium on tea genetic resources will benefit tea-growing countries around the world, according to Professor Liang Chen, curator of the world’s largest collection of tea diversity and co-author of the Crop Trust’s Glob...

From sunflowers to blueberries, cranberries and blackberries to pecans and squash, the United States is home to a variety of widely eaten crops and their wild relatives. Unfortunately, many of these wild cousins of familiar crops...

Plus, 5 facts about the humble root vegetable’s extraordinary potential

Sandra Cordon | Global Landscapes Forum

The potential of the potato has only just begun to be realized.

Some 368 million metric tons of potatoes were...

Climate change is reducing potato yields in some important production areas due to more drought, heat, and diseases like late blight and bacterial wilt.

Our partners from the International Potato Center (CIP) are working with the...

“I’ve never seen barley looking this great before!” El Kbir Safraoui couldn’t hold back his excitement about the crop growing in his fields. And he had seen a lot of barley in his lifetime of farming in central Morocco.

Safraoui...

Hunting for Drought Tolerance in Papua New Guinea

Bananas were first domesticated in Southeast Asia, sometime between 5,000 and 8,000 BCE. They have since spread widely around the world. India alone consumes a quarter of the...