News

For many smallholder farmers in the tropical highlands of East Africa, the dream of a bountiful potato harvest is increasingly overshadowed by a ‘chemical tax.’ Disease pressure keeps farmers trapped in a costly cycle – spraying...

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...

In this edition of our Seed Heroes series, we recognize Bart Panis for his pioneering work on the conservation of banana diversity and for leading the establishment of the world’s largest cryobank for bananas in Leuven, Belgium.

One year after gathering its pioneering members in Bonn to shape the initial direction after launch, the Global Flagship Initiative for Food Security is moving from ambition to action.

At a time when climate shocks, conflict and...

€2.2 Million in Power of Diversity Grants for Opportunity Crops

Opportunity crops are getting a boost in six countries thanks to the Power of Diversity Funding Facility. On 12 May 2026, the Facility issued a Call for Proposals,...

For more than four decades, Joachim von Braun has been at the forefront of understanding and improving how the world produces and shares food. As a professor at the University of Bonn, he started the Center for Development...

AI is transforming business and society. Companies are scrambling to integrate it into business models and governments are using it across departments. It is transforming workplaces and classrooms with record investment set to...

Potato, cassava, guava, passionfruit and peach palm are as Colombian as cumbia, Betty la Fea and Gabriel García Márquez’s magical realism. These crops are found in markets, kitchens and backyard gardens across the country,...

On a spring evening in Rome, leaders interested in global food security gathered for the German Embassy’s Climate Talks to discuss the very foundation of food – crop diversity. Ambassador Andreas von Brandt, Permanent...

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...