News

How do you go about finding and collecting seeds from a scraggly looking crop wild relative in a prairie or a tropical forest, when you’ve never done it before? Once you’ve collected them, how do you keep track of the seeds...

Genesys, the online portal for information on genebank samples, is constantly evolving. First launched in 2008, it now contains data on more than four million accessions and counting, which is over half of the estimated total...

The Crop Trust’s Seeds for Resilience project is supporting genebanks in Nigeria, Zambia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Ghana to improve their capacity to conserve their collections of crop diversity and make them available to scientists...

Early this year, the Crop Trust’s very own Luis Salazar visited Argentina, where our Crop Wild Relatives Project pre-breeding partners from the National Agricultural Technology Institute (INTA in the Spanish acronym) are...

Taking stock on World Hunger Day, more than 820 million people around the world do not have enough to eat. The vast majority of these people live in developing countries. According to the Hunger Project, half of the world’s hungry...

The cowpea keeps millions of people fed every day—but with the climate crisis threatening production, scientists are finding ways to increase its yields and hardiness.

“The cowpea has nourished people for many centuries,” said Ou...

It might come as a surprise that there are many crops that can’t be conserved in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Aside from today’s star the banana, these include favorites like: cacao, cassava, coffee, potato, sweetpotato,...

Stefan Schmitz | Executive Director

In November 2019, it was my honor to accept the position of Executive Director of the Crop Trust. While new to the role, I am already familiar with much of the Crop Trust’s excellent work, not...

Luigi Guarino | Director of Science

In the end, it proved a bridge too far. Delegates at the eighth session of the Governing Body of the Plant Treaty in Rome last week were not able to agree on a package of measures to enhance the...

Keeping up with the demand for rice seeds: The automation of seed sorting at the International Rice Genebank

To an untrained eye, all sheep in a paddock look alike. But shepherds can call all the sheep in their flock by name and...

Bonnie Furman and Stefano Diulgheroff (FAO)

Luigi Guarino (Crop Trust)

How do genebank managers know they’re doing all they can to maintain the quality and availability of their collections?

Perhaps the most important tool at...

Marie Haga | Marie's Corner

This month was historic for the Crop Trust. For the first time, we agreed to fund a genebank with the longest possible time horizon – nothing less than forever.

The agreement with the International...