News

Luigi Guarino

Californians flipping through the news over their organic, high-fibre muesli must have spluttered orange juice all over their shiny new iPad3s. Huanglongbing has come to their state. This nasty disease -- also known...

Luigi Guarino

What you – and they – are looking at is a small fraction of the world’s largest collection of bean diversity. You can admire it, like these guys are doing, at the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture, whose...

SAN JOSÉ, COSTA RICA (7 April 2011)—Crop specialists in Central America announced today that a major rescue effort is underway in one of the heartlands of ancient agriculture to regenerate thousands of unique varieties of coffee,...

Luigi Guarino

The financial woes of Ireland are regularly in the news these days, though a respectful respite seems thankfully to have been observed recently, perhaps in honour of St Patrick’s Day. But the country has gone through...

Luigi Guarino

Genebanks: what are they good for? While the answer is rarely the emphatic “Absolutely nothing!” of the anti-war song, ambivalence – or worse – about the usefulness of genebanks is expressed more often than one...

SYDNEY (22 October 2010)—Hoping to save the vulnerable varieties of bananas painted by the artist Paul Gauguin, rare coconuts, and 1,000 other unique varieties of staple fruit and vegetable crops across the Pacific, crop...

ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA (21 September 2010)—A global social media campaign to save Europe’s most important collection of fruits and berries has collected over 50,000 petition signatures worldwide. The campaign is part of a massive...

LONGYEARBYEN, NORWAY (11 March 2010)—Days after celebrating its second anniversary, the Svalbard “Doomsday” Global Seed Vault is receiving this week thousands of new seeds that will push its collection to more than half a million...

This fantastic TED talk brings people closer to understanding the importance of crop diversity.

Tucked away under the snows of the Arctic...

Longyearbyen, Norway (26 February 2008) The first seeds will be placed in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault at an opening ceremony on Tuesday, 26 February 2008. During the ceremony, thousands of crop varieties from countries around...

OSLO, NORWAY (9 February 2007)—The Norwegian government has revealed the architectural design for the Svalbard International Seed Vault, to be carved deep into frozen rock on an island not far from the North Pole. The entrance to...