How drone-assisted breeding can help stop rice hoja blanca disease

by Maria Eliza Villarino | May 15, 2018

Technicians perform visual scoring of select rice breeding lines that resistant and susceptible to the hoja blanca virus. Photo by: FLAR It’s a sight no rice farmer in Colombia or elsewhere in Latin America would like to see: stunted rice plants with bleached white...

‘Preemptive’ breeding: More than a step ahead of crop disease outbreaks

by Maria Eliza Villarino | Dec 13, 2017

 Bush bean trials at CIAT’s headquarters in Colombia. Photo by: Neil Palmer / CIAT Back in 2000, Francisco Morales, then virologist and now emeritus at CIAT, led a survey of plant viruses present in Colombia. He and his team discovered geminiviruses, or...

With genome editing, plant breeding gets a boost

by Maria Eliza Villarino | Oct 12, 2017

CIAT Research Associate Sandra Valdes holds a petri dish with germinating rice seeds that are part of a a study to prove if a single gene may offer resistance to the destructive hoja blanca virus. Photo by: Neil Palmer / CIAT CIAT Research Assistant Alejandro Brand...

Remembering Dr. Myles Fisher, a groundbreaking and much loved Alliance scientist

by Andy Jarvis | Jun 6, 2020

Dr. Myles Fisher, an Emeritus of the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, and a groundbreaking agricultural scientist passed away on the 27th of May. He suffered a stroke, which mercifully was sudden and painless. Myles was my colleague, my mentor, and my...

The wild relatives of major vegetables, needed for climate resilience, are in danger

by CIAT Comunicaciones | Jan 23, 2020

The wild relatives of chile peppers, pumpkins, carrots, and lettuce join a growing list of poorly conserved plant species. These ancient plants have genes that may help our food withstand the harsh climate of our future. If they don’t go extinct first Growing up in...