Agrobiodiversity
A smart revolution: World Congress in Asia
The World Congress on Roots and Tuber Crops, to be held in China next week, (January 18th – 22nd) explores exactly the diverse nature of this market. In Asia, cassava is in demand for starch – mostly sweeteners and other products in our modern diets – and dried roots for ethanol or livestock feed.
Smart beans help farmers cope with global warming – CIAT on Deutsche Welle
The eyes of the world are on Paris as leaders from 195 countries continue to hammer out a global agreement on how to address climate change, a threat that is expected to have huge impact on the ability of some communities to grow food. Take beans, for example. Beans...
What’s in your noodle soup?
You may never have heard of it before. A globetrotting crop by all accounts, it's thought to have been introduced into Southeast Asia in the Philippines from Mexico in the 19th Century. As our diet becomes ever more complex, cassava - or tapioca - a root crop like...
Genome Editing: As Easy, Useful, and Safe as it Sounds?
Helping experts in crop biotechnology explain their work to non-specialists is a tough job – one to which I’ve dedicated a lot of time as a science writer/editor over the last 20 years. One rhetorical device that I’ve always found handy for getting my mind around...
Burundi: Breaking down barriers for beans
As part of our contribution to the United Nations’ International Year of Pulses, we’re starting a blog series called “Bean-Growing Country of the Month.” This first article focuses on a country that is rebuilding its bean research programme with assistance from the...
Beans and Other Paragons of Dietary Virtue
When the United Nations (UN) General Assembly designates an issue to be the focus of an international year, this is usually a tacit admission that people around the world tend to take the issue for granted, even though they shouldn’t. The International Year of Pulses...
EATxCali: Hungry for a Sustainable Food System
When I grew up, poor people were thin. Books, films and news coverage of famines perpetuated the stereotype. But today, poor people are increasingly likely to be overweight. Now it's often the rich who are the thin ones. It’s especially the case in cities, where most...
Impatient with Hunger
In adopting the sustainable development goals (SDGs) at the United Nations summit held last month in New York City, world leaders made it very clear what agricultural research must accomplish in the years to come. By 2030, this research must, among other things, help...
Geotrack mealybug invaders and more: CIAT Asia team received support from Dow
When we hear Dow at CIAT, most of us think about the collaboration of CIAT’s forages team with Dow AgroSciences who work together on ensuring farmers to have the high-quality forages they need to fatten their livestock and boost their incomes. Kris Wyckhuys and his...
“White gold” beans to beat drought in Ethiopia
New drought-resilient white beans - most commonly used to make baked beans - will be deployed to Ethiopia, as erratic weather threatens national production and farmers’ incomes. Severe drought in Ethiopia, Africa’s largest exporter of the bean used to make baked...
About agrobiodiversity research at CIAT
CIAT develops more resilient and productive varieties of cassava and common bean, together with tropical forages for livestock. We also help improve rice production in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The superior crop varieties that result from our collaborative work offer many valuable traits, such as high yield and stress tolerance, which are vital for guaranteeing global food supplies in the face of rapidly rising demand, shifting disease and insect pressures, rampant environmental degradation, and the looming threat of climate change.
Contact
This CIAT Blog was launched in January 2016. For articles related to agrobiodiversity prior to this date, visit our former blog. Please note the old AgBio blog is no longer updated.