Crop Diversity
Crop Diversity
Crop diversity encompasses variation among crop species, varieties, landraces, genetic populations, cropping systems, and the wild relatives of domesticated plants. It is a central component of agricultural biodiversity and provides farmers and plant breeders with biological options for responding to pests, diseases, drought, heat, changing rainfall, soil degradation, and other environmental pressures. Research across regions and farming systems shows that crop diversity operates at several interconnected levels, from genetic variation within individual crops to diversity among crops grown across farms and landscapes.
Modern agriculture has increased production of a relatively small number of major crops, but this specialization can reduce the diversity available within food-production systems. At the same time, crop diversity has not disappeared uniformly. Some countries and agricultural regions have diversified their crop portfolios, while others have experienced declining crop evenness, replacement of traditional varieties, or increasing dependence on a narrow group of globally dominant crops.
Crop diversity is therefore both an ecological resource and a strategic reserve for agriculture. It supports food production today while preserving genetic traits, species, and farming practices that may become increasingly important under future environmental and economic conditions.
Crop Diversity, Agricultural Resilience, and Productivity
A major body of research links diversified agriculture with greater resilience. Crop rotations, intercropping, mixed cropping, cover crops, agroforestry, and other diversification strategies can reduce the ecological risks associated with continuous monocultures. Diversified rotations can interrupt pest, disease, and weed cycles while improving nutrient use and exposing agricultural systems to a broader range of ecological conditions.
Greater crop rotational diversity has also been associated with reduced climate-related yield losses. Long-term experiments indicate that diversified rotations can make agricultural production more resilient during unfavorable growing conditions. In some systems, diversification increases cereal yields, improves nitrogen availability, reduces pesticide requirements, and provides ecological benefits without reducing overall production.
The benefits of diversification depend heavily on which crops are combined, local climate, soils, management practices, and the spatial scale at which diversity is measured. Simply increasing the number of crops does not guarantee improved outcomes. Carefully designed diversification strategies can produce stronger results than diversification undertaken without consideration of crop interactions and local conditions.
Crop diversity can also contribute to farm profitability and risk management. Farms producing several crops may be less vulnerable to the failure of a single crop, shifts in market prices, or localized environmental stress. For smallholders in particular, maintaining multiple crops and varieties can function as a biological and economic form of insurance.
Genetic Diversity, Landraces, and Farmers' Varieties
Genetic diversity within crops is one of the foundations of agricultural adaptation. Different varieties of the same crop may vary in drought tolerance, disease resistance, flowering time, yield, nutritional characteristics, root structure, temperature tolerance, and many other traits.
Landraces are locally adapted crop populations that have often been cultivated and selected by farmers over many generations. They can contain genetic variation that has disappeared from modern commercial cultivars. Studies of wheat, maize, rice, millet, sorghum, cotton, avocado, barley, beans, and other crops demonstrate that traditional varieties often contain valuable traits for future breeding.
Farmers play a major role in maintaining this diversity. On-farm conservation allows crop populations to continue evolving as farmers select seed under changing environmental and cultural conditions. This differs from conservation in genebanks, where seed samples are stored under controlled conditions. Both methods are complementary: genebanks provide long-term security, while continued cultivation maintains dynamic relationships among crops, farmers, environments, and cultural traditions.
Genetic erosion occurs when traditional varieties disappear or are replaced by a narrower range of modern cultivars. Surveys in several agricultural regions have documented significant losses of landraces. Changes in markets, seed regulations, agricultural modernization, migration, replacement by improved varieties, and changing food preferences can all contribute to this process.
Protecting landraces therefore involves more than storing seeds. Continued cultivation, farmer participation, access to markets, supportive seed laws, recognition of farmers' rights, and documentation of traditional knowledge can all influence whether locally adapted crop populations survive.
Crop Wild Relatives and Plant Breeding
Crop wild relatives are wild plant species genetically related to domesticated crops. They represent an important reservoir of genetic variation that plant breeders can use to introduce new traits into cultivated varieties.
Wild relatives can contain resistance to diseases and pests as well as tolerance to drought, salinity, temperature extremes, poor soils, and other environmental stresses. They are increasingly important as agriculture confronts climate change and emerging biological threats.
Research on wild relatives of citrus, cowpea, wheat, millet, fruit crops, legumes, and other plants demonstrates how genomic analysis can identify useful genetic variation. Pre-breeding programs can then transfer desirable traits from wild populations or landraces into breeding populations that are more practical for crop improvement.
Many crop wild relatives remain poorly protected. Conservation gaps exist both within protected natural areas and within genebank collections. Because wild relatives continue to evolve in natural ecosystems, in situ conservation is especially important. Ex situ collections provide additional security and make genetic material available to researchers and breeders.
Modern genomic tools are making these resources increasingly accessible. Pangenomes, whole-genome sequencing, genome-wide association studies, genomic selection, and related techniques can identify genetic variation that may be missed when breeders rely on a single reference genome or a narrow set of elite cultivars.
Crop Rotation, Intercropping, Pollinators, and Soil Biodiversity
Crop diversity affects more than the crops themselves. Diversified farming systems can influence pollinators, soil microorganisms, nutrient cycling, pests, weeds, and other components of agricultural ecosystems.
Landscapes containing a greater variety of crops can provide more continuous and diverse floral resources for pollinators. Greater crop diversity across agricultural landscapes has been associated with increased pollinator abundance and improved production of pollinator-dependent crops.
Below ground, crop diversification can influence bacteria, fungi, and other soil organisms. Legumes can stimulate biological nitrogen fixation, while different crop combinations affect root systems, microbial communities, nutrient cycling, and soil fertility.
Intercropping systems combine two or more crops within the same field. Examples such as maize-legume and maize-alfalfa systems illustrate how crop combinations can produce food while also supporting ecological functions. Diversification can sometimes reduce dependence on synthetic fertilizers or pesticides, although outcomes vary substantially among cropping systems.
Rotational diversity can also suppress weeds by exposing weed populations to changing planting schedules, crop competition, cultivation methods, and disturbance regimes. This makes diversification an ecological management tool as well as a strategy for preserving crop varieties.
Major Crops and the Search for Underused Diversity
Large genetic collections exist within major global crops such as rice, wheat, maize, barley, sorghum, millet, pulses, vegetables, roots, and fruit crops. Genomic studies repeatedly reveal genetic variation that is absent from commonly cultivated commercial varieties.
Rice research has produced pangenomes containing both cultivated and wild material, substantially expanding the known genetic variation available to breeders. Wheat landraces and heritage collections contain traits associated with disease resistance, flowering responses, nitrogen use, drought adaptation, and other characteristics. Maize landraces contain extensive variation associated with local environmental adaptation and unusual biological traits.
Millets and sorghum are especially important in dry and climate-stressed regions. Large germplasm collections contain extensive variation in drought tolerance, flowering time, nutritional traits, biomass production, and yield. These crops may become increasingly important where changing climate conditions make production of less drought-tolerant crops difficult.
Research has similarly documented important genetic diversity in cowpea, chickpea, peanut, fenugreek, buckwheat, sweetpotato, eggplant, tomato, durian, cassava, yam, and other crops.
The challenge is not merely conserving this diversity but making it usable. Pre-breeding, genomic characterization, core collections, farmer evaluation, and breeding programs can help move useful traits from genebanks and traditional populations into future crop varieties.
Neglected, Underutilized, and Opportunity Crops
Global food production depends heavily on a relatively small number of crops, even though thousands of plant species have been cultivated or gathered for food. Neglected and underutilized crops often remain important locally but receive comparatively little investment in breeding, seed systems, processing, markets, or agricultural research.
Examples include various millets, fonio, Bambara groundnut, indigenous vegetables, buckwheat, orphan crops, and regionally important cereals, pulses, roots, and fruits.
These crops can contribute to food-system diversity because many are adapted to environments where major commercial crops perform poorly. They may also provide distinctive nutritional, ecological, and cultural benefits.
However, increasing their use requires more than demonstrating their biological potential. Farmers require reliable seed, consumers require markets and food products, and breeders require genetic resources and research investment. Policies that favor a narrow group of major commodities can also make diversification more difficult.
Efforts to promote "opportunity crops" seek to connect conservation with breeding, seed-system development, farmer adoption, nutrition, and market expansion. The broader objective is to increase the number of crops contributing significantly to regional and global food systems.
Genebanks, Seed Vaults, and Conservation
Genebanks conserve seeds, plant tissue, and other genetic material so that crop diversity remains available for future generations. They provide genetic resources for plant breeding, scientific research, restoration of lost collections, and adaptation to environmental change.
National and international genebanks conserve enormous collections of crop varieties, landraces, breeding lines, and wild relatives. These collections are particularly important when varieties disappear from farms or when war, natural disasters, pests, institutional failures, or climate impacts threaten existing collections.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault provides an additional layer of security by storing duplicate seed samples from genebanks around the world. Its collections have grown to more than 1.4 million seed samples, illustrating the scale of international efforts to safeguard agricultural genetic resources.
Long-term conservation depends on stable financing. Seeds must be regenerated, tested for viability, documented, characterized, and distributed. A genebank collection that cannot be properly maintained may gradually lose the very diversity it was created to protect.
Conservation strategies increasingly emphasize complementary approaches. Ex situ conservation protects material in genebanks and seed vaults, while in situ and on-farm conservation allow plants to continue evolving within ecosystems and agricultural landscapes.
Seed Systems, Farmers, and Access to Crop Diversity
Crop diversity reaches agriculture through seed systems. These systems include commercial seed companies, public breeding programs, farmer-to-farmer exchange, community seed networks, local markets, and informal systems through which farmers maintain their own seed.
Studies in Africa and elsewhere show that commercial hybrids, open-pollinated varieties, and traditional landraces often coexist. Farmer choices are influenced by yield, drought tolerance, taste, cultural preferences, market demand, seed price, availability, storage characteristics, and many other factors.
The survival of crop diversity therefore depends partly on farmers having meaningful access to diverse seed. If only a small number of commercial varieties are widely available, crop diversity can decline even where farmers would prefer additional options.
Formal and informal seed systems can complement one another. Formal systems can distribute improved varieties at large scale, while farmer seed networks often maintain locally adapted diversity. Policies that recognize both systems can help preserve genetic resources while also supporting agricultural development.
Crop Diversity, Nutrition, and Food Security
Crop diversity contributes to food security in several ways. At the production level, diversified farms may be better able to withstand drought, pests, diseases, and economic shocks. At the household and food-system level, producing a broader variety of crops can increase the range of foods available for consumption and markets.
Research has examined relationships between crop diversity and dietary diversity, including children's diets and seasonal nutrition. Greater agricultural diversity can contribute to more diverse diets, although production diversity alone does not guarantee improved nutrition. Income, markets, gender relations, food preferences, infrastructure, and access to other foods also influence dietary outcomes.
Crop genetic diversity also protects future food security. Plant breeders depend on genetic variation to develop crops able to survive emerging diseases, changing climates, and new production conditions. Diversity conserved today may therefore contain traits whose importance is not yet known.
Agricultural diversity is particularly important because global food systems are interconnected. Most countries depend heavily on crops that originated elsewhere, meaning conservation of crop diversity is an international rather than purely national responsibility.
International Cooperation and Crop-Diversity Policy
Crop genetic resources move across national borders through research, breeding, agriculture, and international conservation systems. International cooperation is therefore essential for maintaining access to the diversity on which crop improvement depends.
The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture established a multilateral framework through which participating countries share important crop genetic resources. Seed and germplasm exchanges allow breeders and researchers to access genetic material originating in many regions of the world.
International organizations including the Food and Agriculture Organization, CGIAR centers, national genebanks, universities, research institutes, and the Crop Trust contribute to documenting, conserving, exchanging, and improving crop genetic resources.
Policy questions include access to genetic material, farmers' rights, plant-variety protection, seed regulation, conservation financing, and the relationship between national sovereignty and international germplasm exchange.
Effective conservation policy must connect stored genetic resources with active agricultural use. Genetic material has greatest value when farmers, researchers, and breeders can access it and when conservation programs maintain sufficient information about each accession to identify useful traits.
The Future of Crop Diversity
Climate change is increasing the importance of crop diversity. Rising temperatures, shifting rainfall, drought, extreme weather, new pests, and changing disease distributions are altering the environments in which crops must survive.
No single crop or variety can provide every trait required for future agriculture. Maintaining a broad portfolio of species, landraces, wild relatives, breeding materials, and cropping systems expands the options available for adaptation.
Technologies such as genome sequencing, pangenomes, genomic selection, and genome editing can accelerate the use of diversity, but these technologies depend on the continued existence of diverse genetic resources. Advanced breeding cannot recover genetic variation that has already disappeared.
Future crop-diversity strategies therefore require both technological innovation and conservation. Genebanks, farmers, breeders, Indigenous and local knowledge holders, protected areas, seed networks, agricultural researchers, and international institutions all play complementary roles.
Conclusion
Crop diversity is a foundation of resilient agriculture and long-term food security. It includes not only the number of crops grown but also genetic variation within crops, traditional landraces, farmers' varieties, wild relatives, neglected crops, and diversity across fields and agricultural landscapes.
Evidence from crop rotations, intercropping, plant breeding, genomics, genebanks, and farmer-managed systems shows that diversity can improve ecological functioning, reduce production risks, provide material for adaptation, and preserve options for future agriculture.
At the same time, genetic erosion, disappearance of landraces, inadequate conservation, simplified farming systems, and dependence on a narrow group of crops threaten this resource. Conserving crop diversity therefore requires both ex situ protection in genebanks and continued cultivation in farmers' fields and natural ecosystems.
The long-term challenge is not simply to preserve seeds, but to maintain a living system in which genetic resources can continue to evolve, circulate, and be used. Crop diversity links the agricultural knowledge of the past with the capacity of future generations to produce food under conditions that cannot yet be fully predicted.
Global Patterns, Foundations, and Food-System Change
| Siyaram Meena et al. | Discover Soil | 2026-06-23
Synthesizes evidence for intercropping, rotations, agroforestry, and other diversification strategies as tools for increasing agroecosystem resilience.
| Mustafa Kamal et al. | npj Sustainable Agriculture | 2026-02-10
Maps crop species and functional diversity across South Asia, showing how agrobiodiversity can support nutrition-sensitive agriculture and more resilient food systems.
| Multiple authors | Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems | 2026
Reframes agrobiodiversity as genetic, crop, farm, landscape, and agroecological diversity and argues that all five levels must be considered when designing sustainable agricultural systems.
| Xuerong Gong et al. | Science Bulletin | 2025-12-30
Examines crop-diversity trends across 211 countries from 1961–2020, finding that global diversity generally increased but with substantial inequality, national declines, and decreasing crop evenness in many countries.
| Mary Ann George and Maria J. Santos | Landscape Ecology | 2025-07-21
Examines tropical agricultural landscapes and finds that crop diversity can help create synergies between biodiversity conservation and crop production.
| Sandeep Gawdiya et al. | Discover Applied Sciences | 2025-04-19
Reviews crop diversification as a strategy for addressing biodiversity loss, food-system vulnerability, soil degradation, climate pressures, and dependence on simplified agricultural systems.
| Sara Heikonen et al. | Nature Food | 2025-03-04
Finds that climate change threatens the range of crops that can be grown at low latitudes, potentially reducing agricultural diversity in already vulnerable regions.
| Multiple authors | Global Challenges | 2025
Reviews crop diversification as a strategy for managing climatic, biological, and economic risks while strengthening food security and agricultural sustainability.
| Multiple authors | Environmental and Sustainability Indicators | 2025
Analyzes spatiotemporal changes in crop species diversity across India, providing evidence of where cropping systems have diversified or become more homogeneous.
| Erin Gleeson and Graham K. MacDonald | Global Change Biology | 2024-12-23
Examines global spatial relationships between crop diversity and landscape heterogeneity, helping explain where diversified agriculture coincides with more complex landscapes.
| Zhenong Jin and David Tilman | Nature Food | 2024-06-03
Shows that relationships between crop diversity and agricultural benefits vary with national scale and emphasizes the importance of spatial context when measuring diversification.
| Multiple authors | Nature Sustainability | 2024
Proposes adapting tools from wildlife conservation to protect agricultural biodiversity, including monitoring, prioritization, in situ conservation, and long-term financing.
| M. Guinet et al. | Nature Communications | 2023-11-16
Shows that increasing temporal crop diversification can reduce pesticide use while maintaining agricultural production.
| Multiple authors | Journal of Agriculture and Food Research | 2023
Explores biocultural diversity in crop domestication and improvement, emphasizing how crop genetic resources and traditional knowledge have evolved together.
| Chloe MacLaren et al. | Nature Sustainability | 2022
Uses long-term experiments from Europe and Africa to show that increased crop diversity and fertility-building crops can support staple yields, especially where nitrogen inputs are low.
| Charlie C. Nicholson, Benjamin F. Emery and Meredith T. Niles | Nature Communications | 2021-09-07
Finds global associations between greater crop diversity and the stability of nutrients supplied by national food-production systems.
| Multiple authors | Scientific Reports | 2021
Reconstructs national-scale changes in crop diversity through the Anthropocene and documents substantial geographical variation in agricultural diversification and homogenization.
| Sabine Hufnagel et al. | Agronomy for Sustainable Development | 2020-04-20
Reviews genetic, spatial, temporal, and landscape approaches to crop diversification and proposes a more systematic framework for diversification research.
| Colin K. Khoury et al. | Proceedings of the Royal Society B | 2016-06-07
Maps the geographical origins of food crops and shows that modern countries depend heavily on crops originating in other regions of the world.
| Colin K. Khoury et al. | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | 2014-03-03
Documents increasing similarity among national food supplies as globally dominant crops expanded while many regionally important crops became relatively less significant.
Climate Resilience, Productivity, Nutrition, and Farmer Livelihoods
| Estelle Raveloaritiana and Thomas Cherico Wanger | Nature Communications | 2026-01-26
Synthesizes long-term evidence showing agricultural diversification can increase profitability, biodiversity, ecosystem services, and other measures of agricultural sustainability.
| Multiple authors | Communications Earth & Environment | 2026
Assesses how projected warming may exceed historically suitable thermal conditions for rice cultivation, underscoring the importance of diverse genetic resources for adaptation.
| Crop Trust | Crop Trust | 2025-11-06
Describes development of a potato variety using crop genetic resources to improve resistance to late blight and strengthen farmer resilience.
| Crop Trust | Crop Trust | 2025-10-09
Shows how conserved alfalfa diversity can be used to develop material better suited to drought-prone conditions in Kazakhstan.
| Veryson Mutandani et al. | Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems | 2025-08-13
Systematically reviews evidence connecting seasonal crop diversity with nutrition outcomes and the double burden of malnutrition in rural communities.
| Crop Trust | Crop Trust | 2025-07-03
Argues that reliable long-term financing for genebanks is necessary to keep crop diversity available for resilient, productive, nutritious, and sustainable food systems.
| Crop Trust | Crop Trust | 2025-06-17
Describes development and farmer testing of drought-tolerant durum wheat derived from crop genetic resources suited to increasingly dry Moroccan conditions.
| Yaoyun Zhang et al. | Communications Earth & Environment | 2025-06-13
Finds that carefully designed crop-diversification strategies can reduce pesticide requirements more efficiently than diversification implemented without attention to crop combinations.
| Xin Li et al. | Plants | 2025-05-21
Reviews how maize genetic diversity, breeding, and agronomic innovations can be combined to build more climate-resilient production systems.
| Anne W. Kuria et al. | Frontiers in Agronomy | 2025-04-08
Revisits agroecological change in Rwanda and emphasizes local knowledge in understanding relationships among crop diversity, food security, and land degradation.
| Brunhel N'tambu Vambi et al. | Scientific Reports | 2025-04-01
Examines yam diversity and its role within broader agrobiodiversity in two ecological zones of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
| Jeffrey Neyhart et al. | Nature Climate Change | 2025
Develops approaches for selecting promising parents from global genebank collections so breeders can more efficiently exploit diversity for climate resilience.
| R. S. Rathod Sridhar and L. T. Longkumer | Frontiers in Agronomy | 2025
Reviews diversification strategies that can strengthen yields, ecosystem resilience, soil functions, and adaptation to climatic stress.
| Carina Isbell et al. | Food Security | 2024-07-03
Uses multi-country and multi-scale data to examine relationships between agricultural crop diversity and children's dietary diversity.
| Alessio Costa et al. | Global Change Biology | 2024-05-07
Finds that greater crop rotational diversity can reduce climate-related grain-yield losses, highlighting diversification as an adaptation strategy.
| Wenwu Zhou et al. | Nature Food | 2024
Examines how agricultural diversification and technological change can jointly create environmental and food-security benefits in China.
| K. Thomas Felix and K. B. Ramappa | Humanities and Social Sciences Communications | 2023-09-13
Analyzes changes in crop diversification and cropping patterns in Karnataka, India, from an economic and agricultural-development perspective.
| Juliana Gil | Nature Food | 2023-08-22
Discusses links between women's empowerment and crop diversification and emphasizes the social and institutional dimensions of decisions about agricultural diversity.
| Monique E. Smith et al. | Communications Earth & Environment | 2023-03-23
Demonstrates that increasing crop rotational diversity can raise cereal yields, although results vary among climates, crops, and management systems.
| Multiple authors | Nature Communications | 2022
Meta-analysis finds substantial yield advantages from legume-based crop rotations and identifies environmental and management factors affecting the size of those benefits.
Cropping-System Diversity, Rotations, Intercropping, Pollinators, and Soils
| Multiple authors | Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment | 2026-07-01
Evaluates rotational diversity and hedgerows as complementary approaches for supporting multifunctional agroecosystems while noting that neither practice alone addresses every ecological objective.
| Multiple authors | Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment | 2026-01-01
Reports that greater crop diversity across agricultural landscapes can increase pollinator abundance and support yields of pollinator-dependent crops.
| Shingirai Mudare et al. | Nature Communications | 2025-10-29
Global meta-analysis finds crop rotations can simultaneously increase total crop yield, dietary nutrients, and farm revenue relative to continuous monocultures.
| X. He et al. | Scientific Reports | 2025-08-20
Reports that diversified intercropping arrangements can alter soil microbial communities while influencing crop yield and quality.
| Arnaud Delbaere et al. | Frontiers in Agronomy | 2025-08-08
Develops a participatory framework for designing biodiversity-based cropping systems that considers long-term ecological and socioeconomic outcomes.
| Multiple authors | Journal of Environmental Management | 2025-07
Reviews the agricultural, environmental, and economic impacts of rotations and cover crops as complementary forms of crop-diversity management.
| Multiple authors | Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment | 2025-05-01
International synthesis examines how farming practices, including diversification, affect soil microbial biomass and therefore biological foundations of agricultural productivity.
| Bo Yi et al. | Nature Sustainability | 2025-01-02
Finds that diversified cropping systems increased nitrogen availability but did not necessarily increase soil-carbon stocks, illustrating important diversification trade-offs.
| Rui Li et al. | Soil and Tillage Research | 2025
Finds crop diversification can improve productivity and soil health partly by changing fungal diversity and community structure.
| Multiple authors | Frontiers in Agronomy | 2025
Reviews meta-analytic evidence for rotations, intercropping, cover crops, mixed cropping, agroforestry, and local varieties as strategies for increasing farming-system resilience.
| Multiple authors | Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment | 2024-10-01
Examines maize-alfalfa intercropping and finds diversified production can supply multiple ecosystem services while reducing reliance on nonrenewable fertilizer inputs.
| Abdul A. Jalloh et al. | Scientific Reports | 2024-06-21
Evaluates maize-legume intercropping and its potential to increase agrobiodiversity while strengthening belowground ecosystem services.
| Mengjie Qiao et al. | Nature Communications | 2024-04-04
Shows that legume rhizodeposition can stimulate microbial nitrogen fixation in diversified cropping systems, providing a biological mechanism for improved nutrient cycling.
| Xiaolin Yang et al. | Nature Communications | 2024-01-03
Finds that replacing simplified wheat–maize production with more diverse rotations can increase production while reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and improving soil health.
| Catrin Westphal et al. | Landscape Ecology | 2024
Examines crop diversification as a tool for conserving pollinators and improving the continuity and diversity of floral resources in agricultural landscapes.
| Damien Beillouin et al. | Global Change Biology | 2021
Global synthesis finds crop diversification generally improves biodiversity and ecosystem services, though outcomes vary according to diversification strategy and environmental conditions.
| Giovanni Tamburini et al. | Science Advances | 2020
Second-order meta-analysis finds agricultural diversification can improve biodiversity, pollination, pest control, nutrient cycling, soil fertility, and water regulation without reducing yields overall.
| Timothy M. Bowles et al. | One Earth | 2020
Uses hundreds of site-years from long-term experiments to show that diversified crop rotations increase agricultural resilience during adverse growing conditions.
| Multiple authors | PLOS ONE | 2019
Meta-analysis finds that diversifying crop rotations can substantially reduce weed density by exposing weeds to more variable ecological and management conditions.
| Multiple authors | Land Use Policy | 2015
Examines crop diversification among smallholders near Mount Kenya and finds diversified farming can contribute to household livelihood and risk-management strategies.
Landraces, Farmers' Varieties, Genetic Erosion, and On-Farm Conservation
| A. K. Padhee et al. | Scientific Reports | 2026-03-20
Examines mainstreaming traditional finger millet varieties and on-farm conservation as complementary strategies for maintaining crop diversity in Odisha, India.
| Avinash Shrestha et al. | Frontiers in Plant Science | 2025-11-21
Finds that cotton landraces retain genomic regions lost from modern cultivars and could help broaden cotton's genetic base for resilience and adaptation.
| Kadupe Olanike Babalola et al. | Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems | 2025-07-22
Reviews wheat landraces, composite cross populations, and evolutionary populations as sources of adaptive diversity under climate change.
| Alessandra Lezzi et al. | Frontiers in Plant Science | 2025-06-13
Characterizes traditional popcorn landraces from northern Italy and identifies genetic and agronomic diversity valuable for conservation and future breeding.
| Verónica Pérez et al. | Frontiers in Plant Science | 2025-04-16
Genotypes local avocado landraces from La Palma in the Canary Islands and identifies distinctive genetic resources requiring conservation.
| Tafesse Kibatu et al. | Scientifica | 2025-03-07
Studies the distribution, use, and conservation of enset landraces within traditional farming systems and highlights farmers' role in maintaining genetic diversity.
| Multiple authors | Heliyon | 2025-01-30
Surveys Ethiopian tef landraces and documents substantial genetic erosion despite the continued cultivation of locally valued and environmentally adapted varieties.
| Preeti Yadav et al. | Journal of Experimental Agriculture International | 2025
Examines educational approaches for increasing farmer knowledge of farmers' rights and landrace conservation.
| Multiple authors | Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution | 2024-07-30
Studies Maroon rice landraces in Suriname and French Guiana, linking variation in maturation and yield to generations of farmer selection and cultural history.
| Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences | SLU | 2024-07-12
Explores whether traditional crop-diversity practices can help organic agriculture narrow yield gaps while obtaining ecological advantages from diversified production.
| Lorenzo Raggi, Giorgia Spataro and Valeria Negri | Biodiversity and Conservation | 2024-07-09
Reviews European achievements in maintaining crop landraces through in situ and on-farm conservation rather than relying exclusively on genebanks.
| G. M. Puneeth et al. | Scientific Reports | 2024-05-10
Documents landrace diversity in India's Western Ghats and examines its conservation status, agricultural importance, cultural value, and continued maintenance by farmers.
| FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture | FAO | 2024-03-14
Highlights international work on conserving farmers' varieties and landraces through continued cultivation and management in working agricultural systems.
| Maria João Almeida et al. | Frontiers in Plant Science | 2024-02-22
Develops a practical methodology for assessing threats to crop landraces and identifying populations most urgently requiring conservation.
| Multiple authors | Peer-Reviewed Review | 2024
Reviews crop landraces and Indigenous varieties as reservoirs of genes and traits valuable for plant breeding, adaptation, food security, and agricultural resilience.
| Multiple authors | Journal of Agriculture and Food Research | 2024
Finds significant molecular, biochemical, and morphological diversity within traditional common bean landraces from Italy's Aniene Valley.
| Multiple authors | Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution | 2024
Reviews legislation governing landraces worldwide and examines how seed rules and variety-registration systems can either facilitate or impede their continued cultivation.
| Multiple authors | Heliyon | 2023
Documents on-farm wheat diversity in Ethiopia and estimates substantial loss of landraces as improved varieties and other crops replace traditional material.
| Crop Trust | Crop Trust | 2022
Explains why conserving landraces both in farmers' fields and genebanks is important for protecting crop diversity before locally adapted varieties disappear.
| Multiple authors | Heredity | 2021
Compares maize landraces conserved for fifty years in situ and ex situ to investigate how different conservation approaches affect genetic diversity and selection.
Genetic Diversity, Genomics, Pre-Breeding, and Plant Breeding
| Sefawdin Berta et al. | Scientific Reports | 2025-10-21
Tracks genetic diversity and breeding gains in Ethiopian bread wheat across six decades, providing evidence about how improvement programs reshape crop germplasm.
| Multiple authors | Scientific Reports | 2025-08-28
Uses genetically diverse sorghum germplasm to identify genomic regions controlling root-system architecture relevant to drought adaptation.
| E. Kaler et al. | Scientific Reports | 2025-04-19
Uses genetic variation in perennial sorghum germplasm to identify sources of resistance to damaging aphids.
| V. K. Verma et al. | BMC Plant Biology | 2025-03-26
Characterizes genetic diversity in male and female teasel gourd landraces from northeastern India and evaluates their potential for crop improvement.
| Nadia Kamal and Manuel Spannagl | Nature | 2025-03-05
Discusses a genus-wide Solanum pangenome that links productive cultivated crops with genetically diverse indigenous and wild relatives.
| Ahmed A. Galal et al. | Scientific Reports | 2025-01-22
Evaluates genetic diversity and breeding potential among new maize inbred lines grown under contrasting sowing conditions in an arid environment.
| Multiple authors | Scientific Reports | 2025
Characterizes genetic and agro-morphological diversity among cassava varieties and identifies useful variation for breeding and crop improvement.
| Multiple authors | Scientific Reports | 2025
Shows how pre-breeding with diverse alfalfa genebank accessions can produce genetically differentiated populations that broaden commercial breeding material.
| Multiple authors | Nature Communications | 2025
Uses cereal landraces to examine how crop populations adapted to present climates could respond to abrupt, severe climatic disruption.
| Multiple authors | Frontiers in Plant Science | 2025
Reviews African okra genetic resources, local landraces, seed systems, and opportunities to incorporate nutritional and agronomic traits into breeding.
| Multiple authors | Journal of Plant Ecology | 2024-10-04
Tests whether genetic diversity within spring-wheat mixtures translates into greater biomass and yield under different growing environments.
| Emile Cavalet-Giorsa et al. | Nature | 2024-08-14
Investigates the evolutionary origin of the bread-wheat D genome and expands understanding of the ancestral diversity available for wheat improvement.
| Shifeng Cheng et al. | Nature | 2024-07-31
Demonstrates how genomic information from wheat landraces can be systematically harnessed to broaden breeding populations and improve important agricultural traits.
| Rebecca Leber et al. | Theoretical and Applied Genetics | 2024-03-27
Characterizes 755 bread-wheat accessions and identifies substantial untapped landrace diversity, including genomic regions associated with powdery mildew resistance.
| T. I. C. Wright et al. | Theoretical and Applied Genetics | 2024-03-07
Describes a winter-wheat genetic resource incorporating diversity from synthetic hexaploid wheat for use in future crop improvement.
| Mona Schreiber et al. | Nature Reviews Genetics | 2024-02-20
Reviews plant pangenomes as tools for capturing genetic variation missed by single reference genomes and applying that diversity to breeding, conservation, and evolutionary research.
| Jinpeng Zou, Yong Huang, Caixia Gao and Kejian Wang | Science Bulletin | 2024-02-15
Reviews genome editing as a means of generating and using new crop variation, potentially expanding the diversity available to breeders.
| Multiple authors | Scientific Reports | 2024
Uses genome-wide association and selective-sweep analyses to identify genetic regions linked with improved wheat yield under drought.
| Multiple authors | Trends in Plant Science | 2023
Argues that genetic diversity retained in heritage barley and landraces can provide traits needed to adapt crops to marginal soils and future climates.
| Multiple authors | Frontiers in Plant Science | 2023
Reviews research on creating and using crop germplasm resources, including genetic characterization of wild relatives, landraces, cultivated varieties, and breeding materials.
Crop Wild Relatives and Wild Gene Pools
| COUSIN Consortium | European Commission CORDIS | 2026
Presents research from the COUSIN project on conserving and using crop wild relatives to improve European agricultural resilience and sustainability.
| Zoë Migicovsky | American Journal of Botany | 2025-07-09
Argues that genomic resources for wild relatives of perennial fruit crops are essential for both conservation and future breeding.
| Khaoula Labrighli et al. | Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution | 2025-05-07
Compiles Morocco's crop wild relatives and wild harvested plants and prioritizes taxa for conservation based on food, economic, and biodiversity importance.
| Leonard Manda et al. | Frontiers in Sustainability | 2025-02-12
Reviews progress in conserving and using wild relatives of underutilized Vigna species for food security and adaptation to climatic change.
| Ahmed Aldow et al. | Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution | 2025-01-20
Identifies major gaps in both protected-area and genebank conservation of priority crop wild relatives across Northeast Africa.
| Crop Trust | BOLD Project | 2025
Describes collecting finger millet wild relatives and using them with landraces to develop breeding material with improved drought, disease, Striga, and lodging tolerance.
| Richard C. Pratt et al. | Frontiers in Horticulture | 2024-08-23
Proposes crop-improvement strategies that make greater use of wild relatives and reconsider the boundary between domesticated and wild genetic resources.
| Multiple authors | Agronomy | 2024-06-27
Reviews how crop wild relatives and forage-legume landraces can contribute genetic material to pre-breeding programs responding to climate change.
| Multiple authors | Scientia Horticulturae | 2024-05-01
Reviews conservation of crop wild relatives and traditional landraces in the southern Levant, an important center of crop domestication.
| P. Vikram et al. | Frontiers in Plant Science | 2024-03-06
Reviews genomics-assisted pre-breeding approaches that can move diversity from landraces, wild relatives, and genebanks into climate-smart crop varieties.
| Multiple authors | Frontiers in Plant Science | 2024
Reviews advances in using crop wild relatives for breeding and emphasizes their importance as reservoirs of stress-resistance, adaptation, and nutritional traits.
| Ahmed Aldow et al. | Crop Science | 2023-08-22
Creates a checklist and conservation priorities for crop wild relatives in Northeast Africa, a region rich in genetic resources important to agriculture.
| Nan Wang et al. | PLOS Genetics | 2023-06-20
Uses citrus as a case study to show how genomic data can identify, characterize, and prioritize diversity in crop wild relatives for conservation.
| Nature Plants Editors | Nature Plants | 2023-03-21
Discusses the importance of wild crop relatives as reservoirs of genetic variation needed to make cultivated crops more adaptable and resilient.
| Multiple authors | Plants | 2023
Reviews crop wild relatives as sources of genes conferring tolerance to drought, salinity, temperature extremes, and other abiotic stresses.
| Multiple authors | Global Ecology and Conservation | 2023
Examines how agricultural landscapes contribute to conserving crop wild relatives in Switzerland and the implications for in situ conservation strategies.
| Nigel Maxted and Joana Magos Brehm | Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems | 2023
Examines how conservation systems can maximize the diversity of crop wild relatives actually available to plant breeders for crop improvement.
| M. U. Nduche et al. | Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution | 2022-12-15
Identifies gaps in both in situ and ex situ conservation of priority crop wild relatives across West Africa.
| Nigel Maxted et al. | Plants | 2020
Reviews major threats to crop wild relatives and outlines actions needed to strengthen inventories, conservation, and utilization.
| Multiple authors | Scientific Reports | 2014
Uses African cowpea wild relatives to demonstrate how spatial prioritization can identify efficient sites for conserving agriculturally valuable wild diversity.
Rice, Wheat, Maize, and Barley Diversity
| Carolina Rivera-Poulsen et al. | Theoretical and Applied Genetics | 2025-12-15
Tests continued rapid genomic selection in maize landrace populations and examines whether pre-breeding can reduce the performance gap between landraces and elite germplasm.
| Hugo M. Rodrigues et al. | Scientific Reports | 2025-11-17
Uses whole-genome polymorphisms to examine genetic relationships among rice varieties circulating in the Mediterranean market.
| Estela Giménez et al. | Frontiers in Plant Science | 2025-10-30
Evaluates Spanish bread-wheat landraces for genetic variation in flowering responses and identifies material potentially useful for adapting wheat to changing climates.
| Sabrina Morrison et al. | Scientific Reports | 2025-07-30
Sequences the Australian wild rice Oryza australiensis and identifies genomic characteristics that could provide useful traits for cultivated rice improvement.
| M. Z. Islam et al. | Scientific Reports | 2025-05-28
Measures phenotypic and genetic diversity among Aman rice landraces and identifies variation useful for selecting parents in rice-improvement programs.
| Abdul Waheed et al. | Frontiers in Plant Science | 2025-05-23
Uses the Watkins wheat landrace collection to identify diversity in root and shoot biomass responses to different nitrogen environments.
| Leke Victor Aiyesa et al. | BMC Biology | 2025-05-21
Finds extensive within-population diversity and genomic signatures of local environmental adaptation among European maize landraces.
| Nature Research Briefing | Nature | 2025-04-16
Explains how large-scale genomic analysis of domesticated and wild rice can uncover diversity missed by reliance on a single reference genome.
| Clara Polzer et al. | Theoretical and Applied Genetics | 2025-03-17
Demonstrates rapid genomic selection in maize landrace-derived material as a method for converting traditional genetic diversity into useful breeding populations.
| Layne N. Connolly et al. | Frontiers in Plant Science | 2025-01-28
Compares nitrogen fixation and aerial-root traits among Mexican maize landraces, highlighting unusual biological traits retained in traditional germplasm.
| Multiple authors | Nature Communications | 2025
Maps gene-expression diversity among wheat landraces and elite cultivars, revealing regulatory variation overlooked by single-reference genomic approaches.
| D. Guo et al. | Nature | 2025
Presents a pangenome reference spanning wild and cultivated rice, greatly expanding the catalog of genetic variation available for research and breeding.
| Multiple authors | Frontiers in Plant Science | 2025
Uses genotyping-by-sequencing to characterize hundreds of Peruvian highland maize accessions and reveals population structure among traditional maize races.
| Multiple authors | Gene Reports | 2024-12
Uses SSR markers to assess genetic diversity among Bangladeshi rice varieties and demonstrates the value of molecular characterization for conservation and breeding.
| John Bakum | CIMMYT | 2024-07-24
Describes efforts in Zambia to use greater maize varietal and genetic diversity to improve productivity, farmer choice, and resilience.
| Bin Chen et al. | Maize Genomics and Genetics | 2024-06-17
Reviews strategies for exploiting maize genetic diversity and examples in which diverse germplasm has contributed to crop improvement.
| Multiple authors | Frontiers in Plant Science | 2024
Introduces a genetically and phenotypically characterized collection of European heritage barley containing landraces, historic cultivars, and modern breeding material.
| Multiple authors | The Plant Cell | 2023
Whole-genome sequencing of diverse wheat accessions reveals genetic changes associated with modern breeding in China and the United States.
| Multiple authors | Frontiers in Plant Science | 2023
Examines more than 1,300 Tibetan barley landraces and identifies genomic variation associated with adaptation to extreme highland environments.
Millet, Sorghum, and Other Resilient Cereals
| Multiple authors | Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems | 2026
Documents 460 Ugandan finger millet landrace accessions, farmer conservation practices, cultural preferences, seed sources, and threats of genetic erosion.
| Multiple authors | Frontiers in Plant Science | 2026
Investigates stay-green alleles in traditional Sudanese Feterita sorghum and identifies diversity relevant to drought resilience.
| Sabreena A. Parray et al. | Scientific Reports | 2025-11-14
Uses diverse pearl millet germplasm in a pre-breeding framework to identify material combining drought tolerance with improved forage production.
| Badal Singh et al. | Frontiers in Plant Science | 2025-09-23
Phenotypes 1,807 Indian barnyard millet accessions held by the national genebank and develops a representative core collection.
| Xinwei Xue et al. | Frontiers in Plant Science | 2025-07-16
Evaluates 1,558 foxtail millet accessions and documents extensive phenotypic diversity useful for constructing breeding and conservation collections.
| Adane Gebreyohannes et al. | Theoretical and Applied Genetics | 2025-05-08
Examines population structure in Ethiopian finger millet landraces and maps genomic associations with agronomic and nutritional traits.
| Multiple authors | Plant Breeding | 2025-04-12
Studies Ethiopian sorghum landraces and identifies extensive genetic diversity and genomic regions associated with grain-quality traits.
| T. Birhan et al. | Frontiers in Plant Science | 2025-04-09
Evaluates exotic sorghum germplasm as a source of drought-adaptive traits for breeding in Ethiopia's arid agricultural regions.
| Multiple authors | Frontiers in Plant Science | 2025
Characterizes more than 1,500 proso millet accessions using agronomic traits and molecular markers and identifies representative germplasm for crop improvement.
| Multiple authors | Frontiers in Plant Science | 2024-10-07
Characterizes more than 500 sorghum accessions used in Uganda's breeding program and finds high variation in flowering, height, panicle traits, and yield.
| Multiple authors | Frontiers in Genetics | 2023
Finds substantial molecular and phenotypic diversity among South Indian foxtail millet landraces, including promising high-yielding and early-maturing material.
Pulses, Vegetables, Roots, Fruits, and Other Crop Diversity
| V. S. Meena et al. | Scientific Reports | 2026-01-19
Characterizes genetic and agro-morphological diversity in fenugreek germplasm and identifies material suitable for breeding and crop improvement.
| J. N. Abed et al. | Scientific Reports | 2025-11-03
Uses SNP markers and agronomic traits to quantify genetic and phenotypic diversity in sweetpotato breeding material.
| Aina Yadav et al. | Scientific Reports | 2025-10-23
Combines morphological traits and molecular markers to identify substantial genetic diversity among tomato accessions useful to future breeding programs.
| P. P. Dutta et al. | Scientific Reports | 2025-10-01
Assesses morphological, molecular, yield, and biochemical diversity in buckwheat germplasm and identifies stable high-performing genotypes.
| Yiwang Zhong et al. | Communications Biology | 2025-08-23
Uses whole-genome resequencing to map durian genetic diversity and construct a representative core germplasm collection.
| N. P. Ofem et al. | Scientific Reports | 2025-07-31
Characterizes the genetic diversity and population structure of Asian cowpea germplasm and documents variation useful for future pulse breeding.
| B. Tripathy et al. | Scientific Reports | 2025-07-02
Studies heterosis and genetic control in brinjal landraces, demonstrating their value as genetically diverse parental material for eggplant improvement.
| Mercy Wairimu Macharia et al. | Communications Biology | 2025-05-30
Analyzes Southern African cowpea landraces and identifies genetic loci potentially associated with adaptation to local and future climates.
| Multiple authors | Nature Genetics | 2025
Develops a peanut pangenome spanning wild and cultivated material and identifies structural variation linked with seed size and weight.
| Multiple authors | Nature Genetics | 2024
Constructs a Cicer super-pangenome using cultivated chickpea and wild relatives, revealing diversity associated with flowering, disease resistance, and other agronomic traits.
Neglected, Underutilized, and Opportunity Crops
| Simoun Bayudan et al. | Scientific Reports | 2025-11-19
Investigates barriers and motivations affecting consumption of neglected and underutilized species across six European countries.
| Crop Trust | Crop Trust | 2025-10-14
Reports on stakeholder selection of opportunity crops for targeted conservation, breeding, seed-system development, and expanded use.
| Nafisa Habib Purba and Kiruba Krishnaswamy | npj Science of Food | 2025-09-30
Reviews neglected and underutilized crops and proposes ways to integrate their nutritional, ecological, cultural, and resilience benefits into sustainable food systems.
| Lilian Korir, Matthew Hannaford and Ted Fuller | Food Security | 2025-07-28
Reconsiders the historical marginalization of underutilized African crops and examines their possible role in the continent's future food security.
| Gideon Sadikiel Mmbando | Discover Plants | 2025-05-26
Reviews obstacles preventing wider use of neglected and underutilized African crops and identifies pathways for realizing their food-security potential.
| Crop Trust | Crop Trust | 2025-03-19
Describes a funding initiative designed to conserve, improve, and promote crops that remain important locally but have received comparatively little research investment.
Examines neglected and underutilized millets in the Himalayan foothills and their potential contribution to household food and nutrition security.
| M. Verza et al. | Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems | 2025
Uses spatial modeling and farmer-adoption analysis to investigate opportunities for bringing buckwheat into more diversified Italian agrifood systems.
| Mendy Ndlovu et al. | Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems | 2024-11-27
Systematically reviews underutilized crops in sub-Saharan Africa and their potential to make agrifood systems more diverse, resilient, and nutritious.
| Nature Communications Editors | Nature Communications | 2024-01-08
Argues that genetic improvement of orphan crops requires approaches adapted to their distinct biology, limited research investment, and importance to local food systems.
Farmers, Seed Systems, and Local Crop Diversity
| FAO | Food and Agriculture Organization | 2026-02-12
Warns that African landraces, traditional crops, crop wild relatives, and wild food plants are disappearing faster than many can be adequately conserved.
| Multiple authors | Frontiers in Food Science and Technology | 2026
Examines maize seed systems in Tanzania and documents coexistence of farmer-maintained landraces, open-pollinated varieties, and commercial hybrids.
| FAO | Food and Agriculture Organization | 2025-03-24
Summarizes the global assessment of progress and remaining gaps in conserving and sustainably using plant genetic resources for food and agriculture.
| FAO | World Information and Early Warning System | 2025
Describes international monitoring of the proportion of cultivated land maintained under farmers' varieties and landraces in crop-diversity hotspots.
| Multiple authors | Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems | 2025
Studies maize seed choices in Machakos County, Kenya, showing how market dominance, variety availability, and farmer priorities influence seed diversity.
| FAO | Food and Agriculture Organization | 2025
Provides an accessible overview of global crop genetic diversity and the threats facing farmers' varieties, landraces, and wild food plants.
| FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture | FAO | 2025
Presents the third global assessment of plant genetic resources, covering landraces, improved varieties, wild relatives, genebanks, conservation, and sustainable use.
| Multiple authors | Frontiers in Plant Science | 2024
Uses tef to demonstrate the importance of coordinated investment in orphan-crop breeding and both formal and informal seed systems.
| Bonnie Furman, Arshiya Noorani and Chikelu Mba | IntechOpen | 2021-02-26
Reviews on-farm crop diversity as a resource for food security, nutrition, adaptation, and the continued evolution of farmers' varieties and landraces.
| Salvatore Di Falco and Jean-Paul Chavas | American Journal of Agricultural Economics | 2009
Finds that crop genetic diversity can reduce production risk and improve farmer welfare in the Ethiopian highlands, particularly on degraded land.
Genebanks, Seed Vaults, International Cooperation, and Policy
| Crop Trust | Crop Trust | 2026-08-18
Describes how national genebanks in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and Zambia can provide crop diversity needed to respond to drought, flooding, conflict, pests, and other agricultural pressures.
| Crop Trust | Crop Trust | 2026-06-24
Summarizes conservation, breeding, genebank, and farmer-access projects that strengthened the use of crop diversity during 2025.
| Crop Trust | Crop Trust | 2026-06-17
Reports that the Svalbard Global Seed Vault surpassed 1.4 million seed samples, illustrating the expanding global effort to safety-duplicate crop collections.
| FAO and FARA | FAO Regional Office for Africa | 2026-06-09
Highlights efforts to expand African food systems beyond dominant staples by promoting fonio, millets, sorghum landraces, Bambara groundnut, and indigenous vegetables.
| FAO | Food and Agriculture Organization | 2026-05-26
Explains how international sharing of seeds, crop varieties, and associated information supports breeding, conservation, and resilient food systems.
| International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture | FAO | 2026-05-22
Reviews 18 years of international seed and germplasm exchange through the Treaty's Multilateral System and its role in maintaining access to crop diversity.
| Crop Trust | Crop Trust | 2026-02-25
Covers the first Svalbard deposit of 2026, including participation by additional countries and expansion of the crop diversity represented in the vault.
| Crop Trust | Crop Trust Annual Report | 2026
Reports BOLD project progress connecting genebanks, pre-breeding, crop improvement, and seed systems so conserved diversity reaches farmers.
| Crop Trust | Crop Trust | 2025-11-24
Reports on Crop Diversity Day 2025, including cryopreservation, opportunity crops, vegetable diversity, and efforts to strengthen the global genebank system.
| Yurdi Yasmi and Abebe Haile-Gabriel | FAO | 2025-11-12
Examines the erosion of African crop diversity and why disappearing local varieties pose risks to resilience, cultural heritage, nutrition, and future breeding.
| Crop Trust | Crop Trust | 2025-08-29
Explains how long-term financial support for the AfricaRice genebank helps conserve rice genetic resources and keep them available for research and breeding.
| Lena Prochnow et al. | Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution | 2025-07-22
Reviews European regulation of berry genetic resources and how conservation, access rules, and plant-variety rights interact.
| FAO | Food and Agriculture Organization | 2025-07-02
Summarizes FAO's case for maintaining plant genetic resources as a foundation for food security, nutrition, crop improvement, and transformation of agrifood systems.
| Genebanks Accelerator | CGIAR | 2025-06-05
Explains how the Svalbard Global Seed Vault serves as a safety backup for genebanks conserving crop diversity and recounts its importance after loss of ICARDA's Syrian facility.
| Crop Trust | Crop Trust | 2025-06-03
Describes seed deposits emphasizing heritage varieties, nutritious crops, and the importance of globally distributed backup conservation.
| Crop Trust | Crop Trust | 2025-04-17
Describes efforts to safeguard crop collections in the Philippines against typhoons, climate change, and other threats to genetic-resource conservation.
| FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture | FAO | 2025-04
Provides the concise edition of the Third Report on the State of the World's Plant Genetic Resources, summarizing global crop-diversity trends and conservation needs.
Highlights international discussions linking crop genetic diversity, genebanks, plant breeding, climate adaptation, and future food security.
| Crop Trust | European Commission Knowledge for Policy | 2021
Explains why complementary in situ and ex situ conservation of crop genetic diversity is necessary for future breeding, climate adaptation, and food security.
| Crop Trust | Crop Trust Annual Report | 2021
Describes pre-breeding projects that introduce diversity from landraces and crop wild relatives into grasspea and finger millet improvement programs.
