Crop Diversity in the Next 50 Years of International Agricultural Research
Colin Khoury, USDA/CIAT
Abstract: International agricultural research has diversified greatly over 50 years, moving from a narrow focus on the elimination of hunger to a broad portfolio surrounding the sustainable production of healthy and equitable food. What hasn’t changed much is the research emphasis on the handful of world’s most important caloric staple crops, even as private industry increasingly dominates their markets, with limited investment in roots and tubers and other staple cereals, and almost complete neglect for vegetables, fruits, and nuts. In this presentation I provide an overview of the past half century of international public agricultural research, and argue that the evolution of this research for the next 50 years will necessitate re-finding the niches where these organizations stand to contribute the greatest impact, including by giving much more attention to the dozens of food crops that can be relatively efficiently improved with regard to their productivity, as well as marketed creatively. I offer a vision for how genebanks, which have played a critical conservation role over the many decades of severe erosion of crop genetic diversity worldwide, can become essential partners in re-diversifying the global food system.
Bio: Colin Khoury is a researcher at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Colombia, and a research associate at the USDA ARS National Laboratory for Genetic Resources Preservation in Fort Collins, Colorado. His broad research interest is in enhancing food security, human nutrition, and the sustainability of agricultural production systems through the conservation, exploration, celebration, and use of crop genetic resources. Current projects focus on acquisition and conservation strategies for crop wild relatives, genebank conservation gaps for landraces of CGIAR mandate crops, Aichi and Sustainable Development Goal indicators for the conservation of the genetic diversity of economic plants, and data driven entry points that advance transitions toward more sustainable diets.
