CropsWriting ahead of the 2026 UN Biodiversity Conference, Ismahane Elouafi and Stefan Schmitz say a single conserved seed sample can save farmers hundreds of millions of dollars, yet many national genebanks are chronically underfunded.
VegetablesPineapple, cassava, potato and groundnut samples will be stored in liquid nitrogen at minus 196 °C at the International Potato Center, the first joint deposit by several countries.
CropsThe 13 October deposit at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault included Ukrainian buckwheat prepared near the front line, thousands of samples from CGIAR genebanks and Italy's first deposit of historic wheat and rice.
EnvironmentCGIAR will host the Food & Agriculture Pavilion at CBD COP17 in Yerevan, Armenia, from 19 to 30 October, and wants agricultural biodiversity and landscape approaches at the heart of the first global review of the Kunming-Montreal framework.
CropsAt the 2026 Crop Diversity Day, held by the Crop Trust and the New York Botanical Garden during Climate Week NYC, partners launched the latest World Food Map and marked the first year of a consortium linking botanic gardens and genebanks.
A PNAS perspective warns that about 24% of the wild relatives of 79 major vegetables are at risk of extinction, while Indian seed savers, chefs and school meal schemes try to bring lost varieties back.
Tests at Australia's Grains Genebank found 90 per cent of mung bean seed viable after some 45 years, but many tropical crop seeds fell below 85 per cent viability within 20 to 40 years, a warning to seed banks to test regularly.
A new agreement will keep more than 50,000 legume seed samples at ICRISAT's genebank in India conserved and available to breeders, with support from the Crop Trust's endowment fund.
