The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) created in 1971, is an informal association of sixty-four independent public and private sector Members, from South and North, with the World Bank, FAO, IFAD and UNDP as Cosponsors. The CGIAR maintains a global, non-political perspective.

The CGIAR fulfills its mission primarily by formulating a research agenda to be carried out through a network of 15 international agricultural research centers.. The CGIAR provides the Centers with strategic guidance, as well as financial support - $450 million in 2005, all in outright grants.

Decisions on research policy are made, and research programs are carried out, in consultation and collaboration with many partners in the global agricultural research system.

The Centers conduct research that generates global and regional public goods to benefit the poor in developing countries, by increasing income and improving livelihoods, without harming the environment. The CGIAR is committed to harnessing the best in science from traditional knowledge to cutting edge developments in the sciences.

Productivity and natural resource management are the twin pillars of CGIAR-supported research. The CGIAR contributes to global efforts to preserve plant genetic resources by maintaining, in trust for humankind, gene banks that contain over 600,000 germplasm samples.

The CGIAR supports Center activities that sustain Conventions such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention to Combat Desertification, the Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources that are related to its mission. The Centers collaborate with like-minded institutions in undertaking appropriate initiatives to implement the provisions of these Conventions through the production of global public goods.

The CGIAR on its own, as well as in association with partners, engages in public advocacy of science-based approaches to solving some of the world's most pressing development problems: reducing hunger, improving human nutrition and health, protecting the environment, and reducing poverty.

The CGIAR supports institution building and capacity building-globally, regionally, and nationally-to strengthen the evolving international agricultural research community, and enhance the professional development of agricultural scientists in developing countries. Some 75,000 scientists have been trained at or through the Centers.