As the climate crisis intensifies, populations grow, disease and pest proliferate, and natural resources diminish, genetic improvement of crops within holistic breeding programs is crucial to reaching global food security. For over 40 years, ICARDA scientists, under a mandate from CGIAR, the world’s biggest agricultural research network, have developed innovative crop improvement technologies and approaches to enhance and scale-out climate-smart crops across vulnerable dry regions and beyond.
Dr. Michael Baum, ICARDA’s Acting Deputy Director General for Research, Research Team Leader of Breeding and Scaling Improved Varieties of dryland cereals and pulses, and Morocco Research Platform Manager sheds light on ICARDA’s innovations in breeding programs in our new video. Our breeding programs encompass staple dryland crops such as wheat, barley, chickpea, faba bean, lentils, and lathyrus. To improve the efficiency and precision of the breeding programs ICARDA researchers use several molecular tools.
This story is originally published on ICARDA News.