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ICRISAT - International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics
“The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) is a nonprofit, non-political organization that does innovative agricultural research and capacity building for sustainable development with a wide array of partners across the globe. ICRISAT's mission is to help empower 600 million poor people to overcome hunger, poverty and a degraded environment in the dry tropics through better agriculture. ICRISAT belongs to the Alliance of Future Harvest Centers of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).”
“ICRISAT is headquartered in Patancheru (25 km from the city of Hyderabad) in the State of Andhra Pradesh in central India. ICRISAT Centers in Mali, Zimbabwe, and Nairobi provide hubs for staff based at seven locations across Africa and Asia (see map). ICRISAT staff travel extensively from these centers to work with partners across the semi-arid tropics (SAT) of the world.”
Mission
“To help the poor of the semi-arid tropics through Science with a Human Face and partnership-based research for development to increase agricultural productivity and food security, reduce poverty, and protect the environment in semi-arid production systems.”
Genetic resource activities
“ICRISAT's Genetic Resources Unit is responsible for assembly, characterization, evaluation, maintenance, conservation, documentation and distribution of its five mandate crops (sorghum, pearl millet, chickpea, pigeonpea and groundnut) and their wild relatives.”
In addition, “ICRISAT also conserves, characterizes, and promotes the utilization of six small millets (finger-, foxtail-, barnyard-, kodo-, little-, and proso millet) that have regional and location-specific importance and as such classified as under-utilized crops.”
Currently, the genebank holds over 110,000 accessions of chickpea, groundnut, pearl millet, pigeon pea, sorghum and minor millets in trust for the world community under agreements signed with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on behalf of the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.
For more information about the collections held by ICRISAT, go to ICRISAT’s website.
Inter-Centre Working Group on Genetic Resources
Each of the CGIAR Centres has a representative on the Inter-Centre Working Group on Genetic Resources, SGRP’s steering committee. The Committee sets the strategy and priorities for SGRP and meets annually to review its workplan.
Location
Bioversity International is the convening Centre for SGRP. This website is a collective work which includes contributions from the CGIAR Centres. Bioversity International administers this website on behalf of the SGRP. © 2009 Bioversity International. Unless protected by other copyrights.