Colombia inaugurates world’s biggest tropical crop bank

Colombia has opened the world's largest repository for beans, cassava, and tropical forages near the city of Cali. The demand for food grows as more people are born into this green planet. Feeding the roughly 8 billion people on this planet is a huge task, not only because of the amount of food necessary but also because of the climate crisis, which makes growing conditions more difficult and unpredictable. Crops need to be resilient to droughts, heat, floods, and disease, and this resistance comes from genetic variation. The world's crop diversity is being stored in gene banks, which are facilities where the seeds, roots, and vegetation needed to create more life are maintained secure and viable. Near Cali, Colombia, the world's largest repository for beans, cassava, and tropical forages opened this week. On March 15, Colombian President Iván Duque Márquez officially opened the Future Seeds gene bank. The facility will not only protect the biodiversity of essential tropical ...