With the presence of the President of Colombia, Iván Duque Márquez, future seeds was inaugurated, the largest gene bank for tropical crops in the world, located in Palmyra, very close to the city of Cali, in the midwest of the country.

A gene bank is a facility where the seeds, roots and vegetation needed to create more life are kept safe and viable over time. As more people are born, ensuring the future supply of food becomes more necessary than ever. But the crisis makes growing conditions more challenging. To withstand droughts, heat, floods and diseases, crops must be resilient, and this resilience comes from genetic diversity. Preserving this genetics is the function of gene banks.

The facility will not only protect important tropical crops such as forage, cassava and beans, but will also serve as a living laboratory for some of the most advanced technologies in agricultural research, making use of artificial intelligence, drones and robotics.

Future Seeds is one of 11 gene banks administered by CGIAR, a global food safety research association. The new one has more than 37,000 bean samples, 6,000 cassava samples and 22,600 tropical forage samples from more than 100 countries.

In its opening, Future Seeds announced a $17 million commitment from the Bezos Earth Fund that will be used to support gene banking operations and research on the use of plant roots to hijack carbon and mitigate climate change.

Source: Agrolink