About Us
- Children in Kenya enjoy a plate of mitoo (Crotalaria brevidens). Mitoo is extremely nutritious containing high levels of folic acid, iron, calcium and magnesium among other nutrients. Credit: S. Mann/Bioversity. Photo published in Back by popular demand: The benefits of traditional vegetables.
Our research
Research into the conservation and use of biodiversity is important for everyone. The more plant and animal genetic diversity we conserve, the more opportunities there are for innovation and growth in agricultural production and the more options we have to cope with climate change and new pests and diseases. Biodiversity makes our environment more fertile, our meals more nutritious and delicious, our lives more vibrant.
Biodiversity is available to communities even in the most impoverished areas of the world, indeed some of the world’s poorest countries are among the richest in biodiversity. Promoting research that can protect this biodiversity and harness it to fuel community development in ways that respect local traditions and the environment is what Bioversity is all about.
Bioversity is committed to research that can help foster sustainable development; research that can help people living in poverty secure dignified and sustainable livelihoods through food and agricultural production, research that can help raise nutrition levels in areas where hunger is widespread, research that can help keep communities and the environment healthy. Our area of expertise is biodiversity, but it is benefiting people, especially the people of the developing world, that is at the centre of our work.
Our vision
Our work is motivated by a vision in which people today and in the future enjoy greater well-being through increased incomes, sustainably improved food security and nutrition, and greater environmental health, made possible by conservation and the deployment of agricultural biodiversity on farms and in forests
Our mission
Bioversity undertakes, encourages and supports research and other activities on the use and conservation of agricultural biodiversity, especially genetic resources, to create more productive, resilient and sustainable harvests. Our aim is to promote the greater well-being of people, particularly poor people in developing countries, by helping them to achieve food security, to improve their health and nutrition, to boost their incomes, and to conserve the natural resources on which they depend. Bioversity works with a global range of partners to maximize impact, to develop capacity and to ensure that all stakeholders have an effective voice
Our focus areas
The purpose of Bioversity's work is to ensure that individuals and institutions are able to make optimal use of agricultural biodiversity to meet current and future development needs of people and societies. To achieve this purpose, Bioversity concentrates on six focus areas:
- developing and implementing strategies for global collaboration to conserve and use genetic resources for food and agriculture that focus on policies, genetic resources information systems and awareness raising;
- monitoring the status and trends of useful diversity, including locating diversity in situ and genetic erosion;
- enhancing the ex situ conservation and use of diversity of useful species;
- conservation and sustainable use of important wild species;
- managing agricultural biodiversity for better nutrition, improved livelihoods and sustainable production systems for the poor; and
- conserving and promoting the use of diversity of selected high value crops for the poor
