Bioversity Annual Report 2007
From here you can explore the various stories contained in Bioversity's Annual Report for 2007. The supplementary information — for example Financial Information, Staff and details of Bioversity's projects — is not published as html, but can be downloaded as PDF files. A printable PDF of the full Bioversity Annual Report can be downloaded here. The file is about 1.5 Mb.
Alternatively, if you would prefer to receive a printed copy, please send your address details by e mail.
Foreword
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Adapting agriculture to climate change
Climate change will greatly affect what we grow and where we grow it. Bioversity research shows that farmers in Europe and North America stand to gain, whereas farmers in sub-Saharan Africa will lose. Solutions may come from existing diversity, but the wild relatives of crops are also threatened by climate change.
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A banana time machine on the Comoro Islands
A group of bananas bypassed by modern times offers a glimpse of what the ancestors of the export banana might have looked like. A Bioversity project, supported by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, has been working with partners to understand the banana diversity of the Comoro Islands and to conserve it before it is too late.
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Hope flourishes in home gardens
Much of modern European agriculture favours homogeneity over diversity. And yet in the back gardens of Europe, a few farmers continue to grow a rich variety of crops to suit their needs. A study by Bioversity sheds light on the potential of home gardens as havens for the conservation of Europe's crop diversity.
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Back by popular demand
More than ten years ago, scientists at Bioversity's regional office in Kenya noticed an alarming development. The traditional African leafy vegetables they had eaten as children were rapidly disappearing from farmers' fields and people's tables. Bioversity and its partners set out to reverse this trend.
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Saving seeds in the Sahel
An IFAD-funded project to help farmers in the Sahel make better use of agricultural biodiversity has opened new doors for women in Mali, improving their access to markets and strengthening their role in the local seed system.
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The missing link: biodiversity and nutrition
In 2006, the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity tasked Bioversity and the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) with leading a global cross-cutting initiative on biodiversity and nutrition. One year later and much progress has been made.
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Diversity to manage pests and diseases
A six-year project is setting out to help resource-poor farmers make the most of local crop diversity to control pests and diseases. The first step will be to talk to farmers to find out more about how they currently use crop diversity to protect their harvests from pests and diseases.
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Berry good nutrition
A project to look in detail at the chemical composition of different varieties of some fruits and potatoes offers the opportunity to enhance our basic understanding of their nutritional properties, paving the way to improved crops and better nutrition.
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Policy paves the way to a global system
Bioversity, working through the System-wide Genetic Resources Programme, helped to secure a global system for the conservation and exchange of crop diversity. An impact study completed in 2007 confirms a pivotal role for Bioversity and the SGRP in setting the stage for multilateral exchange of plant genetic resources and for sharing the benefits from them.
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Download whole report in PDF [1.5 Mb]