Bioversity International

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Bioversity International is a global non-profit research-for-development organization that works to protect and use agricultural biodiversity. Its goal is to improve food and nutrition security, especially in low-income countries, by showing how diversity in crops, animals, and ecosystems can boost resilience, productivity, and sustainable farming. Biodiversity helps directly through locally adapted crops and better nutrition, and indirectly through ecosystem services like pollinators, soil microbes, and natural pest control. Diversity is crucial for adapting agriculture to climate change and building more resilient farming systems.

In 2019, Bioversity International joined with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) to form the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT. Both institutions are part of CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food-secure future. The Alliance has about 300 staff working from 18 offices around the world, with a global headquarters moved in 2021 to the Aventine Hill in Rome, Italy, near the FAO.

Bioversity International is governed by a Board of Trustees, with representatives from Italy (the host country) and FAO, and the Director General manages the organization’s programs. The current Director General is Juan Lucas Restrepo.

History and scope: The organization began in 1974 as the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources (IBPGR). It became the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI) in 1993 and began operating independently within CGIAR in 1994. In 1994 IPGRI took over governance of INIBAP (the banana and plantain improvement program), and in 2006 IPGRI and INIBAP merged under the Bioversity International name.

Bioversity runs the world’s largest banana gene bank, the Musa Germplasm Transit Centre, hosted at KU Leuven in Belgium, and manages ProMusa, a platform for banana knowledge. In 2002, Bioversity helped establish the Global Crop Diversity Trust through a Crop Diversity Endowment Fund, in cooperation with CGIAR and FAO. The organization has published various series and reports, including Issues in Genetic Resources, and in 2017 released Mainstreaming Agrobiodiversity in Sustainable Food Systems: Scientific Foundations for an Agrobiodiversity Index.