ICARDA : Collecting, Conserving and Using Agricultural Biodiversity

ICARDA’s gene bank was established in 1985 in Tel Hadiya, Syria. It contains 157,000 samples of major winter cereals, food legumes, forage and rangeland species drawn from four major Vavilovian centers of plant diversity – including the ‘Fertile Crescent’ in Western Asia, the Abyssinian highlands in Ethiopia, and the Nile Valley, where the earliest known crop domestication practices were first recorded. Many plants are now extinct or endangered in their natural habitats. ICARDA’s collection of unique genetic materials rank among the most important worldwide. These collections are rich in landraces and wild relative species. More than 85 percent of the accessions are characterized and 75 percent are georeferenced.