Bioversity is now seeking a well qualified candidate, to be based at its office in Montpellier, France, for the position of: Programme Director – ‘Commodities for Livelihoods’.

The successful incumbent will provide leadership in researching and developing pro-poor and diversity-friendly commodity systems, focusing on 3 commodity crops (banana, cacao and coconut) of special importance to poor people in the tropics and their farming systems.

15 July 2008

The site where archaeologists found the oldest remains of cultivated bananas has been added to the UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites during its July 7 meeting held in Quebec City.

17 March 2008

The ProMusa network—established in 1997 by Bioversity to provide expert support to the world’s (very few) banana breeders—has a new website featuring discussion fora, an electronic newsletter, an e-mail alert for registered users and commenting facilities to express opinions on individual articles.

24 October 2007

The destruction in 2003 of Iraq’s Abu Gharib national genebank could have been a disaster for genetic resources conservation in an area where the ‘Fertile Crescent’ provided the cradle for domestication of cereal crops. The impact of this loss was, however, mitigated by the existence of a ‘black box’ collection at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) in Aleppo, Syria, where seven years earlier Abu Gharib scientists had sent seeds of the 200 most valuable varieties for safe-keeping.