Outside Mexico City, at the headquarters of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), a vast “seed library” holds the world’s most important collection of maize and wheat seeds.

The enormous genetic diversity embodied in these seed collections, which number 180,000, includes original races of maize and wheat that were domesticated over millennia by farmers. The seed is conserved, studied, shared by CIMMYT with breeders, specialists and farmers worldwide. In 2016, 41 tons of wheat and maize seeds were shipped from the CIMMYT germplasm bank to 100 countries.

For decades, CIMMYT maize and wheat breeders have drawn on this diversity for genes to strengthen the disease resistance and climate resilience of modern, improved varieties.

The CIMMYT genebank also safeguards and restores seed collections lost or threatened by conflicts. Genebank staff are working with peers from the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) to preserve and genetically analyze ICARDA wheat seed collections that were relocated from Syria with the outbreak of civil war.

Under the Seeds of Discovery project, a joint initiative of CIMMYT and the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture (SAGARPA) through the MasAgro project, scientists have genetically analyzed approximately 60,000 CIMMYT seed collections from more than 100 countries and nearly 30,000 wheat and wheat wild relative samples from ICARDA.