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Image ID: 4825181

Caption : Seeds of crops stored in the GENEBANK at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) headquarters at Pathancheru, Hyderabad, are the bedrock for the institute's crop improvment reserach. This is one of the largest public-funded GENEBANKs in the world. It conserves for posterity 114,870 germplasm accessions of sorghum, peral, millet, chickpea, pigeonpea, groundnut and six small millets. These seeds of land races from 130 countries signify the global diversity in these crops. Till date, ICRISAT has supplied more than 6,70,000 germplasm samples to scientists in 143 countries. It has rehablitated agriculture, ravaged by civil war in Afganistan and East Timor, using the germplasm from the GENEBANK. With $1.3 million funding support from the World Bank, it is upgrading the facilities at the GENEBANK. Photo: A. Roy Chowdhury