The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is a global partnership that unites organizations engaged in research for sustainable development with the funders of this work. The funders include developing and industrialized country governments, foundations, and international and regional organizations. The work they support is carried out by 15 members of the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers, in close collaboration with hundreds of partner organizations, including national and regional research institutes, civil society organizations, academia, and the private sector.

The CGIAR Vision and Strategic Objectives

The Vision:

To reduce poverty and hunger, improve human health and nutrition, and enhance ecosystem resilience through high-quality international agricultural research, partnership and leadership.

The Objectives:

• Food for People: Create and accelerate sustainable increases in the productivity and production of healthy food by and for the poor.
• Environment for People: Conserve, enhance and sustainably use natural resources and biodiversity to improve the livelihoods of the poor in response to climate change and other factors.
• Policies for People: Promote policy and institutional change that will stimulate agricultural growth and equity to benefit the poor, especially rural women and other disadvantaged groups.

Why agricultural research matters

Multiple crises – triggered by food and energy price volatility, economic turmoil and concern about global climate change – have opened a new era of challenge and opportunity for agriculture and natural resource management.

While affecting people everywhere, the crises have imposed particularly harsh consequences on the approximately 2.1 billion people who live on less than US$2 a day – three-fourths of whom live in rural areas and depend directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods.

Higher prices for food have forced poor consumers to spend more of their meager earnings on this basic necessity, drastically reducing their possibilities for improved well being. 

Climate change, by worsening the growing conditions for crops, will further strain the productive capacity of agricultural land and undermine the agricultural growth that is vital for reducing poverty. Scientists estimate that rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns will have especially severe impacts on farming in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Stronger investment in agricultural science at the national and international levels is essential for addressing these new and complex challenges. Adequately funded research can deliver the innovations needed to achieve sustainable increases in agricultural productivity, benefiting the rural poor while conserving natural resources, such as water, forests and fisheries.

A long standing strategic partnership

The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), established in 1971, is a strategic partnership of diverse donors that support 15 international Centers, working in collaboration with many hundreds of government and civil society organizations as well as private businesses around the world. CGIAR donors include both developing and industrialized countries, international and regional organizations and private foundations.  

Guided by a vision of reduced poverty and hunger, improved human health and nutrition, and greater ecosystem resilience, brought about through high-quality international agricultural research, partnership and leadership,the CGIAR applies cutting-edge science to foster sustainable agricultural growth that benefits the poor. The new crop varieties, knowledge and other products resulting from the CGIAR’s collaborative research are made widely available to individuals and organizations working for sustainable agricultural development throughout the world.

Eleven of the CGIAR Centers maintain international genebanks. These preserve and make readily available a wide array of plant genetic resources, which form the basis of global food security.

In addition, the CGIAR implements several innovative Challenge Programs, which are designed to address global or regional issues of vital importance. Implemented through broad-based research partnerships, these programs apply knowledge, technology and other resources to solve problems such as micronutrient deficiencies, which afflict more than three billion people worldwide; water scarcity, which already affects a third of the world’s population; and climate change, which poses a dire threat to rural livelihoods across the developing world.

CGIAR researchers have a solid record of delivering results that improve people's lives and help protect the environment. Without public investment in international agricultural research through the CGIAR, world production would be 4-5% lower, developing countries would produce 7-8% less food, world food and feed grain prices would be 18-21% higher, and 13-15 million more children would be malnourished . For every $1 invested in CGIAR research, $9 worth of additional food is produced in developing countries, where it is needed most. The evidence is clear: agricultural growth alleviates poverty and hunger.

CGIAR expenditures amounted to US$572 million in 2009, the single largest investment made to mobilize science for the benefit of the rural poor worldwide. The global food crisis of 2008 restored agriculture to its rightful place at the top of the development agenda, prompting a global recommitment to agricultural research, as expressed in recent statements by world leaders through the Group of Eight and High-level Food Security Summits.

A new CGIAR

In December 2009 the CGIAR adopted a new institutional model designed to improve its delivery of research results in a rapidly changing external environment.  The reforms should give rise to a more results-oriented research agenda, to clearer accountability across  the CGIAR and to streamlined governance and programs.

The new model consists of a balanced partnership between donors and researchers, which was established in the course of 2010. A new CGIAR Fund will improve the quality and quantity of funding by harmonizing donor contributions, while a new Consortium will unite the Centers under a legal entity that provides the Fund with a single entry point for contracting Centers and other partners to conduct research.

Shifting to a more programmatic approach, the CGIAR Centers will operate within a Strategy and Results Framework, aimed at strengthening collaboration for greater efficiency and development impact. A portfolio of CGIAR Research Programs will be developed, providing CGIAR scientists and partners with new means to deliver international public goods that address major global issues in development.

An Independent Science and Partnership Council (ISPC) will provide the CGIAR with critical advice and expertise.

The new CGIAR will foster stronger and more dynamic partnerships, which generate high-quality research outputs while strengthening national research institutions. Stakeholders, including donors, partners and beneficiaries, will provide input into the design of the Strategy and CGIAR Research Programs. The Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD) represents a key opportunity for engaging end users, including farmers, forest and fishing communities, and National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS), in the development of new research programs.

Read more about the new structure.

Benefits for the poor and the planet

International agricultural research has a strong record of delivering results that help confront the central development and environmental challenges of our time. The technologies and knowledge developed by CGIAR-supported Centers and their partners have delivered significant gains in terms of reduced hunger and improved incomes for smallholder farmers across much of the developing world. They have also contributed to sustainable management and conservation of natural resources, thereby protecting millions of hectares of forest and grasslands, safeguarding biodiversity, and preventing land degradation.

Among the outcomes of that research are the following:

• Biological control of the cassava mealybug and green mite, both devastating pests of a root crop that is vital for food security, succeeds in sub-Saharan Africa. The economic benefits of this work alone, estimated at more than $4 billion, are sufficient to cover all costs of CGIAR research conducted so far for Africa.


• New rices for Africa (NERICAs) combine the high yields of Asian strains with African strains’ resistance to local pests and diseases. Currently sown on 200,000 hectares in upland areas, NERICAs help reduce national rice import bills and generate higher incomes in rural communities.
• More than 50 varieties of recently developed drought-tolerant maize varieties now grow on 1 million hectares across Eastern and Southern Africa.


• A flood-tolerant version of a rice variety grows on 6 million hectares in Bangladesh. The new variety enables farmers to obtain yields two to three times higher than those from non-tolerant versions following prolonged submergence, a situation that will become more common with climate change.


• Resource-conserving “zero-till” technology has been widely adopted in the vital rice-wheat systems of South Asia. Employed by close to half a million farmers on more than 3.2 million hectares, this technology has generated benefits estimated at $147 million through higher crop yields, lower production costs, and water and energy savings.
• An agroforestry system called “fertilizer tree fallows” renews soil fertility in Southern Africa using on-farm resources. More than 66,000 farmers have adopted this technology in Zambia, where it has strengthened food security and reduced environmental damage, and the system is spreading in four neighboring countries.


• Information and tools are used by conservationists to monitor some 37 million hectares of forest, supporting better management of this diminishing resource and contributing to more sustainable livelihoods for forest dwellers.


• A new method of detecting aflatoxin — a deadly poison that infects crops, making them unfit for local consumption or export — benefits farmers throughout sub-Saharan Africa. This technology, together with a novel biological control method that has proved able to reduce aflatoxin by nearly 100%, helps to curb this major threat to human health, especially children’s health, and to save millions of dollars in lost sales of food for export.


• A simple methodology for integrating agriculture with aquaculture bolsters income and food supplies in areas of Southern Africa where the agricultural labor force has been devastated by HIV/AIDS. Under large-scale testing in Malawi, the method doubled the income of 1,200 households and dramatically increased fish consumption.


• A new approach predicts the likely impact of climate change on major crops’ wild relatives, which are a key sources of genes needed to enhance climate resilience, as well as provides valuable findings on the likely consequences of biofuel development in China and India for increasingly scarce water supplies.


• Increasing smallholder dairy production in Kenya improves childhood nutrition while generating jobs. This award-winning project with smallholder dairies has contributed up to 80% of the milk products sold in the country and strengthened local capacity to market milk products.

Click here for our page on scientific recognition.

The CGIAR Genebanks

CGIAR scientists play major roles in collecting, characterizing and conserving plant genetic resources. Eleven Centers together maintain over 650,000 samples of crop, forage and agroforestry genetic resources in the public domain. Read more on the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and on the Standard Material Transfer Agreement.

Data on the identity, sources, characteristics and transfers to users of the germplasm samples held in Center genebanks are available through the CGIAR Systemwide Information Network for Genetic Resources (SINGER). To access SINGER, click here.

CGIAR Stakeholder Perceptions In 2006, the CGIAR commissioned GlobeScan Inc., a global public opinion and stakeholder research firm based in Canada, to study the perceptions of its key stakeholder groups (CGIAR Members and Center partners). The survey shows that quality research is by far the most important driver of the CGIAR's overall reputation, while also identifying opportunities for improving the CGIAR's perceived performance. A report with the key results can be found here.