Crop Trust Gives ICRISAT Long-Term Backing for 50,000 Legume Seed Samples

The Crop Trust has committed long-term funding to the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, giving ICRISAT more dependable support for conserving over 50,000 samples of chickpea, pigeonpea and groundnut at its genebank in India.

The agreement, signed in New Delhi on September 12, covers the unglamorous but essential work that keeps a collection usable: testing seed viability, regenerating ageing stocks, maintaining secure backups and preparing samples for distribution. The funding amount was not disclosed, but the structure matters because genebank costs recur for decades rather than ending when a short project grant expires.

ICRISAT said its genebank had supplied more than 1.72 million seed samples to 151 countries by December 2025, and that 90 percent of the full collection had been distributed at least once. Researchers receive material for breeding, research and teaching under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.

The commercial value of conserved diversity is visible in GPBD 4, an early-maturing groundnut variety with resistance to late leaf spot and rust. A study cited by the Crop Trust estimated benefits of 17.6 billion rupees, about 185 million U.S. dollars, between 2006 and 2022. Its resistance was also used in at least five other released varieties.

The collection has produced international spillovers as well. One Indian groundnut sample supplied through ICRISAT contributed resistance to groundnut rosette virus in varieties released for farmers in Malawi, Uganda, Mozambique and Zambia, showing how a trait conserved in one country can become production infrastructure for another.

Across the three crops covered by the new arrangement, ICRISAT material has contributed to 88 varieties: 38 chickpea, 33 groundnut and 17 pigeonpea. The institute also plans to fill gaps by acquiring traditional varieties and wild relatives that could contain useful resistance, maturity or climate-tolerance traits.

The timing is relevant to India's push for greater self-reliance in pulses and edible oils. Better varieties and quality seed are central to those programmes, but breeders can only select from diversity that has been conserved, characterized and made available in the first place.

For seed companies and public breeding programmes, the agreement is best understood as upstream research infrastructure rather than a product launch. It reduces the risk that irreplaceable material is lost or becomes unavailable, while preserving options for diseases and climate pressures that breeders may not yet know they will need.