Cryo validation: conserving potato biodiversity for the long term

Changes in the climate, landscapes, and pest and disease pressure are driving a necessity to transform agriculture, which requires preserving the agrobiodiversity breeders and farmers need to achieve adaptation. Yet some of the same factors that threaten the future of farming endanger agrobiodiversity in the field today, making the conservation of plant genetic resources in genebanks, or ex situ, more important than ever.

Biodiversity safeguarded in genebanks is frequently shared with crop breeders or farmers, and it could be key to overcoming threats to food production that scientists have yet to even image.