Climate change and agricultural transition towards reduction in pesticide require a significant increase in the resilience of the agrosystems globally. A better understanding of plant responses to stresses and the identification of genes associated with resistance can be instrumental to provide agrosystems with stress resistant plants. The generation of improved crop plants is particularly important for smallholders with limited capacity to use agricultural input to increase the performance of their agrosystems.

The Tropical Crop Improvement Laboratory hosts the largest banana germplasm collection in the world which is managed in close collaboration with the CGIAR (The Alliance CIAT-Bioversity). Besides its key positioning in banana research, the Laboratory has also recognized expertise in other important tropical crop species (i.e. cassava, palms, rice). The laboratory develops high-throughput bioassays to screen and study natural resistance against biotic and abiotic stresses. The development of cutting-edge genetic tools is used to validate gene functions and to engineer improved traits in crop genotypes relevant for farmers and consumers.