Strengthening Global Research for a nutritious and secure food future

The Directors General of ICARDA, and Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT met on 13 Feb 2026 in Rabat, Morocco to bring together research capacities, co-design a transformative research and delivery agenda and sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to jointly drive innovation, scaling, and impact for legumes for food and feed across the world.

Why legumes?

Because they are resilience powerhouses: delivering nutritious, culturally-rooted food and feed for humans and animals, soil health, boosting climate resilience, and expanding livelihood options. From beans and chickpeas to lentils, faba beans, grass pea, forage and others, legumes offer a practical and scalable pathway for improving nutrition, addressing drought, heat and soil degradation, food insecurity, pest and disease pressure and resource scarcity.

Responding to global challenges, including increasing climate pressures and shrinking traditional funding sources, bringing the two centers together will enable raising funds and building partnerships at scale. Together, both centers bring excellence in genetic diversity and discovery, as the custodians of the largest legume genebanks, advancing breeding and genetics through to delivery, including in fragile and conflict-affected settings. Building on these strengths, and challenging business as usual models, we are laying the foundation for a global legume effort— a future-food-focused, impact-oriented platform designed to accelerate the development and adoption of climate-resilient, biodiversity-protective, nutrition-rich, and market-relevant legume innovations.

What the MoU will deliver

• Novel, disruptive pathways for innovation, including pipelines for new heat-, drought-, salinity-tolerant, pest-resistant legume varieties
• Redesigned seed systems and last-mile private and public delivery pathways
• Evidence showing how to bring back legumes at scale to improve nutrition, livelihoods, and climate resilience
• Coordinated regional partnerships, and compelling investment cases
• Policy and market support to boost adoption and value chain development

At a time when climate stresses and food insecurity are rising around the world, this transformative collaboration represents a timely and strategic step toward healthier diets, stronger livelihoods, and more diversified food and feed systems.

We look forward to building this exciting agenda, with partners, farmers, and communities at the center.