India to host CGIAR's science week in April 2027

ICAR and CGIAR will hold CGIAR Science and Partnership Week in New Delhi on 12-17 April 2027, the second edition after Nairobi in 2025, with over 5,000 delegates expected and India pitching its farm science to the Global South, especially Africa.

What happened

• CGIAR and ICAR announced that New Delhi will host CGIAR Science and Partnership Week from 12 to 17 April 2027, organised by ICAR under DARE, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, with CGIAR; over 5,000 delegates are expected.
• The first edition was held in Nairobi, Kenya, in April 2025, where CGIAR launched its current research portfolio; the Delhi edition will focus on science to impact, South-South cooperation and India's 2047 vision.
• M.L. Jat, Secretary DARE and DG ICAR, said CGIAR's 15 research centres work in more than 100 countries, credited CIMMYT, IRRI and ICRISAT for India's food production gains, and named Africa as a priority for sharing India's innovations.
• Ismahane Elouafi, Executive Managing Director of CGIAR, said the event would set an agenda for the next 50 years of agricultural cooperation; ten CGIAR centres now work in India, on crops, water, livestock, fish, nutrition and policy.
• An Indian groundnut sample conserved and shared by ICRISAT contributed to varieties in Malawi, Uganda, Mozambique and Zambia; Hyderabad's Centre of Excellence for South-South Cooperation in Agriculture shares innovations across Asia, Africa and Latin America.

For Prelims

• CGIAR: a global partnership for agricultural research formed in 1971, with the World Bank, FAO and UNDP among its founding sponsors, to raise food supplies in developing countries; it has 15 research centres working in more than 100 countries.
• ICRISAT: the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, headquartered at Patancheru, near Hyderabad; the first new centre established by CGIAR, legally constituted in 1972. Its crops are dryland staples - sorghum, millets, chickpea, pigeonpea and groundnut.
• CIMMYT and IRRI: CGIAR's maize-and-wheat centre (Mexico) and rice centre (Philippines). Semi-dwarf wheat from the Mexican programme and high-yielding rice from IRRI were the seed base of India's Green Revolution in the late 1960s.
• ICAR: India's apex agricultural research body, an autonomous society under DARE in the Ministry of Agriculture; its Director General is also Secretary, DARE - currently M.L. Jat.
• CGIAR leadership: Ismahane Elouafi has been CGIAR's Executive Managing Director since 1 December 2023, having earlier worked at FAO. ICRISAT's Director General is Himanshu Pathak.
• South-South cooperation: development cooperation among developing countries. India's offer here is agricultural technology - climate-resilient varieties, digital agriculture and AgriStack, mechanisation, millets and natural farming.
• Genebanks: CGIAR centres conserve seed samples and share them under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture; the release's example is an Indian groundnut accession from ICRISAT that fed varieties now grown in four African countries.
• Second edition, first outside Africa: the first Science Week was in Nairobi in April 2025; New Delhi in April 2027 is the second, hosted by a country with ten CGIAR centres working on its soil.

For Mains

Syllabus: GS2.20 · GS3.4 · Linkage L1