Origins
The first steps toward the creation of CIMMYT were taken in 1943 when cooperative efforts of the Mexican government and the Rockefeller Foundation led to the founding of the Office of Special Studies, an organization within the Mexican Secretariat of Agriculture. The office’s goal was to ensure food security in Mexico and abroad through selective plant breeding and crop improvement.
The project developed into a collaboration between Mexican and international researchers. It established global networks to test experimental crop varieties. One of its researchers, Norman Borlaug, developed shorter wheat varieties that put more energy into grain production and responded better to fertilizer than older varieties. The program was renamed and morphed into CIMMYT in 1963, though it was still under the Secretariat of Agriculture’s jurisdiction. As international demand grew and it became apparent CIMMYT required internal organization and increased funding, the center was reorganized and established as a non-profit scientific and educational institution in its own right in 1966.
In the early 1970s, a small cadre of development organizations, national sponsors, and private foundations organized CGIAR to further spread the impact of agricultural research to more nations. CIMMYT became one of the first international research centers to be supported through the CGIAR. Today, the CGIAR comprises 15 such centers, all dedicated to sustainable food security through scientific research.
Read more about this topic: International Maize And Wheat Improvement Center
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
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“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
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The origins of art.”
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