GCP Phase II: Focus on selected, crops, trait-crop combinations and farming systems
- Challenge Initiatives (CIs) and CI target countries
- GCP target crops and farming systems
- GCP mandate crops
Challenge Initiatives
Following an extensive External Programme and Management Review (EPMR) in late 2007, the Generation Challenge Programme (GCP) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) now focuses on seven trait–crop combinations. The EPMR panel recommended that half of GCP’s resources be devoted to these seven trait–crop combinations, now dubbed ‘Challenge Initiatives’. Read more on the Challenge Initiatives here.
GCP continues to work on 12 target crops and associated farming systems, and—overall—on 18 mandate crops.
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GCP target crops and farming systems
In 2006, Generation Challenge Programme scientists developed and applied a new method for identifying areas where poverty and drought-prone crop production coincide. This analysis of global spatial datasets identified five farming systems in South Asia, five in sub-Saharan Africa, four in East Asia, and one in Mesoamerica where drought coincides with high levels of poverty.
The study also sought to find out which crops poor farmers rely on the most by examining a global database of harvested area and production. This analysis identified 12 crops as covering at least 5 percent of the cultivated area of each of the 15 farming systems stricken most by poverty and drought.
As GCP enters its second phase (2009-2013), the programme will seek to focus on these 12 crops, listed below (in alphabetical order):
| 1. barley | 4. chickpeas | 7. maize | 10. sorghum |
| 2. beans | 5. cowpeas | 8. millet | 11. sweet potatoes |
| 3. cassava | 6. groundnuts | 9. rice | 12. wheat |
Learn more about the GCP target farming systems
GCP mandate crops
Below are GCP's mandate crops, presented in alphabetical order:
| 1. barley | 5. cowpeas | 9. millets | 13. potatoes | 17. wheat |
| 2. cassava | 6. groundnuts | 10. Musa | 14. rice | 18. yams |
| 3. chickpeas | 7. lentils | 11. Phaseolus | 15. sorghum | |
| 4. coconuts | 8. maize | 12. pigeonpeas | 16. sweet potatoes |