New York Botanical Garden event explores how crop diversity could shape the future of food

The New York Botanical Garden gathered leading researchers and diet-science experts for Crop Diversity Day 2026 on Sept. 22, part of the garden’s Climate Week NYC programming.

The event explored how global crop diversity can contribute to healthier diets and a more dependable food supply with the goal of adapting to the agricultural impacts of a changing climate. The program celebrated the launch of the World Food Map, marked the first anniversary of the Global Conservation Consortium for Food Plants and shared findings on underutilized food species.

The garden’s president, Jennifer Bernstein, opened the day with the notion that food belongs at the heart of conversations about the planet’s future.

“Crop Diversity Day brings us together around a vital idea,” she said, adding that the diversity of plants people grow, eat and conserve is key to building more resilient food systems and adapting to climate change.

Bernstein tied the global discussion to the botanical garden’s work closer to home, pointing to initiatives like Bronx Green-Up, the garden’s community gardening outreach program, and the garden’s Edible Academy, which teaches children and families about food and plants.

“The relationship between people and plants, the plants that they eat, is of course foundational, whether you’re in the Bronx or anywhere else in the world,” she said.

Crop Trust, an international nonprofit based in Germany working to ensure global food security through conservation and advocacy, was among event’s central organizers, with its executive director Stefan Schmitz taking to the microphone in celebration of the anniversary of the Global Conservation Consortium for Food Plants.

Launched at the garden last year, the consortium brings botanical gardens and gene banks — facilities that preserve seeds and other plant genetic material to protect crop diversity for future research, breeding and food production — together to protect the world’s food plants. Schmitz likened the launch to a wedding between the two.

Gene banks and botanical gardens hold plant genetic resources that Schmitz called “one of the most precious resources we have on Earth.”

Protecting crop wild relatives and underutilized species, he said, can help agriculture respond to climate change, pests and diseases. Crop wild relatives are the wild cousins of domesticated crops and often carry traits such as drought or disease resistance, while neglected and underutilized species are food plants that matter locally but get little research or commercial attention.

More than 26,000 plant species are used as food worldwide, according to Mauricio Diazgranados, the botanical garden’s chief science officer and dean of science, but only a small share are widely cultivated. Many cultivated plants, their wild relatives and wild edible species face growing societal, agricultural and environmental threats.

In its first year, Diazgranados said, the consortium established its steering committee, began publishing a global food plant checklist and launched projects involving wild cassava and cowpeas.

Colin Khoury, the Crop Trust’s global conservation lead, spoke to the scale of the challenge.

Thousands of botanical gardens safeguard more than 100,000 plant species and curate more than 150 million herbarium specimens, he said. Nearly 1,000 gene banks maintain more than 6 million samples of crops and their wild relatives and distribute more than half a million samples annually to scientists and breeders.

“Yet these efforts are really not nearly sufficient,” Khoury said, adding that most plant species, including many food plants, are not conserved in either system.

By working together, he said, gene banks can gain botanical knowledge and  partners, while botanical gardens can gain conservation infrastructure and a more direct role in crop research and breeding.

Khoury pointed to Texas tapioca, a rare, endangered wild relative of cassava found only in Texas and northern Mexico. It carries a trait that keeps roots from deteriorating after harvest, which he said could help cassava last two to three times as long.

Also in the spotlight was the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture — a 2001 agreement under the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization that lets member countries share seeds and genetic material of key crops for research and breeding, and recognizes farmers’ rights as stewards of crop diversity.

Its deputy secretary, Álvaro Toledo, illustrated the effects of climate change, recalling a conversation with a Mediterranean olive oil producer.

Heat had damaged olive flowers during blooming, Toledo was told, and while temperatures reduced existing pest problems, storms could still threaten the crop before harvest.

“It’s not only one impact of climate change,” Toledo said. “It’s several impacts of climate change in the same harvesting season.”

New plant varieties with traits adapted to changing conditions are one potential response, he said, but only a handful of plant breeders worldwide work on olives. Those breeders need access to genetic diversity, quality data and policies that facilitate research, he said.

The day’s centerpiece was the launch of the World Food Map, which co-lead Anna Herforth called “an atlas of edible biodiversity.”

The map grew out of more than 1,000 interviews across 140 countries by the Global Diet Quality Project, a research effort Herforth leads, which produced a systematic list of commonly consumed foods. It now covers 165 countries, 1,700 foods and 905 species. Users can find local names for species, where they are eaten, where they can grow under current and future climates, and whether they are held in gene banks or botanical gardens.

Herforth used the cowpea to demonstrate the importance of understanding how individual species are named and consumed differently across cultures. The same species is eaten as dried seed called a pulse across much of Africa and as a leafy green in East and Southern Africa.

“If we can’t talk about them, how can we conserve them?” Herforth asked.

The data also pointed to dietary gaps. Herforth said low dietary diversity is concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, while diverse plant foods in many middle-income countries are being displaced by ultra-processed foods made from a relatively small number of species.

The goal, she said, is to connect plant diversity with gaps in diets, offering “a menu of foods that are culturally resonant, nutritionally rich and climate resilient.”

World Food Map co-lead Chris Vogliano, a registered dietitian and postdoctoral researcher at Wageningen University & Research, a Dutch university known for agriculture and food science and another of the event’s organizers, explained how the map could also help food systems prepare for climate change.

In Ethiopia, growing zones for Ethiopian kale, a commonly consumed dark leafy vegetable, are projected to shrink as the climate changes, while areas suitable for jute mallow, another culturally familiar green, are expected to expand, according to the map.

Vogliano also previewed findings from a study analyzing 21 global priority food lists that identified 683 “opportunity crops,” which are being added to the map.

The current phase of the World Food Map project is ending, but Herforth and Vogliano envision it continuing to grow, with tens of thousands of edible plant species still waiting to be added.