The Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT) is one of the 16 international agricultural research centers of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). CIAT's mission is to contribute to the alleviation of hunger and poverty in tropical countries by applying science to the generation of technology that will lead to lasting increases in agricultural output while preserving the natural resource base. Research is conducted on germplasm development of beans, cassava, tropical forages, and rice for Latin America, and on resource management in humid agroecosystems in tropical America, including hillsides, forest margins, and savannas.

CIAT's activities in postharvest research includes germplasm enhancement for nutritive and processing quality of its mandated crops beans, cassava, rice and tropical forages. In beans, identification of genes and germplasm enhancement for resistance to storage pests and diseases is undertaken. Utilization and market research is carried out for cassava based products, focusing principally on the small scale extraction of starch.

In addition to this commodity focus, a land based approach is used to develop tools, methods and institutional models to facilitate the design and execution of successful rural agroenterprise development projects in fragile hillside and forest margin ecosystems where small holder agriculture is predominant. . The aim is to integrate market opportunity identification, the selection of appropriate postharvest technology and enterprise organization, with the development of environmentally sound agricultural and land use practices, for those commodities that small farmers have a competitive advantage in producing.

Website: https://www.ciat.cgiar.org/