The list in this chapter provides leads to websites where focus is on breeding, i.e. the science of changing the traits of plants in order to produce desired characteristics. The goals of plant breeding are to produce crop varieties that boast unique and superior traits for a variety of agricultural applications. The most frequently addressed traits are those related to biotic and abiotic stress tolerance, grain or biomass yield, end-use quality characteristics such as taste or the concentrations of specific biological molecules (proteins, sugars, lipids, vitamins, fibers) and ease of processing (harvesting, milling, baking, malting, blending, etc.).

The links below provide information on crops in a specialized way, i.e. with particular attention to the peculiarities of the specific crop.

Since the dawn of agriculture, farmers around the world have been the custodians and innovators of agricultural biodiversity. Through careful selection of their best seeds and propagating material, and exchange with other farmers, it became possible to develop and diversify crop varieties. As new crops were found in the wild, some of these were domesticated and cultivated. Community seed banks have been founded since the early 1980th in many parts of the world. They maintain and develop agricultural bio-diversity, enhance access to seeds and plants adapted to local conditions, provide training and sensibilisation activities and thereby contribute to sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty.

The development and adoption of standards, recommendations, diagnostic protocols and phytosanitary treatments is currently the major role of a number of international fora, in FAO but also elsewhere.

Papers and datasets are the most common outputs of any research activity. Both benefit from Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) being assigned to them in order to make them more easily findable and accessible.