A global system to protect the world’s food supplies from crop diseases

A multidisciplinary group of experts from academia, research centres, and funding organisations propose a Global Surveillance System (GSS) to improve global food security by preventing crop diseases. The GSS would extend and adapt established biosecurity practices and networking facilities, allowing countries to respond much more quickly to disease outbreaks. The framework is the outcome of a meeting held in 2018 at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in Italy, convened by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), and details were published on 28 June in Science.