An organization that is cosponsored by the Rome-based United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the World Bank. The CGIAR is an association of 43 public and private donors that jointly support seventeen international agricultural research centers that are located primarily in developing countries. Twelve of the research centers have collectively assembled 500,000 different preserved samples of major food, forage and forest plant species into a gene bank. This, the world’s largest internationally held collection of genetic resources, was legally placed under the auspices of the FAO in 1994 in order “to hold the collection in trust for the international community.” Since 1970, CGIAR’ s collection has supported research efforts to develop better varieties of staple foods consumed primarily in developing countries of the world.