We look forward to welcoming you to the 2025 International Perennial Grain Meeting, co-hosted by The Land Institute (TLI) and CIMMYT the week of March 10th, 2025 at the CIMMYT Campus in Texcoco, Mexico. Core conference days will be March 11-13th with an agenda focused on developing the Pathways to a Perennial Future and with confirmed participation of over 100 scientists and partners from 30+ countries around the world.
Pathways to a Perennial Future
Event in brief: As enthusiasm for regenerative agriculture continues to expand globally, the perennialization of grain production is the next frontier. Not only will the growth of perennial grains themselves improve soil health, but perennial grain cultivation has the potential to increase nutrient retention, reduce energy use, and enhance farmer income; they are part of the solution for global food security and climate change.
From March 11-13, 2025, The Land Institute will convene a meeting with CIMMYT to advance research and programming on breeding, cropping systems and adoption of perennial grains. Sessions will be organized around pivotal, multi-disciplinary themes
that are central to advancing perennial grains research, especially in an international context:
- Perennials for climate change mitigation and adaptation
- Breeding methodologies for perennial grain crops
- Intercropping and cropping system diversification strategies
- Intellectual property rights
- International data sharing
- Participatory/Transdisciplinary methods
- Defining and participation in regional perennial research hubs
- New candidate species for de Novo domestication
- Under-researched areas of ecological intensification
Discussion and working group sessions around these themes are expected to culminate in identifying ways forward for the Global Network to make progress on setting up systems, resources, or initiatives; the goal is to have a globally informed roadmap that will help guide TLI and other regional hubs in making progress on perennial research and development. Side meetings of crop or topic-specific subgroups can be organized for March 10 and 14, the dates preceding and following the core meeting.
Event Context
Previous International Perennial Grain Research meetings held in Rome, Italy (2013), Estes Park, Colorado, US (2014) and Lund, Sweden (2019) were focused on connecting and coordinating existing perennial grain researchers around the world. Organized as research workshops these meetings were successful in advancing crop specific partnerships, developing flagship research initiatives and developing global networks. Building on the expanded research collaborations that were made at these workshops, the 2025 meeting will look to further expand the scope and goals of previous convenings by inviting new partners into perennial grain research and going beyond crop-specific working groups to focus on cross-cutting themes.
Invitations and Space Limits: Due to space constraints at CIMMYT, not all researchers with interest in attending will be able to participate. Please feel free to let colleagues know about this meeting, kindly noting that we are encouraging participation by people outside of the U.S. and Europe, including researchers new to perennial grains. We will try to accommodate as many researchers as we can and will follow-up with invitation requests as is possible.
Contact: The best way to be in touch is through the RSVP form emailed to you by Tim and Seig, but you can also message perennial2025@landinstitute.org for other needs.